… you remove the GA bunny hop.
Hello I’m Tortellini and I am a Mercy main with having 100hrs on Mercy 1.0 and ca 200hrs on Mercy 2.0.
I want to elaborate why I think that if Mercy was to be reverted (with tweaks to mass rez) while keeping the bunny hop as a feature (like all suggest) would still keep her at the insane pickrate she is now.
Don’t get me wrong, fellow MercyMains, the bunny hop is hands down my favourite part of her kit. The movement she has with it is insane and most definitely incredible fun.
BUT I also think it’s what kept her as a top tier pick since her rework.
Mercy 1.0 had a significant weakness, it was being dive-able. Winston, Genji, Tracer, DVa were hardcounters to her.
The simple reason to that was because she was not able to slingshot past a teammate and get out of the reach of the flankers, except if she had a teammate positioned far away from her. If she got dived by a Winston, she could not escape him when her teammates weren’t far apart.
Whereas Mercy 2.0 can GA to a close teammate and use the bunnyhop to slingshot past said teammate to get out of the reach of the Winston, where Mercy 1.0 would’ve 100% not been able to.
This in return makes her way harder to chase and kill as she was before. It opens up so many new ways to play her. She can slingshot across the battlefield and reach teammates far away, giving her effectively more mobility as she had before. If you’re an experienced Mercy player, you can even use the environment to perform a socalled “superjump” where it catapults you in the air, thus gaining altitude without a Pharah or a teammate on highground.
More mobility always means a hero is harder to deal with. Let’s take Hanzo as an example. Another hero who has gotten a rework with an insane mobility buff. They took away Hanzo’s weakness of being able to be jumped on and now we have this monster who can reposition all 4s with a jump and wallclimb and dishes out insane damage. You cannot dive him with a dive tank since he just jumps out of their reach and then melts them down.
Widow is another perfect example. She is dominating OWL and high ranked games ATM. It is because she has such a short CD on her mobility skill, she can just grapple away when being jumped on.
Yes I’m aware that the current META doesn’t favour divers, but Mercy (especially) and Widow were already strong picks while Dive was Meta.
Suggesting a revert while keeping the GA bunny hop will not impact Mercy’s strength or her pickrate at all.
Let’s look at the most common suggestion:
- Valk put on “E” for a short duration (2-5s), including free flight, only 2 chains heals
- Mass rez as ult. Rez range reduced, Mercy needs line of sight, casttime stays
- GA bunny hop stays
All this does is swap Mercy’s kit around, it does not give her back her weakness she had with her 1.0 version. She’d still have her insane mobility and thus making her still the best healer overall since she is THE ONLY one who is able to frequently (all 2s) jump out of reach of the heroes who should counter her, WITHOUT her team being in positions for that. Mercy 1.0, as mentioned before, would’ve needed her team to position perfectly far apart so she could escape flanker, Mercy 2.0 doesn’t necessarily need that if you’re good with her. Your GA target could literally be in Winstons reach too, but you can catapult yourself past them out of Winstons reach.
It doesn’t give her back THE WEAKNESS she had before.
I know to some of you, the bunny hop doesn’t sound like a big deal. In a fast-paced game like OW, mobility is king, that’s why dive was always so strong (and still is in OWL). Mercy is the only high mobile character who is not countered by Brigitte (since she doesn’t dive without divers), thus why she works so well in this deathball META too.
Balancing Mercy is hard, there are many ways to do it.
- revert with tweaks, remove GA bunny hop
- nerf her healing , keep bunny hop
- nerf Valkyre, keep bunny hop
- remove rez, keep bunny hop
- increase GA CD, keep bunny hop
- leave current iteration, remove bunny hop
- rework her completely, keep bunny hop
In order for her to be balanced, she needs a weakness, which she currently doesn’t have and why she’s overperforming.
Ana’s weakness is mobility and self heal.
Lucio’s weakness is healing range.
Zen’s is mobility.
Brigitte’s is her attack reach (melee).
Moira’s is having to recharge her healing.
Mercy has nothing…
I personally would like her to keep the bunny hop, since it’s the part of her kit I enjoy the most. I don’t know what the best way is to balance her, all I think is you have to give her a weakness, which you wouldn’t if you revert her while keeping the bunny hop.