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!