Mercy: So Whats Next And Whats a Revert (And The Nerf that Shows Why This Was All a Mistake, and The Buff That Caused It All)?
As everyone here is keenly aware, Mercy recently received a revert on a previous buff to her healing rate, aaalll the way back from season 3, cutting her healing rate from 60 to 50 hps.
Why is this the nerf that undoubtedly shows that this was all an incredible mistake? To see that, lets have a brief overview of everything that’s happened. Ever. Single. Thing. So buckle in kiddos.
Throughout Mercys history (up until “The Original Mistake”, as I like to think of it this past year), shes received many, many tweaks to resurrect and her kit, all of the early ones need to be kept in mind, which I will list out to save everyone time
- Originally a global ult, range was reduced to 15m
- Ultimate charge rate increased by 30%
- Mercy used to be tethered into place, she was granted free mobility
- Guardian Angel was granted a reset upon its cast
- Resurrected allies were able to maneuver sooner
- Her healing rate was buffed from 50 to 60
- Her self regen was buffed to activate after 1 second, previously it was 3
- Somewhere in here, all ultimate charge was nerfed across the board as well
All of these changes helped Mercy become less of a troll pick, while allowing better Mercys to shine, since it gave resurrect more flexibility, but keeping it easy to punish if a Mercy made a bad decision. You had to be close to the fight, have better healing and damage amp prioritizations to get ult as fast as before, and rewarded a Mercy for thinking ahead about her allies positions by giving GA a reset.
And then, in the twilight of Beyblade, the day that Damned Us All: February 28th.
Resurrect:
- While performing a resurrect, Mercy now becomes temporarily invulnerable alone with the allies being revived.
“She will always survive long enough to be with her team again.”
I remember clearly thinking this was a mistake, and that a Mercy should either die or be rewarded for good positioning and timing to keep the counterplay, but everyone seemed so satisfied with it. A great change! There was an interview with EeveeA (who no longer plays Mercy because she feels so hollow and is a throw pick in diamond+, just like she was when she received this buff) where one of the guys on Overwatch central said it felt so right that it was more like a bugfix than a buff. Of course Mercy should have this!
Sigh. If that didn’t happen, neither would this rework. The high risk, high reward ult was made way too safe. They made a monster.
But lets backtrack to that Dev comment: “She will always survive long enough to be with her team again.”
Little known fact these days, but mass res used to be preeeettty bad. It was extremely easy to kill a very telegraphed 3-5 man res. I used to pride myself on being extremely good at staying alive through a res, because I understood that amongst other things. But it wasn’t hard to stop, or overpowered.
Really it wasnt overpowered after either, it just added a cheese factor two it. Mercy gets stuck? Res the dps that just died. Lol screw you Tracer. I also enjoyed resing in the middle of a Dva Bomb because it was funny. But it just shows how the invincibility became frustrating and allowed Mercys with worse positioning or juking skills to get away with dumb stuff, and anger the enemies with good reason. No one had a hated it vocally before this change, but I digress.
The main thing here is, Mass Res was a thing that could be tweaked and altered. Invincibility was one option, and really the extreme option of adding some damage reduction. 1.0 was more of a blank canvas. We’ll come back to this later
Then the rework came. We all know the patch notes by now, but the important takeaway from it is the first two reverts of many that came with this.
- Resurrect no longer grants invulnerability (the change that brought on this rework in the first place)
- The split beams ultimate idea from the alpha version of the game was brought back
Also, this ENFORCED the correct way to play Mercy, which was tempo ressing. Bad MErcys always went for 4-5 mans resses. No that option of missplay was removed, and the only question about res that remains is: Will I die? Also, its worth to note that Valk takes away all of Mercys weaknesses, and makes things stronger that were already strong enough, leaving it feeling hollow and kind of pointless other than a quick ez mode to get some freeflight if someone isnt in an ideal location.
Now we get to go over aaall the nerfs, and reverts.
- GA no longer rests when res is used. Bunny hopping added as feature instead of bug
- Valk no longer resets or reduces resurrects CD. Compensation if a bonus charge
- Cast time increased from 0 to 1.75
- Movement speed is now 75% while casting
- Can now be interrupted
- Valk no longer makes res instant
- Valk no longer grants a bonus charge of res
- Duration of Valk decreased from 20 to 15s
- GA speed in Valk reduced by 50%
- Primary Healing beam reduced from 60 to 50 hps
“Mercy previous healing output made her impossible to replace in any team composition. Even after these changes she will still be able to deliver more healing over the course of a match than any other support hero.” And now Moira easily outheals her, and Ana is on her tail.
GA no longer resets. Revert.
Reduced movement speed combined with short aoe is a Revert. She stands still.
They reverted their idea to have Valk still be powerful with res, no longer instant, no longer grants a charge. Two reverts.
Healing reduced to 50 hps. REVERT.
Combine this with split beams from alpha and no invincibility, and thats……
A total of 7 reverts, or 12 nerfs. Plus a stealth nerf of damage amp listed as a bug fix.
How many changes did Mercy 1.0 have? 7. She had 6 buffs, and one nerf. Three of which were reverted during this mess. Two nerfs if you want to include the potg thing that means nothing. But if you include that, its worth noting that they nerfed her on fire rate with the rework as well, so 14 nefs thats left her on fire rate at 2%, the lowest in the game.
Her healing rate nerf was an act of desperation to get her into a worse off spot. They had nerfed everything the could at this point. Everything about valk that could make it not feel hollow (though it always felt that way to me, but whatever), and any kind of reasonable nerf to res had been made. So they decided to chip away at her base kit, nerf something that had never been a problem, instead of looking back at the last year and see just how many more, undoubtably negative (but necessary, I’m not remotely implying she wasn’t a monster.) changes they had to make in this last year than they ever did to her in the first place.
How is it fair to say that this rework was a success, or to remain silent on the matter, when you’ve made at least 14 overwhelming negative changes to the hero, when you only made half of that before, and only two of them were nerfs? When there were other ways to change the hero than rip her ultimate away and put it on an E ability nobody wanted (I mean res as the E here, a lot of people wanted her to get an E)? When you already had to do over 7 reverts on things to put them in a worse off stop?
But I digress.
(uh, tl:dr I guess?)
So, now to get to the big question: What’s next for Mercy, with all of this in consideration?
- Her pick rate has dropped by a wide margin
- She cant continuously hold a 50% wr in diamond, and had trouble even touching it in Masters and GM
- The healing nerf did NOT allow her to still heal the most (fun fact, after the rework, her overall healing average only increased by 100ish)
- She is now a throw pick again, just like she was when she received the buff that lead to all this, invincibility
- She has had 7 reverts of things during valks lifespan, and 13 important nerfs, but 15 all together. The only positive change to mercy during this was a GA buff that was unintended, had that bug not existed nothing would be a net positive
Well, there’s a few options.
- Leave her alone.
- They didn’t leave her alone the last time she was suffering, so this is unlikely, and also a bad move. A lot of people love Mercy and are still unhappy with everything that’s happened, especially now that she’s a bad pick
- Revert the revert of her healing. Make it 60 again.
- This could make her meta again, something the devs don’t want at this time, or they wouldn’t have buffed all the supports on top of nerfing Mercy. Everything about this rework is still a loss besides GA change. She still feels hollow, and with all the other support buffs, she still isn’t very good, but should at least have a 50% wr in GM and Masters, which is still bad btw
- Take a few weeks to really analyse what went wrong, like a lot of people already have. Maybe read that Mercy feedback thread. Maybe say you’re looking at her again. It can be as vague as when they said they were “looking at resurrect”. A little “Hey, we get it guys and we know this hasn’t been smooth. And then change her.
Okay, since 1 isn’t really an option for more than like… a month, and reverting her healing is only a band aid and probably won’t solve anything systematically wrong that lead to that change, or the 12 other nerfs, then that leaves us with option three. So how do we change Mercy?
There’s only three options, again.
- Rework Valk
- Valk could have higher healing and increased damage amp. Maybe like 80-85 hps and 40 damage amp. It would probably need a decreased in time. Maybe 10-12 seconds.
- The problem with this is, its still a transformative ult on a character with a strong base kit. A good Mercy doesn’t need split beams, she can priorities and juggle. A good mercy doesn’t need free flight, she already doesn’t touch the ground. It would be like giving Rein or Zayra a transformative ult. More bubble, higher damage. Bigger shield, faster, more damage, hitscan fire strikes. Their base kits are good, making them overclocked for a period of time is superfluous and is a waste. It would, at least, be more useful, and maybe fat fingering valk, or using it at a bad time would actually be a problem that exists maybe.
- Make Res her ultimate again, with changes
- Mercy players across the board liked her more in this state. Her kit flowed much better, she wasn’t a must pick by any means, and, most importantly, she could be changed much easier. This would also solve the power imbalance in her kit, since all of her power is tied to a basic ability, which makes Valk feel, and be, hollow.
- This would involve removing the invincibility upon cast (which was done anyway upon the rework), and changing the aspects of her ultimate the could promote hiding for rest, which I’ll talk about at the end.
- Getting rid of Res and rework from there
- This would also get rid of Mercys iconic ability, but free up her ultimate, since valkyrie would still feel hollow and get rid of all of her weaknesses, for something else. This would remove the flair from the hero that people fell in love with, and also make the game a bit less diverse in abilities. Plus, if you are going to rework her to be without res, then why not try to keep it with one of the may different ideas posted here, or that the devs claimed to have when this whole thing was announced
All in all, Mercy is not fun, not a strong pick, not the best throughput healer in the game, made worse by her lack of utility outside of a res that’s not done very often and is situational, and people are still not happy with her. Which is past a full year later.
“This witch doesnt burn!” Oh but you sure did sweetie.
So, how would I fix her? What would my course of action be if I had all the power over at Blizzard? Well, Id make sure of a few things.
- She has no group healing
- She has no burst healing, outside of an ultimate, because Mercys strong base kit calls for a burst ultimate, like mentioned above
- No unneeded help with mobility. GA is strong, and the weaknesses it has balances it. Any help with it is redundant and unbalanced
- No offensive buffs, it goes against lore and keeps her balanced
Have her flow as much as possible without affecting balance.
With that said, these are my patch notes.
Mercy
Ultimate: Resurrect
- Revives dead allies in 15m area of effect
- Burst heals any living allies in radious, Mercy included, for 175 hp
- Can be cast without any dead allies
- Line of Sight requirements. Allies can be behind the mercy and still revived, but not walls. This does not apply to destructible objects, or the payload on escort maps. If LoS is obstructed after cast, res will still be successful, but the burst heal will not (imagine current E res if you slug yourself around a corner)
- 1s cast time
- Can be stunned out of ult like other channeling ultimate abilities
Caduceus Staff
- Healing increased to 55
Guardian Angel
- Movement is remained unchanged
- Guardian Angel is reset upon successful cast of resurrect
(these are two options for an E)
Pacify
- Cast using E
- A hitscan ability that, upon hitting an enemy, reduces the damage they deal by 30%
- 11s CD
- 4s duration
OR
Angels Grace
- Targeted ability
- Casts on friendly enemies, visually, it makes them have a slight glow
- They receive 30% reduced damage from all enemies fro 3.5s
- 10s CD
Developer comments: After over a year of experimenting with Res on E, and a constant year of nerfs, Mercy has been left in a weak state. We’ve heard all the comments, and this is us letting you know we’ve taken that feedback in, and agree. Her power balance was too skewed for her base kit to be enhanced, so we’ve moved her res back to her ultimate.
The new line of sight checks, and the added option of using it without dead allies as a quick heal, not only incentives Mercys to use their ult to keep a fight going instead of reversing it, but also help the previous problem the had of it effectively being a suicide button, without the bad behaviour invincibility encouraged, while also keeping it high risk high reward.
With the power balance in her kit back in line, we’ve also decided to raise her healing to 55 a second, since her group heal has been removed. This, and in combination with her new E ability involving reducing damage, we feel she’ll take back her intended place as the strongest throughput healer in the game, without stepping on the toes of the paces where other healers should shine, while also not being so unusable in those situations that her players can maintain a good win rate at the higher tiers of the game.
We will be keeping a close eye on her going forward, and have many different ways to buff or nerf her with this current kit to keep her in a good spot.
So if its too powerful or weak, how would it be adjusted?
Well, you could change the CD and effected time on E if shes weak. If shes too strong and res is the issue, and the issue is that the burst heal on her is too much, then lower the burst heal she gets to 75, and cut the cast time to .8s. Or something like that. Or make it to where she gets no burst heal, but gets a 30% damage reduction istead. There’s a few things that can be done. I prefer the ability Titanium proposed, but the other one is another similar option.
Whether you agree with my proposed changes or not, Mercy is in a bad state caused by a buff that was a mistake, and has been stripped of anything good that this rework has offered that’s both useful could be considered particularly fun or engaging. The rework has failed, her win rate is bad, her players are upset, and talk about why this was a mistake hasnt stopped for over a year.
A year later, and the hero is back to where she was when she got the buff that would eventually kill her again. Invincibility on cast caused the hate that pressured the devs to rework her, and the rework caused a series of unending nerfs that have now left her in a horrible state in diamond plus play, but with the twist of feeling hollow enough that even EeveeA doesn’t play her anymore because of that very reason, the champion of Mercy during her troll pick era, because at least she had a spark of life in her, at least res wasn’t a bot ability that only asked one question to use at the best time, at least she flowed, at least… at least she was Mercy.
Thank you for reading. For anyone who ever loved Mercy, its important to keep up conversations, so I felt the need to start contributing again
