Pocketing with Mercy is putting all your stock in the weakest link of the team chain, the DPS players. Even worse, in many cases just one DPS player.
It also starves resources from your tanks and robs the 2nd support of peel help.
So while I think DMG boost is Mercy’s role as she has sort of shifted over to flex support vs true main heals, the best value is still from target to target movement. Spending more time with the DPS if they are putting in work.
Well, given the competitive direction OW went, yes I think it is. I hope OW wouldn’t go towards a game from 1972 that has almost no relevance towards the subject (but I understand the intent, but it doesn’t really paint a relevant or meaningful picture)
I shouldn’t say if I know if healing is dominant right now, because it feels like damage is (and I think a lot of tanks will agree), and regarding aoe heals, I think that Bap, Lucio and Moira are your references and… being Lucio has been around a long time, we’re left looking at Bap (who I think performs subpar?) and Moira, who is the single definition of AoE heals and yet… often takes a back seat to Ana… who admittedly has the ability to aoe heal…
I don’t think I can A) agree that healing is dominant and B) tie the two together to make a cohesive statement out of your words.
Well, healing right now seems to be where it roughly should be, but this is only because it has been toned down. Lucio was the first AoE healer, but IMHO he is still the most balanced of the bunch.
Moira, Brigitte, Baptiste all had their AoE heals reined in over time. And Ana’s 'nade ist still being complained about here.
Conversely, given that she can heal only a single target at a time, Mercy’s healing feels sub-par.
But perhaps that’s my nostalgia speaking, since I still have the image of her as a main healer, not the off-heal/damage pocket/rez bot side-kick she’s nowadays.
I feel like where healers like Moira, Bap and Brig do well, Mercy excels in chaos/stretched out/mobile teams, be it dive or not. I’m just a diamond / plat player, but when the team is not “death ball” or … aware of each other, Mercy makes it easier for me to work overtime and dip back and forth between them and correct more mistakes/laxed gameplay of others… where as on Moira I find I have to push myself pretty thin in order to do the same thing and I may have more of my own mistakes to make up for or watch out for.
Genuinely, I like seeing Mercy on my team as my co-healer… I believe she can handle the gaps where I might suffer from doing so and thus I can focus more on what’s in front of me than keeping an eye on someone who decided to dip far right or jump up through a window.
Deciding who to pocket, when to pocket and when to heal or damage boost is the primary skill of Mercy. She is most valuable when she does all of those things - that and not die to bad positioning.
Tbh I’d say the optimal strategy is a mix of both pocket playstyle and this hyper-mobile playstyle, and knowing at which point in the game to do what.
In my comp games as her there are teamfights where I will be hard pocketing/peeling for my backline, or zipping around drawing aggro and staying alive whilst supporting my team.
If you do just one or the other you are missing out on a lot of value, and that goes for pocketing too. Just standing w one DPS all game is NOT gonna get you optimal value from Mercy IMO
Except her healing output is literally pretty much back to where it was…
And Mercy Zen is literally a meta comp like it used to be…
You don’t have to play Mercy as a strict pocket bot all game anymore. She doesn’t have 50 HPS anymore and all the other healers had their insane AoE sustain nerfed.
You DO still need to peel for your backline and provide value with damage boost, which Mercy 1.0 ALSO had to do. No idea where this notion that Mercy 1.0 didn’t pocket anyone came from. Yes, you’d be shunned for pocketing 1 person all game. And you still are. That’s bad Mercy gameplay. It was also bad Mercy gameplay to fly around only healing all game unless you were solo healing, and even then you should have been finding windows to pocket with damage boost.
Right now you need to juggle the different “playstyles” of pocketing and team-wide healing/support to be as valuable as possible to your team.
In my comp game a few days ago I had 18,200 healing and 6,000 damage amped in a 15 minute game. Because I was juggling healing my team and damage boosting my Soldier/Hog/Zarya. Beam juggling is one of Mercy’s main skills. Doing just healing or just damage boosting is not good nor valuable IMO.
The optimal way to play Mercy is entirely dependent on your Team Composition.
Have Ashe/Echo? Pocket heavy Mercy will be the best, obviously.
Have Torb/Tracer? Team oriented Mercy will be better.
Have no pocket Dps but your other Support is a Lucio? Better Healbot your Tanks a bit.
Mercy isn’t a 1 playstyle pony, which is exactly why I have 1400hrs on her at this point
Her playstyle fluctuates alot, which makes her fresh and fun to play.
I find it kind of hilarious that your username is History but you don’t seem to know the History of Mercy being the strongest healer, not some pocket healer.
Y’know, like when she had mass res? Because she was intended to be healing her whole team, because her beam was actually strong?
Pocketing is only good if the whole team agrees on it.
If you’re pocketing another player as Mercy, the rest of the team is not getting her healing. If the player being pocketed provides enough value to make that worth it, then it’s worth it. If he or she does not, it’ll wipe the team.
Your teammates may get resentful if you are not providing them with healing. Even if the person you’re pocketing is being effective.
Even if the player who wants pocket is good enough gameplay-wise, that doesn’t always mean you as Mercy should do it. The time I most regret agreeing to pocket was a Doomfist player who was highly effective but a total jerk. He DID win us the game, but the way he acted, in retrospect I should have just healed the rest of the team. Sometimes, a win is not everything.
I get tired of ashe/pharah/etc. EXPECTING ME to be their accessory to yank around all game, instead of playing the Hero- I mean “Side-kick”, like how I want to, and its the same as its ever been since 2016, and thats a main freakin healer, Ill damage boost when I can, but I refuse to rely on it just because its “the meta” or “thats how she was designed” (no she wasnt btw).
And besides why is it that pocketing with Mercy is condoned so hard in todays overwatch, when a couple years ago it was deemed extremely bad and if you got caught doing it you would get flamed?
What happened? Oh thats right, they balanced Mercy around the E-Rez so she cant have as much of an impact with healing, and didnt touch damage boost, and now that the dust has settled on that horrible trip, people in the last year or so see how much value dmg boost brings with certain heroes than they did before.
And take stock of the situation and make necessary callouts based on the situation, I would think that more mercies spot Flanking McCrees or Reapers than an Ana, Mercy can hold beam without looking at a target which should be taken advantage of.
Not denying any of your points, just adding on to what you said.
I agree with this, but that also (unless you’re queueing with a dps you trust) leaves it up to the rng of getting a good dps on your team. You can definitely get huge value out of playing her as a hybrid between an off and a main healer, but if you have a good hitscan or echo or Pharah then you can get enormous value out of just damage boosting and letting them do anything.
That would actually not be a bad Mercy, but a bad support player. If you wanted to support your whole team, there are other heroes that do it better, for about as much effort, while also proving more utility or damage.
Mercy is a very passive hero. She heals or dmg boosts another player, her entire value is how good that person is. No Triage is an important skill for a single target healer like Mercy to have. Now I wouldn’t say glue yourself to a single person and never switch.
But if it’s a choice between the Rein holding up your entire team or dmg boosting the hazno with a 20% accuracy it’s a no brainer. Same with you could pocket the Phara… or GA all around trying to heal every one and exposing yourself to more enemy fire while keeping no one really alive.
Mercy’s heal is pretty weak. With all the nerfs to shields there is no “Rest” it’s just constant incoming dmg and 50hps to a single target doesn’t do a whole lot if you try and spread it out.
if you think about it 50hps means it’s 12 seconds to heal a single 600hp tank, assuming they aren’t taking more dmg in the mean time. How long does it take that tank to get hurt again? Less than a second for a Dva or RH to go back to critical health…
Despite being the only main healer before Ana was introduced, Mercy was seldom used in higher ranks or tournament play because her ultimate was objectively worse than the alternatives and didnt provide anything better in exchange. Often times the 50hps wasnt necessary and teams did just fine with Lucio and Zenyatta.
In fact, every single change to Mercy’s ult prior to her rework was a net buff to make it better.
Her rework was intended to make Mercy stronger and viable in all ranks, but admittedly the developers went too far and made her go from mediocre to a must pick.
That mercy doesnt exist anymore thanfully. Right now she is much stronger than she ever was with mass rez and has a healthy pickrat in high ranks and OWL, even with the added competition.
That and her mobility make her feel fluid and fresh