So I had an… odd bit of brain storming happen regarding Mercy. Please read and let me know what you think.
The thoughts that lead here
Overwatch basically has 3 general types of damage. It has general DPS (think Soldier) which is the most common. It has Burst Damage (think Widow, Junkrat) which is the second most common. Lastly it has Ultimates which is the least common.
Ana handles DPS well and has a very inconsistent way to stop ults.
Moira handles DPS well and has a very inconsistent way to stop ults.
Lucio handles ults well and DPS inconsistently.
Zen handles ults well and DPS inconsistently.
Brigitte handles burst the best and DPS very inconsistently.
Now let’s take a quick peek at Pre and Post nerf Mercy.
Pre Nerf Mercy handled DPS well and had a semi consistent way of handling Burst. That’s why pre nerf Mercy was still OP, she could potentially handle the two most common forms of damage.
Post Nerf Mercy doesn’t handle DPS well anymore and a semi consistent way of handling burst. Flat buffing her heal beam might just take us back to Old Mercy… Brig doesn’t have real competition for countering Burst Damage… sooo… what if we gave Mercy a fairly consistent way to burst heal?
The Idea
Give Mercy a new passive ability.
Healing Capacitor
While not being used to heal, Mercy’s Caduceus staff stores its healing, up to somewhere between 100 and 150.
When the healing beam is reconnected to an allied hero, the Healing Capacitor instantly drains, providing a burst of healing equal to the amount of healing stored.
If Mercy is in Valkyrie when this triggers, all recipients of the chain beams get the same full burst of healing.
I love the idea of the burst healing so much that I even included it in my own rework idea. I think that this would dramatically help Mercy deal with incoming burst damage.
Burst AOE healing is actually another issue she has for sure.
I think that if we aimed her kit in a direction where she has burst AOE healing and burst single target healing that is controlled and earned (like Torbjorn’s armor mechanic) then it would be amazing.
This would be pretty dramatic playstyle shift. You would almost never want to be healing (provided it charged at the same 60hps or whatever the beam is at). You would always want to be shooting / damage buffing, and then swap up just before the storage maxed, pop it on someone, and then go back to damage boosting, to get maximum benefit.
That’s a huge divergence away from her current playstyle. This could be an overall buff, but it makes her a tremendously more technical character, which does not seem to be the direction they want to go with Mercy. Her current playstyle emphasizes positioning and situational awareness over technical gameplay and this would totally shift her away from that.
Would be fine, but it would make her “not Mercy”. Something like this would be far more likely on a fundamentally new healer.
I can definitely see where you are coming from. I’m not entirely sure you are right though.
Anybody who is under fire right this second would rather have 50 HPS instead of nothing for 2 seconds then a burst of 100 health. It gives Mercy more flexibility, for sure, but with this change I can see times where I’ll still end up holding heals on someone.
As an upside of this, it actually makes her GA and Save play style (which is more fun anyway) more robust while making mindlessly pocketing not as good. The first burst of healing then a constant stream of healing is more likely to actually save peeps than just the constant stream.
This also has the extra bonus reducing the amount of head butting her healing and Resurrect cast time do.
Not really, I think it would entice the Mercy to use her gun to lay down some fire every now and then which adds more dynamic to her playstyle, but nothing too crazy.
No, she provides a constant healing stream to her team that is not effected by barriers.
Her being able to heal basically whenever is OPAF, You have to be carful with mercy because of how powerful she can be with the slightest buff.
I personally think she would need another re-work if anything further is done to her, I don’t think she needs anymore additional ability’s, If she was given a passive it would totally make her OP again and we would be on the same mercy train we where on for the first like 9 seasons of OW.
Mercy does not need a buff currently though, she is fine and balanced. I don’t understand why people think she needs a buff when she was literarily the main healer for 9 seasons.
Ps… As a ana main I endured like a year of people yelling at me telling me to swap to mercy, SO I GOT STRONG FEELS AGAINST HER BEING OP AGANE.
That’s not necessarily a bad idea, but it doesn’t really push her towards burst healing like this is attempting to do.
Also I feel like any buff to Mercy’s HPS numbers healing could easily make it “Good Enough” for healing general damage… at which point she probably becomes a must pick again.
i do not like the idea of mercy having burst healing. increased healing for a short amount of time, yes.
the resource meter was posted by someone else a long time ago
every 250 hp healed mercy gains light orbs (would be displayed on hud)
she can stack up to 3 light orbs
upon using a light orb she heals 70hps for 4 secs or damage boosted targets are cc immune for also 4 secs
light orbs cannot be used back to back, there is a 2 sec cd
can also be used on valk and i would tie rez to valk, rez 1.0/max of 2 teammates
It’s more to push her towards competing with Brigitte in the burst heal arena (since E Resurrect is pushing her that way anyway) and less competing with Ana and Moira in raw HPS output (which she was never spectacular at).
Less penalty for using Rez and Damage Boost (and pistol) is more of a happy accident.
Why would you want to add an ability that rewards Mercy for not healing, and becomes basically worthless/nonexistant in situations where her team needs the most healing