Mercy: The Best Off-Healer

General Discussion
1

After a lot of Mercy play and reviewing, I’ve noticed something.

Mercy is still viable.

But before you “”“anti-Mercy”"" people say “Told you so!” It’s not in the way you think. She’s viable as an off healer. Not a main. The way I see it, is this:

Main healers: Moira and Ana. These two are basically top healer tier right now. (Thank goodness for me) High healing capacity and very much needed in many comps.

Off Healers: Mercy and Brig. These two offer lower healing, with very important abilities to help the team survive.

Utility Healers: Lucio and Zen. Similar to off healers, but they focus more on utility than heals. Having much lower healing with abilities that could change the tides of battle as well as the highest DPS of all healers.

With Mercy set in the Off Healer category, things begin to make sense on how she is supposed to work. We do need to stop using her as a Main, and/or God forbid Solo healer. 50 HPS for a main healer, with no other way of increasing said healing, is abysmal. But her ease of use and res alone can help fill an Off healer slot if needed.

I think we should start discussing her balance in this mindset, instead of a main healer mindset. Because at this point, we’ve seen that such a powerful heal and such a powerful ability do not mix well. It’s either one or the other.

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2

Warning: every will reject this cause it makes so much sense. Good points and honestly as an off healer she is in a good spot.

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3

What’s funny is that I’m on the side of the Mercy players. She ain’t that fun to play and the way was played before can’t be played now.
But she does have the tools to help her stay at least decently viable for a bit as an Off Healer, so hopefully Blizzard will balance/change her around THAT aspect.

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4

Mercy will never not be topping pickrate charts so long as rez is an on cooldown ability. Give her 30hps, she’ll still be picked for that broken ability.

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5

That I’d agree… Kind of.

At that point, Res would have to be buffed to compensate for the trash heals.

And we all know the forums would not like that.

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I agree, but I don’t think its how it should be. After all, they said they wanted her to still be the go to pick for raw healing yet she functions more like an off-healer who wants to be a main healer.

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7

Yeah, it’s pretty much where she’s at now.

Kind of dumb that she pretty much doesn’t have a weapon and she isn’t considered a main healer.

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8

Whole heartedly agree, but I think it’d be healthy for the game if they kept her an Off Healer, as much as I and many others don’t like it.

Res on E is an incredibly powerful ability, and such a strong ability on a main healer can and has caused a lot of problems. I think they shpuld balance her similarly to Moira.
More Heals = Less Utility, but More Utility = Less Heals.

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Basically, I just believe it is terrible design to have a “pure healer” as an off-healer. Especially when she was a main healer for the longest time.

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10

I have felt that she has devolved into an off healer as well, but this isn’t really a good thing for her. her primary role in the game is healing and excluding her from being a main healer is a bit foolish.

to compensate for an ultimate on a timer they have to reduce her down to off healer levels of healing, but the problem is that she isn’t even a very good off healer. compared to brig, lucio, or zen she just doesn’t provide the utility that they bring. she cant heal and provide a damage buff, she cant damage and provide healing or speed, she can only do one thing at a time. At this point rez is rarely worth running her for all the baggage that comes with it.

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11

I agree with the opinion that Hoshizora shared today (GM Mercy and Symmetra main) that Mercy is on a bad spot but not completely trash. Currently Ana is the best support hero and Moira will see more use because she brings a lot of good healing.

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12

I don’t see a problem with this, at least she is balanced now.

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13

She’s not that balanced. Her win rate in diamond and above is doodoo.

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I actually made this post after watching Hoshi play Mercy Heheheh~

He’s kind of how I deducted this ha

15

Mercy should get a new ability, I think. If her healing won’t increase any time soon, then :

  • Rez should only be available during Valk, but it becomes instant cast (use it by pressing Q after starting Valk) ;
  • Her new ability (E) could either be making allies invincible for 1 second or less (on a 18-second cooldown), or an ability to cleanse a teammate (on a 10 second cooldown), or both of them on a wheel. That way, she would have more abilities to help her team stabilize and survive.
  • Her damage boost should be decreased to 24% to prevent instakills on 150 HP targets and nerf projectile DPS overall (Pharah, Junkrat, Hanzo), etc. This change should be added only if that version of Mercy turns out to be busted.
    That’d make her more useful both during the mid-fight and during Valkyrie (if you discard the dmg boost nerf, which is optional at this point).
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16

But on one is playing Mercy anymore, it’s all about Ana and Moira now. Mercy is only run with Pharah and even then it rarely ever works.

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17

Don’t know why nobody ever asks for it, but I’d actually play Mercy if you could gun/heal at the same time, or at least the weapon swap delay was removed. Don’t think she’s an off-healer though, she’s still easily the most consistent healer for non-tanks without taking rez into account.

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18

I thought so too, but I suppose a weapon rework that drastic would take a while

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Because the developers stated in the patch notes when they reverted her healing back to 50HPS that they still wanted her to remain the go-to for healing.

Thats how the game was originally balanced. You had 3 healers in Lucio, Zenyatta, and Mercy. Mercy was meant to always have a spot on a team and Lucio was a must pick because of his 30 meter aura.

When Zenyatta got buffed to 150 shields, then Mercy was given up on. As a result they buffed her heals to 60 so that she would still be in that spot.

However, because her ultimate was so bad and sacrificial in nature it had to be buffed several times. Once to give her movement while using it, another to decrease the time teammates were invulnerable from 3 seconds to 2.25 seconds and with all that it still didnt work so they gave it outright invulnerability.

As a result, it incentivized hide n rez since you werent at danger. Resurrect was intended to be used when you were with the team to keep the momentum if 1 or 3 people died and if there was a wipe and you survived, you could also get that too. It should’ve kept the danger and Mercy’s should die if they used it like how invulnerability let them use it. They had to use it to conserve momentum or otherwise you would end up holding your ultimate for a time that would likely never come. If anything, this rework shows just how much stronger even one tempo rez is than a full team rez that would end up being useless.

Now with her healing reverted she dies back in favor of other supports in spite of Lucio getting his radius reduced by 2/3rds because now we have 2 main healers that both heal better than her even if they have to manage resources.

Not to mention, they are way more fun and dont have a self-inflicted stun to use a fundamental ability.

In essence, what they have done goes against their original design. I’m not saying Mercy should be a must pick but unless you have something better, she should always be the go to healer just as they intended.

She should be viable everywhere and could be used 100% of the time if you wanted only you would miss out on some utility and less healing offered due to her low skill floor and ceiling.

Right now, she isnt the go to healer. Ana’s healing is obviously more powerful but requires much more skill. That still doesnt mean that Mercy shouldnt have any play time at the higher tiers because Ana played perfectly will heal more than Mercy because Mercy should be the go to healer.

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A few things here:

  1. She’s not working as an off healer. She’s not working at all. Her win rates at any rank above gold are utterly abysmal and not remotely close to other healers.

  2. Maybe she can work as an off healer, and once people start doing that her win rates will rise. If so, this will be an absolutely horrible situation. Mercy is designed to be a main healer. She was designed to be THE main healer. Everything about her kit was intended to work that way. Her player base plays her for that role. She’s always filled that role. It’s the most fun aspect of her. It would be a terrible decision to kick her out of her role because the devs are inept at balancing her.

  3. If res is the problem, res should be addressed. It should probably be removed entirely. I don’t think there’s any other character whose player base is fighting hard to get one of their abilities removed.

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