[OW2] I may have fixed Mercy and Queue Times

General Discussion
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I know what you’re thinking “No that’s not possible”.
And yeah maybe it’s not. But everything about this idea feels right to me. And I’m wide awake at 3am. So here goes:

Here are a variety of problems the devs have right now:

  • Mercy isn’t good enough, and there’s no enthuisasm for her character, especially now that every other Support has that regen passive.
  • Mercy has no big heals and burst heals, compared to Ana, Bap, Moira
  • Mercy has no defensive Ult compared to, compared to Lucio, Zen, Brig
  • She doesn’t really fit in. Unless she’s pocketing a sniper, pharah or echo. (i.e. Playstyles the devs may want to nerf, or at least not buff)
  • Dev’s do not want her to have Mass Rez back. Since reversing a lot of deaths feels bad to play against.
  • But Mercy players would kill for something that brings back that joyful nostalgia feeling. (We remember the forum posts, they are passionate about this stuff).
  • But it was also kinda weird hearing “Heroes Never Die”, only to counter-intuitively have your team go intentionally create a pile of corpses on the objective.
  • And on top of all that Queue times are looking to be a huge problem.
  • With devs needing all the hype they can manage on October 4th.

Here’s how we solve all that.

This gives Mercy a big AOE burst heal when she pops Valk.
Where it heals 100% of a player’s maxixum health, and does a cleanse. Kinda like a pre-death version of Mass Rez. With “Heroes never Die”, without them having to intentionally Die first, then Un-Die.

Then for the real “feel” of it, add the Rez meter visual on the screen, but instead make it the number of teammates healed with the burst heal indicator. With the Valk Icon. And bring back the old “Heroes never Die!” voiceline. Just get all that nostalgia goodness flowing.

So basically “Heroes never Die”, without them having to intentionally die first, then un-die.

It’s also a lot more skillful on timing, because it has to be when people are low, but not so low that they die.
And also it doesn’t reverse any kills. Which is why it was such a big problem.

It’s also excessively easy to code, and the visuals and code templates for it pretty much already exist. Also it basically requires no design changes to Mercy aside from a few particle effects. And they have some great people doing magic effects at Blizzard. Especially after aqquiring the team from Spellbreak.

It wouldn’t be Mass Rez.
But it would have those visuals, that user interface, that sound, that feeling. The kind of feeling that would bring an army of Mercy players right when queue times desperately need more Support players. And importantly it would bring the more casual Support players which are the ones that would have run away before, because the game got increasingly tryhard over time. Because they know a huge nostalgia pull on Mercy mains would be enough raw numbers to get people in. Especially the casuals who are way more numerous

And the big thing with Mercy is that she is horrible at healing tanks, and otherwise feels helpless when she just can’t pump enough heals in to save somebody, like a different healer could. And casting Valk usually sucks because the cast time drops your heals to zero. Imagine the feeling of that sense of disappointment being replaced with BOOYAH HERE WE GOOO!!!

Heck even gives Mercy a super clutch cleanse, which even without the heals, could make a huge difference in “Why do you pick Mercy”. And is very on-point thematic towards the character.

Well think about it, not just a “Fix Mercy”, but this “almost-mass-rez” might “Fix queue times”,

Oh another cherry on the top, do what it takes to make Pink Mercy a challenge event skin, given away freely in the first battle pass.
Along with say $25,000 to BCRF. You know you will not only get Mercy players in the door, but they will absolutely grind their hearts out on the battle pass. So you get a sustained amount of Support players all throughout the PVP launch window. A sizable chunk of which will probably even think to upgrade to the paid pass.

Also a lot of those more casual players will first be console players. Which need help with queue times the most. But also it will greatly smooth things along when PVE comes around, and a lot of casual players flock to that.

It’s hugely nostalgic. Pretty damn close to what Mercy players would want from a theme and gameplay perspective. And would draw in a ton Support players into it’s a unique healing mechanic that wouldn’t replace the viability or uniqueness of similar ultimates. And it would be dead simple to code, playtest and most of the visual assets could just be copy/pasted from Overwatch 2018. With room for a little more sparkle on the effects.

And if you ever do even up needing to nerf it, I guess you could lower the percentage of max health healing down to like 70%. But let’s start with that 100%, and see how that goes. And let Mercy players feel like goddesses, for a little while.

Because you know, they’ve been wanting this nostalgic goodness for YEARS. And the hype journalism would just write itself. And a huge surge of free positive press would go a long way on October 4th.

5 Likes
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Get some sleep. Find a nice hobby. Do something productive. You’re trying too hard to fix this game and are just wasting your time. We can suggest all kinds of things that are probably going to make the game better, Blizzard is just going to do Blizzard things and not listen to any reason, then give us something nobody asked for.

23 Likes
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SJ doesn’t need changes though, particularly not anything that can be described as “simplified”.

2 Likes
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Putting the only cleanse in the game on her ult is a yikes from me. It doesnt even maker her ult that much better either. And considering you cut the duration of it by 33% you would actually be healing less than you currently can do with the ult.

5 seconds less is 300 less healing, 60hps for the 5 extra seconds, on up to all 4 of your teammates. Making for a net loss of 1200 less healing. So the burst heal up front would have to equal 1200 healing to even be the same amount. Not to mention losing 5 seconds of her ult means 5 less seconds of having extreme survivability, 5 less seconds where you can play agressive and get a kill.

Also this doesnt fix mercy’s problem which is her mid game flow. She will still just be a pocket bot for dps with no character of her own. And now her ultimate has a slightly better initial effect but loses its long fight strengths. An overall nerf in my opinion while not addressing the core issues with the hero

If cleanse is ever to be a thing it needs to be on an ability where you can use it in a flexible manner not tied to an ultimate. If the stuff that you would cleanse are on cooldowns, ana nade, discord, hack etc. then the answer to those has to also be on a cooldown. You have abilities that counter ults, why would you want an ult that counters a basic ability.

12 Likes
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I really like the ult changes that give her a massive burst heal with a cleanse so that you really can change things with it. I would even turn down the duration to 8 seconds for this. This really could work but make DPS mad :wink:

I think there are some legal reasons they cant bring it back.

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And not for nothing but Valk needs its training wheels removed.

Chain beams replace player choice. It’s disgusting.

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How does “fixing” Mercy fix the queue times?

Mercy players are just a portion of the support player base.

What about the remaining support heroes?

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Mercy players are a big proportions of support players… not a minority.

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Trying to make Mercy’s players happy and keep jump meter at the same time? Hah.

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They’re technically a minority.

Less than 20% of support players.

2 Likes
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Norhing, Mercy players not are a minority.

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What the heck are you talking about? The choice on who to center is a concern, and depending on heal or boost, it has a significant impact. While we are removing “training wheels” from ults let’s rework just about all of them as they dont take the much skill to execute in any case. A bit ironic sporting a Rein icon when Shatter basically just targets everyone in it’s AOE…

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I do like the weapon swap speed being reduced, and we do need a cleanse (but maybe for ‘fox girl’?). However the new Valkyrie is overpowered. Not to mention we should be moving away from instant heals. There is no skill or fun in doing things like that in my opinion.

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I think it does. Her big problem is a lack of Impact, a lack of that “Oomph” big play feeling. She lacks that “feeling” that gave Mass Rez Mercy players that big dopamine hit. That POTG moment where you really made a difference.

And this Ult simultaneously serves as a big heal, and a defensive Ult. So basically makes her fit well into that “OffHealer” archetype. Since I don’t foresee her getting a total redesign in the next 45 days.

And that’s the other great thing about it, it’s damn easy to code, with almost all the needed visuals already being in-game.

So it’s easy to balance, easy to code, easy to animate, and scratches that emotional itch Mercy players have had for 5 years.

Not all AntiHeals actually need cleansing. And having the presence of mind to know when a cleanse would make a big impact is a skill issue. Which is good.

That said, if a cleanse ever does become more of a needed thing, I’d just suggest giving Tanks a debuff resistence passive.

I’m thinking Komen For The Cure, just got annoyingly territorial. But also probably a lot of the legal issues could probably be avoided if it’s given away for free. And the social issues could be avoided by the direct donation.

It basically removes almost everything objectionable about the meter. Since you had to be near a teammate anyways to SuperJump. Or on the ground to PropJump. All it really does is just make so you can’t spam GAJump while in the air, and away from a teammate.

1 Like
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Now think about “Former Overwatch players” from the years where the playerbase sizes were it’s largest. Not just the much-smaller 2022 players.

How the forums were absolutely drowned out by Mercy players who want that sort of gameplay feeling in the game.

And generally how those Mercy players are generally more mechanically aim causal, even if they have great movement, positioning and timing. Especially since almost every action she takes is an opportunity cost, given that almost everything she does is channeled and time consuming.

Oh yeah, and console players, and Quickplay players. I’m betting there would be a LOT of appeal there.

Especially since the devs are looking to pull in more casuals with PVE, and those Mercy players probably have friends.

And something like this would be like irresistible candy for videogames journalists and influencers. The free hype marketing would be insane.

They aren’t going to get rid of this new GAJump. They’ve invested too much time into it. And assuming they make the Jump height/distance comparable to SuperJump/Slingshot. It really just becomes a preference thing.

That said, if they are gonna pull in a bunch of Mercy players who haven’t played the game since 2017, or a bunch of TF2 Medic mains, or a bunch of offrole players. They are going to want GAJump to provide that freedom of movement in a way that doesn’t require a ton of hours of grinding on a glitch.

By making it a preference optional setting, they get the best of both worlds. Everybody gets to be happy.

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Rez should be an ult and valk a normal ability.

1 Like
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Maybe, but I don’t know if devs would actually do that, and even if they would they certainly aren’t going to do that within the next 45 days.

Where as a think this could capture a lot of the same “feeling” as the old Mass Rez Ult, while fitting into the overall game style that the devs want.

This new idea basically requires almost zero changes to the rest of Mercy’s equipment. Is really easy to code, and ideally would reuse some of the old visual effects and UI.

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You only need to see the OWL, Mercy is still the only support that is never used, why? because the superjump is not her problem in OW2, her problem is in other places, as long as they don’t fix where she has shortcomings, she will continue to be garbage in OW2, being one of the worst heroes in the entire game.

4 Likes
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yeah but tying a heroes only big ‘oomph’ moment to their ult just means the other 99% of the game they feel trash to play as. We already know this is the case from heroes like genji who always has solely relied on his ult for making plays. Now with ow2 we are seeing them bring genjis ult value down whilst buffing his duel potential.

If you want mercy to be fun and impactful, which she definitely needs, it has to be in a way that enhances her in the mid-fight, not just solely relying on her ult. When you have heroes like ana and bap who have abilities that offer ‘ooomph’ moments there really is no excuse why mercy cannot have a similar moment as an ability.

May i direct your attention;

Also, I would also argue mass rez is several tiers of ‘oomph’ above an aoe burst heal and cleanse in terms of impact and playmaking potential. Completely swinging the fight back and bringing back your entire team is not even comparable in power to a burst heal/cleanse.

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I was bored, so I was curious.
Mercy had a ~40% beta 1 pick rate.
Mercy had a ~44% beta 2 pick rate.

Since i’m lazy as this point for Brig that leaves Mercy as the 2nd/3rd most picked support in the entire beta2 cycle.

Mercy is not a minority in the slightest. Ironically, Mercy & Ana usage rate shows the communities huge split in terms of playstyle.