Please Reduce Mercy's Health Pool Instead

General Discussion
1

I think that reducing Mercy’s health pool is the simplest way to try and find a way to make her easier to kill without harming her mobility and the way she feels to play.

Almost every Mercy player that I have seen has said that they would prefer literally any change over changes to her mobility. Take away resurrection, take away damage boost, change her healing, anything but touching her guardian angel. And it has been really frustrating Season 3 to see the devs do the one thing everyone asked them not to touch, and to have that continue into Season 4.

Blizzard has created a really good character with Mercy. As someone who has played her since the beginning of OW1, I think that Season 1 and 2 of Overwatch 2 has shown Mercy’s kit basically at it’s peak, with all the efforts they made in the beta and perfecting her GA and superjump/slingshot tech really paying off. You did such a good job with that, and I’m really sad and confused to see you take that away.

The way that Mercy shows her skill, in the simplest terms, is by trying to reduce the amount she dies, in the same way that a Widow might show skill in her aim. People hate when Widowmakers dominate a game, and what was the balance change? Reducing her HP to make her easier to kill. Because making it harder for a Widowmaker to aim would not make a lot of sense. It does not make a lot of sense for you to make it harder for Mercy to move around, when that is the the only thing her character does. Lowering her HP would have made more sense. Tracer, another high mobility character, also had her HP reduced.

Lucio, who has tons of other functionality and utility, is able to move unrestricted, same with Ball, and Doomfist. But Mercy, who doesn’t effect anyone else with her movement, cannot have the fluid and free movement that she has had for 6 years? Please do not take away one of the only ways to have a skillful impact on a game’s outcome, which would be her movement. Not every Mercy player is able to do what people see top ranked Mercy players do with their movement, she was never invincible, and it has never prevented her teammates from dying instead.

Really begging devs to consider different, simpler ways to change Mercy and make her easier to kill. Please do not try to fix something that isn’t broken. GA has been the same for 6 years and certainly did not need to change. 2.5s cooldown was already met with negative feedback, and now you have continued to add different caveats and further meddle with the way her kit has always felt.

PS. Her healing changes were really cool and interesting. Please consider finding another way to implement something like that in the future. I, and many other Mercy players, thought you did a really amazing job with her healing changes in S3 and are very sad to see them go away (especially with the GA changes essentially staying the same or worse).

25 Likes
2

YES! This is it. The answer to the issue they’re looking for. Sometimes the simplest choice is the best one. 25 less Hp but fast, fun, and enabling. Keep her healing at 55hp/s and then bring the crit healing with a 20-25% boost at 40-50% hp (66-69 hp/s) so it isn’t oppressive but it can stop a player from dying long enough for them to secure a kill. Put a passive CD on that burst healing so you can’t spam it on one target forever (8-12 seconds?)

A support should be able to save their teammates. Paying attention to critical health teammates should be rewarded instead of watching them fall over like a sack of very sad bricks.

You wouldn’t add a longer CD to a Reinhardt if they bait and micro block another Reinhardt’s shatter, a skillful act. You wouldn’t add a longer CD for Lucio to switch between his speed boost and healing, or put a CD on his wall ride stack. Imagine punishing Lucio for wallriding too quickly. It’s absurd, isn’t it? So why is Mercy’s movement, her skill expression, being punished harshly?

It’s unhealthy to reduce skill caps on heroes. Lower ranked players hate 1v1ing Moira. But the higher you go, the less useful her hero is because there’s such a small skill expression for her. Most people would rather play Kiriko, who can suzu and wall climb with such a small hit box. They’d rather play Ana for her anti or Bap for his immortality field. The last thing this game needs is a non-viable support. Did no one on this dev team look at the history of OW1? The long queue times after nerfing every single support to lessen the ‘frustration’ dps players experience because they have supportive kits that can deny them kills?

8 Likes
3

OR

How about leaving her alone for once (in their life) :pray:

seriously just stop touching her
18 Likes
4

That’d be absurd! She needs at least like, 5 reworks this year. We’re almost halfway!

11 Likes
5

This could be an interesting change. I’m willing to try it, but I think she would need a buff to her passive in some way. I’d still rather they delete rez and maybe change dmg boost

5 Likes
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That’s where the reintroduction of the burst healing would work to mitigate a lower health pool, but also the speed from her GA would assist to mitigate it (obviously it cannot be the 50% with the insane burst, it should be 20-25% increase). A skilled player will take out a skilled Mercy with a clean shot no matter what their GA movement is like. For lower skilled players it would also mitigate the issue of having to shoot her so many times and punish her for a mis-timed GA Crouch-Jump. You have more at stake and it creates that “Think before you act or suffer the consequences” rush that distinguishes one Mercy from another.

The ultimate result is that she is easier to kill, DPS for the most part have to use less ammo to take her out and are rewarded if they kill efficiently by being able to allocate that ammo to another opponent. Mercy positioning would become an even more integral skill to master.

I don’t want resurrection deleted from this game at all, as that is Mercy’s only individual playmaker. It’s not that giant of an issue unless you’re not paying attention to the Mercy. Most Mercy players in high ranks only rez maybe 2 players every 10 minutes. It’s also not that difficult to stop a Mercy from rezzing if a player thinks ahead (removing rez removes a skill cap from everyone) or at the very least it will be easier to close a kill if she has less HP before she rezzes.

DMG boost should be tuned to each individual hero like the interaction with Soj and revisited when they get buffed or nerfed.

1 Like
7

I figure, solve oneshot heroes.

And then make it so Mercy heals a teammate for less if they are airborne.

Then adjust Mercy from there.

1 Like
8

I stand by that.

Mercy is my second most played hero.

There’s a lot that can be argued is problematic about Mercy, GA (as it was originally) isn’t one of them.

7 Likes
9

You mean… Reverting?

'Cause the situation is already forked, we can’t unfork it without touching it.

3 Likes
10

It’s unfortunate too because non-mercy players see GA back at 1.5 and don’t realize that 95% of our movement is still limited to the same cooldown of season 3 but without the nice crit healing that felt rewarding regardless of lesser movement. It’s sad because it feels like they tried to pull a fast one over mercy players, and they’re still only appealing to people who don’t play her. I wholeheartedly would love to try the less health, old ga, and nerfed crit health boost. (Even without the crit healing I’d still love to try).

2 Likes
11

The people who can’t kill a zooming mercy won’t suddenly increase their killrate by 25% simply because she has 25 less HP.

Removing 25 HP is missing the point of people who pointed out a very real and legitimate issue with the character. Her movement was OP and needed to be toned down. Removing some HP doesn’t fix anything. It just makes the character borderline unplayable for people just entering into the game and learning the character.

Removing 25 HP from Mercy would function like removing 25 HP from Widow. Yea, in Bronze and MAYBE Silver games people would feel it, and in Diamond+ the players would complain because players with better aim simply kill them more [too?] easily.

Beyond that, it doesn’t address the core issue. It just handicaps the character to try to force balance by driving pick rates down - like they did with Widowmaker. That way, people complain less because they see far less of the Hero in their games. Good Widowmakers were still just as oppressive with 175 HP as they were with 200HP, because the whole point of the character is to AVOID damage and OHK, the same way the whole point of mercy is to AVOID high sustained and burst damage, which is why the movement was problematic. It was… astronomically too good.

I actually think most people didn’t have an issue with Mercy’s movement until Blizzard put training wheels on it. At that point, every Mercy could learn how to do it in 10 minutes and suddenly all the marches were filled with Mercy breaking the legs off the entire lobby.

2 Likes
12

I say, dock her health pool down to 75hp (total), and give her 5 more ammo to make-up for it. IMO, that would be the sweet spot. She will be borderline, OP!

2 Likes
13

I would take 175 without hesitation. 150, id hesitate, but it would be thematically appropriate given she’s a slender, birdlike woman. Pls no touch ga

1 Like
14

Someone hire this guy to work at Blizzard.

15

Yeah, I’d lose 25hp for getting GA back into a state where it’s fun again.

Amazing how other heroes are rewarded for using their kit correctly with shorter cooldowns (Genji’s dash reset on elim, Hog’s hook on shorter CD for a successful hook), but Mercy is punished for it. Wack. Might as well disable blink for 2 seconds every time Tracer gets an elim or something.

2 Likes
16

And why should she lose hp?

She doens’t even have good offensive capability.

17

Since she moves everywher every second and can fly on top of easy regen.

Give her the same HP as tracer and this would be legit to have mercy flying eveywhere at mach 5

18

175 works. 150 would be too low as Mercy’s GA isnt instant blink

19

Its not instant blink but it comes more frequently.

And unlike tracer mercy doesnt have to be close to ennemies all the time.

Meaning she isnt constantly taking damage.

(Damage she can heal over time on top of it)

175hp works for widow because she doesnt move a lot and she isnt really going to do anything once you are cmose quarters with her.

20

Tracer deals ridiculous damage and not only can she blink and stack blink cooldowns, but also has a free invulnerability escape rewind that heals ehr in a burst.

You have no idea how to balance a game

Unless we give GA several charges of course