This is not an issue of either of these heroes.
It’s the issue of allowing them the positioning advantage.
Literally, all the problematic heroes can be shut down if you control their positioning. Guess which heroes can do that.
Just yesterday I had several games that clearly show this in practice:
- Junkertown
- We got rolled over with an enemy Bastion, so one of our dps switched to Bastion also. We finally held them before point 3, but then our Bastion chose the worst position to setup at (small room doorway behind payload: low visibility, right in front of tanks, closed quarters against Rein, Dva, and Junkrat).
- On our attack, he did the same thing repeatedly setting up right next to payload all the time and not shutting down enemy Bastion positioning.
- Our tanks couldn’t do much because we had 1 shield while they had 2 big shields and Baptise.
- Gibraltar
- Enemy Soldier + Mercy kept taking the high ground at point 1 and point 2. We had a Widow, but they also ran Winston + Dva.
- Our tanks were Rein + Hog/Zarya the whole time. So, we never could properly challenge their positioning.
- Dorado
- We had an incredible Widow player, and I (Mercy) made sure to keep him alive after I realized his value. He ended up contributing to half of the kills (most of which were straight one-shot kills).
- Enemy problem was that they couldn’t shake him. They dove him and forced our position sometimes, but they never held the position. They also got a Widow, and she tried to claim that position, but she wasn’t supported and I pistol-whipped her out of there.
- Busan
- Our tanks were Winston + Dva, so they dove a lot. We also had Hanzo who was a good shot and very aggressive to the point that he was right there next to our Winston and Dva most of the time.
- We had a Soldier and I was Mercy, but I didn’t pocket him as much as I had to heal the tanks. His position was too far from tanks and other dps. He died several times due to the fact that I just didn’t bother looking at him because our tanks were accomplishing way more than he could do with my pocket.
Most of the times, all you need is just one player that knows how to keep tabs on certain positions and not let enemies take them and maybe a support to help them accomplish that task.
There needs to be an educational sub-forum where players can teach others how to play, especially tanks. Most tanks think their job is to just stand in front of enemy players and wait for their dps to magically kill everyone. The problem with that thinking is that it creates strain on the whole team: your dps can’t find good position to do damage; your healers are stressed because they need to heal the tank that’s loosing hp and feeding ults, each other because they are targeted by enemy dps from good position, their dps who are challenged by enemy tanks.
There’s a reason GOATS was a strategy at one point. Tanks bring immense value to the team, way more than a smurf dps.
TL;DR: I realize now that I just spent a lot of time writing stuff that just means “Soldier and Mercy are okay. Get Gud!” So, I guess this is TLDR now.
then nerf soldiers damage to either 19 or 19.5
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Mercy and soldier are at the advantage with passive positioning. That means they require no cooldowns or pathing to be in the optimal position. A flanker/dive that tries to stop them is employing active positioning, which even if they reach the targets, means they are at a cooldown/time disadvantage. That is one of the main reasons precision hitscan pockets are blatantly imbalanced.
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Let her switch between weapons faster and let her GA to enemies.
Doesn’t have to be a flat buff.
Mercy’s healing doesn’t always have to be the same HP/S at all times. It seems like this “consistency” aspect of her kit isn’t tied in to her identity too much and could be sacrificed.
She could have a healing cooldown ability, or a resource, or her healing could strengthen/weaken depending on certain things -
Any changes like this could nerf pocket healing while keeping Mercy as a viable pick with strong healing overall.
With a problem like this, the balancing team just needs to get creative.
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They should remove resurrect and add something creative instead. My main issue with Mercy is rez being on cooldown.
I have my personal disagreements about Resurrect being removed - perhaps there might be some way to salvage it, but I acknowledge that such a thing would be pretty difficult to come up with.
My main issue is that pocketing is too strong and is currently her main role/value. I believe this creates a toxic dynamic that, in the long run, is detrimental to pretty much all parties involved.
It’s toxic to just pick heroes now?
These forums never fail to both amaze and disappoint me.
that wouldn’t really make her less of a pocket slave. it’d mean she’d be better as a heal pocket…
like even if they buffed her gun to have higher firerate + higher projectile speed and let it be capable of firing whilst beaming, it’d be still a maybe as to whether she’s still largely be pocketing because she’s not going to be aiming well if she’s GA’ing around a lot (frequent wide turns) which is her design.
I remember when I was repeatedly telling players to run soldier + mercy and was constantly told that it was a stupid idea bc soldier is trash and shouldn’t need a boost to be effective.
Look where we are now.
The people who play this game are silly.
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I’m afraid to do that because Mercy is already pretty good and the game can easily change to where she is too good. And this is with her having basically zero dmg. I try to think of ways to discourage mercy being a pocket bot by nerfing her beam and buffing in other areas but mercy players don’t want that 
. I still maintain the best way is to just swap rez to be an ult and valk a normal ability. So you don’t completely eliminate the value mercy gets from pocketing one hero but provide more opportunity for her to go for some solo plays.
This doesn’t make sense at all, if I understand correctly what you mean.
You’re basically saying Winston, Dva, Tracer, Sombra, Reaper, etc… have to use abilities to get closer to their target to be more efficient. BUT that’s the whole point of those heroes. Their weapons are not good at long range; thus, they have an ability to support their needs to get closer.
S76 is a ranged hero and if you want to challenge him with a melee, you better believe that you’re going to use resources in order to get to him.
Assuming S76 pocket is overpowered and kills everything, it means its user has good aim.
Assuming the teams are equally matched, a Widow will just one-shot both him and his pocket.
Just saying 2 heroes are overpowered with no context of team composition, positioning, player skill levels can be easily interpreted as “I died to S76 + Mercy. Plz nerf them!”
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Once again, Mercy can do more damage shooting at you than she can damage boosting soldier.
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Hell, at this point it’s obvious this is a problem with Mercy’s damage boost enabling them too much. It turns dps into monsters and has no resource or cooldown mechanic. Just rework that and give her something else, I can imagine this is only going to get worse in 5v5. Zen at least trades vulnerability and mobility for this damage amp.
That being said, some overpowered dps need to be adressed as they are insanely op without Mercy even pocketing them. Most likely the incompetent devs will shower Cass and Spamzo with a few more buffs then abandon the game for 6 more months.
because it often just means making her trash.
e.g. that expC whereby beam heal decays over continuous use on 1 target? yeah that’s just making her trash because if someone like say a low tank or a squishy being dived on needs Xs of sustained continuously healing, they need Xs of sustained continuous healing. trying to force the mercy player to switch to someone else then switch back in that scenario only means letting them die or taking much longer to top someone off from low. and we precisely saw that from the expC.
while I would like res back on ult, but valk as a normal ability wouldn’t really encourage not pocketting. like it’d largely be used as a “oh crap” button that it’s largely being used for now. sure if you keep chain beams on it as a normal ability (tho I doubt one can) one would use it for aoe heals or aoe boost, but that’s likely not going to get the effect you want (even if beaming someone else, the chain probs means whoever they were pocketing is still benefiting anyways). and chances to pistol will still be highly scarce and pale in comparison to chain boost.
JackGela (pronounced jack jula)
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as a mercy enjoyer, I can admit damage boost is somewhat problematic, but its all mercy has now. If she can’t compete in healing and she isn’t allowed meaningful utility in rez (most rezzes are low value. Top mercy’s rarely go for midfight rezzes on ladder because its too dangerous.) Then what can mercy be allowed to bring to the table?
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Its this fact that I don’t think people realize, Mercy doesn’t create problems, she exasperates them. Is Mercy boosting junkrat a problem? Is mercy boosting Symmetra a problem? Is mercy boosting torbjorn a problem? No, its not in any situation because those heroes are fine, but when you put mercy on an OP hero, than it boosts their OPness even more. Its simple math really.
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Widow is leagues more bearable to go against than even a lone soldier. At least when your tanks actually swap to counter her and don’t remain hog/ball…
The problem isn’t that it’s a 1v2 the problem is that the ease of access to teamwork makes Mercy + DPS so much easier to execute than other synergies.
Mercy has a job of hide and press left or right click.
Say you go Winston D.Va to dive them both, the synergy required by Winston and D.Va to co-ordinate that dive is 10x harder than Mercy’s job. I love Mercy but her ease of access to to teamwork in a teamwork game makes her undeniably strong especially in lower elos with heroes like Pharah.
There’s a lot to Mercy, but a lot of it isn’t necessarily required if you can get a good pocket going and your team keeps it alive.
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