Old Mercy was actually pretty niche

General Discussion
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Old Mercy (as in Mercy 1.0, when her ult was an AoE rez) was acually considered to be the weakest healer once you got out of the low elos. She was a virtual ghost in the highest levels of play, and the pros didn’t use her at all outside of the occasional desperation Pharmercy strat.

I know that to some, this sounds crazy. I can hear it now:

“But she had mass rez! That had the potential to bring back the entire team!”

Stop.

Rewind that sentence.

Pause on the ninth word:

Potential.

If you’re judging an ability by it’s potential, every single abiltiy in the game is too powerful to exist.

Every source of damage has the potential to wipe out the entire enemy team. Every stun, knockback and debuff has the potential to completely shut down an enemy push. Even any source of healing has the potential to keep a teammate alive forever.

But that’s on paper.

In reality, you rarely ever get that sort of opportunity. Sure, sometimes the stars align and you get to make an amazing play that immortalized in a highlight video, along with the many other people who got that one opportunity in their dozens of hours of playing that hero.

If you judge by highlight videos alone, Reaper always kills the entire enemy team with his ult. Widow always wipes the floor with her enemies by getting headshots every time. Lucio always boops the entire enemy team off the map.

But how many times does that happen to you?

Mercy 1.0 had a pretty cool ult, but without an E abiltiy she had zero use in the midfight, before anyone got their ult. Meanwhile, all of the other healers bring a lot of utility and damage to the table on top of their healing, and that’s not even counting their ults into the equation. They could make clutch plays, help the team push, and shut down the enemy with their base kit alone.

Mercy 1.0 couldn’t compete with that. She was nearly entirely dependent on her ult to swing the fight, and even then any observant enemy could undo it by saving an ult to drop on the enemy as soon as Mercy uses her own.

“Why bring a Mercy who MIGHT save your team from a whombo combo, when you could bring an Ana who could prevent the enemy from ever getting the chance?” That was the reasoning back then, for calling Mercy a troll pick.

That’s why one of the most common forum topics pre-rework were pleas for Mercy to get a mid-fight E ability, so that Mercy could be more than just a flying target while she charged her ult. Many even suggested compensation nerfs to Mass Rez, so that Mercy didn’t get over-buffed with the addition on an E.

Mercy was balanced by having a consistent base kit, but a situational ult. She was good on teams that spread across high and low ground, and good on payload maps. She was weak against dive, bad on deathball teams, and didn’t preform as well on control maps. You could force the Mercy to switch by harrassing her with flankers.

If Mass Rez had gotten nerfed to make it feel more fair to play against, Mercy could have gotten an mid-fight E ability as compensation. She could have kept her niche instead of taking over the entire healer category, with this darn rework that’s wiped out all of Mercy’s weaknesses.

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In 400 hours of vanilla mercy I had 4, 5 man rezzes. You are right, potential means nothing

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That’s why Resurrect MUST be Mercy’s ultimate again. It’s too powerful on a cooldown, but as an ult, it is situational and takes careful planning. It also had to be earned.

If the devs want Mercy to be balanced again, the only smart course of action is to make Resurrect her ultimate again.

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I mean, if it was a complete revert back to the original rez - as in no invulnerability and nothing else fancy about it. Just a strict ‘Hit q, resurrect, potential for death high’ I’d be fine with that.

It wasn’t until she became invulnerable along with the rest of her rezzed team that she became trouble.

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Yea I totally agree. “Huge Rez” wasn’t that common and I mained mercy for a long time. I got a 4-5 man rez maybe every 10-12th game. Also rezzing your team did not mean they were magically untouchable und invulnerable. A lot of the time you rez’d and they were attacked by the enemy team or even grav’d. But the devs didn’t like Mercy to hide and wanted her to come out of her hidings. Whateva, I’m done with the revert mercy threads because Blizzard will not revert her.

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los checks with some damage reduction for mercy upon mass rez cast would be nice :man_shrugging:

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It’s too hard for blizzard to take compromises. They go hard and change everything completely or they don’t touch it at all.

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Not to mention another fact as to why current Mercy is OP is because before her weakness was no burst healing, she was a solo target healer that healed or damage boosted consistently, but only one person at a time.

Now that Valkyrie solved that majour drawback with Mercy she is very OP, top it off with 30 second rez and you have an OP hero.

When she had Mass Rez, she was worse. Removing Valkyrie would add a huge weakness to her and would be a nerf. Just like the one so many are asking for.

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It’s a nerf I’d happily accept. ANYTHING to make Mercy fun and require strategy and forethought again. I’d rather her be trash tier and fun again, than this OP skill-less, soulless shell of a moth we have now.

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Yea she’s super boring to play now : <

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This rework has been a pretty massive mess.

but tbh I want more then just simple revert.

I want another rework so we actually fix mercy this time.

A revert would fix some issues yes but another rework would allow them to fix a lot more of the issues and aswell as take into consideration the 6 or so mercy megathreads that have tons of feedback :man_shrugging:

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LoS checks… yeah, that could be good. But, I dunno about the damage reduction for one reason: the biggest thing about her rez from launch Mercy was that to resurrect her team she had to give her life most of the time. There was an essence of fair play in this because, yes, she might undo a Death Blossom by a Reaper. But the Reaper could get some satisfaction out of taking out the Mercy, even though the entire enemy team is probably going to take him down.

I’d be cautious with the damage reduction because it could allow her to survive more (I know that seems like an odd drawback, but hear me out). Mercy is meant to be the starting healer, she is the one you can pick up and go with. Her active interactivity with the game is minimal, you don’t have to understand too much about the game to make use of her kit, and I’m not saying any of this to be rude. Simple heroes are fantastic. I consider Rein a simple hero, and know he could (and occasionally can) be terrifyingly potent.

I feel like her having the biggest reward for the highest risk is a decent trade-off. Her rez is an instant cast with LoS checks, but she has no invulnerability, she has no damage reduction… and this is a way to teach how to best utilize her, right? Because now you have to think when is the risk of flying in and dying to rez greater than saving it? Can I die here and my team still hold?

Like, early on, I had great matches where an enemy Mercy countered by Death Blossom (I used to main Reaper). Popping the Mercy, most of the time, was cathartic… and most of the time the trade-off lead to a stalemate on point. Sometimes it lead to my team having the upper hand, sometimes the enemy team.

I think, now, if you introduced 1.0 Mercy, players have had enough time to get used to the game and the flow that she’d be a really balanced character. Especially with the QoL she received to the rest of her kit.

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She was the 5th most picked character during the height of Ana’s power. She was never niche at all.

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Mercy used to be considered a troll-pick during Ana’s meta. You’d be accused of trolling or throwing if you picked Mercy over Ana.

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I’d be fine with Mass Rez ult if they could fix the generally toxic gameplay revolving around it. I’m not talking Hide n Rez–I’m talking the Mercy yelling through the mic at everyone to die on point so they could fly in and die in an attempt at a mass rez. Not every Mercy did that, but… plenty enough. TBH I think that, more than anything, set the stage for a lot of the negativity toward Mercy mains.

If they can fix that, then we’re gucci. Until then, nah, figure something else out

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I was around at that time. It didn’t stop people from playing her all the time and those stats were directly from Jeff.

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People probably and most likely played her because she was fun back then, not because she was an OP hero and a must pick like nowadays.

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That’s kinda the issue here, The same people telling us “she’s fine” are now the ones crying she’s OP and needs a nerf but don’t want old mercy back. That’s literally the only thing that would balance her properly at this point. There’s nothing else they can do that wouldn’t break her as a playable character.

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I mean, a simple fix would be for people to to actually fight on the objective so mercy wouldn’t have to say that.

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I mean, it’s not like Season5 Mercy created balanced healer picks.
https://i.imgur.com/Tzw71J3.jpg

Or were you talking about Season3 Mercy? Where there actually was a variety of healer picks.
https://i.imgur.com/M5l6cnA.jpg