Yeah I saw the part you mentioned about the terms being reversed from the LoL community… and honestly… now I’m just as confused as I was in the beginning. Let me re-read this and see haha
1 Like
You’re close, but I do not think you are quite there. Think of your potential usefulness as a number between 0 and 100. And consider the floor and the ceiling as limits to that.
- The ceiling is how good you can be.
- The floor is how bad you can be.
If your skill floor is high, that means even if you are somewhat bad, you’ll get some amount of use out of your hero. Lucio might be a decent example. As long as you are near your team, you are healing people. Don’t even have to target them or anything. Works even if your mouse buttons die.
If your skill floor is low, you’ll get pretty much no use out of your hero if you’re bad because the floor doesn’t prop you up. That means if you’re bad, you’re really bad. I’d use Genji as an example because I am just atrocious with him.
If your skill ceiling is high, that means that even if you are good, there is still room for improvement. Widowmaker might be a decent example because no matter how many headshots you get, you could always get a few more.
If your skill ceiling is low, that means you’ve reached your full potential relatively easily. Symmetra might be a decent example here. Mechanically, there isn’t a huge amount you can do to increase your murder-efficiency. Even if you keep practicing and practicing, you can’t really improve anymore because the ceiling stops you. You’re doing everything you can do.
This guy probably explained it better than I did. I was about to type out something similar to what he said about thinking of it as between 0 and 100, and then I started looking through that thread. Definitions like this are whatever is agreed upon. I think my way makes more sense, but I think I’m probably a more spatial thinker. We’re to the point where the word “literally” is now accepted as being valid when used to mean the exact opposite of what it’s meant traditionally, so anything can happen with English with the age of the internet.
Any support that is increasing their uptime during fights is going to be “doing something.”
There is no difference between these two bullet points–despite the denial you keep representing here. You are failing to apply your argument to other heroes and acknowledge that every support kit has exactly the same “low agency” that you’re claiming Mercy has.
Equally applies to abilities in Mercy’s kit: rez, Valk, healing, and damage boosting.
Equally applies to all other support abilities which get the same result whether or not you used an ability. Examples:
- Sleep a Nano Blade that is immediately awoken by your teammate–no value gained
- Sleep a target in the enemy backline that can’t be followed up–no value gained
- Use Transcendence to save a teammate, but they die anyway–no value gained
- Lamp a teammate and they walk out of the radius and die–no value gained
- Nano a teammate and they land zero hits
- Discorded a high value target and your team can’t aim–no value gained
- Speed someone away from danger but they overstay and die–no value gained
- Rally your team for armor but your teammates stay outside your radius, don’t get armor, and die–no value gained
- Throw a healing orb toward your teammate and they run away from it causing them to die–no value gained
I can write examples of “no value gained” for every single support ability whereby using the ability has exactly the same outcome of not using the ability. Your failure to recognize that these arguments ubiquitously apply to all supports–not just Mercy–is what we’re disagreeing about.
Just like Mercy can, right?
This isn’t an argument–it’s like saying, “Anti only has a 4m radius and travels slowly for a projectile. It’s on a 10 second cooldown making Ana really easy to kill. So, its opportunities for use is inherently really niche.”
Again, we can sit and manufacture these asinine narratives for every support ability. You haven’t made a rational argument clearly delineating why Mercy’s kit inherently offers “low value and agency.”
The only true differentiating factor is her inability to output as much damage as the other supports.
Any Ana worth their salt is doing both. This is especially true on maps like Eichenwalde’s first point defense with clearly defined chokes.
I literally showed you video footage of an analogous situation of Mercy repositioning, abusing LoS (thus managing enemy attentional resources), and landing a rez out in the open IN THE ENEMY’S BACKLINE. I even wrote a detailed description of what she did. That is no different than Ana safely repositioning to land an anti from an off angle. Please review from 1:26 - 1:41:
Right–of the video. 4:37 until 4:31 is of the in-game clock time. By 1:20 of the video her teammates are all dead. She was only person on point starting at 4:37 (1:18 video time) until 4:31–however, Ball (who is not contesting) dies at 1:19 video time (4:36 clock time). The enemy needs 3.5 seconds to cap the point. Without her stall, her team loses the point.
You clearly are missing numerous details here which makes me think you’re not playing at a high level. She finishes the stall with 50 HP. You can both hear and see the Reaper landing shots. Obviously Reaper does way more damage up close, but he can still kill targets from the distance she is contesting at–especially with an Orisa, Moira, and Lucio also shooting at her [consistent weapon damage at range]. Again, I don’t know how you’re missing these details.
Realistically, this is a high GM Reinhardt who can absolutely land Firestrikes on flying targets at close range.
I’ve done both and I barely play Rein. I agree that it is difficult and has a low success rate, but it does happen. I mentioned it as a possibility, but I did not include Rein as someone she is actively taking damage from during the stall:
You clearly don’t play Moira either. Moira can solo any 200 HP in 4 seconds. Biotic Grasp ticks for 50 damage per second and her Orb tics for another 50 per second. 4/5 enemies on the point during her stall can reliably deal damage to her–and she expertly dodges.
The enemy comp is running rush–it is objectively a better composition than Mercy’s team. Again, this is a high elo GM/Top 500 game–that Lucio is literally rank 20 and Ball is rank 64.
It’s not low-elo Quickplay.
Enemy Orisa pull hits Brig at 1:27. Mercy gets pulled. You’re right that she gets booped by Rein and that she doesn’t use GA to move through the Halt. Rather, she is holding GA until after Halt to escape and reposition.
During which, she is healed by Brig’s inspire. Brig is getting focused first because Mercy LoS’d after her stall–shifting enemy attention to her Orisa and Brig. After the Halt, the priority is Orisa’s ult. Enemy Rein and Moira go down due to damage boost from Orisa ult. Killing her ult also pulls attention away from Mercy. Additionally, while in the open, she is positioning her self behind and above the enemies with GA breaking LoS.
She actually GA’s toward the Cree soul to speed up the descent and spends about 4 seconds (look at the clock time) LoSing on the platform. The temporary LoS here causes the enemy Orisa, Lucio, and Reaper to focus her teammates on the point. Ball joins the fight again and becomes the center of attention. She waits until everyone is looking at Ball/Orisa (backs turned to her) to rez the Cree.
Because she managed their attention through movement and LoS.
She absolutely did cause this to happen as I explained above.
Because she’s been LoSing them on the platform for about 4 seconds (which is cut from the video, but evident on the clock). They turn their attention to her teammates who are shooting at them. This buys time for her Ball to come back and further create distraction–at which time she rezzes.
Their backs are turned and as they are preoccupied with her teammates (Orisa, Doomfist, Ball). If you’re not thinking about attention as a resource in the game, you’re missing out.
She sees the enemy Orisa pull her Doomfist at (1:35 video) and the Lucio is also preoccupied with Doom. As she is super jump rezzing at 1:37, the Lucio doesn’t even realize what’s going on. He’s just been booped by Ball and nearly punched by Doomfist.
Lucio may have been able to boop her, but she makes a calculated decision by assessing the LoS and his current attention.
She forces two rezzes in this time spawn. How on Earth are you possibly arguing that these wouldn’t qualify as creative movement? You’re not seeing Mercys do this in lower elo play. Additionally, the entire video is filled with this kind of stuff. That same Mercy has dozens and dozens of videos show casing impactful plays like this. What you’re saying here isn’t a rational perspective.
She starts the rez at 1:53 on the left side (spawn perspective) of the doorway–which would be in range of Rein’s second swing if she had not carried the GA momentum forward and up.
It absolutely did. If she did a Gold-elo Mercy rez and stood there after GAing, she would be dead. She is additionally being shot at by Orisa.
Cool story–I guess it doesn’t heal her at all? You know, mitigated damage while stalling is pretty important.
Cool, let me know which enemies care about getting anti as they kill Ana on point during the stall and win the round.
Just as Mercy can bypass obstacles to force the rez on Cree in the video.
Once rez is applied, there’s no delay to achieving the design value. Every single argument you try using to explain why you think Mercy’s agency is low, exactly applies to EVERY SINGLE SUPPORT.
Do you agree or not?
Again, the exact amount of self agency with Mercy’s abilities.
Hint: You are arguing that Mercy has low agency due to “gatekeeping” by other players.
Hint: Ana’s agency is also gatekept by other players in exactly the same way.
Conclusion: If you’re arguing that Mercy has low agency, you must necessarily accept that Ana has low agency.
Do you accept the necessarily logical conclusion of your argument?
Explain how this is different for any of the support classes. If your team needs healing, you heal them.
You’re arguing that you think Valk should be a burst healing ult. It isn’t. Valk is used to initiate fights or in anticipation of incoming damage or for stalling or for surviving or for a safe rez or for a kill. The game isn’t strictly about burst healing and your myopic view here isn’t reasonable.
You’re effectively arguing that you don’t understand how to use the ability and therefore think it’s lower value than another ability.
Many Mercies use Valk to make safe rezzes during fights–which equalizes the asymmetry in numbers. Also, how are you forgetting that this principle APPLIES TO ALL SUPPORTS? Literally every single support ability gets “more value” if your team is alive. This is such a dumb argument, I don’t understand how you could possibly rationalize it in your mind.
Absolutely not–keeping more people alive at once is a much greater value than a hard pocket on one person. Would you rather have 1 teammate alive or 3?
Sure, but killing the enemy often needs mobility–which Mercy offers.
Again, you have a low-elo mindset if you think 60 HP/s on multiple targets for 15 seconds is somehow “low value.” That is completely ridiculous and stems from the lack of understanding of when and how to use the ult.
If you’re waiting until your teammates are 10 HP and expecting to magically save them with Valk–you’re just misusing the ability.
You: Point out that people can die to burst damage through Valk.
Me: Point out that people can die to burst damage through any support ult.
You: Well, besides headshots and stuff, Valk doesn’t heal that much
Me: Then you have no idea how or when to use Valk correctly, not every support kit needs burst damage mitigation
You: I don’t really know how to play Mercy and can’t win games with her [Ignores the rebuttal entirely and repeats it again]
Me: Cool story man, I just won all 5 placements for the season in mid Diamond with Mercy only.
Cool story, uptime on a support is one of the most impactful aspects of the game.
Cool story, let me Valk in after we get a pick in a 5 v 6 and roll your team with 5 people rocking a +30% damage modifier. Some of my teammates are at 75% HP? Cool, let me heal for 2 seconds as we continue rolling your team.
Keep repeating the same thing without actually showing the difference between Mercy’s abilities being gatekept and Ana’s abilities being gatekept.
Excellent, I expect you will now stop complaining that 60 HP/s isn’t that useful.
Neither is a sleep dart or an anti or a nano or healing. You’ll probably now repeat the same argument about Ana positioning while failing to acknowledge this is also the case for Mercy.
Cool–I guess Mercy is unable to beam flick important abilities or focus on damage boosting people who can aim and do prioritize targets. I guess all teams just do zero damage and lose every game. I suppose Mercy can’t damage boost players to charge important team ults faster either. Completely useless abilities with zero agency, right?
For boost, rez, GA, heals etc., once you got it off, you got your value.
Sort of exactly like Mercy’s abilities being completely controlled by the player with tools like GA and innate health regen?
Nade moves at 30 m/s with a 4 m splash. Easily predictable and dodgeable at range–just like Sym orbs with the 2 m splash. Projectiles become more reliable at close range and harder to dodge–including Sym orbs.
All projectiles in the game are “actually aimable” even if you personally can’t aim them.
And their impact isn’t.
If we take old rez vs new rez, we can clearly see difference - Mercy could adjust, how many players she brings back, and this, adjust impact of resurrect. New resurrect doesn’t have such adjustment - you bring 1 teammate back and what happens next is beyond your control.
Damage boost is in same category - you are not in charge of teammate’s aim.
As Ana, your minimal impact from throwing nade is up to you - at absolute minimum you’ll deal damage and block healing. With Nano, minimum impact you’ll get is 50% damage reduction - which mixed with your heals and nade is a lot to keep your teammate alive, even if they are unable to put 50% extra damage to good use.
It’s something Mercy lost - good guaranteed impact even on potato players.
Imo, its widow. You can lose your aim mechanics but not really positioning. Mercys easy to play good but to master she is hard
1 Like
Smh mercy otp 
1 Like
You know who’s skill ceiling is overrated tho?
ZARYA’S
1 Like
says the genji main
Smh mcree one trick
4 Likes
Moth and Yvetal’s mercy plays are on an entirely different level with how they use map terrain, move along map sightlines and cover space its a work of art compared to your average mercy who spams shifts, never damage boosts and valkyries mid-fight only to get high nooned.
1 Like
Mercy’s ceiling is slightly underrated yes, but it’s not high as some are saying. It’s medium and that’s fine.
1 Like
Best hero in the game 
1 Like
and you keep avoiding the main point in bringing that up is to lead back to the discussion about how most of mercy’s abilities don’t let the mercy player have much self agency over their value whether if that’s in terms of opportunities of use or in terms of the actual mechanics of the ability.
quite obviously you’re the one ignoring how there objectively is less self agency for value if you can’t see the difference:
the only thing mercy has that’s equivalent to that is her healing.
-
res is direct application but you legit have very little say over whether a corpse is resable or not. if a corpse is too dangerous to res, in most situations there is nothing you as mercy can do to make that corpse resable.
-
damage boost isn’t a direct application at all because it doesn’t matter how you as mercy apply the beam to the target, how much value that boost is getting is completely determined by the target’s ability to land shots and target prioritisation. you could be breaking your mouse holding down the button, in the open like an idiot, in cover like someone smart, etc. it doesn’t matter to that instance of boost in determining whether if that boost did something. you could be boosting at all the moments that you can afford to and you could still end up with 0 damage amplified.
- that’s not the case with various other support abilities which allow the user to utilise it themselves for value or that simply don’t take allies’ inputs into account when trying to apply it.
-
valk not only as the problems above, but also the fact that whether you can go damage boost, res, or pistol is gatekept by how easy it is to force the mercy to heal and force her to keep healing with how low the hps is. this is esp because you can only do 1 of those use cases at a time in valk.
it legit doesn’t
-
the sleep still interrupted the nanoblade which stops a swing/dash and giving an opening to kill him despite being woken up. and again, the value achieved instantly upon application (i.e. the shot landing) without needing input from allies to land that shot.
-
they’re out of the fight for the duration of sleep… how is that no value gained? and again, legit depends on no-one else but the user to make that shot which immediately applies that effect
-
given the 300hps from trans + higher move speed + range of trans, it’s very hard to have a situation whereby someone dying through trans that was specifically used to “save them” isn’t due to either misuse of trans or the person that died was literally throwing to die. i.e. in most situations, either
- zen threw leading to that result as a direct consequence of the mistake (and no-one else), or
- the high sustain was applied and achieved from the zen, but the ally thew by going into a threat that’s not healable like a OHKO.
-
except you got x amount of time of them in the radius before they left because you decide where to put lamp, and how it gets there is all on you throwing it there. no-one elses’ button presses has an effect in how that lamp is thrown or flies.
-
as explained before:
- you got the burst 250hp heal that legit saves lives (unless you intentionally nanoed an anti’ed target in which case the loss of that is on the user for that timing),
- and again, assuming you didn’t throw and that you nanoed for a push, the enemy has no choice but to focus on the nanoed target as they impose an immediate and significant threat to them
- e.g. if a winston, flanker or rein, etc. got nanoed and they were moving into you, you simply can’t ignore that threat, which is going to take longer to deal with due to damage reduction + being more healed up, unless you want to get steamrolled.
- of which immediately gives the team more breathing room (less damage heading to other teammates, 1 teammate having damage reduction that’s probably healed to full from the burst heal immediately alters the triage heal priority)
-
I’ve already explained this alongside various other boosts and debuffs: the user can utitilise the boost (or for the case of debuffs, take advantage of the enemy being debuffed) themselves.
-
this is probably the only valid counter example you’ve provided so far. but even then, unlike mercy’s kit, the rest of lucio’s kit has more self agency for value.
-
brig has higher movement speed in rally + the fact that rally has a recent radius (range), if she wants someone to get armor, she can go to them if she wanted.
-
zen can walk btw (i.e. he can move closer if needed i.e. he has a say over orb travel distance) + he could’ve also tried giving orb to them earlier. not to mention it’s got 40m range (which isn’t small btw) and it travels 90m/s, i.e. the max delay you can possibly experience is ~0.44s which legit isn’t a lot (again, that’s the max delay, i.e. most of the time it’s less).
is res instant or near instant for the movement to matter (i.e. for simply only the movement to be enough to force out an opportunity)? no.
is the amount of damage amplified or the level of burst with damage boost actuated from the simply mercy moving around? no.
as explained earlier, it doesn’t matter where you are, how you move, where you’re looking, how you’re pressing the boost button, etc. none of that has a direct input into how the boosted damage is actuated. how it’s actuated is in the hands of whoever you’re boosting.
you’re the one missing out details here. I’m saying the reason the stall was successful was pretty much because the enemy comp (i.e. heroes picked) was inherently bad at dealing with flying enemies.
4s TTK with moira is long. and before you try to raise damage orb to combine with her grasp: 1) no damage orb was used then, and 2) orb doesn’t get much tether time on a flying enemy in an open airpspace.
you acknowledged that rein firestrike is inconsistent to land on flying enemies.
you also acknowledged that reaper does low damage when at range.
lucio primary legit isn’t “consistent at range” and even if it is by your low standard, it doesn’t do a lot.
legit those 4/5 of the heroes that were there deals either really inconsistent or low damage to a flying enemy. had there been more ranged hitscans or anything that can do significant damage to a flying target, that “expert dodging” (which was pretty much just strafing) would’ve failed.
any ana worth their salt is doing the latter whenever they reasonably can. and such an option isn’t available for mercy res.
how about you look frame by frame from like around 1:28.5 (like after the orisa halt) onwards and look at where the red team is looking.
legit from 1:28.5-1:33 no-one on the red team batted an eye on the the mercy. heck the reaper hard tunnel visioned on the blue orisa even though the mercy failed to superjump ga at 1:30 in his field of view.
1:33-1:35 until the ga onto the platform legit was more of them not paying attention to the mercy (they can defs see the damage boost beam that leads to mercy seeing as they’re shooting the boosted blue orisa) despite her being in the open in the air.
and they continued to not pay attention to her from there onwards despite mercy’s beams showing where she is which should make them weary of res, but they continued to ignore mercy for the mccree res despite how legit 2 enemies that could do something about it being so close and right in front of her.
again, her superjumps didn’t force them to “switch focus to someone else”. the res on mccree only happened because the red team ignored her from like 1:28.5 all the way up to the res.
and the fact that you need to rely on arguments like “they needed to kill super charger so that she could move somewhere where they’re not looking to then ga somewhere to then get a distraction from her teammate that then finally gets a chance to res” kinda demonstrates my point about how little self agency mercy has over the opportunities to use res.
the mercy player does not have significant input into making them not pay attention to her .
I’d like to remind you that the “creative GA movement” you were pointing to was:
i.e. you were only pointing to the final escape after res’ing mccree (i.e. only after the 1st res) as being the “creative GA movement”.
and again, you were initially claiming that such “creative GA movement” would allow making an unsafe corpse somewhow safe to res which is obvs a completely different direction to what you were pointing to as “creative GA movement” just above.
res has a 5m range. her hitting res at like the 5m away mark doesn’t mean the superjump res was needed esp when the important thing is really the horizontal distance which you could’ve achieved if you just did a normal ga with maybe a bit of glide/bunnyhop.
heck the corpse orb was at the right of the doorway and you’re saying she’d just be in range of swing if she was on the left side. how is this not demonstrating my point about how that she only was able to avoid the rein swing due to the corpse simply being that far away in the first place?
look again, the red orisa was shooting the blue orisa ult (possibly tracer just before that), before seemingly moving onto mercy who already finished the res. but I honestly doubt the orisa was going for the mercy considering orisa fires 12 bullets per second and mercy got hit by none of them throughout (by the time she ga’ed through mines she had taken 150 damage which is exactly 2 rein swings back then which we defs knew she got hit with).
are you just deliberately making wild inferences or do you actually have trouble reading? because I honestly can’t tell at this point.
I didn’t say she doesn’t heal herself. I said the purpose of the heal on nade isn’t to let her be able to sustain herself for a long stall.
and here I thought everyone knew that most of the game isn’t point stalls. 
I like how here you go “all you need to do is just fly to them and you’d be able to res” but before you were like “first you need a distraction so you can get into cover, then you need another distraction to let you fly to the corpse and res”.
you fail to realise there’s 2 matters for self agency:
- opportunities of use, and
- the actual ability mechanics in how value is attained
you need BOTH for something to have good self agency.
the quote you’re replying to was about the 2nd point, which yes, applies to res, but res does not have the 1st point.
damage boost has the first point, but doesn’t have the 2nd.
valk is a mix of both because it includes base kit and the added issue on top (pertaining to the 1st point) in terms of which use case of valk you can afford to do at any given point in the duration of valk because of how easy it is to force a mercy to heal in valk and how you can only do 1 thing at a time in valk.
various other support abilities have both. hence why objectively, mercy has lower self agency over her own value compare to other supports’ for theirs.
except you weren’t looking at how her kit (well here nano specifically) gets value in general at all and instead just cherry picked a situation.
pretty sure I already did explain this in the previous reply whereby I explained how coal and window allow the user to be able to force out an opportunity to damage, zone, etc. because their hps aren’t terribly low that various things could easily leave a surplus of damage that take long to heal back up to safer levels of hp before being able to do something else.
not to mention those heroes can do multiple things at once (effectively for some and literally for others) unlike mercy.
considering the conditions to res, no not really.
As for the 2nd line: other supports can do things in parallel better and the point with what I said there was to emphasise how dependent valk value is on allies being alive and how you can’t stubbornly not heal.
yes the concept applies to other supports, but they can do more things at once or can force out opportunities to do something else instead of healing (e.g. as explained earlier with window and coal).
what makes you think you can’t save 3 with a high single target hps (that legit outnumbers many sources of damage in the game) that you can quickly switch between targets to maintain a certain level of hp on all of them (if not incrementally increase all of them depending on damage numbers)?
except mercy likely isn’t the one getting the kill (someone else likely is esp given 1s weapon swap time) and she can’t necessarily “boost allies to chase” when whether she can boost in valk is easily and often flipped because of how little hps valk healing is which makes you need to be more early/proactive with healing to ensure teammate have enough sustain.
it’s legit moira heal orb tier (technically 5hps less than a moira heal orb). like it simply is low hps for an ult.
I find it really weird how you know how you need to be early/proactive with valk healing because of how low 60hps is yet somehow you don’t see how that’s exactly why it’s so easy for enemies to force mercy in valk to heal instead of boost, res or pistol which are more valuable use cases.
at this point I think you’re just not actually reading what I’m saying and just running along with your own headcannon of what you think I’m saying 
idk why you’re acting like a condition of having 1 up in teammates (a significant advantage) as a condition to ult is any indication of how good an ult is tbqh 
other supports’ ults don’t have a majority of their use cases being gatekept by 60hps.
except it legit isn’t the same for mercy. mercy legit can’t move corpses with her own movement to force out an opportunity to res. she can’t force enemies to ignore her to res an unsafe corpse. she can’t force teammates to cover for her to res an unsafe corpse.
that legit doesn’t change the fact that mercy isn’t having input into how much value boost is getting. it’s legit analogous to betting on a sports game you’re not playing or horse racing etc.
you may observe or get word that a team, horse, whatever, is doing well and you may choose to bet on them for a seemingly higher chance of winning bigger, but at the end of the day, whether you got the top prize, second prize, or last, etc. at the end of the is all on whoever you bet on, while you have no input on that process/determination.
In terms of the mechanics of other support abilities for this analogy, you’re both the person making bets AND the sports team, player, horse or whatever in the sport/race.
with sym orbs you want direct not splash otherwise you’ll end up with <=43dps (60 max splash damage / (1s charge time + 0.25s wind down). with nade, you don’t care about directs because there’s no splash falloff nor distinction between direct vs splash for effects and damage/heal.
how that plays out can be seen in this post (compare dodgeable direct range of sym orbs vs dodgeable splash range for ana nade):
1 Like
I totally get it. I have over 100 hours on widow, stopped playing for like 3-4 months, and I literally can’t even body shot anymore…
1 Like
I respect a good Mercy player… I try to play as Mercy and I screw everything up
1 Like
Current rez still has impact. The player must use their agency to decide when, how, and who to rez.
The same is true of other support abilities–like Discord, Window, and Nano. Can you explain how the abilities I listed are different in terms “teammate’s aim?”
Ana’s minimal impact from throwing a nade can be absolutely nothing. The minimal impact of a rez can also be absolutely nothing. If you land the nade some value can be had, but not always as you often need follow up from your teammates [gatekept]. The same goes for rez. If you land the rez you can get value, but not always as you often need follow up from your teammates [gatekept].
I have explained why and how this perspective is erroneous over and over. Given your argument, logically you must accept one of the propositions below:
-
All support abilities require input from other players which the support player does not control. This necessarily means that all support kits have “low agency.”
-
You’re contending that support agency is really a metric tied to aim and/or autonomous damage output. Because Mercy doesn’t require strong aiming skills and cannot, herself, output much damage, she therefore has low agency.
-
In your opinion, burst healing is the metric of “agency” for the support class. Because Mercy doesn’t offer burst healing, she therefore has low agency.
-
In your opinion, abilities with longer cast timers are the metric of “agency.” Because Mercy has a long cast timer on rez, she therefore has low agency.
Pick one.
The same argument can be applied to Biotic Grenade. Please explain why anti offers more value in dangerous Biotic Grenade usage.
The value of damage boost is directly controlled by Mercy. You cannot pretend that everyone on your team is doing zero damage. Someone on your team is doing damage and good Mercy’s figure that out. That’s how you get value from damage boosting. This is exactly analogous to using a Nano. You aren’t going to use your Nano on a useless teammate. Ana’s choices surrounding the use of her Nano are what give it value–this is exactly how Mercy’s damage boost works.
This directly applies to all supports and is a non-argument.
Completely gatekept by your teammates. You are literally describing a gatekept mechanic while trying to pretend it’s not contigent upon the actions of others. That’s patently ridiculous. Concede the point.
If another player–someone that you do not control–instantly breaks your sleep and that Nano Blade wipes your team, there is ZERO value gained. Literally none. This happens ALL the time with enemy ults–Primal is another example.
Exactly like using Mercy’s ult. If you don’t misuse it, it works wonderfully.
Another example of a support kit being contingent upon the actions of others which the player does not control. Concede your point.
Your argument thus far: “Mercy depends on her teammates to do the right thing. Other supports don’t.”
20 minutes later: “Zen’s Transcendence is only useful if your ally does the right thing; and, that’s totally different.”
Hint: It’s not different at all.
Exactly the same as all of Mercy’s abilities. Concede your argument.
You would fail any standardized test module requiring the correct evaluation of analogous pairs.
At this point you’re making anecdotal assertions over what you find value in–whether that’s CC, damage, or burst healing. You’re acting like these scenarios are any different from Mercy utilizing her abilities effectively.
Mercy can also Valk if she wants to heal herself or she can Valk and use the movement speed + increased GA radius to heal/boost/rez. Please exactly explain why you’re asserting these two abilities have differential agency.
Again, properly using abilities is what garners value and impact. This is the same for Zen as it is for Mercy. Here, I was specifically referring to Moira–but Zen also works.
Great, so agency in your mind is a metric of cast time? Care to engage with the actual analogy made about “easy to kill and inherently really niche?”
You are objectively and grossly mistaken. If that’s your view, then you do not know how to play Mercy. That’s it.
Except you are objectively incorrect. The height for contest on this point is 8.7 meters. All the enemy heroes here–save Rein–can deal effective damage at this range. It’s also obvious in the video that she nearly dies. Even for Reaper, the falloff range starts at 10 meters. Your point here has no practical relevance to the situation.
I’m aware that no orb was used. You commented that Moira can only manage 50dps and that’s untrue.
And hilariously, I killed an airborne moving Pharah with a Firestrike at ~35 meters in a game yesterday. It happens and is possible.
Lower damage, but non-trivial damage nonetheless.
Rank 20 Lucio. If you think a Rank 20 Lucio can’t hit shots, you’re misinformed.
Not at <8.7 meters–which is the contest range. If Mercy had not been in Valk (not receiving the 20 HP/s), she would have died. Keep pretending that doesn’t add value and impact.
Maybe in your low elo world, but not at higher levels.
As I painstakingly explained:
Because Mercy’s Cree just murdered Reaper’s Reinhardt and Orisa just murdered Reaper’s Moira. Cree is the greater threat to him than anyone else on or near the point during this time–as is the Orisa ult. It’s also not clear if Reaper could even see the pull on Brig/Mercy as he is likely trying to peel for his Moira.
They prioritized the most dangerous targets first–the Orisa ult and the Cree. You’re trying to argue that Top 500 players are unaware of Mercy’s presence here and are “just ignoring her.” That viewpoint is ridiculous as they clearly turn their attention toward her as she lands on the platform but they now need to deal with DF–who can 1 shot and turn the fight even faster. Once Ball shows up, they simply can’t afford the resources to try and get Mercy down.
Cool story. Let’s see how impactful and how much “value” Ana gets in this situation:
-She dies to the Rein at 1:10 loses the round while the enemy has 4:30 on the clock. Awesome value and agency there.
The fact that you keep trying to ignore and downplay what she did is astounding. You probably get carried all the time in games by Mercy but don’t realize it.
That let’s me know that you don’t understand the game very well if you aren’t aware of how to manage enemy attention.
I’d like to remind you that I explicit referred to the entire sequence of both rezzes.
Cool story–please tell me more about how “safe” that Cree was to rez without her GA movement. Please tell me more about how “safe” that Orisa was to rez without her GA movement. Give me a break. Concede your argument and drop the nitpicking.
Do we need to talk about forward momentum and triangles here?
Hint 1: The left side of the door is closer to the enemy Rein.
Hint 2: The right side of the door is further away from the enemy Rein.
Hint 3: The hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is longer than the other two legs
Hint 4: GA super jump rezzes follow the trajectory of the hypotenuse
Hint 5: GA super jump rez carries forward momentum
She gains more distance during the rez cast time–allowing her to not die.
If she stands still at the left-side door when the rez starts at 1:53, she is dead. Period.
She is absolutely shooting at Mercy by 1:56.
You’re claiming Mercy’s kit has low value, agency, and impact. I compared it to Ana’s ability to do what Mercy does in the video. Mercy’s kit offered massive value, agency, and impact–something Ana would be unable to do.
Lol–I can’t take you seriously anymore. You’ve got to be trolling. Objectives are how you win games. You win objectives by being the team to contest the point and prevent the other team from touching. I’m floored that you don’t understand this.
There’s no way you aren’t making the connection here. You claimed part of Ana’s agency was repositioning to set up abilities. This exactly parallels Mercy’s agency to reposition and set up her abilities–in this case rez. If you somehow think LoSing enemies and managing their attention is specific to Mercy, I would hate to suffer you as a support on my team. Mercy has far greater agency and creativity to position for abilities than Ana does. Period.
Explain how Mercy “doesn’t have opportunities for use.”
Explain how Mercy’s value is not dictated by “actual ability mechanics.”
If what you’re saying is true, then there is no discernible difference between a Mercy in Top 500 versus Bronze. That is a patently ridiculous and demonstrably untrue belief.
Again, for the 3rd time–if you believe rez “doesn’t have opportunities for use” through self agency because it relies on where/when/how your teammates died; then, you must necessarily concede that this logic applies to all support utility.
You have not a single time rationally demonstrated this point. Not once. You have expressed opinion after opinion built from your low-elo experiences.
Demonstrate the quantifiable delineating factor for value, impact, and agency. Then, show why Mercy’s kit does not qualify.
There is absolutely no difference in what you’re saying about Mercy that doesn’t also apply to Ana. Stop denying this.
You’re failing to show how this is different from Valk forcing out a rez or heal or damage boost forcing out enemy cooldowns or survivability to stall or land a kill. So no, you haven’t explained it whatsoever, you just keep saying, “it’s different because of cast time” or “it’s different because it’s not burst healing.”
Neat opinion, but neither response demonstrates lower agency, lower impact, nor lower value.
Give me a break.
Literally straight denial.
Tell me what “more things at once” is happening with Moira during Coal? What “more things at once” is happening with Window?
Maybe they’re all taking AoE damage and need to be healed simultaneously or else two die. Do you think AoE healing has poor value?
A non-argument. Valk damage boost is mobile and Window damage boost is static. End of story.
And again, if you’re using Valk as a “burst healing” tool because you don’t understand how to use the ability–that’s a user error not a “lower agency and value” error.
So what? Mercy’s healing isn’t limited by resources like Moira’s or needing to reload.
Because the most effect uses for it are rolling enemies with damage boost, sustaining fights longer than the enemy can handle, and making a safe rez during a fight. Again, you seem to think it should be countering a Grav/Drag combo like other support ults can, but that’s not how you should be using it. If you’re not using damage boost at all during Valk, while not solo stalling, you’re incorrectly using the ability–which is probably why you have such warped views about her kit.
What you’ve been writing about Mercy and how to use her kit demonstrates you don’t know how to play her very well.
Probably for the same reason you think winning objectives and clock time “isn’t most of the game.” Numbers win fights.
By your logic, all supports are gatekept by the actions of other players.
It “legit” is the same. If you would think about it for 2 seconds you would realize this: Ana can’t move enemy players around to land a sleep either. Ana can’t move her teammates around to land a nade or nano or healing either.
It is the same thing across the board and I don’t see how you are possibly ignoring this fact.
SHE ABSOLUTELY DOES. If you’re blue beaming a D.Va that is shooting at enemies from 20 meters away, your garbage decision making [input] is directly causing [agency] you to lose value. What you should be doing [input] is following your Rein around [agency] and boosting him as he swings on enemies so he wins the tank brawl and gets shatter 30% faster. If you can’t figure out who on your team is doing damage, that’s a player error not a “lower kit value” issue.
This is EXACTLY the same input and agency that Ana has with Nano. This is exactly the same input and agency that Bap has with Window. This is exactly the same input and agency Zen has with discord targets.
For what you’re saying to be true, your teammates must be doing literally ZERO damage–which means they are hard throwing or AFK.
The analogy is: “If you’re dumb enough to waste your money on bad bets, you deserve to lose.”
Doesn’t matter, the point still stands: All projectiles can be aimed and dodged. Arguably Nade is easier to dodge because it’s not spammable due to its cooldown.
Cool story, let Stevo know he’s not allowed to absolutely rail people with Sym orbs anymore.
Player doesn’t decide, how teammate will act, neither can increase probability of desired behavior.
Discord and Window you can use yourself, Nano has guaranteed impact in form of “teammate takes 50% less damage”.
Damage boost doesn’t have any of that - can’t use it yourself and it doesn’t have any guaranteed impact either.
Not, you can’t. Unlike nade, value of resurrect is 0, until teammate you bring back does useful things. With nade, impact is up to user - with resurrect, impact is up to player you bring back, but execution of res itself is on user.
If you land nade, you will get value, no matter circumstances. If you land resurrect, you may not get value, and it’s not up to you to decide either.
I was expecting fun and interesting comments, but I wasn’t expecting people writing entire books about Mercy’s skill ceiling.
It’s not that high and there’s nothing wrong with that.
See? It only took me 1 sentence.
2 Likes
Dude if you’re expecting fun and interesting comments you could at least try writing some yourself. Smh 
1 Like
More like it’s in wrong area.
Skill ceiling in Mercy’s movement - somewhat high.
Skill ceiling in assisting your team - low.
Which is why I will never love Valkyrie, as I didn’t have many issues with flying around with GA to need free flight, but keeping teammates alive was constant issue, which only became worse.
Honestly tho dude people have put wayyy too much thought into this post.
I wasn’t saying she was the hardest hero in the game who required thought into every single action she does with perfect mechanics required, I just think her skill ceiling is underrated and good mercys deserve more respect lol.
2 Likes