Thank you for specifying that it isn’t all Mercy mains.
Would I like some buffs for Mercy? Yeah.
Do I think they’re required to get value? No.
Plus the OWL hero picks aren’t really indicative of what healers are great. They pick, like us, at least partially based on what they enjoy playing.
Plus all the supports are very situationally leaning, imo. Can I make Mercy work in any situation? Yes. Are there times other supports would maybe get more value or be not effective? Yes. It’s why I’m liable to swap on occasion, even though I by far have the most play time on Mercy.
yea dont you just hate it when the people who love the most popoular hero in the game who is demonstrably subpar in balance and definitely mostly boring ask for some love for their hero? haha me too lol kap
She’s not subpar by any means. The problem with many Mercy mains is that Mercy’s role has changed since launch and they won’t accept that Mercy isn’t a strong pick in every comp anymore.
Mercy used to be the go-to for strong healing output since she massively out-healed the only two other supports, Lucio and Zen. Now that there have been several high-healing-output supports added to the game, Mercy is meant to be more flexible. Current Mercy has a MUCH higher skill ceiling than she used to so people who’ve always played her and haven’t been able to adapt to the new, more active style have been left feeling like Mercy is falling behind when the problem is really that they’re not using the right tool for the job.
It’s far more important for support players to be able to play every hero in their role than it is for tanks and DPS. Supports should pick last and should pick around the rest of their team. Mercy is a definitively bad pick in many popular comps but that won’t stop some people from only playing her anyway and then complaining about it; However, that doesn’t mean Mercy isn’t great in comps she’s supposed to be played in.
I think pointing out how heroes can go with incredible pick-rates without nerfs, while Mercy can go over a year with a terrible one, or pointing out how others get buffs before her even though she was bad a lot longer than them, is less about saying that Mercy needs buffs, but more about pointing out a balance bias.
I personally find Mercy to be very fun to play, effective, and well balanced
I do find her to be less effective than other supports under certain circumstances, but I also find her more effective than other supports in certain other situations…and I see this as a very good thing
People get good at what they enjoy playing, it’s their best asset and people get into teams because of that. And while of course the Meta plays into it and you might have to pick up a few new heroes, generally you get to enjoy at least the category of heroes you like. Like, Carpe will probably never be told to play Genji, but can instead enjoy his hitscanns or at least single shot heroes.
mercy is definitely subpar because she is only valuable more than another support when you have pharah or ashe who both have very low pickrates. No other support is so synergy dependent AND has such few decent synergies. When she’s played she gets decent stats and I get that she doesnt compete with moira ana or bap, but she definitely does compete with lucio and brig, and they both massively overshadow her, now even in dive comps for which people have said she shouldn’t be buffed- brig provides more value to a diving genji, tracer, Winston and dva and peels for zen better than mercy.
It’s how it is. I’ve played Mercy heavily since beta, across multiple platforms, and everywhere from silver to GM and T500. I consider myself a flex player but she’s my most-played hero by a good amount.
Launch Mercy was much more passive. She didn’t have the mechanical improvements to GA yet so she mostly hung out in the back line and held down one button. Then she could throw out an instant mass rez through walls if things didn’t go her way. Everything about her was low effort due to how restricted she was but she did 60 HPS and neither of the only other two supports could match that, so she found a lot of value anyway.
Now, Mercy’s mechanical improvements alone completely change how she’s played. If you’re ever just walking around holding a button, you’re doing it wrong. Mercy should be everywhere. There’s almost nowhere she can’t be even if she has no teammates standing where she wants to be.
As far as healing, it’s no longer her job to stay behind tanks and pump healing into them. It’s her job to be everywhere and take care of her damage dealers and other supports. It’s a far more active role that puts her in danger more often and requires more decision making.
When it comes to Valkyrie vs. Mass Rez, there’s absolutely no comparison when considering skill ceiling. Valkyrie requires Mercy to make the most impactful decision possible every second for fifteen seconds and empowers her to do so rather than just hitting Q once and being done with it instantly. Valkyrie can also be used proactively whereas mass rez did literally nothing unless a teammate was already dead. It was the only purely-reactive ult in the game, which lowered its skill ceiling significantly.
Do you have any argument to the contrary or are you just about emojis?
If giving GA several different options for useage rather than only the one it used have is more forgiving, then sure. Extra options, though, raises the skill ceiling because of how much more it can do. I can usually tell a Mercy’s rank just by how they move. Low-ranked ones spend a lot of time on the ground and don’t use GA for anything more than flying straight to team members.
If you’re using Valkyrie as an auto pilot, you’re not using it to its full potential and its impact will reflect that. Relative effectiveness aside, there’s no ult in this game that requires more decision making than Valkyrie. It’s not even close.
People keep saying this ‘oh, you just can’t play her in every comp and in every game anymore’ but when exactly is that time she sees any play, where are those situations where she can outshine the other supports and is a better pick than them? There’s Pharah and Ashe obviously but both of them are low pickrate niche heroes too.
Just look at OWL over the last weeks - Widow and McCree, both heroes who synergize well with Mercy got played a ton yet she was barely picked. Now we’re seeing dive return in some forms - a meta Mercy should be able to excel in - but again she doesn’t get picked over other supports. She’s pretty much only played as a Genji pocket very rarely and nothing more.
So is Mercy just supposed to be another extremely niche low pick rate character a la Torb, Sym, Pharah and Bastion? Because I don’t think any her should be in that kind of state
Thats like saying Mercy is more skilled than Zenyatta as she has more positioning options.
Sure there’s someone that has more decision making than Valkryied Mercy. Mercy in her base kit, and we know how skill people think base kit Mercy takes.
You’re right about that but I think it’s both in this case. I think the higher skill ceiling is keeping people from playing her to her full potential whereas they used to be able to get pretty close to that without as much effort or practice, which has people thinking that Mercy is the problem rather than how they’re playing her.
I don’t think any of them need nerfs or buffs right now. If I could choose anything to happen to them, though, I’d remove resurrect entirely from Mercy’s kit and replace it with a proactive ability to keep people alive.
Ok i get where youre coming from I think- is the skill ceiling her movement and decision making? How can that be pushed to a limit that makes her better than the other supports?
Also is it worth learning her? Does she pay off to have in your hero pool as a gm support compared to another? I find damage boost so fun but find the hero as a whole frustrating. Even though she’s intuitive to pick up, carrying with her is the complete opposite? I think I get what you mean
