Please Give Mercy a New Ability Too

General Discussion
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Mercy’s kit feels bland in comparison to the other OW2 supports. You guys have been talking about how you want to give supports more things to do, more tools, more refreshed and interesting abilities, etc.

Mercy needs this treatment more than any other support bar Moira in my opinion. Her kit feels lackluster in OW2. She can stay alive no problem (I was averaging 1-2 deaths per game in the beta), but it’s hard to feel like you have a high impact on teamfights with how fast paced the game is now. Her lack of burst healing is painfully noticeable now.

Also a friendly reminder to the Devs that Mercy, like Moira, also has an unused R button.

I am fine with Rez in OW1 but it feels extremely bad to use and frustrating in OW2 because of the lack of protection from an Off Tank and shields that you had in OW1. I’ve seen many top Mercy players express a similar sentiment in their Mercy discussion video they did with SVB last week. And when you DO get it off it feels even more frustrating for the enemy because it’s more impactful in 5v5.

I would really love if Mercy got a new E ability that turns into her current solo Rez with 1 charge during Valkyrie. Valkyrie is described as “enhancing Mercy’s abilities” so this would make sense. This way she keeps Rez in her kit without it being in 90% of the game.

I also think Mercy has untapped potential in her kit for an ability that works WITH her mobility. Anything like a medium ranged AoE around her or something that she throws out and returns to her would have engaging and fun interactions with using GA to be position for those abilities, rather than only using it to run away from things.

Potential new E ability ideas:

Divine Star (from WoW Holy Priests)

  • Throw a Divine Star (a long staff-shaped projectile) forward 20m, healing allies in its path and dealing damage to enemies. After reaching its destination, the Divine Star returns to you, healing allies and damaging enemies in its path again.

This would give Mercy something interesting and would work really well with how fast she repositions and flies around the battlefield

Wing Slap

  • Mercy slaps her wings outward, knocking back enemies within 5m of her and applying a minor slow to them for a few seconds. Could also apply a HoT to allies.

Gives Mercy more anti-dive peel capability and survivability tools without buffing her mobility which is already great

Salvation

  • Burst heal an ally + cleanse them of all negative status effects.

Gives Mercy burst impact which she currently lacks in her kit

Guardian Spirit (like from WoW)

  • Bless an ally for 3 seconds, increasing the amount of healing they receive from all sources by 60-100%. If they die during this time period, they are instantly revived and the long CD starts. If they don’t die during this buff, the CD of the ability is significantly less.

Potential new R ability ideas:

Caduceus Overload

  • Mercy temporarily increases her output, doing increased healing and applying an attack speed or movement speed buff on top of her damage boost buff.

or

  • Mercy’s beam temporarily splits off, healing 2 additional nearby targets for half of the amount.

Caduceus Blast

  • Pressing R fires an aimed projectile from the tip of Mercy’s staff that deals 50 damage to an enemy and applies a minor slow for a few seconds.

etc.

Please, OW team, consider giving Mercy something new and fresh and fun feeling OUTSIDE of her mobility. We don’t need superjump changes and buffs and we don’t need you guys to further expand on the mobility of the most mobile hero in the game. Her problem is not her mobility, it’s her lack of midfight utility and burst potential in teamfights.

20 Likes
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Press Reload to transform the staff into a rapid rocket launcher with which Mercy laughs menacingly.
If it’s not curable, kill them.

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Sounds good, although the thought process I think devs are going for is “How to make Supports more Fun, to solve queue times”.

Moira is strong in OW2. But bland.

Mercy is in a similar area.

That said devs are a bit touchy about Mercy changes, because Mercy folk tend to be…a bit emotionally explosive about literally any changes.

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Suggested this many years ago. This and Halo, but Halo may be a bit too much. Divine Star requires thought/positioning.

I absolutely would also love “life grip” but there’d be some trolling going on with that for sure.

I’ll take Mind Control too.

Disc priest in PvP was just way too damn fun. There’s a lot of Disc abilities they could take from WoW and give to Mercy.

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I completely get that, I think it’s why they should get like 2-3 OWL Mercy players (Yveltal, Dridro, Nisha), and then get 2-3 community top Mercy players from ladder, and ask them for feedback.

Stuff like what they are going to do to Superjump next beta (automatically activates no matter what at the end of every GA) just feels so out of touch

It’d feel so fluid throwing it out and then GAing somewhere else to cause it to spin back towards you in a different location and using that to pass through as many people as possible.

Yep! Yesterday made me realize how many WoW Priest abilities would work well on Mercy since the Devs said they want her value to not come necessarily from aim lol

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well mercy players don’t have a fond time with dev changes…its always nerfs and even when buffs (only buff was initial rework & the buff to 55 hp/s after nerfed us from 60) they ignored mercy players who said it was gonna be problematic.

Devs changes to mercy resulted in mercy users being atatcked by msot people in gaem and on forums when they didnt ask for the changes.

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Incidentally,

What if one of these,

Could be done with Geoff and Josh?

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If they are going to tweak here, I agree, they need to move their attention to something outside her mobility. She has no issues in that regard.

If I was going to mess about with her I’d give her staff an overcharge ability, where she could burst heal when needed by pressing M1 + M2 on a target, but this would active an overheat mechanic, where if pushed for more than 2 seconds or so would risk stalling her staff out completely until it cooled. Then Mercy would have to dance on the edge or increasing her healing or overloading things because she got too greedy with it.

I didn’t find her resurrect to be a problem with all the new cover, plus the speed of the fights regulated its use even more so than OW1. One could go entire matches without using it as well, just because of where people died, when they died (it wasn’t worth pulling them up), etc. So it neither felt too powerful (resurrects everywhere, all the time), and it didn’t feel too limited (where it was always impossible to pull them off). So IMHO, I’d not mess with it.

Her real weakness in OW2 was her DPS output (both in Damage Boost, and pistol + DPS). She just couldn’t touch the other supports in that regard. Where they could all approach Mercy’s healing. The new scoreboard really highlighted the disparity IMHO.

So for that I’d love the devs to finally fix her slow weapon swap, and maybe increase the rate of fire for her pistol, or slow it down but make it hitscan (if they went the hitscan route remove the unlimited ammo in Valk).

If they were going to try an add something completely new, maybe have her do a flash of light that disorients those that are too close? They kind of showed something like it in the Havana movie as she flies by.

Hmmmm…and maybe fix her beam dropping off the target when she ults.

Something like those would be fun IMHO.

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at the risk of mercy becoming more team reliant than she already is, what about a mechanic where healing allows you to damage boost, so 1 second of healing is stored as damage boost in a meter similar to moira which you can then use on damage boost, and for every bit of damage boosted mercy charges up her staff and can then fire a single shot that could either heal an ally or damage an enemy significantly (maybe 1 shot in a hs but that’s probably a but op)

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I hope that in the next beta they give it buffs and considerable improvements, because in OW2 it is currently the worst support…

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And you think that’s ok though? That a hero doesn’t need to/doesn’t have the opportunity to use their E ability a single time in an entire game? I feel like that shouldn’t be considered acceptable for a basic ability in someone’s kit lol, especially when the Devs have expressed the goal of making supports feel more interactive and fun for OW2

Only getting to use a standard ability 0-4 times per 10 minute match isn’t my personal definition of interactable/fun

1 Like
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What do you mean? Mercy has more tools than most supports. You’re either healing a teammate, powering them up or shooting a pistol. What else do you want to do?

Most players don’t even know when to heal or boost correctly.

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Idk if this is a troll post or not but other supports can also heal + deal damage + have utility as well as other things like CC or displacement abilities, burst heal or heal increase mechanics, etc.

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You ever play Zenyatta?

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although the above is stated as if it is a fact, it is an opinion

an opinion that likely not all Mercy players will agree with

I for one do not agree with it

as such, I dont believe she needs a new power/ability

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Uh, Zen can have both his orbs up and still do damage or even pop his ult, can’t he? Lol

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You think he has more utility than Mercy???

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In OW2 Zenyatta has:

  • A heal orb ability
  • A single shot damage primary fire
  • A multi shot volley damage secondary fire
  • A discord orb damage buff for his whole team ability
  • A boop displacement kick ability

He can also shoot and deal damage while he has his heal orb and damage boost orbs out, Mercy can only do one thing at a time

So what was your point exactly?

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My point is Mercy is fine, she’s meant to empower teammates and escape the enemy. Choose another hero of you don’t like it.

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I never said that :joy:

But Zen can heal + DPS + use his burst healing ult, unlike Mercy who can only heal, DB or use her pistol one at a time.

(Discord is technically considered utility so)

1 Like