Personally, I think the reason Valkyrie feels underwhelming at times is mainly because of the visuals for it. Currently, Valkyrie is kind of like Mercy, but in the sky. Overwatch seems to heavily rely on visuals as an indicator of how well a player is performing and of how powerful something is, a couple of examples of this are:
-When you’re on fire, you generally feel good about your performance.
-When you’re nano-d, the visuals make you feel vaguely invincible.
And so this led me to think that maybe if Mercy’s ult merely looked more powerful, maybe it’d feel more powerful. I’m not entirely sure what to suggest as to make Valkyrie look more powerful but I personally think that even if Mercy just glowed way more and maybe even if around the edge of your screen, it just glowed a bit/ has similar visuals as when you’re nano-boosted (I really don’t know how to describe it). Anyway, I’d love to hear your idea’s on how you’d make Valkyrie be more visually powerful.
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Make Mercy literally shoot out beams of light as she flies through the sky hahaha
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Personally I’d enjoy blasting the enemy team with beams of light haha
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My biggest issue with valkyrie isn’t the visuals, it’s the gameplay.
It’s literally just Mercy’s default gameplay, with some bells and whistles attached to make it simpler:
Mercy’s base gameplay: Mercy flies around and attaches her beam to teammates. Doing this well is easier said than done, since you have to consider target priority and the many positioning nuances of an mobility ability that only works in specific circumstances.
Valkyrie gameplay: Mercy flies around and attaches her beam to teammates, only this time all of the earlier mentioned nuance is stripped out.
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That’s also true, personally I don’t have too many qualms with Valkyrie other than it being like I stated before Mercy, but in the sky + some little embellishments like chain healing/damage boosting but I can definitely see where you’re coming from with that!
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Valkyrie has this little known feature called “invis”. It basically makes the enemy team give up trying to kill you because you’re hard to hit and aren’t a very big threat. you’re basically invisible.
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I definitely thought of Lux from LoL as my first reference point for that. Honestly, I had an idea for Mercy using her staff as a weapon(shooting from the tip of it since it seems like it could be a receptacle for some kind of energy weapon).
I agree with Silawatsi though. Her Valkyrie ult is just a less mobility-knee-capped version of her regular play. At least mass rez had a risk vs. reward concept. She needs some kind of ult that compliments her ability to deliver consistent heals / damage boost / both. Mercy’s consistency is what has kept her as a main healer, more or less. Release Mercy had much less of a problem because she didn’t have as much DPS flying at her. I easily die in 2~ hits in most games because the DPS being targetted at me as a mercy is crazy. I mean, sure, you can fly with Valkyrie but I easily get shut down by any hitscan that can aim. In Quickplay that’s a coin toss but… Yeah.
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I mained Mercy for over a year before her Valkyrie rework, and I still miss her old ultimate 
It gave Mercy a lot of extra things to consider in her base gameplay, and incentivized straddling the line between bold risk taking (for faster ult charge) and suicidal shenannigans.
When you used it, you felt like a gawddang superhero. Even if you only rezzed one person.
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When that happens it’s so awkward, personally I attempt to make myself by taking advantage of the infinite ammo and begin attacking their backline, but yeah 9/10 they just let you vibe above your team
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This isn’t really a hot take to me, it’s pretty much accurate. As much as some Mercy players don’t want to admit it, visual and auditory feedback plays a huge role in the fantasy and feeling of power of playing your hero. Mass Rez felt really good in large part that it had a big, explosive, screen-covering golden explosion of light and particle effects with her booming, iconic voice line. You were the one doing that.
Valkyrie feels underwhelming visuals-wise in that after you activate it all that happens is your wings come out for a second and then you go back to what looks like basic Mercy gameplay, visuals wise.
Some things to change this:
- Her main beam needs to be way thicker, brighter, and more magical looking. Make it pulse with energy to represent how the Ult is Mercy overloading her Valkyrie suit with power. Give them a sound effect similar to the one you have while healing when you are nano’d. This would also reflect the higher healing output she has during ult which some players may not know is the case.
This also makes both her team and the enemy team much more aware of when Mercy is ulting. A super thick, bright main beam lets Mercy’s teammates know who to stand next to in order to get the chain healing/damage boost effects. It also will make the enemy shoot at her more which further amplifies the value the Valk brings in making her super hard to kill.
- Her GA should make a much more audibly powerful sound when used considering it’s much faster and has double the range.
I also think something that would help immensely, both visuals and gameplay wise, is adding an AoE burst of healing upon pressing Q. Since her beam disconnects when she ults, she misses out on a valuable second of healing which can lead to teammates dying. I propose that when Mercy uses Valkyrie, she emits an explosion of golden light/healing in a big AoE blast around her that heals all allies for 150 HP. This would make the ult feel directly more impactful and also the visual of it would be similar to old mass rez, having that instant burst impact appearance that made Mercy player’s heart’s start racing. To compensate they can shave the ult duration from 15 to 12 seconds.
Mass rez is never coming back, Valkyrie is not going anywhere. But by changing the visuals and tweaking it we can make it feel a lot better for those Mercy players who really miss the exciting feeling (Although I personally quite enjoy and love Valkyrie the way it is).
(Something that the beam could look like during Valk, but even brighter and more powerful:
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I mean, by the same logic EMP removes nuance of target picking for hack… Or Death blossom removes the nuance of aiming. Pretty much all ults do that.
Valk is an ult that amplifies performance. Of course you can put it in the way that it becomes “simpler”, but that’s because it actually gets more powerful. There’s no amount of nuance in Mercy’s kit that will ever grant me the same mobility or damage boost numbers Valk does.
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Make her look like some final boss final fantasy gods 3rd form in the sky
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And Trans removes Zen’s single target focus of Harmony Orb. And Coalesence removes Moira’s usual focus of managing healing vs damage and resource.
Most ults make your life easier. That’s kind of the point. 
Valk basically amplifies your potential performance to have 5 pocket Mercy clones, each one pocketing a member of your team and never dying, for 15 seconds. It’s the super support ult.
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I’d take for an ult actually. As far as visuals go.
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Rofl imagine instead of chain beams when you Valked you just became a swarm of 5 Mercys that flew around in unison beaming different people LOL
The Mercy moth hive
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Not a bad take. To me, mechanics > aesthetics, but a lot of game design is visceral and tuned to feel engaging. We’ll probably see some visual overhauls in OW2, but hopefully without bogging down the engine with visual overload and rendering clutter.
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To be honest I’m glad someone agrees that Valkyrie is underwhelming, most notably in visuals and audio. Although I didn’t play when Mass Rez was a thing, the clips I saw were very impressive due to the voice line and visuals.
I like your idea on the beam looking more impressive because at first glance it’s a little difficult to see the chain healing, personally I’d also like those who are getting healed via chain healing to be able to actually tell they’re being healed by the ulting Mercy.
And yes the burst AOE healing sounds like a good idea as in the time it’s taken for Valk to activate I’ve sometimes had teammates die in that split second so the burst healing would be nice plus the compromise of time being shaved off of the ult is a pretty good compromise as well!
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I made the same observation a while back op, so it’s nice to hear some people agree. Because OW is in first person, so much needs to be conveyed by animations in the hands, gun, and audio.
Heck, the main reason I like mercy’s pink skin is because of the audio changes on her ga and rez. I think adding some flash to her valk would make it feel cooler.
If valk is supposed to “overcharge” her suit, imagine if that were represented in game? Instead of the usual clean visuals and sounds, what if they looked and sounded… dangerous? Make the staffs central part crackle and spark like its struggling with being pushed to its limit. Make the sounds of her ga faster sounding. Add in the creak of her wings being pushed beyond their intended limit. The visuals don’t even need to be brighter really, just different enough to convey the change.
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while valk might not be as exciting, or game changing as mas rez, i think its a pretty good ult. Its like having an Orisa super charger every minute to minute in a half, or you can use it to burst heal while keeping yourself safe!
I know most people will definitely disagree with me, but valk is a good ult. Its not stupid over powered, its not stupid under powered. Its in that sweet spot. It can still change a fight entirely if used at the right time, and although it makes mercy a bit easier to play for the 15 seconds its active, I think that thats alright. not every ult needs to be this big flashy thing.
Like Nano, it doesn’t even do much for ana herself, Sym wall, isn’t all that impressive but it can still help turn the tide of a fight, same can also be said about widows ult. It doesn’t need to be this huge flashy thing that will get you play of the game. Valk is effective if used right and tbh that’s all that it needs to be, end of story. You can all fight me if u want to, but i’ma stand by my opinion. its a perfectly fine ult, you guys just whiny.
It would be nice to have a bit more of a visual effect for it tho, like maybe when you valk, you go into 3rd person or you get like a orange glow on the edge of your screen, that would just make it a lot more cool!
I just wish there was more of an effect on the primary beam target so that it would mean something during the ult.
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