Papi *Dev* was active soon so why not ask?

[ComposedJam-1198]

Are we gonna see some changes to Mercy soon? Her current version is not fun, and looking at statistics she is actually underperforming :3

I think she is fun and if you’re using Overbuff or something I’d take it with a grain of salt.

[KinkyClam-1212]

if you’re using Overbuff or something I’d take it with a grain of salt.

Both Overbuff and OmnicMeta. Took averages.

I think she is fun

Well, good for you. Honestly I can’t heal any dmg whatsoever, res is suicidal, Valk is meeh. GA means nothing to me when literally I can’t do anything else. But OK.

[Chess-11652]

Don’t wanna go off topic but i would be interested in knowing if you will make some internal changes to the overwatch dev team

(no mean, just curious)

The problem is more likely the people calling the shots at the top than the people lower down.

I don’t like the latest Mercy change in the slightest but, if I had been told that Mercy needed to stop being a must pick asap and that I couldn’t change her design I’m not sure it would look much different than it does now.

Depending what restrictions the lower ranking staff are operating under they may be doing perfectly fine with the people above them consistently letting the rest of the team down while raking in the praise.

[Plarpoon-2445]

bullseye, i’m more interested in changes in the higher ranks then lower ones, i have nothing against the masses of devs but i have some questions about who directs them…

[ComposedJam-1198]

Both Overbuff and OmnicMeta. Took averages.

Yeah, those sources were already iffy before private profiles since (correct me if I’m wrong) they only used stats from people who actually used the site. Now with private profiles I think it’s even worse.

Well, good for you. Honestly I can’t heal any dmg whatsoever, res is suicidal, Valk is meeh . GA means nothing to me when literally I can’t do anything else. But OK.

So why should the developers do what you want instead of what I want? I love the GA and you saying it means nothing almost means you think Mercy means nothing (to me). Guardian Angel is the most fun part of her kit. Without it you just walk, heal, res.

You can heal. I was able to heal in seasons 1,2, and 3 and I’m able to heal now.

Resurrection is only suicidal if you go for a resurrection you shouldn’t go for.
There are many times resurrection is not suicidal. It could even be guaranteed.

Valkyrie is a great ultimate for avoiding enemies and for getting in a good position to resurrect a teammate who died. It’s also good if you die early and really need to be in the fight immediately. You can pop Valkyrie and fly over there. I’ve saved games like this before.

I’m not sure if you’ve played enough of this Mercy if you don’t realize this.

[BadWidowEU-2419]

Overbuff is still very much reliable.

Here’s an explanation:

@Agnostika-1802

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that Overbuff’s numbers are meaningless due to private profiles (or due to the fact that even before private profiles Overbuff only received statistics from a subset of the player base). This claim is false. You absolutely can make very good claims about a large data set by sampling a large piece of it at random.

Here’s an example. A very big bag is full of blue tokens and red tokens. The bag is shaken thoroughly to mix up the tokens. Then you spill 100,000 token on the floor. Of these, 60,000 are blue and 40,000 are red. The remaining tokens stay in the bag (in the Overwatch context, these are the “private” tokens). What percent of the tokens in the bag are blue?

You can’t know for sure without looking at every single token. What you can do is make claims, and then give probabilities that they’re true. The bag should contain about 60% blue tokens and 40% red tokens. If you claim that the bag has exactly 60% blue tokens, then you are probably wrong. If you claim that the bag has somewhere between 59%-61% blue tokens then you are almost surely right (with a probability that can be calculated and shown to be very very close to 100%). The more tokens you draw from the bag, the closer the percentage should be to the actual percentage in the whole bag. In math, we call this the law of large numbers.

You end up replacing a certain claim (exactly 60%) with a more nuanced one, together with a measure of how sure you are about it. This shouldn’t worry you. Your entire life is lived like this. For instance, your brain processes information from your eyes at a certain frame rate, and your eyes themselves have many missing pixels (so there are “private” pixels and “private” moments in time). Everything you see at all times is based off of probability. That’s the way almost all of human experience works.

The situation in Overwatch is almost identical, except we’re not sampling entirely at random. For instance, we’re only sampling people with public profiles. The good news is that there’s excellent reason (supported by data analysis) to believe that private profiles aren’t correlated with, say, skill at playing Roadhog. So the conclusions still hold.

So, now on to the main question that I wanted to discuss. How much should you trust Overbuff data? Like in the bag of tokens example, it really depends on how many games Overbuff records. If you drew 2 tokens out of the bag, your conclusions would be off. If you drew a trillion, they would be really good. So, how many games does Overbuff record?

We can’t know exactly without someone from Overbuff chiming in, but we can get a very good estimate. The thing that comes into play here, and will be important for the discussion later on, is a beautiful theorem called the central limit theorem. I won’t state the theorem itself, since it’s a bit too technical for a forum post, but it deals exactly with the kind of situation we have here - repeating a random event over and over again and trying to understand its averages. The central limit theorem is the source of the bell curves that you might have seen pop up in all kinds of aspects of your life.

Suppose you record N games in which Mercy was played (I told you there would be a little bit of Mercy here). Suppose that Mercy is balanced such that she should win about b% of the time (and b% is pretty close to 50% so the standard deviation is close to 1/sqrt(2)), but that in those games she won about a%. How far apart can we reasonably expect a% and b% to be? One thing that the central limit theorem (and its companion, the Berry-Esseen theorem) says is that you should expect about 66% percent chance for a% and b% to be within about 100/sqrt(1.4 N) of each other (i.e within one standard deviation).

So I looked at the time period between late June (when private profiles were introduced) and early August (when the support balance patch came in) and found several characters whose pick rates were stable (Mercy was one of them). For each day, I found out how far the win rates for that day were from the average win rate during that time period. Then I found the percentage that 66% of the results were smaller than and solved for N.

Now, this is only an estimation but the upshot of it is that Overbuff records around 100,000 games a day. Using Blizzard’s statistics about player distribution (yes, I know that player distribution isn’t the same as the distribution of the number of games per day, but they’re close) we get about: 8,000 games in Bronze, 21,000 in silver, 32,000 in gold, 25,000 in platinum, 10,000 in diamond, 3,000 in masters, and 1,000 in gm every day.

Now back to the central limit theorem. Say we are trying to understand Mercy’s win rates in all ranks. Mercy’s pick rate in all ranks is currently 7.32% so she appears in 7.32% * 6 * 100,000 = 43,920 games. The central limit theorem tells us that we have about a 66% confidence that her average is within one standard deviation of the actual average. This means that we have a 66% level of confidence that the average in overbuff is at most 0.4% away from the actual average. It also gives about a 90% confidence that the average is at most 0.8% away. That’s about the level of trust we should have for a daily win rate in all ranks in Overbuff.

In diamond for instance, we get a 66% chance that her daily averages are within 1.4% of the correct average and a 90% confidence that they’re within 2.8%. That’s not amazing. But, we can improve it by quite a bit. The first thing we can do is to limit the direction - we have a 84% confidence that the correct average is not MORE than 1.4% above the overbuff average for that day (in this case I don’t really care about it being less) and a 98% chance that the correct average is not more than 2.8% from the Overwatch average.

Better, but still not great. So, what do we do? We take more games. We calculate the average win rate over a whole week (if you want to be accurate, you should weight each day by the pick rate). This ends up being 7 times as many games so the accuracy improves. When you do this, you get a 84% confidence that the actual average is not more than 0.5% from the Overbuff weekly average in diamond, and a 98% confidence that it’s not more than 1% more than it. And if this accuracy isn’t enough, you can average over a whole month. This will give you an 84% confidence that you’re not more than 0.25% too low, and a 98% confidence that you’re not more than 0.5% too low. Not bad. In all ranks, the monthly average has about a 84% chance of not being more than 0.073% too low, and a 98% of not being more than 0.146% too low.

In Masters and gm, you really shouldn’t be paying attention at all to daily numbers - only to weekly and monthly averages. Especially for characters with low pick rates. Mercy’s pick rate in gm is about 2%. That means it only measures about 100 Mercy games a day. That means that you only have a 66% confidence to be within 8.3% of the correct number (or a 84% chance to not be more than 8.3% too low). That’s really bad. However, if you average over a week then you are 84% confidence you’re not more than 3% too low, and if you average over a month then you’re 84% confident you’re not more than 1.5% too low. Similarly, in Masters if you average over a month you’re 84% confident that you’re not more than 0.85% too low. Note: you have to be careful when averaging over a month. The days with higher pick rates should count more than the days with lower pick rates because they represent more games. And if this level of confidence isn’t enough? Wait another month and average. This will divide your 84% and 98% confidence numbers by about 1.4.

The numbers given here are just guidelines. They’re based off of estimates and approximations. But the math behind them is very real. They’re good estimates and guidelines. There are other places to go from here that can increase the confidence levels even further. For instance, if the character you’re interested in spends more day below a certain number than above it, that increases your confidence that the number is low. Or, If the character you’re interested in spends most of their days very close to a certain number, that increases the likelihood that this number is close to the correct average.

I hope this helps people interpret data in future discussions (and not only Mercy based ones).

[KinkyClam-1212]

who directs them…

I’m not sure if this is the best way to put it.

Yeah, those sources were already iffy before private profiles since (correct me if I’m wrong) they only used stats from people who actually used the site. Now with private profiles I think it’s even worse.

No they took stats from every account in the game. After private profiles only public profiles. While they are not as accurate they are still reliable somewhat.

Guardian Angel is the most fun part of her kit

I agree on that.

You can heal. I was able to heal in seasons 1,2, and 3 and I’m able to heal now.

You are healing for less.

Valkyrie is a great ultimate for avoiding enemies and for getting in a good position to resurrect a teammate who died

Can you point out another ultimate that is supposed to be used for the character to just “avoid enemies”? I mean Blink, Grappling hook, Genji Dash and what not are such ABILITIES but they are basic ABILITIES. Not “Ultimates”

I’m not sure if you’ve played enough of this Mercy if you don’t realize this.

I have 200 hrs on old mercy and around 300 on this one over my accounts.
And I don’t like it. GA is fun, yes, but it does not make that big of an impact. I mean you’d be better off going with moira/ana as they are more effective and far more fun.

So why should the developers do what you want instead of what I want?

I didn’t say that anywhere. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Without it you just walk, heal, res.

The highlighted part used to be fun to use honestly. And gave you a feel of satisfaction as you had to EARN IT.

EDIT: Its fun how Ana and Mercy completely swapped places.

[ComposedJam-1198]

No they took stats from every account in the game. After private profiles only public profiles. While they are not as accurate they are still reliable somewhat.

I’m just saying to use skepticism in this. It’s easy to be mislead even with accurate statistics.

You are healing for less.

Yes, objectively, so you have to be smarter with your healing. You have to be able to jump between teammates more to get all the healing you can.

Can you point out another ultimate that is supposed to be used for the character to just “avoid enemies”?

No, but I didn’t claim that’s what Valkyrie was for so…

I have 200 hrs on old mercy and around 300 on this one over my accounts.
And I don’t like it. GA is fun, yes, but it by itself does not make that big of an impact. I mean you’d be better off going with moira/ana as they are more effective and far more fun.

And yet you are comfortable saying resurrection is suicide?
There is a conflict here.

I didn’t say that anywhere. Correct me if I’m wrong.

The reason this thread exists is, correct me if I’m wrong, to ask about Mercy changes. You claim she isn’t fun and that (I believe) is the reason you want to see changes.
I do not want to see changes.
I think her current version is fun.

Why should they do what you want instead of what I want?
I’m not saying you actively said this. I’m literally just asking a question.

The highlighted part used to be fun to use honestly. And gave you a feel of satisfaction as you had to EARN IT.

Yeah, I disagree with your implication here.
You’re implying that you don’t have to earn the current resurrection. If you’re basing this off of Titanium’s post you should know his biased interpretation literally means nothing to me.

Anyway, resurrection can actually be interrupted. It takes time to cast. You and your team are vulnerable when you cast it.
If you get it off, you earned it.

I also really like the way this new resurrect works.
It’s far more… personal, for lack of a better word.
You are there with that one ally who’s dead and trying to bring them back. There is far more agency since you have to really decide what individual you want resurrected.
It also encourages team-play. A resurrection that would have been suicide could be free if your Rienhardt just moves forward a little with his shield or if Zarya gives you a bubble.

EDIT: Its fun how Ana and Mercy completely swapped places.

I’m not sure if that’s the case, but the support category is interesting right now to say the least.
In my opinion it’s the most balanced it’s been in awhile. I can pretty much play any support I want in competitive right now.

[shiinotic-1889]

Did… Someone ask in this thread if some people would be fired? Gurl.

[BadWidowEU-2419]

Off-Topic but I feel like you might like this:

[shiinotic-1889]

Me playing symmetra and walking up to the enemy team with full microwave because apparently people just don’t know that she reloads and ramps off of barriers

[KinkyClam-1212]

No, but I didn’t claim that’s what Valkyrie was for so…

Valkyrie is a great ultimate for avoiding enemies

Uhhh, you did.

And yet you are comfortable saying resurrection is suicide?
There is a conflict here.

It is with the cast time. Unless people die under cover (smfh) I usually get something done to me (slept/shattered etc etc)

Why should they do what you want instead of what I want?

It’s not only me. There is a poll going on, currently with near 1k votes. 80% of the votes say Mercy is either not fun or was more fun prerework. Only 7% say she is fun currently.

If you get it off, you earned it.

If you died while casting it, it doesn’t matter. You have it again in 30 seconds, because You didn’t earn it.

It also encourages team-play

Uhh, unless you are minimum diamond, cooperation from your team is rarely seen.

There is far more agency since you have to really decide what individual you want resurrected.

Thats a problem. When the enemy pours 6 ults on the point there is nothing to stop them.

[ChivasUK-1987]

I haven’t seen Jeff popping out here for awhile.

[Sparkle-21103]

He’s not gunna touch that one with a 10000ft pole.

[ComposedJam-1198]

Uhm you did?

Please quote where I said anything like “valkyrie is used just to avoid enemies” and I’ll concede the point.

Uhhh, you did.

No, I didn’t, let me teach you how to quote someone correctly.
I said:

Valkyrie is a great ultimate for avoiding enemies and for getting in a good position to resurrect a teammate who died. It’s also good if you die early and really need to be in the fight immediately. You can pop Valkyrie and fly over there. I’ve saved games like this before.

Now, you said:

Can you point out another ultimate that is supposed to be used for the character to just “avoid enemies”?

Which is not what I said.
If you look at what I said I gave several examples of uses (not a complete list mind you)

1. Great ultimate for avoiding enemies (the only part you seemed to read)
2. For getting in a good position to resurrect a teammate
3. Getting back to the fight early if your team is on the point when you spawn
   Now I’ll add some more
4. It’s good for hitting Pharah and Widow. I’ve killed many of them using Valkyrie.
5. It’s good for damage boosting your entire team to clean up team-fights.

I could go on, but that suffices.
I hope you don’t misrepresent what people say in the future. It’s disrespectful, annoying, and completely dishonest in a conversation.

It is with the cast time. Unless people die under cover (smfh) I usually get something done to me (slept/shattered etc etc)

That’s a problem with your decision making process. You’re going for resurrections you shouldn’t go for while also not taking advantage of resurrections you can go for.
In this quote you undermine your own point though, so I’ll leave it at that.

It’s not only me. There is a poll going on, currently with near 1k votes. 80% of the votes say Mercy is either not fun or was more fun prerework. Only 7% say she is fun currently.

What about a poll about is Mercy fun to play against?
Contact me again when that poll has far more votes, please. For now I’ll take it with a grain of salt.

If you died while casting it, it doesn’t matter. You have it again in 30 seconds, because You didn’t earn it .

So does Soldier not earn his helix rocket?
Does Sombra not earn her stealth?
Does Lucio not earn his speed-boost?
Does Ana not earn her bio-nade?

Please explain to me, without claiming that current resurrection is an ultimate (it’s not), how resurrection is not earned, but all of these abilities are earned.
When you cannot you will understand you’re special pleading.

Uhh, unless you are minimum diamond, cooperation from your team is rarely seen.

Uh, no.
I’ve played in bronze, silver, gold, plat, and diamond. There are many games in each of these ranks that both have teamwork and don’t have teamwork.

Thats a problem. When the enemy pours 6 ults on the point there is nothing to stop them.

Yeah, that’s perfectly fine. Just spawn and use your ultimate advantage to win. Using 6 ultimate abilities is dumb.

[KinkyClam-1212]

It’s good for hitting Pharah and Widow. I’ve killed many of them using Valkyrie.

Great support ult.

It’s good for damage boosting your entire team to clean up team-fights.

Unless you have another healer who is madly healing, then I don’t know what you will be dmg boosting.

• Great ultimate for avoiding enemies (the only part you seemed to read)
• For getting in a good position to resurrect a teammate
• Getting back to the fight early if your team is on the point when you spawn

No other ultimate has such uses. It is just basic abilities.

So does Soldier not earn his helix rocket?
Does Sombra not earn her stealth?
Does Lucio not earn his speed-boost?
Does Ana not earn her bio-nade?

They are not as impactful as resurrect. One thing is to speed boost/disappear/burst dmg/increase(or stop) healing and another thing is to bring back an ally that was killed. And you can do it every 30 seconds. No matter how good of a Mercy you are.

Yeah, that’s perfectly fine. Just spawn and use your ultimate advantage to win. Using 6 ultimate abilities is dumb.

That’s what currently happens. But it is dumb to not have any counters for it.

[ComposedJam-1198]

Unless you have another healer who is madly healing, then I don’t know what you will be dmg boosting.

You’ll be damage boosting your entire team.
You do know you can… swap between healing and damage boosting repeatedly and as needed… right? You don’t only have to do one

No other ultimate has such uses . It is just basic abilities.

Are you going to acknowledge that you blatantly misrepresented my position and misquoted me intentionally to further your point?
Either way, thank for conceding.

I don’t care if no other ultimate has such uses. That doesn’t mean her ultimate doesn’t have these uses.

They are not as impactful as resurrect.

I completely disagree.
Unless you can quantify the impact of these abilities you have no case.
I honestly would rather have bio-nade every 8 seconds than a resurrect every 30 seconds. I think well placed bio-nades have a much higher impact than a resurrect every minute or so.

You can’t do it every 30 seconds.
Sure, it’s available every 30 seconds, but that doesn’t mean you can actually use it every 30 seconds. No matter how good a Mercy you are? I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid. A bad Mercy will never get resurrects off every 30 seconds without dying. Sorry.

So, you’ll forgive me if I say your distinction is completely arbitrary and unconvincing.
This narrative of “resurrection isn’t earned” is completely meaningless, stupid, and simply incorrect. Its basically a meme because of some posts like Titanium’s that people (for some reason) are drawn too, despite their obvious flaws and bias.

That’s what currently happens. But it is dumb to not have any counters for it.

You think it’s okay for one ultimate to be able to undo 6?
There is a counter to having 6 ultimate abilities used on you.
Its called use your ultimate advantage to push whatever objective you’re fighting for.
Unless it’s literally the last fight of the match using 6 ultimate abilities is a terrible, horrible strategy.

[damnitbinks-1559]

I’m sure they see stuff but if your notice they respond to pointless threads over ones with actual good points that are being made. So it kind of shows their agenda of priority for the game.

[Essence-2354]

Scoff’s that person claims to be a “Mathematician” Yet is basically just saying “A sample size is as good as having the whole 100% of the data.”

Now let’s just put this logically… A Mathematician would prefer to be 100% accurate instead of having to use GUESSWORK with only a 60% sample size.

Since the owner of Overbuff confirmed they simply have a tool to latch onto Blizzards API they cannot read data from private profiles PERIOD = Any citation to stats since the private profile update is GUESSWORK As opposed to ACCURATE.

[PlayerOne-21993]

Are we gonna see some changes to Mercy soon? Her current version is not fun, and looking at statistics she is actually underperforming :3

Well I guess we could could revert her self healing to 3s after taking damage. 1s is even faster then some reload animations, this feels quite unfair.

After all she got this reduced to survive the mass res after her team is dead, and now without mass res there is no need for the 1s self heal anymore.