Suggestions for Mercy from someone with too much time on her 📝

[MrTickles-1464]

Does it though?

In most cases I would agree but if this idea were implemented Mercy would essentially get double value out of such an act.

So yes, the enemy team would get ult charge but Mercy would get ult charge and her res at the same time.

[MasterMedic-11495]

Thank you for the laugh

[Cameron-22892]

Surely the mods wouldn’t send our

boy EeveeA to the mega void

Sadly she isn’t an exception. She’s gonna end up in there like the rest of us

[infoinfoinfo-1287]

I really like these ideas.

The “Resurrect via resource meter” idea was one I saw floating around and liked, but I forgot about it. Seeing you bring it back up and flesh it out is nice.

I don’t really know when Blizzard will get back to working on Mercy (if ever), but I think they should consider this design when they do.

[Melke-1420]

Oh no. If three monthes isn’t enough time for the hate to die down enough for the mega-thread to no longer be a thing Mercy is definitely on Blizzards secondary list,
It might take longer then any of us want but she is on their list in some capacity I assure you.

[Titanium-1686]

Regarding Valkyrie:

@EeveeA-1334

Valk

• Valk cost increased by 20%

Currently, Mercy’s constant sustained healing in game causes Valkyrie to charge too quickly. Increased ult charge balances out Mercy’s constant beam output while also encouraging more use of damage boost for charging ult as it is too comfortable currently to merely stay on healing and gain ult quickly with low effort.

• Duration reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds

A 12s duration sets Valkyrie’s power on par with other support ultimates, rewards players with quick/sharp game sense, and improves the pacing and flow of matches.

• Remove chained beams, Make healing / Damage beams do double from base values 1.5x

Right now, Valkyrie suffers from being both an overpowered ability and unengaging to play at the same time. Single target beams heavily encourages quick decision making and game sense, while increasing the variety of Valkyrie’s movement mechanics as currently Mercys are usually hovering high above grouped teammates in order to benefit from chain beam.

Edit: After some discussion and thinking, 90HP/s and +45% seems a lot less problematic for these changes over-all.

• Res cast time reduced in half

Valkyrie is supposed to enhance all of Mercy’s abilities, however this is the only one that is not. By halving cast time, Mercy is still vulnerable while rezzing yet doesn’t overly waste valuable ult time to cast rez. This would also compensate for shortening ult duration.

• Remove Infinite ammo, Fire Rate Increased 20%

Infinite ammo serves no direct purpose and discourages helpful gameplay. Removing infinite ammo and increasing fire rate (6/s during ult) allows the pistol to be more lethal in bursts yet empties the clip faster (3.33s during ult), taking up ult time if the player wants to reload and continue shooting (1.5s to reload during a proposed 12s ult duration) . Therefore, this change results in pistol being targetedly useful for self defense or for securing a kill, rather than dedicating a majority of Valkyrie to shoot people.

(Did not quote properly, sorry)

I would go even further with a 8-10 second duration and more potent effects. 12 seconds of 90 HPS/45% damage increase on a single target and one (potentially 2 if the player uses Mercy’s pistol) use of Resurrect at half the cast time is pretty underwhelming for an ultimate, especially considering that you are simultaneously proposing a 20% charge requirement increase.

This is better than what we have on live servers, considering that it actually requires target prioritization, but it still leaves a lot of other problems with the ultimate:

• Flying as far away from the fight as possible and therefore being completely disengaged is a good thing, as it minimizes risk without compromising any reward.
• Valkyrie is still underwhelming and underpowered when compared to the ultimates of other healers (although this kind of has to be the case if the developers insist on keeping an ultimate on Mercy’s E).
• Free flight without any limitations other than flight speed just isn’t interesting; Guardian Angel is far more fun to use, yet the only targets to use it on are the ones on the ground when your objective is to gain altitude.

@EeveeA-1334

Resurrect

• Remove cooldown, now an earned ability - A Meter in the UI similar to Torbjorn scrap functions

If Resurrect must stay as an E ability (which I prefer that it does not), this is the way to go. The cast time will still be a pain in the rear, but I could set that aside because I would actually have interest in playing Mercy (and Overwatch, for that matter) again.

Now that I’ve criticized your suggestions, I might as well leave some of my suggestions here for others to criticize. These suggestions are pretty old, and I’m literally copy/pasting the following quote from my last megapost:

@Titanium-1686

Potential Solutions

I am literally copy/pasting this entire section from one of my previous posts, “Overwrite - Let’s Fix Everything: Part 2”.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/overwrite-lets-fix-everything-part-2/4520

Yes, that was a shameless plug. Want something?

Please note that the following text was typed up a little over a month ago, so any statistics included may not be exact for today’s numbers.
CTRL+V in 3… 2… 1…

Build 1:
Resurrect: Removed as a usable ability unless Valkyrie is active. One again sets Guardian Angel’s cooldown to 0 upon use. Does not have a cast time.

Resurrect needs to be locked behind an ultimate if it is not an ultimate by itself. It is impossible to balance Resurrect and simultaneously make it feel good to use if it is locked behind a basic cooldown.

Double Jump: By pressing the jump key twice in rapid succession, the player gains extra lift, the animation showing Mercy’s wings activating to give her an altitude boost. This can be used to establish LoS to targets on high ground, or get a better view of allies who are currently obscured by closer allies. It cannot be used more than once since touching the ground.

This is mainly out of preference, but Mercy would feel better if she wasn’t 100% dependant on allies to not be a sitting duck.

Valkyrie 2.0:

• Duration reduced to 8 seconds.
• Free flight removed.
• Current beam setup removed.
• Regeneration passive during Valkyrie removed.
• GA range during Valkyrie reduced from 50 meters to 35 meters (30 is normal GA range).
• Resurrect becomes available when Valkyrie is activated. Upon using it, it has a 3 second cooldown, and will continue to run on 3 second cooldowns for the rest of the ultimate.
• Once the ultimate ends, if Resurrect is not on cooldown, the player has 6 seconds to use it before it is no longer usable. If it is on cooldown, the ability completes its cooldown and then has 5 seconds to be used before becoming unavailable.
• New passive while Valkyrie is active- Angelic Presence: All allies within 8 meters of Mercy including herself receive an uninterrupted 10 health per second.
• Mercy no longer points her staff at her allies and engages a healing stream, she now swings her staff in an upward arc at a rate of once per second whilst using one of her streams (damage boost or healing). Each swing causes an eight-meter cone AoE effect of the current beam, but amplified because this is an ultimate.
• If Mercy’s healing stream is activated when she swings, all allies within the AoE receive a burst 100 HP. If her damage stream is activated when she swings, all allies within the AoE receive a 60% increase in damage for 1 second.
• Pistol damage during Valkyrie increased from 20 to 25.
• Mercy’s base movement speed and Angelic Descent horizontal speed increased by 0.6 to 6.1 (5.5 is the base movement speed for all heroes except Genji and Tracer, 7.1 is Lucio’s speed aura).

This forces Mercy to be in the fight, as Mercy has neither the free flight, nor a 30 meter beam range. Being this close to the fight will jeopardize the player, yet it still open lots of opportunities for the player to feel heroic. The reduced duration and increased stats makes Valkyrie more potent but for a shorter duration and less annoying to play against, as Mercy is now directly in the fight rather than 30 meters away. Because Mercy is now forced to be in the fight, commitment is required to use Valkyrie, and the player must use it carefully because of the reduced range and duration. Target prioritization will need to be considered in the event that not all players can be healed in a single arc of Mercy’s staff.

Variant 1:
Rather than a Double Jump ability, 3 seconds of free flight at base movement speed are granted to the player upon hitting the jump key twice in rapid succession. This ability has a 7 second cooldown, which begins once its 3 second duration has ended. This results in a maximum uptime of 30%. Can be used in Valkyrie.

This is mainly to appease the players who enjoyed the free flight granted by Valkyrie and want to keep it to some degree. Note that none of the other bonuses from the current version of Valkyrie (chain beams, range increase, etc.) apply to this ability.

Variant 2:
Free flight is added to Valkyrie.

This variant was created for the same reason Variant 1 was created; to appease the players who enjoyed free flight. I, personally, would not prefer this variant, but it would still be miles better than Mercy’s current iteration.

Build 2:
Valkyrie:

• Duration reduced to 10 seconds.
• All outputs (healing, damage amplification, pistol damage) increased by 50%, Meaning: Healing → 90 HPS, damage boost → 45% increase, pistol → 30 damage.
• Primary beam range reduced from 30 meters to 20 meters.

This makes Valkyrie more potent with a shorter duration, making it feel more impactful. The reduced beam range is to prevent players from spending the entire fight in the skybox, and makes it feel a little more fair to play against.

Resurrect:

• Players can now reduce the cooldown time for Resurrect by healing/dealing damage/amplifying damage.
• Cooldown is doubled or tripled.
• Movement penalty upon activation reduced from 75% to 50%.
• Mercy can now heal, damage boost, and shoot while reviving.

If this change is executed properly, this could overall be a cooldown nerf to Resurrect without feeling like it. The cast time was modified in order to make Mercy feel less helpless upon using Resurrect.

Variant 1:
Duration of Valkyrie reduced to 8 seconds, outputs increased by 60%: 96 HPS, 48% amplification, 32 pistol damage.

This is basically the same as the above version but even shorter and more potent.

Variant 2:
Valkyrie has a 10 second duration, primary beam target receives 120 HPS/60% damage increase, secondary beams apply 80 HPS/40% damage increase.

The goal for this was to create a need to prioritize targets. To do this, the strength of the primary beam was increased while the strength of the secondary beams were decreased.

Variant 3:
Valkyrie has an 8 second duration, primary beam target receives 128 HPS/64% damage increase, secondary beams apply 85 HPS/43% damage increase. Mercy’s blaster deals 32 damage.

Variants 1 and 2 mixed together.

Build 3:

• Mercy reverted to 1.x.

Guardian Angel:

• GA modifications from Mercy 2.x applied.

Resurrect:

• Range reduced to from 15 meters to 10 meters.
• Line of sight requirement added.

Valkyrie:

• Added as an E ability.
• 4 second duration, 12 second cooldown. Cooldown begins once the ability’s duration has been exhausted, allowing for a 25% uptime at the very most.
• Primary beam range only extends to 20 meters, down from 30.
• Movement speed reduced from 9 meters/second to 6.5 meters/second.
• Guardian Angel range is not extended when Valkyrie is active.
• Passive self-regeneration is no longer constant.

A revert is the most definite fix. The line of sight requirement and range decrease were applied to Resurrect for two reasons; one, to compensate for Valkyrie becoming an E ability, and two, to incentivise tempo-resurrections without forcing them. Note that the charge requirement was not increased for the latter of those two reasons.

Variant 1:
Resurrect has a 15 meter range and no line of sight requirement, but can Resurrect a maximum of 3 players at once. If more than 3 players are within range, the 3 closest players to Mercy are revived.

Just an idea. There really isn’t any justification for this idea, and there doesn’t really need to be.

Variant 2:
Valkyrie no longer grants free flight, GA range is once again extended, beam range is again set to 30 meters. A double jump ability is added to Mercy’s kit.

This allows Valkyrie to be used to heal allies that are otherwise unreachable, but does not make Mercy herself unreachable. The double-jump was added to provide Mercy with a little independant mobility.

Variant 3:
Valkyrie’s primary beam applies 80 HPS/40% damage increase, secondary beams apply 53 HPS/27% damage increase.

Valkyrie but with the added requirement of healing prioritization.

Variant 4:
Any combination of Variants 1, 2, and 3.

Have fun.

Build 4:
A build I stole from ReinStein (with permission, so i didn’t actually steal it) and then modified:

Valkyrie:

• Removed.

Resurrect:

• Is once again Mercy’s ultimate.
• Now uses a charge/stack-based system, stores a maximum of 3 stacks. 1320 ultimate charge is required to gain a single stack of Resurrect.
• Cast time removed.
• Resets GA cooldown upon use.
• Otherwise functions like Resurrect does currently.

This fixes the issue that Resurrect is not earned and adds variation to its availability. I didn’t just pull 1320 charge out of my butt; I took the amount of ultimate charge the average competitive Mercy player was earning every game by healing/damaging/amplifying (11562.4), added the passive ultimate gain from existing for 10 minutes (3000 charge) to total 14562.4, and decided I wanted the average Mercy to earn 11 Resurrect charges/game. 14562.4/11 ~ 1320 (rounding to the nearest ten). For reference, Resurrect from Mercy 1.x required 1625 ultimate charge.

New E ability: Alter Stream

• Pressing E activates Mercy’s chain beams, which function as they currently do in Valkyrie but without the primary beam range increase. Pressing E again returns the beams to normal.
• The strength of Mercy’s beams is decreased, reducing her damage boost amplification to only 10% and her healing to only 20 HPS.
• This ability has no cooldown.

This adds more depth to Mercy’s allied prioritization, allowing her to choose between affecting one ally with a potent beam or multiple with weaker beams.

Changes to damage boost in relation to ultimate charge:

• Ultimate charge is no longer generated based on how much damage a target amplified by Mercy is dealing, but by how much damage is amplified.
• For every 2 damage amplified, Mercy gains 5 ultimate charge points.

There’s a reason for this change. If you are not interested in watching me crunch numbers, I suggest you skip over this part. If you enjoy math like I occasionally do, feel free to stick around.

Currently, the amount of charge Mercy gains from amplifying teammates is determined by the total amount of damage the ally in question is dealing to enemies. Note that this is not the base damage, but the amount of damage the ally is dealing total, after Mercy’s 30% damage increase is factored in. This is then fed through a 2/3 conversion ratio before giving us the final amount of ultimate charge gained through damage amplification. In other words…

If [player currently being amplified by Mercy] deals 200 base damage to [enemy], Mercy’s 30% amplification increases that damage by 60, resulting in a total of 260 damage dealt. This number is then multiplied by 2 and divided by 3 (because reasons, the developers slapped a random conversion ratio on top of this), resulting in a grand total of 173.3333… ultimate charge gained from this endeavor. 60 damage amplified resulted in 173.3333… charge points.

Why the developers made this conversion so unnecessarily complicated is beyond me, but I digress. The reason this is no longer an effective system is because of the proposed E. Why? Let’s compare Mercy’s normal damage boost to the suggested chain boost:

For Mercy’s normal boost, she gains 173.3 charge for 60 damage.

For Mercy’s group boost, let’s assume she is increasing the damage output of three allies, all of whom are dealing 200 damage. With Mercy’s 10% increase, she is increasing the damage of each ally by 20, for a total of 60 damage amplified. However, the targets she is boosting are dealing a total of 660 damage. If we slap this into the same conversions currently in place for Mercy’s damage stream, we get 440 ultimate charge gained; here lies the issue.

Normal: 60 damage amplified = 173.3 charge.
Chained to three allies: 60 damage amplified = 440 charge.

The amount of charge gained is not consistent with the amount of impact Mercy is creating; this is why I very strongly suggest that Mercy’s charge gain from damage boost is determined by how much damage is amplified rather than how much damage the affected allies are dealing.

If we want the current charge rate for Mercy’s beam to remain unchanged while solving the issue, we simply divide the amount of charge gained from the normal scenario by the amount of damage amplified in that same scenario:

173.33…/60 = 2.88…

So, for every 1 damage amplified, Mercy receives 2.88… ult charge. Because Mercy has the potential to gain ult at a faster rate by amplifying/healing more than three targets, however, I figured it would be better for Mercy to gain 2.5 charge/1 damage amplified to counterbalance. Hence the 5 charge for every 2 damage amplified.

Variant 1:
Resurrect stores up to five stacks. The range of Resurrect is increased to 15 meters and all allies within the radius (and within LoS) are Resurrected upon a single use of Resurrect. Mercy receives one second of invulnerability upon using Resurrect, and she can only use Resurrect once every ten seconds. If she uses her ultimate, it is put on a ten second cooldown.

This makes Resurrect feel more epic to use, but still actively incentivizes tempo-resurrections rather than mass-resurrections because of the line-of-sight requirement and limited invulnerability. The cooldown upon using Resurrect is inflicted for two reasons; One, to prevent Mercy players from abusing the invulnerability by chaining Resurrections, and two, to make the Mercy player think carefully about how they use Resurrect. Ten seconds is the same time it takes a player to respawn after death, so a Mercy must consider how they use Resurrect if multiple allies are down at once and some are not reachable.

[Cerburus437-1424]

They confirm its not instant by saying in valk the cast time on rez is halved

[Silentstrike-1319]

The thing about giving Mercy a cast time + LoS on Mass Res doesn’t work. In Beta, Mercy was ROOTED in place for 1s to have a 40m Resurrect radius. It was crazy huge, and if Mercy tried to use her ultimate anywhere near enemies, she was dead while rooted to res. It was scrapped for a 15m, no root res, which was still too weak because it made Mercy’s ultimate a suicide mission to re-engage a 5v6. Blizzard couldn’t really think of anything to make Mass Res feel both fair and fun for the Mercy players and the enemies. It was either overly counter-able or extremely annoying. I think Valk on E (obviously extremely nerfed from its current form) with no invuln would’ve been an amazing fix, but Blizzard didn’t go that route. Funny how we looped right back around to a rooted res. Except this time it is for 1 target within 5m. Lmao

[Flare-12560]

Remove chained beams, Make healing / Damage beams do double from base values 1.5x

Resurrect

• Remove cooldown, now an earned ability - A Meter in the UI similar to Torbjorn scrap functions (Only one chargeable at a time)

Yes please, these are much needed

[Melke-1420]

I’d rather connect rez to the ult in some way and give us an instant rez. Just one or two at the most because cast time is non sense and instant cast mass rez while annoying was never OP statistically.

[Krystace-1893]

Waste of a post, A hero should not be reworked or buffed because you are not having fun playing said hero. Especially, when said hero is in a better spot than most of the heroes. Mercy currently has a near 85% Pick rate in the OWL right now, compared to Ana who has just 1.81% Pick rate.

[Titanium-1686]

Waste of a post, A hero should not be reworked or buffed because you are not having fun playing said hero.

Why then, was it completely justifiable to rework a hero because they were not fun to play against, a given in a competitive PvP game?

[Melke-1420]

Hey titanium, sicne you’re like the master of feedback what would I have to do to get you to weigh in your cirticisscms of my cirtisiscms on the post I recently made trying to identify the problems and provide simple-ish solutions to?

[Titanium-1686]

You would have to provide a link to it and give me some time to make a reply.

[Melke-1420]

@Melke-1420

So let’s just jump ino this Let’s see if I can identify the problems people who are complaining have with Mercy, problems that aparently aren’t letting a mega thread die when D’va after her rework started to die down (indicating these two reworks are not equal)

let’s see if that worked for linking if not then well I’m hooped cus I don’t have enough trust to post links

[Mulqueen-11677]

You do know that compared to most other support ults it’s one of the worst…

[GetRekt266-1561]

Have to give props to a person who’s actually logical, blizzard implement this asap.

[EverKnown-1564]

I don’t want the discussion in this thread to be limited to these suggestions - I would love for people to make this discussion around what can be done to improve Mercy’s gameplay in general.
So please, discuss!

A friend linked me to your reddit post. I was about to give up on the fight for Mercy but you’ve brought me back. So here I am to repost the same idea I’ve made 3 times now.

Deep frustrated sigh

My opinion on Mercy is that she suffers the same affliction as Symmetra. The problem with both of these supports is they have the highest mobility in the game -> bringing a dead hero from spawn to the battlefield almost instantly.

The TLDR of my long support post for Mercy and other utility supports is that they should have ‘ultimate stacking’. The idea being the longer the game carries on, the more value a utility support brings. Whereas DPS supports give an immediate value to the team fight.

The change I had in mind was to remove Valk as an ultimate and then replace that with rez. Except this time, players may stack their revives. This does 2 things: it allows rez to be earned again and brings back mass rez. However, when a player uses their ultimate with Mercy, they spend all their revive stacks to revive- regardless of how many targets they in fact revived (with possible rebalance changes in the future).

I felt this was an easy middle ground. Since Overwatch Devs can’t get rid of rez (as it is a core of Mercy’s identity) and it keeps Mercy 2.0’s engaging gameplay.

Other tweaks could then be made based around this. Adding a famous ‘cleanse’ idea for her ‘E’ and possibly, if needed, adjusting her mobility to compensate for her new buffs.

However, the core of this idea is essentially building a Mercy 3.0 since Jeff said personally he wanted to put “a revert to rest”.

[Krystace-1893]

Original Mercy was broken in solo queue and mass rez took away from the core of the game. The reworked Mercy was just disgustingly broken and the worst period in the whole of Overwatch.

[Orack-21628]

For me the only thing I don’t love about Mercy is her Ult.
It don’t feel like ult at all. You can’t protect / counter ult your team like a Zen, Lucio, Brigitte.
Moira load faster and do damage and she’s even easier to play than mercy…

Mercy need an Ult who feel like you do something important.
Not just be the “ultimate heal-bot”

Same fight for Orisa Ulti. That don’t feel like an Ult.