This is all my opinion, please no severe hate! Also, please read everything.
So we have gotten to the point where Mercy’s healing has been nerfed, and the reason given stated her healing output was greater than any other support character. This is a fairly controversial statement, since Mercy is a much more vulnerable and valuable target, therefore having a high chance of being picked first. Moira or Ana have better self-defense over Mercy since they don’t rely on teammates. Therefore, Ana and Moira have a higher uptime than Mercy would on average. Higher survivability means more healing can be given. I think the REAL reason why Mercy’s healing was nerfed was to compensate for Rez.
Rez has always been too strong and too weak at the same time. Currently, playing Mercy in grandmaster is almost throwing and playing Mercy in bronze is a must-pick, due to her little aim requirement (no problem with no aim, almost all supports don’t have to aim). When a character is in this state, a rework is needed. Symmetra, for example, had never been picked in OWL yet was a normal pick in bronze, and therefore she was reworked to be balanced all throughout.
My ideas? Ok, I’ll give it my best shot.
-Remove Rez
-Mercy’s E is replaced with an ability that can heal 80 health in an instant and has a range of 5 meters. Cooldown: 6 seconds
-Mercy’s Damage Boost has a slightly larger range than her healing beam (+3 meters?)
-Guardian Angel’s range is slightly longer, but also has a slightly longer cooldown. (+5 meters, +1.5 seconds?)
This would make Mercy a more well-rounded character as well as give her much more utility. Her Rez would no longer be the focus of her kit, rather, it would be keeping people topped off. Giving her abilities a longer range should keep her safer.
I would love to hear what you all think. Thank you for reading!
Good point, one that I totally forgot. My answer is… I have no clue. It might just remain the same since Rez wasn’t enhanced by her ultimate either. But it could be a thing where whenever Valk is activated, any heroes next to Mercy get the healing bonus.
Question. What are the benefits of having a 80hps 5 meter ability with a 6 second cooldown over an Ana who can do 75hp instantly as her main projectile without a cooldown?
~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance. xavvypls
i believe that the hps was simply a typo regardless that ability would be worthless when ana can basically do the same thing except without the cooldown and range restriction
And brigitte can with a longer range same cooldown and nearly double the burst heal plus overheal, not to mention every part of this is a nerf with the exception of that damage beam idea which just makes using the beams clunky
Mercy’s Resurrect was balanced before her rework. It should not be removed from the game. It should be her ultimate. You’ve also made many false claims in your post. I’ll break it down.
Moira has comparable escape ability to Mercy, but must also take risker positions. Her average deaths/game are about the same as Mercy’s.
Ana does not have an escape ability. Although she is indeed a better duelist than Mercy is and a bit tankier thanks to her ability to self-grenade during combat, Ana’s inability to escape from multiple targets diving her at the same time means that she dies more. In fact, she dies about 6% more often than Moira and Mercy do, according to Overbuff stats.
Ana and Moira do not have the same level of mobility and reliability. Mercy’s healing uptime is the only reason why her inferior healing output is able to keep up with Ana at all, and the only reason why she used to be able to keep up with Moira pre-nerf.
As a followup to my previous statements, this statement of yours in a vacuum is absolutely true, but the fact that higher survivability means more healing given actually benefits Mercy (and Moira, who is as survivable), not Ana.
This you’re correct about.
In Bronze, Mercy and Ana are both adamantly fighting over the glorious position of lowest win rate support. While Mercy enjoys some level of popularity in Bronze (present on 83% of teams), Zenyatta and Brigitte are actually the best support picks in Bronze by win rate, by a significant margin. Moira and Lucio are right behind them.
This was true when Resurrect was an ultimate because it was a skill-based ability, just like Widowmaker’s rifle. There are skills other than aim. It’s also noteworthy that while it felt strong, Resurrecting people vs killing people is not a +1, -1 issue. If you kill 5 people, you won the team fight. If you Resurrect 5 people, you only get another chance to win the team fight. Killing is more powerful than Resurrecting in Overwatch, and always has been. Most people just don’t understand or appreciate the intricacies of team strategy that Mercy used to bring to the FPS genre, because they were blinded by the anti-Mercy hide-and-res propaganda without knowing what it actually was like to play her at a high level.
Your rework would actually make Mercy a less well-rounded character, by putting all of her power budget into healing with the removal of Resurrect. In her current form she’s a shadow of her former self and Resurrect feels terrible to use, but at least Resurrect can sometimes provide a counter to one-shot abilities, giving Mercy unique value instead of just making her a worse Moira.
Keeping people topped off is already the main focus of her kit, and always has been since the game was launched. Being forced to use Resurrect is bad. Healing your team to keep them alive in the first place has always been the better option whenever it was possible, from game launch through the Valkyrie rework and still today.
I also feel the need to address these ideas. First, increasing the range of blue beam but not Mercy’s yellow beam may be one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. While it’s not as abhorrently impactful as removing Resurrect from the game, it would be an arbitrary complication of her playstyle that wouldn’t feel like it made any sense to the player. It would also completely break Mercy’s default control set, which treats the beams as one entity that can change color rather than two separate things.
Second, Guardian Angel already gets a range boost from Valkyrie, which you have left untouched in your rework idea. It is Guardian Angel’s low cooldown that actually makes it useful, and its existing 30 meter range is perfectly adequate. Increasing its range will not significantly increase the power of the ability, and increasing the cooldown would make Mercy even more susceptible to heroes like Tracer than she already is.
I knew by your post before I checked your profile that there was no way you could have put any significant time into Mercy before coming up with these kinds of suggestions. However, before you let my words discourage you too much, know that I appreciate the fact that you are here on forums trying to make suggestions that you believe would improve the game, whether or not they actually would. If that is truly your motivation, then please spend the time to look at the authors who have written on the topic before you, who have hundreds of hours of individual experience with and against all versions of Mercy that have existed in Overwatch. I will provide a relevant forum link below, that will give you everything you ever wanted to know about the topic and plenty that you didn’t want to know but should still read anyway.
Your idea left out her ultimate and you don’t have any idea for it, plus the other ability you wrote isn’t smart thought.
As RevertMercy said, Ana can istantly heal 75hp with her main projectile without a cooldown.
I’m not sure if you’re enough informated about thia topic or if you played Mercy a lot to give a judge.
Actually, Ana does 100hp healing with her grenade, not including the bonus healing from the buff. What RevertMercy actually said was:
And that refers to Ana’s rifle shots, not her grenade.
I know I’m kind of nitpicking here and I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I can’t stand false information being spread, regardless of intent or origin.
Try balance it as ultimate first before removing it please and thank you. No what the devs did doesnt count they only gave it buffs till they overdid it with invulnerability.
Thats it? Just more healing and no utility? This is just a worse version of Brigittes armor pack.
But why?
Double the CD of the most essential ability and fun factor? Hell no! If you would play Mercy you would know how important GA is to her.
Making Mercy a more well-rounded hero is nice and all but not like this please. I will keep sticking with Titaniums thread that Orion linked already.
