In the latest dev blog post they said they were going to be reworking some existing Support heroes.
And one idle thought I had is that Mercy is basically a spinoff of the TF2 Medic.
Which got me to thinking that maybe devs should copy some mechanics off the TF2 Medic that made him work on a game that had almost zero barriers.
Notably CritHeals and Overheals:
CritHeals: In TF2, the longer it’s been since a teammate has taken damage, the higher the rate of heals per second. This is in there to make it so you don’t have a healer sitting there forever during times of stress doing bulk healing that’s about as interesting as watching paint dry.
A visual explaination of critheals:
https://i.imgur.com/fBaUlPm.jpeg
Overheals: One aspect of healing received from Medic is that he can heal beyond a players maximum healthbar and provide an additional 25% percent of their teammate’s maximum basehealth as “Temporary Overhealth”. Guess what, Overwatch 2 just added “Temporary Overhealth” in the form of Green Health. So maybe if they are adding a new feature to Overwatch they should use it for more than making healthbars more visually readable.
I think the goal of all supports, current and whatever new ones are released, is to be less 24/7 heal bots, and more engaging, more offensive and utility based.
If they are going to change Mercy it would be best to get away from that design and play style of her always having a blue or yellow beam attached to a teammate all game 24/7. And just running or flying away from any type of fight or engagement.
Also supports don’t need any increased healing. As they already do more than enough healing and that is not the issue.
The supports are still balanced around having six teammates and hasn’t been lowered for the fact that there are now five players with the same output of healing as when they were six players.
In fact a couple of healers actually got increased healing in the beta for some dumb reason.
Well yeah, but I guess at least with crit heals, the idea there would be to get rid of the idea that she’s basically standing there afk healing tanks and other teammates for like 30sec between fights.
I do have a bit more of a combat focused approach for Mercy, if they basically have her a miniature version of Valk as an ability. While having a singlerez version of mass rez as her Ult.
So she isn’t a punching bag for flankers, and an immobile target dummy for snipers.
I made a thread about a rework for Mercy as well but basically it included what you just said there with switching rez and valk.
The other things that included was to get rid of damage boost as that has always been problematic and also would further get Mercy away from a pocket style , as she always has a blue or yellow beam attached to someone.
Instead of damage boost give her an attack ability where she swings her staff up and she shoots a projectile like Rein’s fire strike.
That does a bit of damage and a small knockback as well.
Kind of like a get out of my face type ability.
And the final thing I added was to make switching to her gun faster and also increasing the fire rate and projectile speed of her gun.
Her gun already does good damage so numbers might have to be adjusted but the goal is to make her using her gun feel more fluid and less clunky.
That’s it. If you make Mercy more like that then more players would be inclined to play her instead of just the group of die hard Mercy mains that like to be a pocket bot.
Ya got this where I suggested she could throw her staff for damage. Like you said. But that it would stick in the ground it lands on and act like a persistent Soldier heal. Also it would be targetable by Guardian Angel.
A mild overheal would be cool for Mercy. Personally I’d like her healing to the primary part of her kit. For a LOT of OW1, damage boost may as well have been her primary fire.
Gotcha, incidentally what would ya think if they swapped damage boost for like 20% damage resistance (for both her teammate and herself)?
Heck, what if Mercy’s ultimate was literally a copy of TF2 Medic UberCharge.
Or alternatively a copy of the Kritzkrieg with the same function as her current blue beam, but with like 50% damage buff and disabling all damage dropoff at range.
I never really played TF2 so I cannot give you input on that.
But the changes I made to Mercy are to make her more offensive and to give her some utility which was the damage debuff to enemy she hits with her new ability.
And to get her away from that pocket style gameplay.
And damage boost abilitys should be only included with ultimates as having them in game cause too many issues and damage number bottlenecks when it comes to balancing the game for the developers.
It’s important not to forget that she’s one of the most popular heroes in the game, and a large reason why Overwatch was met with commercial and mainstream success. They hate her because she’s different. She has lax aim requirements which upsets people, but that doesn’t mean she’s easy.
