Back when Mercy first got reworked, if you remember, there was this huge “#reworkmercy” movement. It more or less manifested from an overall sense of a loss of identity from Mercy mains. Our hero went from a main healer to an off-healer, a lot of her kit felt pretty weak/bad to use, and she just didn’t feel all that good. Non-Mercy players pretty adamantly stood behind the opinion that “mercy players are just dramatic and are angry that they can’t abuse their braindead character anymore, and mercy is fine and doesn’t need changes.” I mean, seriously, as a forum user ANY discussion talking about Mercy was met with “mercy is fine.” and no elaboration.
Now, moving into Overwatch 2, Mercy players have settled into a new identity as an off-healer. Mercy feels much better to play in 5v5 and a lot of issues that she used to have are no longer present (or heavily reduced). Now non-mercy players are crying for changes to her kit. They say that it’s braindead, it feels bad to play against, it’s unhealthy… whatever. When Mercy players defend the kit that they have gotten used to, her kit as an off healer, we see the usual comeback of “Mercy players are so dramatic, they’re just trying to keep their braindead/unhealthy/whatever hero strong and refuse to acknowledge the issues with her kit”
If there is one thing that I have noticed, more than anything else within Overwatch, Mercy players opinions are usually completely dismissed, and often even approached with a contrarian attitude. If Mercy players notice a problem within her kit that they think needs to be addressed, everyone shakes their head and says that everything is as it should be. If Mercy players think their hero is good, people shake their head and tell them they’re wrong. No matter what I seem to do my opinion has ZERO weight. It’s so much more insulting because if I were to introduce myself as a “GM zen player” “Masters DPS player” “Top 500 Brig player” or anything OTHER than “Top 500 Mercy” people would take me so much more seriously.
When we point out our frustrations, it’s not there. When we try to defend something we’ve grown to like, we’re incorrect. It just doesn’t feel like there’s any winning.
Not surprising at all. No one has any respect for Mercy as a character because no one sees anything in her kit as a respectable amount of difficulty.
Kiriko is overwhelming the more powerful support and problem child of support for season 1 and 2, but people are willing to put up with it because its perceived as respectable.
It’s especially insulting because even though Mercy is widley considered to be the second best support right now, she’s only a top 3 most used support (in T500) in a single region: Americas.
On Asia she’s outpicked by Kiri, Lucio, and Ana (and zen)
On Europe she’s outpicked by Kiri, Ana, and Lucio
On America she’s outpicked by Kiri, and Lucio
If Mercy was as braindead and easy to use as people say then it’d only make sense for her to occupy a large number of the T500 leaderboard ESPEICALLY because she’s really strong right now… right?
It’s impossible to have an intellectually honest conversation about Mercy.
Her value boils down to pocket the carry DPS and press shift+ctrl to be nearly unkillable unless 3+ people are focusing you out in the open.
When people turn around and say it’s ridiculous that they can’t kill her they’re met with angst and passive aggression.
If you want respect from the community at large you need to play something that at least creates it’s own value and doesn’t just exist as a buff for DPS heroes.
The mercy rework was disgustingly broken / blatantly over powered. She was meta for a long time from plastic tier up to top500 / pros. It took countless nerfs to dial her down to a balanced state over a considerable period of time.
But from the very first Nerf, mercy mains flooded the forums (literally, more in that in a moment) vehemently defending the hero as “fine”
Hell many at the onset of the rework insisted she was terribly underpowered.
I just want to iterate here- Mercys community is the only one to have actively “raided” the forums in large masses, in an attempt to actively disrupt the forums and protest.
Mercy mains to this day tend to have the reputation of being on the dramatic side.
We’re already once again seeing mercys community actively false flag members here until the comments are hidden because they don’t like the opinion they have. These aren’t people being rude, disrespectful, they’re not violating any rules of the forums- they’re guilty of having an opinion that differs from their own.
Now obviously not all mercy players are like this. Some of them are the utmost nicest respectful members in these forums (and I have huge respect for them). It’s a shame that some go out of their way to give the community such a bad image- but they do exist, and they’re pretty vocal so it’s not hard to understand why the perception of the community often is what it is.
As for mercy in her current state-
I’ll simply say many heroes have had to have many adjustments to adapt to a 5v5 format. As the dust settles and we see what is or isn’t an issue, more heroes may need changes, regardless of “how they’ve been” until now. The community is still learning and adapting. The devs are trying to follow suit. It’s not unreasonable that mercy may, like many other heroes already, need to be reconsidered in some ways to follow.
I’m a T500 Mercy player. I’m also a T500 Brig player, and a T500 Lucio, and a GM Zen, and a… I can go on and on and on.
If I introduce myself as a high elo Mercy, no one takes me seriously. If I introduce myself in ANY other way, people respect me.
lol
Keep in mind that Mercy is the most popular hero in the game (this is an old statement, but I assume it’s still true) so there’s going to be more problematic people.
if 1% of Mercy’s playerbase is problematic, and 1% of Bastions playerbase is problematic, the 1000 Mercy players are going to make her playerbase as a whole look a lot worse than the 10 Bastion players.
This is perhaps the worst thing about the Overwatch fandom. Why is Mercy unworthy of respect? Well, its because she focuses on helping her team.
“She’s boring!” says one person. “She doesn’t participate” says another. “She doesn’t take skill!” says a third. All fallacious responses for obvious reasons. The first one is more acceptable since its an opinion, but people state it as a fact.
People grossly misjudge Mercy, and in doing so, they put Supports in a box where they have to be the same cookie cutter shooter/healer dude like Bap, Moira, Ana, Lucio, and Zenyatta. Instead, people need to see that Mercy is important, and opens the door to support concepts that go beyond yet another pew pew dude.
I just don’t understand why the Medic from TF2 is considered respectable in the way he supports, but Mercy isn’t.
Remember: we’re not talking about her mobility here. People say Mercy’s a bad character purely because of her heal noodle, but the Medic has historically done the same thing and people love him. I know I love him.
Oh, it’s not just Overwatch. In League of Legends my favorite heroes were similar to Mercy(not Yuumi) and holy… People regularly outright told me to shut up in discussions because I played them. I’ve gotten sooo much negativity for playing them that I outright quit the game because of it. (The negativity wasn’t being told to shut up btw. It was a lot worse)
Even though I played other characters at the same level. It’s so frustrating and I am not sure I want to know why this happens. I have a few ideas but I REALLY don’t want them to be true.
As a mercy main atm, I don’t want to just buff people either. I like flying around and being able to give out consistent heals to the team and priortize who needs healing. I would rather damage boost just be reworked into something entirely different. Valk should have been weaker and as a regular ability with rez being her ult. Multiple parts of her kit aren’t great. The mobility and consistency are what I enjoy most about her.
Something worth noting is that a character so dependent on the output of others is going to have volatile power levels that are easily affected by other parts of the meta. Frequent changes are probably necessary, or at least they will be if the devs make any real effort to preserve Mercy’s identity.
I mean yes, but also I remember the devs basically just hardly ever talking to the community directly for the next… 4 years, until maybe only the last few weeks or months…
You guys have yet to prove that Mercy is the reason for any problems. The main argument is unironically “OP hero is OP, but they’re even MORE OP when Mercy’s with them. Therefore, nerf Mercy.”. Is there something I’m missing here?
What point are you making here? People don’t respect Mercy OTP’s. You’re not a Mercy OTP. The fact that you can get T500 on Zen and Lucio suggests you’re simply an exceptional support player, and probably would be able to pull the same thing off with most DPS heroes.
None of this has anything at all to do with Mercy, her mechanics or why OTP’s that cannot play anything aside from Mercy won’t tend to get respect.
I still don’t believe that YOU yourself don’t understand why Mercy OTP’s don’t get respect.
Did I say Mercy is the reason for any problems? And even if so, that just proves my point- Mercy’s output is inherently volatile and extremely meta dependent.
. Definitely more noticable on supports like Soraka though for sure.