I've been thinking a lot about Mercy. I have hundreds of hours on her and i played all changes that were made to this character, being the pre-invul multy rezz mercy, were she as considered a troll pick; the fase of hide-nd-rezz with the invulnerability that was added; the new reworked mercy and the consecutive nerfs. And my enjoyment in playing this character decreased a lot, not because of burn out but due to the mistreatement that mercy has recieved, from both the comunity (more than half of the comunity hates mercy and mercy players) and the devs by the consecutive changes.
Even tough i could play another character i still have to find the joy that i experienced with mercy in the other healers. While i do believe that this game needs another pure healer in not going to discuss this idea here. In this topic i wish to express my thoughts on the reworked live mercy and what i think that should be changed.
- Ultimate
Valkyrie was a very powerfull ultimate in the early stages of the rework. It had more time and you could rezz up to 3 times instantly. Now, for the majority of players valk feels like a underated ultimate, fly to the skybox, hold heal/dmg boost, if you won the fight good if you didn’t rinse repeat. Ultimates, when used right they feel impactful to the player and to the both teams. The main problem with valk is that the sustain is weak due to the recent nerf to the healing and even though the dmg is nice to push a point or a teamfight, its easily counterable by other ultimates or focus fire to key elements on the team. To the mercy player valk is a spectator mode that cancels all decision making, beam management and bunny hopping. The only way to take mercy out of the sky is to have deadeye and visor ready but good mercys stay hidden while the beam reaches the team from miles away.
I want, with this sugestion, to give mercy some of the skill she had in the beggining while maintaining core aspects of valkyrie being the multi heal/dmg boost without the flight.
Bless
Mercy ultimate is now conected to 2 resources meter, one to healing other dmg boosting. As soon as one is filled mercy can activate one or the other (not the 2 at the same time) and give:
1. regen- 50hp/s;
1. dmg boost 30%
if you activate this it will only last 10 seconds.
In paper mercy will have 1 ulti with 2 resources. It will have a small cast time with something similar to caduceus emote, 50/40 meter radius (i still haven’t decided the meters yet) and can be blocked by barriers and line of sight. After this mercy can’t use dmg boost if she choose dmg boost as ulti, or healing if she chose healing as ulti. During those 10 seconds mercy doesnt win ult charge or resource charge. If dead the resource meter will reset to 0. With this changes mercy can now actively participate in the batle after the use of the ulti. Ulti can be stoped by stuns, boops and hacking. If you die the ultimate stops, if you disconnect the beam during ultimate for more that 3 seconds the ulti stops. This happens to prevent hide during ulti usage. This will encrease mercy’s skill kit.
I think this will give more interesting plays to mercy since now mercy no longer stays flying endessly holding a button and works with the idea that the devs wanted her to be active in the teamfights in the early stages of the rework.
- Guardian angel
I feel like this is the only balanced hability that mercy has. So i wont remove it or increase the cooldown.
- E- hability
I think that, even though mercy’s core image is rez it should me removed. Mercy has a character suffered a lot from putting the old ultimate and as an “e”. If you need to destroy a character to balance an hability please just remove it. It will be healthier to the game and to mercy. You did it with hanzo and scatter you can do it with mercy too.
So with this hability out of the way i propose 2 options as new habilities:
1. Valkyrie
Mercy jumps on the air 15 meters and flies in the air on a duration of 4 seconds.
Cooldown: 12 seconds
This is going to complement guardian angel as an survival hability. While guardian angel is only used with team players valkyrie is a quick escape mechanism, independent of teammates position. While in the air you cannot activate bless.
2. Halo
Gives mercy 30% damage reduction by 3 seconds.
Cooldown: 8 seconds.
I think this one is really strait foward. It can be used during bless.
- Conclusion
This is all my sugested alterations to mercy. The numbers can be tweaked and worked on. Please be respectful on the coments, we all want changes to mercy but if this ones aren’t for you, or if you disagree please share your view. English is not my native language so im sorry for the errors in the text.
If you read all of this tank you you are a wonderful person.
Thank you