Mercy 1.0 could have been reworked much better than she did. In my opinion, they should have given mass rez the nerfs it needed to eliminate unhealthy playstyles, and given Mercy an E to compensate.
Fixing mass rez
Do a “carrot and stick” approach to eliminating unhealthy playstyles with mass rez. Pressure and incentivise players to use their ult for tempo rezzing.
The stick would be a LoS limitation and free-moving cast time. Flying in at the end of a fight wouldn’t work anymore, because Mercy would get killed or stunned out of rez during the cast.
The carrot would be a burst heal for living allies and Mercy at the end of the cast (around 150hp) instead of giving Mercy invulnerability. Now that she doesn’t have to wait until teammates are dead to use her ult, Mercy can focus on using her ult to keep the fight going, instead of re-starting it after it’s already over.
Putting in a new E
Mercy needs more to do than just beams and rez, but her options for an E abilty are very limited. There’s an E proposal at the bottom of this, but I’d still recommend reading the in-between to understand the reasoning behind it.
Mobility on E is already out, because of the “Mercy needs more to do in a fight” part and the concern that giving Mercy any more mobility than she already has would be overkill. This is assuming that the bunnyhop is kept, and the superjump is made official like the bunnyhop was (crouch before using GA to go vertical instead of horizontal when you bunnyhop).
Damage dealing abilites contradict Mercy’s character design, and crowd control (boops and stuns) are out; simply because we already have too much of it in the game.
There’s also the concern that an E would make Mercy op in the low elos, since she’s already so reliable down there with her consistent healing. So we need something that is weak in the low elos, but strong in the high elos.
The second part is really important, because old Mercy was actually a trash pick in the high elos - they could predict and play around mass rez pretty easily, and that was the only value Mercy has ever brought to a fight in that level of play. She needs something that would compensate for rez being weaker the higher you climb.
A straightforward answer to the question would be an ability that relies on things that low ranks don’t have, but high ranks do: aim, and team coordination.
I’d really like a skillshot for Mercy: it would give new players a transferable skill when they branch out to other heroes, and it provides an interesting skill curve.
When a new player starts out with Mercy, her value will come from her consistent healing and moblity. Hitting the skillshot won’t matter at this beginning point, because it’s effects are designed to be weak in a disorganized setting. But by the time the new player start hitting it reliably, they’ve climbed to an elo where doing so is very important.
This is what I had in mind:
Pacify
Fired like Ana’s sleep dart
4 second duration, 10 second cooldown
Reduces an enemy’s damage output by 20-30%
“Violence isn’t the answer!” Mercy pleads with the enemy to consider talking it out instead of fighting, causing them to feel conflicted and pull their punches for a short period of time.
The exact numbers are up for debate.