✳ My Support Balance Patch/Mercy Rework (No Mass Rez)

Last night I drafted up a quick support patch and Mercy rework and just wanted to put it out there for feedback. The goal of it is to even the playing field of the support heroes, keep them feeling strong and independent without contributing to power creep, and to rework Mercy to be more viable, skillful, and less centered around rez as a whole.

Mercy

  • Heal Beam increased to 60 HPS
  • Damage boost gives 30% damage boost, 30% speed boost
  • New E ability: Salvation
    Same range as GA, with a .2 second cast time. Same animation as instant rez. Bathe the targeted ally in golden light, healing them for 75 HP instantly. Cleanses them of any negative status effects like hack, freeze, and anti-nade. 12 second cooldowns. (Numbers can all be changed around obviously, burst heal can be made more/less strong or CD can be raised/lowered to 10 or 15 seconds etc.)
  • Valkyrie
    - Ult charge raised by 15%
    -Valkyrie is now 10 seconds long and heals for 65 HPS chain beams and 100 HPS main beam
    - Damage boost gives everyone the 35% speedboost.
    - Salvation is replaced by Ressurect for the duration of her ultimate. She has 1 charge of a solo rez on E, with a 1 second cast time.
    - GA speed buffed by 25%.
    (Not sure if healing is too much, trying to make it more in line with Moira ult which is 8 seconds of 140 HPS. The short duration makes it more bursty, and the AOE speed boost opens up big offensive playmaking potential, especially in dive comps).
  • Graphical changes: Healing beam is changed to look like the OW2 healing beam. Valkyrie now makes her beams thicker, brighter, and pulsating with Energy similar to her wings. This allows Mercy to feel more powerful, her teammates to know who has the main beam/who to play around, and the enemies can track her more easily. Now has more powerful sound effects like when she is nano’d and healing.

Overall this rework shifts her even further away from rez, makes it less prevalent in matches as it’s tied behind her ultimate, makes it “earned” again, and keeps a moderate cast time to allow for ample counterplay. Because rez is removed from her base kit it frees up room for more base power, and so her healing and damage boost have been buffed and she has a new E ability that allows her to make more plays and manage cooldowns. The goal is to make Mercy more fun to play as, to play with, and to play against, without making her too strong or too weak. Also for reference, Lucio speed is 25% without amp and 60% with so Mercy having 35% single target doesn’t really step on his toes, just adds more speed options in the support role.

Damage boost buff is based off of Geoff’s statement here:

And I shifted the power away from rez and back to healing, as Jeff said:

"We want the top two things you notice about Mercy to be, “Oh my God, she’s an amazing throughput healer,” and “Wow, look at that mobility, she’s just flowing back and forth through the map.” And we don’t want her to be the resurrect bot that’s just erasing kills."

Baptiste

  • Healing nades now heal for 5 bonus healing for direct hits/the center of the AoE. So his nades still do 50 HPS but 55 HPS if you are directly hitting the target.
  • Ultimate charge nerf reverted.
    I wanted to buff Bap back up a bit, but carefully, as he was outhealing everyone including 80 HPS Moira back when he had 60 HPS AOE nades, and he was doing a lot more damage than the other supports too.

Zenyatta

  • Discord nerf reverted back to 30%
  • Right click nerf reverted
  • Reloading instantly initiates his shield regen so he doesn’t need to wait 3 seconds after not taking damage.
    Zen’s nerfs he received during GOATS and Dive need to be reverted so he can compete with Lucio in the off healer slot again. He is so fragile that it’s not worth picking him a lot of the time, but increasing the value he brings as well as slightly buffing his survivability increases the incentive for playing him.

Moira

  • Damage orb maximum damaged nerfed from 200 to 100
  • Primary fire heal spray projectile speed increased by 70% to more quickly reach targets at it’s maximum range, as currently her range doesn’t actually play out like 15m
  • Healing increased from 65 to 80 HPS, but her resource and HoT buffs are reverted. This basically puts her back to where she was at launch, with high healing but having to manage it carefully.
  • Right click beam hitbox tightened by 30%, self heal from it increased to 35 HPS again
    Overall aimed at making Moira have a higher skill ceiling for maximum value. Nerf to her cheesey damage output but a rather huge buff to her healing projectile spray speed which makes her a lot more viable with more spread out comps and DPS and also more reliable as a whole, as currently her spray takes too long to reach most targets and start healing them. This buff sounds small on paper but would make a huge, noticeable difference in game to her consistency.

Please let me know your thoughts/concerns/whatever! The overall goal is to make supports feel better to play, raise the skill ceiling on Moira and Mercy while keeping them viable, and to overall make healers feel more impactful. I didn’t touch Ana or Lucio because I believe they are great baselines for the power level of supports, and Brig was left out because although I personally think she’s in a strange spot I don’t know what I’d change about her.

I’d like Ana to remain the overall best support at the highest levels due to her high skill nature, but want Mercy to have her place as well in comps like dive and to not only be played alongisde Pharah, as she is currently. Not only does the Mercy HPS buff help Zen, but reverting Zen’s nerfs also will push him back into viability. Mercy + Zen will once again be a viable and staple combo you can run, trading less healing for higher offensive power.

Also, before anyone says it, this is not healing powercreep. I repeat, not powercreep. Mercy had 60 HPS for the majority of the game’s lifespan, Moira had 80 for most of her lifespan and she was considered bad for a long time, and overall shields have been nerfed and DPS have been buffed (Mcree fire rate, Sombra spread, Solider rocket, and now the Ashe, Genji, and Pharah buffs, etc.) so I think these healing changes will be fine. Yes, this overall increases the amount of healing in the game, but after the big barrier patch people now get to shoot actual players and not barriers all game anyways.

And for those who are concerned that the Mercy heal buff with make Ana useless, remember that Ana has gotten 4 consistency buffs in the past year and a half. 4 more ammo (300 more healing before having to reload, or 4 more shots you can afford to miss), healing through allies, nade radius increased from 3 to 4m, and a big burst heal on Nano. Ana has more healing/consistency than she ever had before during original 60 HPS Mercy, hence why she’s currently outhealing Mercy on average in GM.

Anyways, please let me know what you think of these changes, and if you hate them don’t tear into me too hard!

25 Likes

Don’t you think 120 consistent HPS would be a tad bit high? I know it’s an ultimate and I like all the ideas but I think some numbers need adjusting.

12 Likes

Honestly with the decrease of healing overall I don’t think that Mercy really needs 60HPS, especially in OWL.
Mercy was never played as a Main healer (other than moth meta) in OWL, and buffing her healing would probably just make her a better dog owner in OWL, it’d just make her better at tethering to Pharah.

This would also probably push her more into a pocket support, and that would almost undoubtably be really overpowered. With Lucio you could get a 75% speed boost, amp+damage beam would make reinhardt an absoulte monster.
But this actually might be a good thing, as it would make Mercy+Lucio a stronger combo, and would help with faster gameplay (something a lot of players seem to like)

I think that this, on top of a cleanse would probably be a bit overpowered.

It’s a lot of healing, and utility on an ability with no huge downside.

to compensate for the healing buff, makes sense

That would be
Oh my god, that would really be overpowered.

honestly I’d just like 90 HPS on main beam, and then 50 on all tethers, so that picking a target would actually become part of the kit and add something for mercy to do instead of just AFK’ing while in Valk

7 Likes

I like the mercy changes. Have her E being dynamic with Valk is a good change and gives her power again.

I am not going to comment on numbers since those have to be tested anyways.

I especially love your Moira changes. Her high skill-cap should be resource management always.

What are your thoughts on removing some of the Valk training wheels like the chained beams in exchange for a very powerful singular beam? Mercy’s who mastered beam juggling (which requires low beam sens and actual aim).

1 Like

The numbers can definitely be adjusted! It can be lowered to 100 if necessary, just want to keep it higher than the chain beams to promote target prioritization and beam juggling!

My logic was if Moira can do 140 HPS to all allies for 8 seconds in her ult, 120 HPS for one ally in Mercy ult wouldn’t be too crazy, but I def get the concern and had it myself too!

I have to disagree. For one, Mercy was never played in OWL without her rework and 60 HPS until the nerf. All she’d ever been in OWL was 60 HPS moth and then 50 HPS not-picked. In previous pro play before the rework she did have a 5% pickrate as a Pharah pocket, but to be fair she had a defensive “off healer” style ultimate, less good survivability without slingshot, and no E ability. She wasn’t really useful in general.

Yes, she can still be used as a Pharah pocket this way, but the main thing is she now has the option of being played as a main healer alongside Zen/Lucio, which she currently can’t do.

Yeah I was thinking of making it to be where speedboosts don’t stack or cap at a certain %, forgot to add that into my OP.

And yeah overall I know the community likes speedboost and feels the game is more enjoyable with it in it!

For sure, all the numbers can def be tuned down! The HoT could be removed entirely, for example.

Yeah, numbers are crazy, this proposal is moreso the general idea! We can def tune it down as necessary. Overall I feel like this rework makes her a lot easier to balance, as it just requires tuning things down/up.

4 Likes

I like them, although the ult heals do sound like a lot right off the bat. Same with the burst heal, it would probs need to go down a tad in hps but it otherwise seems great!

2 Likes

Thanks!

I personally would like to keep chain beams intact as without them, Mercy is the only support in the game with no ability to AoE heal, and I feel like it’s part of the only thing that makes Valkyrie ult-worthy and Is one of my personal favorite parts of it, so that’s why I wanna keep personally. But I do want to make the main beam significantly better than the chains to promote/force beam juggling.

Thans! Yeah, numbers are crazy, ahh xD

3 Likes

I’m surprised Ryan hasn’t referred you to this:

3 Likes

i like how you suggested a separate e ability other than res because i feel like mercy using res is highly situational and can put your team at a disadvantage severely because sometimes res wouldnt go off / youre not healing your team in that time frame, i hope mercy does get some change to bring her up to par with the other supports!

1 Like

ty ty ;-;

3 Likes

Sure just make all tanks other than Rein even moooore useles. 60 hps, why don’t you make Winston do 1 damage every 5 seconds why don’t you. All joking aside I would like Suppoet buffs if they were paired with major Tank buffs. Or just needing burst damage, either one is fine with me.

Winston was the top meta tank for almost a year while Mercy was meta with 60 HPS. If you think a Mercy HPS buff makes Winston useless idk what to tell you. Mercy and Winston are almost always side by side in pro play, if Winston is picked there’s usually a Mercy with or against him. Mercy being good is a buff to Winston’s viability. Winston has not been viable/meta a single month or week since Mercy’s HPS nerf, just think about that for a moment.

I agree, but this is just a support patch. I do have a tank patch though. Here’s the brief summary:

Sigma- Delay on his shield deployment removed, shield health buffed, regen rate buffed, primary fire rate nerfed. (Makes him a better main tank)
Orisa- Shield health buffed back up a bit
Winston- Damage ignores armor completely, more ammo

2 Likes

Why is it not just instant cast? If its only one i see no reason with it having a cast time, especially since resurrect is removed from her main kit

Other changes seem ok

I wanted instant cast but felt people would dislike that idk. :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

Since its only one its perfectly fine,
its her ultimate after all

Or make it when she uses valk over a dead body that one person is instantly brought back

I do like the moira changes, but the one to damage orb doesn’t really make sense to me. It will still be opressive in a 1v1 (especially combined with the other changes), but will not be useful else. Just leave that part out or change the orb’s dps to 40 and keep the 200 max. to make it harder for her to kill but still enable her to use it for poke and ult charge

1 Like

Too OP imo, you should reduce her speed to find counterplay to valk, eitherwise it will be op imo

2 Likes

Mercy’s beams are not her issue. Her issue is her ult and rez. Salvation is not a good idea. Brigitte’s 75 instant heal was removed for a reason. Cleansing cc in of itself is fairly powerful. An over time heal wouldn’t be too bad. Also, this would make damage boost broken.

Zenyatta might work. My issue with zen personally is that he doesn’t heal enough to be worth using in a 222 role lock, but this might help him.

Im alright all around with the moira changes. I suppose they could work.

1 Like

Don’t like the mercy changes.
Bap changes are cool, but what about immortality field? I’d rather buff that than ult.
Love the Zen changes.
Not a fan of the Moira changes.

What is wrong with the Moira changes? It is actually a buff and forces you to have good resource management for once if you want heavy sustain. Throwing Damage orb + Coal would still be a strong combo with Ryan’s changes.