One of the big flaws of Mercy’s design right now is that
Her out-of-combat regen is only marginally better than other Supports
Other Supports have ways to heal themselves besides Regen.
Mercy’s only way to self-heal is through Regen.
Here’s a visual comparison of the self-healing rates of all the Supports.
So that seems like a straightforward fix to me. Give Mercy a way to selfheal that isn’t the OutOfCombat Regen. Especially since
All of Mercy’s capabilities with heals+boosts+rez, are time consuming. So she can’t be spending a lot of time out of combat. She doesn’t have the big burst heals Ana/Bap/Moira. Lucio/Brig have active mid-combat regen. And even Zen effectively has better out-of-combat regen than she does, when combined with shieldhealth.
Alec Dawson, Lead Hero Designer, pointed out in his Hero Balance twitter stream that if a Support needs buffs, he would like to buff Supports in the direction of “More Sustain/Mobility”. Well she’s got mobility. So more Sustain it is.
For that, I propose giving her something that’s kinda like a “LifeSteal”, but instead of a portion of damage dealt providing selfheals. It would be a portion of healing dealt providing selfheals.
MERCY
Passive: Combat Medic
25% of healing dealt is received as self-healing
14hps for normal healing
21hps for normal healing with Ana healing boost
That said, then you got Valkyrie. Technically they could give her 15hps per player, up to 60hps regen. And might need to remove her normal Valk passive selfheal. But this might be more fun.
MERCY
Valkyrie: Angelic Fury
60% of damage dealt gives Aura healing within a 15m radius.
Does not provide selfhealing.
Combat Medic passive disabled for the duration of Valkyrie.
So basically she can choose between the more sedentary Valk playstyle of ChainHeal+ChainBoost.
Or she can do the equivalent of ChainHeal, and Shoot Stuff. Which for a lot of people, would be way more Fun.
Making her not a healbot. Removing her damage boost for damage projectiles. Removing resurrect for a damage ability.
Mercy’s GA/ superjump every 1.5 seconds is amazing mobility, kinda broken keep that. Valk is one of the most fun ultimate’s in the game. If Mercy put out damage, Valk would be amazing.
The health regen passive is broken, Mercy doesn’t need more of that with her great mobility, healbot playstyle.
Is it? Looks like Mercy gets the 2nd or 3rd worst selfheals to me. And that’s comparing to Ana being the “lowest” which gets a 100hp burst heal, and +50% incoming heals afterwards.
I would just weave in some damage in her staff kit so that she does not have to swap to deal damage.
It gets old AKJ. We know that you cant stand her but your takes are just fundamentally wrong. It was fun for the first 200 times but now… search for a new hobby than to hate on the worst support in OW2.
Her Rez is usually worthless in the “Objective Brawl” part of the fight
Her only other value is damage boost, and that’s entirely dependent on how good her teammate is, and really doesn’t have much to do with her own agency.
There are Supports that have way more Utility than that, with far fewer downsides.
And on top of all that, her self-heal, objectively sucks. Which is kinda important considering she’s usually pretty bad at killing opponents.
Because her movement is really good and fun, her playstyle is completely unique, she provides plenty of value as is, and most supports don’t average that much damage anyways so you’re not missing out on that much.
Mercy’s value is that she has fairly high healing for a support that is so freaking reliable. Just because she doesn’t have a big burst heal(also Kiriko doesn’t!) doesn’t mean she doesn’t heal enough. It’s easy to consistently heal the most in a match by 2000+. Also her self healing being marginally better is fine because Mercy is the hardest support to hit and pin down because she’s fairly thin and hyper mobile.
Resurrect is fine in a brawl provided you are playing in a way where you aren’t the constant focus. Use those corners, use those ledges, fly over people’s heads and take note of any backliners looking at you. Res is huge, even moreso in 5v5 since it’s easier to snowball. Get a trade but Mercy brings back your gut, well that’s likely a teamfight win. It’s not always easy and that’s fine because the degenerate support(Ana) has a bunch of easy teamfight winners and we need less of that, not more.
Mercy is completely fine, I know from experience. She’s as fun to play as she always has been and needs no major changes.
Her lack of damage is made up for with her reliable healing for good numbers, damage boost, and crazy mobility. Mercy proves you don’t need to do damage to make a fun character, same as Medic in TF2 does.
Also she proves that pocketing one guy is a surefire way to lose games