I won’t. As a competitive player, I tend to make my selections based on which hero will give me the best chance of winning first, and choose for which hero I actually like second. As someone who likes Mercy’s general hero design both for aesthetic and game flow (even if I preferred her pre-rework), I am disappointed that in her present state I will be unable to justify using her at all in competitive at my rank. I play in Masters.
That is why it matters. I know that if I pick Mercy, even though she is the hero I am best at playing, I will be letting my team down because I could get more heals out of Moira (or even Ana, with whom I can often out-perform Mercy). I can make the switch to other heroes and maintain my rank more easily than most players because I play a wider variety of heroes than most other players. However, that doesn’t make the situation fair for Mercy or anyone who wants to play her.
That’s nice. Last I checked Mercy is the ONLY support in Masters with a negative win rate. Moira and Ana have gone up in win rate by a lot. The stats are clearly showing that teams who pick Moira or Ana in place of Mercy in Masters are winning against teams who picked Mercy as their main healer, and Ana has nearly the same pick rate.
I am subscribed to that subreddit because tons of people link it to me for obvious reasons. I take it as a complement.
Indeed. I am not asserting this will be the narrative forever. I am just saying that clearly it was a substantial nerf and even after she bounces back she is never going to be the same and it is highly unlikely that she remains “must pick” regardless of the fact that rez was not touched. People will just adjust to playing without the safety net and get more value out of literally any other healer.
Give it some time
Both Mercy players and more importantly the Tank players who use a healers beam to go a bit more aggro. Have yet to really settle on the ramifications of the HPS nerf,
Once people adapt she’ll go back up, the fact she’s still maintaining higher then Moira even though Moira now should in theory have a higher healing per match then Mercy shows something
Before this rework, Mercy was still one of the most popular heroes, and had the lowest winrate in the game. whether she’s OP, Up or balanced doesn’t matter, she’s going to be seen a lot at all levels regardless of if she’s winning her matches
Ana was a hero I would still swap off of Mercy for before the last patch. She was a better pick in certain team comps or against certain enemies. Ana was an actual example of a niche hero… a hero who was incredibly powerful, but without the versatility needed to always apply that power. In the right situations, she would still shine… and in the right hands, Ana’s raw power made sure that she was always useful, even in situations where she may not have been optimal.
The latest patch gave Nanoboost its heal, and I think Ana needed that to be in a better place. That change is a change I specifically requested in a past thread as compensation for the speed boost that was long ago removed, so I was thrilled to see it. The ability to save someone with her ultimate has added to Ana’s versatility even more than her power level, and that is why Ana is now in a much better spot than she was before.
And that’s a good thing. Ana needed that. Her niche was a bit too narrow, and she wasn’t picked much in pro play because she wasn’t a “safe” pick. That nano heal makes her safer, because it gives her more guaranteed value. She could still use a change to let her grenade pierce through full health allies to make her kit feel even more consistent.
Ana’s former weakness, however, is a completely separate topic from Mercy’s strength or lack thereof. It was clear even without Mercy’s presence that Ana’s kit was previously lacking, and let’s not forget how much of an overpowered monster Ana was during the meta that revolved around her.
Im totally fine having low skill hero’s having a lower win rate. It should be go easy hero’s but not much impact. Or hard hero’s with a big impact. People are expecting so much from a hero that stands still and press one button.
I frankly don’t care about Mercy’s overall average pick rate. Only her pick rate in Masters and GM affects me, but I don’t actually care about her pick rate there all that much either. What I care about is her ability to out-heal the other supports, which she absolutely should do because as the game’s only pure support she brings little else to the table. That is the reason I picked her. I picked her for exactly the reason Blizzard wants me to according to their statement about the nerf to Mercy in the patch notes, and I am upset because they very clearly took away the very reason why they said we should pick her.
The reason why I started this thread talking about statistics instead of just saying Mercy couldn’t heal enough anymore, is because I already know the kind of useless response I would get from forums for saying a hero subjectively isn’t good enough: “Git gud.” So, I provided numbers to show that the problem is real. I didn’t need the numbers to tell me that, but for the sake of engaging other people constructively, I needed to bring them up as evidence of my claims.
The core issue here isn’t that Mercy has a low win rate. That is just a symptom of the problem. The core issue is why Mercy has a low win rate, and that’s because Blizzard made the wrong change.
Players above Gold rank include 39% of the playerbase based on this information.
While at Gold and below Mercy is still the strongest healer, she is definitely not the strongest support at any rank in the current patch. If she were, her pick rate is still high enough that her win rate would show it.
