Mercy: Restoration Beam

General Discussion
1

I’m not even going to bore you with an in-depth rant. There have been enough of those.
But, I, like many others who voice their discontent: do not enjoy this iteration of Mercy in the slightest.

However, as a revert is very unlikely, I’ve begun thinking of a way to streamline Mercy by keeping Valkyrie entirely intact. And by keeping the gameplay philosophy behind the rework, ALSO intact.

I will propose a “soft rework”.
I will NOT ask for mass-rez to return. I will, however, ask for a way to prevent death entirely, for a couple seconds.

Read on, if you are interested.

Concept
Resurrect is gone. Mercy no longer brings back the dead. But a similar ability will take its place: Restoration Beam. (alt names: Savior Beam. Defender Beam. Salvation Beam).
In effect, it is the same as resurrect, but instead of being a reactionary ability, it is a pre-castable ability, meaning it becomes dependent on timing, gamesense, and coordination. Which is always a good thing, isn’t it?

It is capable of saving a teammate from a certain death by giving them an infusion of health at near-death. This infusion happens automatically, as long as the ally stays tethered to Mercy.

Yes, it will be a beam. It is a tertiary beam that is activated with an ability button. It fits in Mercy’s entire kit and visuals as well, which is cool.

Similar to rez, it has a (slightly slower) cast-time of 2 seconds. However, Mercy can now move at full speed while casting it, and also continue healing/dmgboosting.
The cast-time is more so that Mercy can be hacked/stunned out of applying the beam in the first place, and it discourages activating it at the last possible moment to save a low-health ally. While casting, the targetted ally must stay in range and Mercy can not break LOS. (If you fail this, the beam is cancelled, but goes on a 50% reduced cooldown.)

The effect lasts for 6 seconds. Maximum range is like the other beams too: 15m.
Effects are as follows:

  • Ally will receive a passive 20hps heal.
  • Should the ally get below 10 health at any point during these 6 seconds, they get a single instant heal to full health. This also applies to burst-damage that usually instakills (ie: Widow headshot). Unlike resurrect, there is no invulnerability after the burst heal.
  • IF a restoration heal is applied, the target loses any active buffs applied to them (ie: nanoboost), and will cancel any active transformation/channelled ultimate.
  • Mercy can not move out of range or break LOS for more than 1.4 seconds; that will break the beam and the ability goes on cooldown. Mercy doesn’t need to be looking directly at the target all the time though.
  • Ana’s biotic grenade prevents the beam from being casted on the target, and will also break the beam if it was already applied. (unique interaction)
  • Stuns will interrupt the beam for the duration of the stun, but the beam will function for the remainder of its timer after the stun wears off. Sombra hack will disable the beam. Any stuns while Mercy is casting it will prevent the beam from being applied at all and the ability goes on full cooldown.
  • The restoration beam can only save someone ONCE. Meaning that if someone gets to <10 hp twice in those 6 seconds the ability is active, it will only activate the first time.
  • The instant heal can apply towards Mercy’s ultimate. However, the recent -15% ult charge change on PTR might have to be reverted then. Ult charge requirement for Valk might even need to be increased.
  • Mercy can heal or damageboost the selected target (pocketing) at the same time the Restoration effects are active (meaning 70hps healing for 6 seconds, or 20hps heal while also damageboosting), or heal someone else in the meantime (multitasking)

Visually it can be impressive and feel “powerful” while charging up, with the tip of Mercy’s staff drawing in particles and making a high-pitch charging noise before shooting a beam at the designated ally.
Mercy will connect a separate, bright-white energetic beam to the selected target. Target may be glowing, or get some kind of other visual effect to indicate that they are being protected from death.

Cooldown of this ability is 22 seconds. (22s cooldown + 2s cast-time + 6s ability active = 30s total)

In Valkyrie, the effects of the Restoration Beam are also affected by Mercy’s chain beams during Valkyrie, as well as the longer range (+100% range buff), meaning that if timed right and the team is positioned right, Valkyrie + Restoration Beam CAN affect and save multiple people at once.
In effect this is no different than other support ultimates.

Mercy DOES become more powerful in terms of raw healing power. In turn, the ability to bring back people from the dead is removed entirely. You now have to predict and pre-determine (or coordinate with) an ally that can receive the Restoration buff. This increases Mercy’s skill ceiling significantly, but it does keep her as an entry hero for healers.

If the Restoration Beam is too powerful, alternative methods could be changing her burst heal from full health, to 200-300hp. (instantly heals a squishy, but only partially restores a tank). And/or possibly reduce the time that the ability is active.

But I think it will be a nice compromise either way.

Disclaimer:
My suggestion may in no way be properly balanced. But it is the idea for the new mechanics that counts, and which you should be responding to.

Please stay civil, and please do not go into repetitive arguments. Discuss the idea as described here, and leave everything else out of it.

2

My problem is this+nanoboost would instantly become the meta at the highest level because it would almost certainly become an instant fight win unless the other team lands a sleep dart on, say, the Ulting Genji that got this superboost treatment

1 Like
3

Hmm, good point. Maybe the restoration burst heal should also cleanse any buffs and disables any ongoing ultimates?

4

That’s not good, technically you never go below 10hp for 1 shots. That would also make Widowmaker way more dominant than she already is. If you can have a widow both survive a headshot from an opposing widow while also getting a passive heal and damage boost, that would make her almost a must pick for good widows and bring back the mercy/widow meta. This would also be very good for initiator/dive heroes such as doomfist and genji, they would be able to dive in and essentially have 2x the amount of HP than normal. I would say get rid of the heal for 1 shot bursts, but everything else I can pretty much agree on.
Finally, an actually good mercy concept I can get behind.

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5

Widow v Widow battles already tend to have Mercy players on both sides pocketing the widow. Same for Pharah v Pharah battles.
It just happens on specific maps (ie: Illios or Oasis). I wouldn’t say that it is neccessarily a bad thing that certain heroes are more meta at specific maps or gamemodes.

Yes, it does lead to longer drawn out battles in these cases. But we already have that with a resurrect which can be held indefinitely, and is reactionary.
The Restoration Beam is pro-active and you just kinda hope that it saves someone during the 6 seconds it is active. If you guessed wrong, well, tough luck.

I do think that in theory, you’re right, such a thing can become (stay?) dominant. But there’s enough drawbacks to make it less interesting than resurrect in these kinds of cases.

The proposal here is to make Mercy more proactive and engaging during teamfights. Her timings can be trained and you can become good at them, setting you apart from a random new Mercy player who never played her. But at the same time it has its value no matter when or how you use it.

6

To be honest, if they were going to go this route, I’d prefer the idea that Mercy can heal dead souls.

Say, 3 seconds to heal a dead soul, which would trigger a Rez.

7

Seems like a worse version of the rez ability we have now. And it still brings someone back from the dead. Which is the one single element that creates the whole “unfun to play against” argument for Mercy, and which caused her to be in this state in the first place.

I’d rather have a fun, skillful Mercy without a resurrect ability, than to have a boring, skill-less Mercy with a resurrect ability.

8

i sugest the ability have two secondncast time and simply heal 500 health over the corse of 4 seconds. it will require even better timing, while allowing instakill countrplay, you could also say stun counterplay is enhanced but it was effective even at 6 seconds. also, this is like a mini nano with longer lasting proactive healing so i would sugest that 30 secknx cooldown this can still win fights especially offensivly and really its truly still an ultimate. but to protect valk which truly could have its place with a few mercy tweaks(like, i think valk should heal one target only, for 200 hps. its like a longer lasting ghetto zen ult with no invulnerability to caster)