Please, no more "beam powerup" suggestions

General Discussion
1

I’ve been seeing a number of posts from newcomers to the “mercy discourse” that suggest a new E ability. This in of itself is really cool, and it’s great to see more people interested in the idea of reworking Mercy!

A common suggestion for an E ability is powering up Mercy’s staff in some way, and/or a mini Valkyrie. On the surface, it makes sense. The Mercy community already calls Valkyrie an overhyped E ablity, and a common complaint pre-rework was about her lack of independent mobility.

However.

I’m sorry to say it, but a mobility ability and/or a beam powerup in the E slot at best won’t fix the problems with Mercy’s design, and at worst will bring back Mercy 1.0’s problems but worse.

Hear me out for a second: Let’s talk about the SR system. It had no idea what to do with 1.0 Mercy, because there weren’t a lot of stats to calculate. The only stats Mercy has any solid control over are her healing and rez count - damage boost depends on your teammate’s performance, and Mercy’s pistol is meant to only be used in niche situations. This lead to the system putting too much emphasis on rez count when calculating SR gains/losses. Once the playerbase found out about this, a few stat padders ruined the game for the rest of us.

If you put mobility or a beam powerup on E, then the system will go right back to giving disproportionate SR gains/losses based on ult stats (whether it’s rez again, or something new).

If Mercy is going to have a kit that doesn’t reward bad player behavior, her E abilty needs to give performance calculators new stats to chew on. Something new and unique, that can be quantified with numbers. It’s the only way to dilute Mercy’s appalling dependence on rez (or whatever else is her ult in this hypothetical rework), both stat-wise and in player perception.

If the devs don’t want Mercy to only be known for her rez (as they have stated), then they need to give her more to do than "flying around with beams and rez."

Addendum: as far as mobility goes, the bunnyhop and superjump have already has done wonders for Mercy’s fluid movement-based playstyle. If the superjump was made an official part of the bunnyhop tech (and maybe upgrade her passive featherfall into a real glide), then Mercy would be set.

2

I disagree. I think a heal boost on E would give her needed clutch heals, while also giving her a bit of inconsistency.

Main problem with her old kit is that it was a bit too consistent.

Also by kicking the rez over to only being accessible during Valk it would allow Devs to reduce or remove the cast/slow on Rez.

3

“Consistent heals’” is part of Mercy’s core design. How is a burst heal on E supposed to be balanced in any other way than reducing Mercy’s base heals to unacceptable levels?

Ana gets away with burst heals on E because her base heals are inconsistent.

4

Well, Mercy’s base heals have already been reduced.

Just need some burst heals to allow for clutch saves.

Would show the difference between a good Mercy and a great Mercy how they prioritize using it.

5

Yeah, having a “clutch save” on E would be okay with 50hps…

But I stand by my earlier statement that it should be in a way that gives Mercy new stat categories. This means doing it in a different way than powering up a pre-existing part of her kit.

6

Does Ana or Moira have a secondary heals stat?

7

They should just swap valk and rez and give mercy better heals than what daddy76 can do.

8

Did you reply to these beam power up posts with this? Or is this another topic just to like, uh, subtweet(? Forum equivalent at least)

9

On top of her stats for healing and ult, Ana has stats for:

Targets slept
Sleep dart accuracy
Damage dealt (both with primary fire and nade)
Enemies killed (again, separate stats for primary fire and nade)

Moira also has stats for accuracy, damage dealt and kills.

Mercy’s pacifistic design actively de-emphasizes combat, which denies her a lot of stats that all other heroes have. She can’t put emphasis on stats like “damage dealt” or “eliminations,” because that would contradict her character design.

So, she needs new things to do that can be stat-tracked.