Mercy - Jack of all trades, master of them all?

General Discussion
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TL;DR - If you can’t be bothered digging in and reading this maybe you shouldn’t bother discussing either… :wink:

I’m not going to bore you with explaining what we already know - something is rotten with the state of supports. And this can mostly be traced back to Mercy’s rework as it removed Mercy’s weaknesses and compensated the loss of a beloved (by some at least) ultimate with sheer power and versatility. Not everything about the rework is disliked; some really like Valkyrie and find it a lot of fun, many agree that the bunny-hop actually increased their enjoyment of the character. But right now Mercy is just too good at everything, and I just want to outline what I think should be Mercy’s main strengths and weaknesses. These are the words I like to think of Mercy: Mobility, Consistency, Prioritization.

Weaknesses

  • Limited distribution. Mercy should never have access to multiple target healing, this is supposed to be her great weakness. This is part of forcing good Mercys to prioritize their healing. Her current ultimate removes this weakness, and does so for 15 seconds straight if you cannot kill her.
  • Inability to multitask. This is connected to the point above; Mercy players need to constantly make decisions about their game-play, there is not supposed to be any room for her to multitask her way out of situations. This weakness is for other heroes a strength; Zenyatta, Brigitte, Moira and Lucio are all good at multitasking to some extent. Ana is the only other support with similar limitations as Mercy, but she does switch from healing to damage faster than Mercy is able to. Overwhelming a Mercy should result in her team experiencing difficulties. The one exception to this rule is her GA, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to do anything as a good Mercy is constantly on the move. For this reason Mercy should never have the option of, for example, using both her beams at the same time or doing damage and heal at the same time.
  • Limited damage. This is for two reasons; it leaves her vulnerable and it allows other healers to bring a value she can’t. It also makes her an easier target for enemies that catch her at an opportune moment. She should not have anything in her kit that encourages or helps her do more damage. glares at Valkyrie’s unlimited ammo
  • Lack of burst heal. Mercy should never be able to burst heal as that should be a role more dedicated to Moira and Ana and the reason you pick them and not her. Her ultimate is the only situation where she may have an exception to this rule.
  • Teammate dependent. Most of Mercy’s kit should be revolving around helping her teammates, but also needing her teammates. If you catch a Mercy alone you should have all the advantages to kill her. Mercy’s abilities should therefore be centered around her teammates.
  • Limited utility. Utility is very important for supports, and Mercy shouldn’t have too much of it with the consistency of her heals. Current Mercy has way too much utility to be balanced. That being said, her old version did have a kit that felt lacking, so an E that doesn’t infringe on any of her weaknesses could work. This means it should have:
    - No burst heal
    - No rezzing (it’s virtually the ultimate burst heal)
    - No damage
    - No multiple-target healing

Instead it could have:
- Protection (like super short invulnerability)
- Anti-CC
- Limited extra mobility (like a vertical jump)
- Mild CC (like Mercy flapping her wings and it temporarily slows you/knocks
you back)

Strengths

  • Mobility. Mercy is a close range healer, so to get to her targets she needs mobility. It is also doubles as her only defense against flankers. Her GA with the added bunny-jump gives Mercy a lot of fun mobility on a short CD she can use to get around the map. It balances out by:
  1. The need for teammate LoS
  2. The predictable flight pattern
  • Consistency. Mercy is a consistent healer because she doesn’t require much aim and her beam is infinite. But she’s also consistent because she’s slippery for the enemies and can keep on healing while dodging their attacks.
  • High single-target healing. If Mercy should only, in accordance with her mentioned weakness in limited multitasking, do one thing, it makes sense that she does that one thing well. It’s nowhere near the potential burst of either Moira, Ana, or even Brigitte, but certainly stronger than Lucio and Zenyatta.
  • Mechanically simple. Having characters in the game that are more simple mechanically is an accessibility issue, but it’s also a way for people who normally play other roles to be able to pick this one up and still provide functioning healing. It also leaves room to develop other skills related to playing, like game-sense and decision making.
  • Burst ultimate. Mercy’s current ult is a sustained ult that conveniently stomps on many of the weaknesses I’ve outlined (independent mobility? check! multi-heal? check! limited utility? possibly multiplied by 5!). You should be rewarded for pinning down a Mercy, but now she has tools to escape and be nearly unreachable for 15 seconds while multiplying her output several times over. Killing a Mercy is hard enough as is, and an ult like Valkyrie just makes it worse. The primary mistake with Mercy’s old ult was not giving it enough counterplay that could be performed to either prevent the rez or interrupt it when it happened (so even if you successfully stopped her she could always come back with it the next fight).

Current Mercy does not respect these strengths and weaknesses - she needs to be changed so she does, without sacrificing the part of her that her players love and is a part of what makes her Mercy.

I ask for a civil discussion about this topic, and I ask for everyone to temper their responses and suggested changes with reason.

70 Likes
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Don’t comment if you haven’t read it yet

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Unfortunately, smart/good mercy’s know how to balance out their staff towards multiple teammates at quick intervals. This is why her healing is so reliable because it can be quickly switched between those players. Now it less becomes a weakness and more of an advantage, unlike Ana who has to keep on switching her aim to heal players.

Refer to the first point above

This entire paragraph I actually agree with.

I’m pretty sure that’s every support besides Brigitte.

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Would you want Rez to return as her Ultimate, but only for a single target? With a rebalanced charge time, naturally.

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Somebody got to take out the pharahs and Widows

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Thank you for commenting! Most healers actually have more independent agency than Mercy, which becomes obvious if you ever try her in death match (only her gun and glide works there).

It is true that a good Mercy player can juggle heals, but that is also a skill. You will notice if you look at lower ranked games that Mercy players tend to latch their beam to a tank or a Pharah and then “forget” the others. And even a Mercy good at keeping tabs on her teammates can only ever heal one, giving the enemies an opening. Sadly rez on E has made that less relevant, as she can now decide to focus on one and just try to rez the other later.

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Zenyatta, too, right?

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It’s either that or un-nerfing Bastion’s Sentry Gun so that he can return to doing that.

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I’m speaking personally here - I don’t need Mass Rez to return, I do think her ultimate should be different and more of a burst. However, I also do think her old rez could have been balanced - it was only annoying because people felt the counterplay came after the rez, forcing you to endure her ult, when more should have been done to make it easier to during. People don’t hate Transcendence, right? But it basically does the same! The reason is because it can be outplayed in a straight forward manner.

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I think the fallout buff will slightly help him out Although he’ll need more than that.

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I mean, Bastion deserve some love overall, doesn’t he? I’ve tried him a bit, liked him more than I thought I would!

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Mercy has by far the best survivability. Best healing. Best utility. Best rez. There’s a reason every single group you see has a Mercy. The fact that she has such a high pick rate while being an extremely boring hero to play shows how ridiculous she is. If you made any DPS as strong as Mercy they’d have a pure 100% pick rate.

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Please describe more

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Hey, Stunlaw, nice to see you! Would you mind commenting on my points a bit more specifically? It makes it easier to respnd. :slight_smile:

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Is this how people see Rein as well? Necessary, but boring to play? :frowning:

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He’s a blast… as long as he gets enough healing and there isn’t a good Doomfist on the other team.

(Played one game vs a Doomfist, Junkrat, and Sombra… eventually switched to Pharah just to give them hell in payback!).

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INB4 the inevitable “MeRcY iS BaLaNcEd LeAvE hEr AlOnE” comments

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But Quizzy didn’t say she is balanced, if that would happen then it’s just off-topic

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Nice of you to stop by, maybe you could add something more? Do you agree or disagree with the strengths and weaknesses I propose? I know I’m not very specific, but I kinda want to go back to the roots of the character.

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Apparently, a Transformation Ult only removes her weaknesses and kills the balance within her kit.

Mercy’s base kit is too strong to be transformed into something better, so the only solution is that it needs to remove her weaknesses which is a very bad thing for all support heroes if one can do that.

As Quizzy said a Burst Ultimate would be a much healthier solution. Not only for Mercy, but for all the support’s and maybe even the entire game.

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