The Anger Around the PTR Mercy Buffs Explained

You made a tl:dr on your thread.
This pretty much resumes your wall of text.

If for every 100 threads you make about Mercy, she gets a nerf, she’d be deleted already.

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There is a leap in logic. You somehow went from:

To:

You took an out-of-context quote and are trying to construe it to be the full picture, and the only thing in the picture.

Whereas if you read the OP, you would know how wrong what you were going to say was before you said it:

Me bringing up the fact that Resurrect was the most iconic ultimate in the game was to question the decision to remove it. How iconic Resurrect was plays very little part in my current opinion of Mercy. If Mercy didn’t have that iconic ultimate, but was still fun to play, I wouldn’t be here on the forums complaining about Mercy for the past year; I would be playing Mercy.

Placing the quotes side-by-side to refresh your memory, being that it has been a while since my last reply to you:

You stated that because Blizzard at one point said that they do not plan to revert Mercy, that they will never address our concerns, regardless of the type of rework.

Which I replied with:

Replace “I” with “Blizzard”, replace “the color yellow” with “a Mercy rework”, and replace “green”, “orange”, “purple”, “teal”, and “brown” with arbitrary rework ideas, and we have what you said.

But does the fact that I don’t like the color yellow really mean that I also don’t like colors green, orange, purple, teal, and brown?

To assume that to be the case is an extrapolation beyond that which could be reasonably (or unreasonably, for that matter) concluded.

We’re not talking about what you would classify as an “anti Mercy main” position. We’re talking about these positions:

…And you then came in and acted all offended over it, repeating one of those very positions:

And now you seem to be claiming that you never held any of those positions… but you still took offense to it.

Because you have failed to elaborate on that statement, allow me to shoot it down before you can:

You were crying about how I was being “arrogant” and “self-righteous” because I said that several insulting assertions that are based upon ignorance are exactly that: Ignorant.

So yeah, this trade-off begins with a series of ignorant, insulting, and incorrect assertions from your side of the court. You might follow this up with “That isn’t my side of the court”, but then why did you feel the need to defend those positions if you supposedly aren’t siding with them?

And you provide no supporting arguments for this statement. Is it really self-righteous or arrogant to call out insults for what they are? I mean, sure, I’m arrogant as hell, but that move wasn’t made out of arrogance. That move was made because I wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush when acknowledging a particular group of people in the OP.

“What I said is true because I said it” seems to be a trend here.

“You are X and you think Y because I said so.”
“You are arrogant and self-righteous for rejecting the labels and projected ideals I flung at you because I said so.”

I’m guessing this is the purpose behind the willful ignorance. If you pretend to have no knowledge of the situation, you can feel excused in your misinformed, emotional prejudices.

See above. You misinterpreted the meaning of that, apparently.

Pretending that they know and care about our concerns, pretending that they have acknowledged our concerns, while doing nothing of the sort for a year is disrespectful.

Reworking a hero to appease those playing against that hero with no regard to said hero’s playerbase is disrespectful.

Breaking nearly every promise they made in the Mercy rework Developer Update is disrespectful.

Strawmanning the two sides of the debate as “Make Mercy OP” vs. “Make Mercy UP” is disrespectful.

So again, respect is a two-way street. They lost ours when they demonstrated that we lost theirs. I’ll go back to respecting the developers when they can prove that they deserve that respect again.

Until then, I will call them what they are: Incompetent.

The rework. Why people were calling for a Mercy rework/nerf in the first place.

Because apparently when we want a rework because our hero isn’t fun to play anymore, that’s just us being entitled… but a few players getting mad that their Q press was reversed by someone else’s Q press is unacceptable and requires action.

Did you read what you quoted?
Did you read your previous post?

Do I need to spell it out?

Sigh

You said that this thread is not constructive. This then prompts a question: What could be changed to make it constructive? The purpose of this thread is to inform people why there was so much backlash over the PTR changes, which it does quite thoroughly. It displays the rationale behind the backlash that many mistook for having none.

Of course, I’m not going to address this topic without addressing the elephant in the room, the statements that inspired me to create this thread in the first place:

I’m not going to ignore the insults meant to delegitimize our concerns. I’m going to hit them head on, because that’s the best way to deal with them.

So that’s two constructive contributions from this thread: The reader sees the reasoning behind our concerns (whether actually apply them or feign ignorance is up to them), and the nonconstructive, pointless insults and myths meant to slander those who have these concerns are shown to be incorrect.

So what about this thread is nonconstructive when it fulfills its exact purpose of informing others about our position and diminishes the value of petty insults?

Is there really anything nonconstructive in the OP?

Or are you calling it nonconstructive because… it doesn’t present or support your sentiments? Just as I have seen countless others do?

Hence:

A question that is derived from an incorrect assumption needs no answer.

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Come on. You walked right into that one.

That’s funny.

Mercy would have… zero nerfs then. Really goes to show little you know.

I’ve made a whopping…

… 7…

Mercy threads. Go to my profile my profile and count them.

I suggest that you check yourself before you make a fool out of yourself next time.

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I have to take issue with this. Saying the thread title is wrong and then making this statement is hypocrisy.

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That would have been a better thing to say.

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Is this another way of telling me to shut up? Because my answer is “No”.

It totally is another way of telling me to shut up.

I’ve already stopped playing Overwatch. I stopped over a year ago. I’m not going to stop voicing my opinion on this matter, however. Considering that I payed the money to buy the game, I have every right to criticize the product and its creators.

Good.

Changes never happen without “agitation”.

And here you are, telling me to stop saying it because you don’t like to hear it. Get used to it; you’re not going to stop hearing it until Mercy is fixed.

I’ll be blunt. That sounds like a “you” problem.

You choosing to give up on your hero, if anything, is the perfect example of what I will not do. You stopped advocating for your hero, and you got less than you deserved because of it. You settled for less, and are less than happy because of it.

I will not make that same mistake, regardless as to how much you want me to. Get over it.

You not liking our persistence does not make our posts “spam”. If there is a large portion of the playerbase upset for a long period of time, you will see a proportional amount of persistent backlash.

This is how a forum works. If a position is popular, a lot of people will take it. If you can’t tolerate that, why enter any of these threads? Why open the forums at all, if you are annoyed by persistence?

Not when we’re the ones being civil and to-the-point. The people dismissing us as “whiners” (or whatever other insult/excuse they use to ignore us) are the ones who get laughed at, because that seems to be the only thing they can contribute.

I will believe this when I have reason to.

We’ve given them better reasons to change Mercy than those that were provided to support the initial rework. Want to see?

Why I Have Yet to Not Despise Mercy's Current State

And they have given us no indication of what changes they want to see proposed.

There has been no communication between us and them. Just us trying to get their attention, and them occasionally making a statement about Mercy that is irrelevant to our concerns.

We’re not the ones who made those 12 megathreads.

Talk to the moderators about that.

Reread what you quoted. You’d realize that none of these have anything on Valkyrie.

I’m pretty confident that Brigitte mains don’t mind Brigitte’s kit.
I’m pretty confident that Roadhog mains liked Hook 1.x. You said it yourself.
I’m pretty confident that Doomfist mains approve of Doomfist’s kit.

I’ll highlight what you overlooked:

Mercy mains?

There are a hell of a lot of us who outright despise Valkyrie. If the Quickplay pickrates are anything to go off of, over half of us do.

Actually, you are wrong.

According to a recent forum survey, more players, of all three hero categories, excluding Mercy mains, would rather revert to Mercy 1.x than the number of people who would rather leave Mercy as she is (as of before the PTR buffs) or give her a flat buff combined.

Do you want to know what has received even more backlash on all of those mentioned platforms for at least four times the period of the aforementioned complaints?

Mercy 2.x.

I’m sorry, but I just find this utterly hilarious.

Yes. Resurrect totally was overpowered. This is why Mercy never surpassed D-tier prior to the rework. :rofl:

Nah, I like Mercy’s base kit. The problem is that Valkyrie and Resurrect actively detract from and contradict that base kit. A kit plagued by contradictions, and that has been furthermore nerfed to force those contradictions into the kit, stops being fun real quick.

If Mercy’s Resurrect and Valkyrie were removed entirely, I would play her. I won’t play her while they still exist in their current state.

*D-Tier.

Attempting to change history to suit your narrative doesn’t make you look credible.

Objectively incorrect.

Also incorrect.

All heroes are fun to someone.

The difference here is that the hero we found fun got removed.

As for Bastion… I wouldn’t sacrifice any of his fun factor for a buff. The worst feeling possible in relation to game balance is to see your hero buffed into god-tier but have no desire to play them anymore because the engagement and fun was torn from them. Speaking from experience.

At least when your hero is nerfed into oblivion and is no longer fun, you know they have nowhere to go but up, and that there is a very high chance of them becoming fun again… provided their nerf wasn’t a full-blown rework.

Funny. We were never given this consideration.

Similar to how we aren’t “mass-Resurrect or nothing”, I would imagine that those who like Valkyrie aren’t “Valkyrie or nothing”. It is very unlikely that this is a matter of choosing one or the other.

We want Mercy to be fun for ourselves. That is our goal. Mercy being fun for ourselves is not mutually exclusive with Mercy being fun for those who currently play her, and balanced in the grant scheme of things.

But let’s suppose that everyone who is okay with Valkyrie wants nothing other than Valkyrie, dammit. What then?

What would do the most to please the majority of the Mercy playerbase? How about the larger playerbase? According to that Mercy survey, according to the values we’re seeing on these forums, and according to those Quickplay pickrates, reworking Mercy, in spite of those who are against it, would please a lot more people than it would anger.

Hello? We have Tom Powers. His job title is literally “Community Manager”.

There is no need to re-allocate resources just to get a clue as to what the community wants. We have someone who should be relaying that information to the developers already.

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By the way, this person creates flagging groups to silence people that disagree.

You say this^ before saying this:

Doesn’t exactly help your case.

As for this entire section:

I find this ironic, as it could easily be applied to what you said in reply to my reconfiguration of your post:

I think you’re just being sensitive, it was a harmless joke copying what you said in your first post and modifying it to apply to you.

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I’m explaining a position.

Obviously, if that position does not apply to you, you are not included in the explanation.

You’re right; it wouldn’t fit, because we’re not a “small minority”. :wink:

I’m going to skip over a few related parts to address them all at once…

Except there’s a problem; you have the wrong context selected.

The OP uses “a lot” as a noun, not an adjective. You have the thesaurus showing the set of synonyms for the adjective.

Set it to the noun. You’ll see this:

Your “quick Google search”, was too quick to be accurate, it seems.

As for this assertion…

So, where is your evidence to back that up?

That’s purely anecdotal, and is flatly contradicted by the fact the the majority of players that I’ve talked to are unsatisfied with the Valkyrie changes.

And… you provide no other evidence.

How about I give you some evidence that suggests quite the opposite?

Let’s talk about Mercy’s pickrate in Quickplay, being that said gamemode is the one where fun is most isolated from any other factor contributing to pickrates.

In season 3, when Mercy was a troll-pick in Competitive play due to Ana dominating the meta, Mercy’s Quickplay pickrate was the highest in the game at about 10%.

In the following season, Mercy received a buff, and her Quickplay pickrate rose to 12% starting from season 4 all the way through to the day her rework hit. We all know what happened after that.

However, with each set of nerfs came further realization as to just how limited the reworked Mercy was in regards to engagement. Mercy’s Quickplay pickrate plummeted as low as 6% in November of 2017, and it gradually began to recover.

It never fully recovered. The January nerfs hit, and Mercy’s Quickplay pickrates dropped back to 6%. They began to rise again when Mercy moved back into the meta, but once again plummeted with the healing nerf.

Mercy’s Quickplay pickrates have hovered at 5% since then. From season 4 to today, we have lost over half of the Mercy playerbase. The majority of the Mercy playerbase has stopped playing Mercy since the rework. If we were to be generous and say that everyone who still plays Mercy prefers the current version over her season 4/5 version, that’s still only 5/12ths of the Mercy playerbase who prefer the current version of Mercy over 1.x, and that’s disregarding the turnover that would make that fraction even smaller.

At least 7/12ths of the Mercy playerbase has been so dissatisfied with the Mercy rework that they elected to stop playing Mercy altogether. If we were to look at her Competitive pickrates, we would get numbers even more grim than that: 13-14% to less than 5%.

That alone is enough to suggest that we are not the minority; quite the opposite, even. That suggests we are the majority.

But let’s not stop there. This is the Official Overwatch Forums: The go-to place to submit feedback or just talk about whatever the hell you want to so long as it is related to Overwatch.

And… the most popular post of all time, with over 1.5 times the popularity of the second most popular post of all time, on both versions of the forums, is a thread expressing these very sentiments… created by myself, in fact.

Scour the forums if you want, but you will not find a single thread that has more support than the aforementioned post, but more specifically, you will not find a single post that is a proponent for the Mercy rework in any way with more support than that post. The highest number of upvotes I have ever seen on a post that supported the idea of a Mercy nerf/rework from 1.x, the rework we got, etc. was a post with around 250 upvotes on the old forums before the rework was announced… in contrast to our 1700 upvotes, which I might note is still climbing.

Furthermore, we have this survey, which I might note was conducted by a proponent for the rework:

Mercy Survey - Results

In it, we see that of the Mercy players taking the survey, 57.9% of them do not enjoy playing Mercy.

Furthermore, looking at the Mercy community again, we have over 80% who want drastic changes to Mercy, meaning either a revert or a rework.

But what about the larger playerbase? Well, even with the Mercy players isolated from everyone else, we still have 70% of the playerbase wanting a rework or a revert.

Perhaps, before you go around accusing those you disagree with of being a vocal minority… maybe check to verify that you aren’t the very minority you are pretending others are.

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Is “this person” referring to me?

I mean, in all honesty that’s how an argument goes, since it’s usually both ways…just saying.

To me, it sounded like you were trying to say that the people who agree with this post are the minority with very little proof aside from the fact that the “majority” of your minority says otherwise.

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I’ve had a pretty crumby week, and looking back at all my posts in this thread I am just going to delete them. I still stand by my original point of not painting an entire group with one broad brush but I lack the strength and character to properly articulate my argument in a way that will make sense, not offend the opposite party or remain civil.

My apologies if at any point my previous comments seemed anything other than respectful. I’m not making this response for pity, just hope that someone can understand that I am not in a good head space at the moment.

I love Mercy a whole lot, I’ve been playing her since beta, I am over level 2,000 and love her current state. I’m saying this in hopes that you understand that I came in this thread with the best intentions. From the past few responses you’ve made to myself and others, it appears to me that you’re in defensive mode and I apologize if at any point my previous comments put you in that state.

From here on out, I’m going to refrain from posting in any thread regarding Mercy since I do not have the patience nor mind to properly articulate what I want to say.

:sun_with_face:

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This is one of the best explanations that I’ve read as to why I feel current Mercy is superior in gameplay style over Mercy 1.0.

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No, it is not. Its my way of saying that you cant expect them to change everything at once when you want it, regardless if you like it or not.

Again, its not a way to tell you to shut up. Its a way of trying to get you to understand the situation blizzard has put you into.

Then you wouldnt know how the fixes and little buffs theyve given to mercy work, hell i know a lot of mercy mains and they say the new buff to mercy that was given recently, of valk being faster, and healing more was good. Even coming from a former mercy basically onetrick in GM, that if you think that mercy is a throw pick now, you are not a good mercy player. The new buffs to mercy do give her a lot more utility and usage.

The roadhog changes happened with patience and not begging constantly. Why wouldnt the mercy changes follow the same pattern, theyre looking to fix her slowly, like theyre doing.

But what youre doing is not helping anyone, not the mercy movement, not the rest of the forums, not your own statements, not blizzard. Youre just elongating the inevitable buffs to mercy by giving constant streams of hate and negativity and fixes and buffs that blizzard now has to consider and not do actual buffs to the hero because everyone just complains about the state of a hero theyre trying to slowly fix.

i got a good roadhog buff, it works, and its far better, and i am very happy because of it. I didnt stop advocating for it, but we stayed silent, because we have faith in blizzard more than just “they can make games”. They listened to our feedback and playtested buffs and came up with a good buff to roadhog.

Youre making a bigger mistake by complaining about it constantly and not giving blizzard the freedom of making the game the way they feel is balanced, because youre giving unreasonable buffs and reverts and changes that they would never put into the game. But have to now again, consider them because they actually care about the state of the game.

No, but what is spam is that there are tons and tons and tons. well, were tons and tons and tons of mercy threads that give no actual point to them, i dont complain about the actually good mercy threads, that give constructive criticism and actually good buffs/changes to mercy, but the ones that whine about every single thing about mercy without giving proper context or any real anwsers to the points they are making. By no means im saying your original post was spam, because it wasnt, nor are posts like “Why i have yet to despise mercy’s current state” which is a good thread, hence why i havent complained about it.

^refer to my previous text, i get you being angry, but some posts about mercy have been just anger filled “im going to only battlemercy” “im gonna throw” kind of posts, which i would say, are just spam, and terrible for the forums.

Again, i do not mind the mercy posts, as long as theyre kept civil, and formal.

I dont enter the troll mercy threads, or the battlemercy threads, or the anger and hate filled ones at all because i couldnt get a proper argument out of anyone there if i tried my hardest to, but threads like this where i can make an argument and get an actually well formatted argument back, i enjoy, i like seeing other peoples views on topics and i want to change my mind on certain topics if someone manages to prove me wrong.

Again, its not the fact of there being mercy threads, i have no issue with them. But the mercy threads that derail into hate speech, and ones that are there just to trigger people, coming from mercy lovers or haters. I dont like either, i dont like threads about mercy that are there just to complain about how mercy is good and every single mercy player should shut up.

Again, i am incredibly happy about mercy players who voice their opinion in a civil way, i love debating and i love talking with people about subjects like this, the ones id put in the “whiner” category are the ones that really do just scream “OMOGMNAIGMJREVETMERCYYYY;-;” and “ILLTHROW” Not posts like this with meaning and actual thought behind it.

There is a reason to, blizzard will listen to complaints and concerns, but theyre extremely slow with them, just look at the roadie buff, that took 1.5 years, but we still got it. Just hold on and the buffs will come.

I dont exactly remember my whole message i wrote, but i do believe i was more so going for “you havent given them a good reason to change mercy, in this thread” ive read the Why I Have Yet To Not Despise Mercy’s Current State, and i believe its a very well written post, far better than any posts ive made so far, and i respect it, quite a bit.

That is something i do agree on, since blizzard doesnt disclose their opinions on heroes personally, but always talks from the perspective of the game.

This i do understand, with the similarities again with roadhog (sorry about that by the way) of no communication between the devs and us.

Im still not quite good with how the forums work, and still think megathreads are just threads that are extremely popular. So correct me if im wrong, couldnt they be made by anyone?

But i believe theyre hating the constant nerfs and changes in it.

But we started to hate Hook 3.0 and 2.0, with the nerfs, even going to lenghts of making him from one of the most played heroes to one of the least.

This one i did honestly just overlook. I did read the initial post you gave a bit wrong and thought that you meant just overall people hating on an ability, and i apologize for that mistake.

I get that, but the thing here is, a lot of new mercy players do like the new mercy, and would hate for it to be reverted. Thats kind of what i was basing my arguments upon.

i will give you this one, i didnt do my research well enough and you have, this was a good reply and i thank you for correcting me

Oh yes mercy 2.x. While i do know it received more backlash, the thing that i was going for on my post was that they changed rez because it received so much hate, not that because they actually thought it was a decent change.

(quoting to this because id rather not quote to the huge wall of text)
What i mean with this was that it was one of the worst feelings in the game, to get a 6k with something ,and then have a mercy to fly in and rez everyone. it was in qp, arcade etc just something that would make people leave games, and in comp it could make them so tilted theyd underperform for the remainder of the match.
Im not saying that this is a reason to make mercy bad, but one of the reasons people complained about mercy.

Again to this, what i meant wasnt you need to hide and res to be good, but that a lot of mercys would, and could just hide and res which i did see from silver to diamond very often, in every rank. Again, im not saying its the correct mercy playing way, but its one that a lot of players used.

The thing is, a good mass rez was overpowered, if your team lost a 6v6 so its now a 2v6 with a zarya and a mercy alive, zarya bubbles, mercy resses.

But. By overpowered i dont mean in contrast to the entire game, but in contrast to the support category, that was just a shell of what it is now, since every other healer was outshined by res, and mercy, it made her overpower the rest of the healers.

I can understand this, wont probably comment more on it since its based on opinions, but i do understand what youre saying.

I feel like a lot of people would do the same, and do feel the same way as you do with this, and i do agree, i liked the new mercy when it first came out, but after nerfs upon nerfs upon nerfs i did notice i started playing her significantly less.

But in a way, that could be true. As i do agree hook 1.0 was incredibly broken, but it was incredibly fun too, but it was broken, and needed to be changed. But it was far more broken than mercys res was, so i do understand my post on it was over exaggerated.

To be fair, i do not know what i was going for in that, and i apologize for it.

same to this.

I would, in a way, to the point of still having fun on them constantly, but just a little less fun.

I do get this, and this isnt at all what i was going for, i was more so going for bastion going more playable in more comps.

Well this could mean she can get buffed back to being fun with valk, just in a different state. So most things about it are changed.

I was talking more so from the perspective of seeing tons of people who are “mass res or nothing” and speaking on that regard, but since youre not one of them, i do understand youd be able to take more changes from the original state of mercy to fit more the general fun factor of mercy.

^to my previous part of this text wall.

Again, you beat me with the research and i can only applaud you for it, as ive been led to believe that majority of people hated the old mercy and are okay with this one, outside the mercy community. But in this scenario, the best way to please the majority of the mercy playerbase if they only wanted valk, is to just buff around her valk, and make her main kit more viable.

To this, he cant be there for constant mercy threads, but all other threads aswell, but i do get where youre coming from.

But its not given that he is relaying the info, maybe hes the one to blame for the miscommunication of the dev team and the forums. just maybe.

Also jesus this took too long to write

Not really, since my first post was clearly sarcastic and i think you would understand that out of anyone since my post was a direct quote from you.

Meanwhile this whole argument confirms your sensitivity towards mockery even if theres no animosity within it.

The person you were quoting explicitly claimed to not understand how limited resources increase depth (as in complexity). As far as I am concerned that’s not the best way to start explaining anything, really.

I think it’s a bit late to respond to that post directly, but since you brought it up:

In pretty much every strategy game out there your resources are limited, so you constantly have to choose between available options to spend them on. If you were to enter a cheat to give you unlimited resources, you’d essentially be adding the option “all of the above” to each of these choices, and it’s pretty much always going to be the best option.
Isn’t it obvious how that will actually lower complexity instead of increasing it?

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It’s perfectly fine for you to like the current state of Mercy, and I apologize if you took what I was saying as me implying that your opinion does not matter.

Your opinion does matter, and there is nothing wrong with holding the opinion you have.

Have a good day.

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Oh no, a Mercy main made a reply trying to revert and make me look bad.
Keep like it, at least while you do that you don’t flood these forums with Mercy trash. Everyone wins.

Mercy is ok.

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You walked into that one. :joy: Jokes aside, let’s try to argue constructively. :slight_smile:

7 posts made in total. That’s considered flooding? :open_mouth:

I respect your opinion but will have to disagree. :blush:


𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓜𝓮𝓻𝓬𝔂 𝓘𝓬𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓶 𝓜𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽

:shaved_ice::chocolate_bar:

Spreading positivity and ice cream, one Mercy at a time.
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there is nothing to explain, mercy mains are never happy until they can be the dominant super healer that everyone else plays around.

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