I’ve often wondered why activation of Valkyrie detaches Mercy’s beam for a split second as the animation for the transition plays. I figured with the OW Dev team focusing on giving a little more power to the ult in the Oct. 23rd PTR patch, a nice QoL change would be getting rid of that timeframe during which the beam detaches. Instead it’d just be a seamless transition from healing a single target to healing multiple without that (albeit very short) downtime. The delay serves as cast-time for Valkyrie considering it’s a transformation ultimate type, but given the nature and impact of the ult, I question whether that’s necessary.
As I understand it Valkyrie is used both in a reactive and proactive sense, fitting Mercy’s kit fine. This QoL suggestion would allow the ult to function just as it does, though it would be more forgiving in the reactionary sense, because of the fact that the small downtime can be so crucial.
A very good counter point/argument can be made against this QoL suggestion that all of the other transformation type ultimates have an animation delay before they begin, and consistency is huge in OW. To that, I can really only bring up the fact that there are two supports that have this ultimate type, Brigitte and Mercy. Brigitte, while she can’t swing her flail during the initial activation of Rally, she can have her shield up and keep it up during that same activation. This makes me inclined to believe there’s room for trade-offs in the goal to make everything consistent. Seeing how there’s one instance of inconsistency the question can be begged:
Why don’t we take that feature away from Brigitte, so that she can’t have her shield up, and in doing so reach that goal of ultimate consistency?
On a more basic level another point can be made that timing of Valkyrie is extremely important and is a trait of a good Mercy due to that need to compensate for the sudden drop of heals. However, I view this suggestion as more of a simple change across the board. It wouldn’t make Mercy easier to play, but instead just serve as a very small buff to the character herself.
I’m curious as to what the community thinks about this, as perspective when it comes to balance is important, and I try to keep that in mind.