Realized why devs think Mercy is okay

Yes, eventually she will be less good in situations that are less good for her? That’s again, how all heroes work.

Redesigns would be cool, but I thought you were asking for hps buffs.

Why would you ever change a hero that is incredibly popular how they are already and has a good deal of success?

If Mercy is so incredibly popular there is virtually no reason to change her which is what blizzard has done. Mercy’s continued popularity despite not being some obsenely broken hero goes to show there isn’t much to change.

The only reason for any change is because they want to see her more used or more success at higher end play. That’s the ONLY reason.

Well, I still see the overall situation in terms of “Not enough Support players to address Matchmaker/Queue” issues.

And Mercy is particularly unique, in that if they gave her highly “nostalgic” and “hype” changes, then there are probably a crap ton of additional Support players they can pull in from ex-players, new players, and players who moved to other roles.

Mercy has and will always be hard to balance as long as she has the power to damage boost her team. The day blizzard decides to remove her damage boost is when mercy will get legitimate buffs. Its true the dps have a part in all that but mercy is at the very core in engaging the dps to begin with. When ashe released for example, she played out exactly as she currently does right now with a pocket mercy. the second mercy boosted her, the ashe was getting free one shot headshots. It was oppressive. Heck the reason pharah will never be changed is because of mercy too. Hanzo, echo etc. at the core of every meta where a dps is broken, what hero is right next to that dps? Mercy, thats just how it is. Mercy cant be changed unless the damage boost gets replaced

The moment they do that the mercy mains will riot… a lot of her appeal is you can have zero mechanical skill and still contribute

Heh, get rid of damage boost, buff her heals without buffing PharahMercy, give her some other utility, then give her back Mass Rez.

That would pull in Mercy players, like a “Moth to the flame”.

I’d love to lose Damage boost so Mercy can move away from the pocket mentality. Its such a cancerous thing to have to put up with from teammates when you just want to zoom around between the whole team.

It would also allow a greater range of damage values to exist since with 1.3x always being the 1shot threshold certain dmg values cna never be used really.

1 Like

Hmm, currently I’m experiencing <1 minute matchmaker queues, so clearly there’s not enough dps. Even though Tracer is good atm, maybe we should give her 7 damage per pellet because we’re not seeing how bad she really is because someday she might have to play in a Junkrat meta.

Like, this is nonsense.

No way, I rather take a pocket mercy than a mass rez mercy any day. I do mot miss those days, those were the worst days in overwatch to me. Nothing sucked more than playing hide and seek every game because mercy could easily erase a whole engagement.

Well, let’s see how that interprets in terms of matchmaker speed/quality when Comp starts back up.

My guess is that they are dumbing down the matchmaker quality in favor of matchmaker speed.

Sorry, but, Mercy is not fine on OW2 :wink: , is the worst support.

1 Like

Well, I did figure a “pre-death” equivalent to Mass Rez.

Since what they are looking for isn’t necessarily exactly Mass Rez. But the nostalgic feeling that Mass Rez gave.

1 Like

Yep that comes with having the lowest skill celing in the game…

Play someone else, but if most mercy mains were capable of that we wouldnt be having this conversation

As a support player myself, i know how hard holding m1/2 and following people around is.

Balancing based on pickrate is so dumb. Value is what matters

Balancing on pickrates is fine. Especially since that’s a decent proxy for value. And feeling like you have a good enough variety of worthwhile and unique choices is the point of balance.

That said, the entire Support role probably needs it’s overall power level raised, to make it more popular.

Their current baseline, is too low.

But heroes are not played in a vacuum. If putting her with sojourn makes sojourn a game winning monster, then that is the power of Mercy now.

She is as strong as the heroes she can buff.

Thats ALWAYS been the power of mercy…

Mercy players just refuse to learn and grow with other support heros because you actually have to have some ability to aim and deal damage, you cant rely on damage boosting others to compensate for the fact you cant aim with other supports

Which begs the question, of if they should get rid of damage boost. Or maybe put it on a cooldown ability. Then give her something else on right click.

Mercy’s strengths are out of line with how players want to play-as and play-against the hero.

I mean…I play in GM and I do see a lot of Mercy, but not necessarily always pocketing Sojourn. It’s nowhere near as common as, say, a pocketed Ashe was or anything. I see just as much Mercy being run (even in GM), and even winning sometimes, with what you wouldn’t consider ‘good Mercy comps’. But Mercy is certainly a less common pick the higher in SR you go, and that has everything to do with the realitive skill ceiling of the hero. Number changes and balance tweaks won’t change that -and they shouldn’t; just because Mercy isn’t a particularly strong pick in your GM+ gameplay does not mean she is balanced. It means she has no upward skill expression. Buffing her numbers will just make her too strong. A lot of the other supports get played to value in that SR not because they’re particularly stronger kit-wise than Mercy, it’s because the hero has individual agency that Mercy is missing.

Mercy is great with some heros, and not amazing with others. That is how it goes for a lot of heros in the game, and balance-wise you need to consider popular ‘duos’ before buffing or nerfing heros in those duos. Like Pharmercy, or Lucio/Rein. Pharah and Mercy are fine on their own, but their synergies make them feel sometimes too strong (in some elos, certainly) together. It’s difficult to balance.

The issue is that, even though one of Mercy’s weaknesses is that she is very well suited for some comps, and poorly suited for others…unlike other heros -or even if you narrow your gaze to just the supports-, she is much harder to run when she is not an ‘optimal pick’, because there is almost no agency or skill expression on the hero.

If you run Lucio in a scenario he’s not great in…you can still get by if you’re really good on Lucio, because he has it in his kit to give agency to the really good Lucio player playing him. The same can be said to all the supports…even Moira, to a degree. Mercy does not have that, and no amount of buffing or nerfing her is going to change it; it will just make her too strong or too weak. Mercy needs a soft rework in her kit to give agency to the player. What that will mean is Mercy would be harder to play effectively the higher in SR you go, but if you are good at her, you can use her to success in a bigger variety of ways. That’s what I would hope for her, anyway.

Mercy’s balanced. She’s boring and team-comp dependent, but her kit is team dependent. Buffing her numbers will just make her too strong. She needs actual reworks for her her abilities work to change that, imo. But I’ve seen a lot of discussion about this for literal years and I think that it may be too hard a balance to strike; the approachability of Mercy is why so many of her fans like playing her; if you remove some of that to add upward skill expression, you’d upset the player base. Mercy players also have been notoriously vocal about any changes that are not flat out buffs for their hero -and here I think she would need entire rework of skills-, so I can understand the reticence from the dev team to even approach it if it’s perceived by the fans as ‘weakening’ the character.

The issue is damage boost is REALLY strong at high ranks, and healing is really strong in lower ranks.

So what do you put in there instead?