This is alarming to me because they went for Mercy instead of something like Lucio.
Both of them are very accessible, but the skill ceiling of Lucio is just unbelievably high. You get easy value but there’s a lot of mechanics that’s not tied to aim that you can improve on making you better and better. There’s a mechanical skill aspect to it that’s not tied to aim like movement for instance. Yes Mercy has GA and SJ but they seem to be set on making that tech accessible as well and even then, I wouldn’t put good wall ride mechanics and good GA usage anywhere near close to each other. I’d even say current Brigitte is also a good shout for an accessible hero because she has easy mechanics outside of Whipshot but the way you use your abilities and healing is what makes her challenging.
This might just be me over reacting to the hero they chose to name and they very well could be looking to make more Lucio like supports but said Mercy because it’s healing without having to aim.
While I would normally agree, I think having more heroes like Mercy is a reasonable choice.
While Lúcio might be more appreciated by many players, I think tapping into the massive casual Mercy fandom will probably get more dedicated support players in que.
Constantly surprised they keep nerfing characters like Lucio and Zarya just for being meta, when everyone wants them to be meta instead of stuff like Ana and Sigma.
That’s the point, Lucio and Brig aren’t FPS heavy heroes, they are still accessible but they are nothing like Mercy as well. Plus they have more agency as well IMO. A support like Mercy is only valuable if the teammates the resources are given to does something with it.
My understanding was they wanted to add more supports who don’t need to dps at all, as the provide value in other ways. As well as supports who do dips or have more intense mechanical aim. I don’t think they meant healbots.
Variety of skills, variety of aim intensive play and variety of play styles are all good for the support role. Everyone should be able to play a hero that fits them.
I think when they said that it was worded terribly what they really meant was more heroes leaning towards like mercy ,brig, moira where you don’t need the best aim to get insane value.
I also think they possibly meant more fun abilites that isn’t based on precise aim? Rez, brings abilites, and moiras too come to mind with this but who knows I do think they just threw mercy under the bus there and they do not mean more supports who just only heal
They’re both accessible and they both have mechanics (barring OW2 Mercy which is being reworked) that players learn as they progress and become more proficient at their hero.
“Healing without having to aim”. My guy, Lucio heals just by existing.
The issue with this mindset and heroes that are designed this way is that it encourages 1 tricking.
Players that can ONLY play Mercy or heroes like Mercy and nothing else.
So if you have 2 Mercy type players in a game and 1 chooses Mercy the other is lost and cant play anything else at a decent level
As opposed to support players than can play multiple supports. Most high ranked support players that Play heroes like Ana, Bap, Lucio , Zen, have no issue playing Mercy at that level as well.
But the same cant be said for a strictly Mercy player that tries to play Ana, Brig, Lucio, Zen, at the same level they play Mercy.
In short: it encourages 1 tricking and it makes it so you limit yourself, not leaning any other heroes with different and more difficult more rewarding mechanics.
Not if they intend on making more Mercy-style supports. In which case, the transferable skills learned from playing Mercy can be used to play other supports like her. When Moira and Brig were released, a lot of Mercy players played these heroes fine.
Making every hero accessible to everyone and giving players control over what heroes they want to master is hardly a bad thing. At the end of the day, if what they’re doing is a detriment to the match their rank will reflect that. If they’re winning and climbing, great. There isn’t a problem.
Big doubt. Have you seen how some of them play Mercy? ML7 is a GM Ana player who had no clue how to play Mercy. He started to learn and made a Smurf account to do this. He quite literally started in Gold. This idea that anyone can play Mercy just because she has a low skill ceiling is laughable. From watching streamer gameplay it’s obvious that these people never have and never will properly play Mercy unless they put in the hours and effort.
Give ML7 1 week or 2 playing Mercy exclusively non stop and he will be at the same level or above that.
Give a GM Mercy 1 trick the same amount of time on learning Ana and they wont have the same results.
He also got into gm with her. And also very quickly learned how to play her at the high elo level. She’s a low impact support because she is a low skill support. How it should be.
Bro it took him months to get to GM as Mercy and on top of that, he spent most of those months only playing Mercy. That’s a long amount of time to learn what is supposed to be an easy hero. If a GM Ana player is taking months to learn Mercy in a way that’s suitable for GM gameplay, I have no hope for anyone else in that rank.
Guess aim really isn’t everything…
It doesn’t need to be Ana though? The same way Ana mains would 100% struggle to learn Mercy, Mercy players will probably struggle to learn Ana. They’re fundamentally different heroes with different play styles. That’s why I compared Mercy with Moira and Brig. In the context of those heroes, Mercy players will hardly have a huge problem flexing. In Ana’s case, they tend to find it easier to switch to a Bap or Zen if they need to. Now, Lucio is a hero that you actually do need to learn separately to get a good grasp of because I’ll tell you now that no GM support player is gonna be playing him like Frogger ir Redshell without actual practice. Playing Ana or Bap will literally do nothing for them.
Spent 2-3 months only playing her to get to GM as a Ana GM player. “Very quickly” is stretching it. According to you guys, Ana, Bap, Zen and Lucio players will easily play Mercy at a GM level.
She’s low-impact bc she sucks. This is the case in OW2 too. Just because her skill floor is low doesn’t mean she should just stay trash lmao.
How am I exaggerating? I’m citing his unranked to GM educational series. You’re suggesting that aim-intensive support players can easily pick-up Mercy but a GM Ana player - one of the best at that - took 2-3 months to learn her. All I’m saying is that people who’ve never touched Mercy should hardly be lecturing actual Mercy players about the ease of playing that hero.
