So… waves hi. I’m a former Mercy player who thinks the GA changes weren’t a good thing for Mercy to get. Not because they weren’t fantastic or fun, but because they, plus Valk free flight, made Mercy too safe. Too dependable. Too able to get her value out into the game regardless of what anyone did to try to stop her.
Then… the Devs reacted to now almost impossible to counter Mercy with a ridiculously long string of nerfs that pulled most of the direct power out of her kit. Maybe if we had had better Devs, her accidentally getting GA techs could have turned out fine… good even… but we don’t.
I didn’t even need to see the video to know which clip you were talking about. I still have an upvote on the top rated comment for that video. “I wished the guy who asked the question wouldve said , remember when your game had 12 mill subs? still there in the past”
Wonder why something like LoL keeps growing but OW dies? I don’t because I know the answer why.
This is why I advocate for drastic changes to Valkryie, it would allow Mercy a way to provide value to her team AND not remove the fun part of her kit (GA). Valkryie is the epitome of so safe she no longer has impact and its whats fundamentally wrong with her kit.
Heck not only is she actually safe, but her gameplay is safe from user error during valk lol.
I disagree with this assumption.
Even here, you’re admitting that they’re fun, which I’d already argue is grounds to say they should patch AROUND the mobility, even with a patch to base health if it’s needed (GA is an integral part to every Mercy version’s gameplay, SuperJump or not, I don’t think it would be overly punishing to make her live longer proportionate to how good you are at flying).
NONE of Mercy’s 14 nerfs after Valk (before she got a partial Nerf revert once they accidentally nerf’d Valk’s healing rate along with main) addressed her changed Guardian Angel-- and that was back when they had a chance to do so without hurting anyone’s attachment to the jump-cancel mechanic. It had JUST been added.
Mercy 2.0’s problems are too many too list, but they were largely independent of her mobility outside of Valk. Rez was too fast and free. The reduced CD on Rez in Valk was absurd, effectively buffing her ult in every way compared to any Mass Rez that wasn’t on 4 bodies like all the Mercy mains predicted. Valk’s flight speed was way too high and iirc ALSO factored into GA’s when using Valk (until this year, custom games didn’t even change that value, and even if Valk did, that’s still a problem with the ult, not GA). Valk’s damage output with the infinite ammo and projectile speed was absurd-- the first version they made of Valk even gave the Blaster bonus damage on its own.
Pinning Mercy’s decline throughout 2017-2018 on Guardian Angel’s jump-cancel is ridiculous to me, even you didn’t personally find it fun (which it seems like you do along with every other Mercy player).
edits: rewrote a thing and broke my sentence, fixed it now, my b
One of the changes they should really do for Valkryie is removing the permanent hps regen and beam length doubling. Its just even more self sustain that she really doesn’t need. Base kit Mercy has little trouble living, trying to kill a Valkrying mercy is an effort in futility unless in VERY specific scenario’s, most of which proper use of Valk can circumvent anyway.
while I (like anyone) do have some matches where things dont, shall we say, go too well…those games aside, I find I am able to be impactful with Mercy in every match, and not entirely in the same way each time
I have watched many, many matches at multiple tiers of play and with few exceptions Mercy makes an impact in those as well
My experiences and observations were pretty much the same even before she received her substantial healing buff
As someone who plays both Ana and Mercy, I can tell you now that it’s much easier to keep tanks alive as Ana. MUCH easier. Mercy healing a tank is just delaying the inevitable.
your anecdotes doesn’t change the fact that her ability mechanics literally make her have minimal self agency for value i.e. low impact.
there is basically 0 way for you to damage boost in a way that’d make allies land their shots better or to target prioritise better to get more value from damage boost
there is 0 meaningful way for you to influence the factors res opportunities depend on (i.e. where the corpse is, whether if the enemy ignores you or your allies cover you).
and valk doesn’t change any of the above either.
unlike other support abilities where the user has more self agency for value (i.e. have impact) e.g.
ana can made use of anti herself whether to boost her own heals or to secure picks on anti’ed enemies. in the same manner bap can do the same with his window and zen for his discord.
ana’s nade + sleep, zen orbs, bap lamp, etc. can abuse trajectory to bypass barriers or they can simply move to a diff angle/position to bypass them.
none of that can be said about any of mercy’s abilities that actually produces value. ga has it sure, but that on its own does generate value.
To be fair, it was that way from beginning, but resurrect kind of covered those “weak points”.
Got good teammate? Rez them to have a chance.
Don’t have good teammate? Rez multiple average/bad teammates for similar chance.
Now, however, what are you supposed to do, if you don’t have that one good teammate? Literally nothing. You just do not have anything for that kind of situation.
And it goes for multiple situations. Teammates ran on point and died one by one? Rez them all together, and now you got them to “group up” in place, where it matters, without any of them actually putting any effort to do that.
If that happens now…well, you got nothing to fix that.
it largely was, but there’s 2 facets I’m pointing out here:
the player’s inputs to influence opportunities to get value for an ability
player’s inputs in applying an ability/execution of play to get more/less value
sure, in terms of 2, res is largely the same because at the end it’s still up to the res’ed ally’s input. BUT the huge difference between old res vs current rest is in 1.
i.e. with old res, you had more self agency about when and where to you use it because old res was instant: i.e. swoop in, q, deed is done. it also had a decently large aoe radius that also went through walls and it was ased on ult charge making you as mercy have even more room to go about applying res for mercy to make her own opportunities for res.
that’s not the case for current res where you have all these constraints of slow, cast time, animation lock hard limiting how you can go about a res and how you can influence the opportunities for a res.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to make res lenient or to revert, but merely pointing out how there’s so many restrictions on the application of the ability to the point where mercy simply has very low impact from it as her own input has little meaning in the opportunities of res.
It would be tolerable, if it wasn’t only 1 player you bring back with all those limitations.
It’s hardest limitation so far - you can work around slowdown, long animation, etc. but not around being restricted to 1 player, which means, that overall impact of your ability can’t exceed impact of that 1 player.
I disagree. the problem with res is moreso how to apply rather it than “how many people it brings back”.
personally a decent solution imo is to make res an underarm projectile also with windup and a bit of slow and a tracer bomb-like trajectory. good mercies will be able to utilise GA maneuvers like superjump to combine with res to be able to get reses off where we’d currently be unable to do so (because it wouldn’t be safe). meanwhile bad mercies will have to res just like now, i.e. standing on top of the corpse.
Pulling off rez never was an issue for me, but it’s constant issue to get that value out of player I bring back.
Because, let’s be honest, resurrect provides nothing for player you bring back to justify your choice. You got them back, perhaps in hostile area, with enemy players on their way to eliminate you both, but they aren’t given anything to fight their way through or escape.
making res bring back more people doesn’t change that though. and it also doesn’t change how the mercy player doesn’t have a meaningful say in the factors in what makes a corpse res-able.
It does improve the odds, however. Since more players means, that enemy can’t focus on just one.
Resurrecting multiple players was rather effective way to catch enemy off-guard, as they got multiple targets to take care of at once, and it will take them some time to set their priorities on who target first.
what makes you think you wouldn’t be using it to tempo res a pick most of the time compared to res’ing multiple people?
if they managed to get 2+ picks on your team in a sort of quick succession for such a res to be possible, why would res’ing multiple people be much of an issue in terms of “focus”?
resing any amount, even 1 “improves the odds”
people don’t simply target a freshly ressed enemy unless there ressed in a position that’d be easy picking for them e.g. ressed into like a 1/2v6 i.e. rest of mercy’s team is dead. they’re just treated as any other enemy ._.