The Anger Around the PTR Mercy Buffs Explained

[BattleMercy-1705]

there is nothing to explain, mercy mains are never happy until they can be the dominant super healer that everyone else plays around.

All of these are built upon a position of ignorance.

Atleast read the explanation!

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𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓜𝓮𝓻𝓬𝔂 𝓘𝓬𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓶 𝓜𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽

Spreading positivity and ice cream, one Mercy at a time.

[Titanium-1686]

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

I should be able to expect them to listen to the most heavily-discussed concerns in regards to Overwatch.

They’ve had 14 months to address it in some way. They have failed to do so.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Considering that I’ve been in this fight for a year now, I think I know the situation Blizzard has put me in a little too well.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Except the version of Mercy that got me to stop playing in the first place had everything the current Mercy has and more.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that if I don’t like X, and X proceeds to get worse and worse, I still wouldn’t like X.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

Even coming from a former mercy basically onetrick in GM,

Are we going to play the credibility game?

@Titanium-1686

If we’re going to play the credibility game, I’m sitting pretty over here with my 470 hours total of Mercy playtime, roughly 50 of which were on the PTR.

Of those 470 hours, approximately 100 of them were spent playing high-Master/GM games in Competitive play, spread out across three consecutive seasons in GM (two seasons before the rework and one season after the rework) before I went inactive.

If you’re going to preface your post with an attempt to look credible because of X amount of experience, expect to get one-upped.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

that if you think that mercy is a throw pick now, you are not a good mercy player.

This is irrelevant, but I’ll bite anyway.

You’re wrong. A glance at the statistics will tell you that.

Mercy this past month has a 1% pickrate in GM. When Ana had a 2% pickrate in GM during the Mercy meta, she was deemed a troll-pick.

And looking at those same GM pickrates after the patch (of which we have two days of data… we see a little spike to 1.8% on the first day, which then immediately falls back down to 1% the next day.

This buff did pretty much nothing. The stats we see immediately after a change to a hero is, without exception, an exaggeration of what that change actually does. Normally, it takes a week or two to get an accurate read on what the change did in regards to balance.

And… that exaggeration is showing us that the buff did basically nothing to help Mercy in the tiers where viability matters the most.

Simply put, the statistics disagree with you. Any Mercy player, Bronze-tier or GM, can see that.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

The new buffs to mercy do give her a lot more utility and usage.

Hardly.

We went from Valkyrie being an underwhelming ultimate, to Valkyrie being an even more underwhelming ultimate, to Valkyrie being an underwhelming ultimate.

Nothing changed. There’s nothing new to explore, unless you plan on going Battle Mercy… in which case, why are you on Mercy?

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

The roadhog changes happened with patience and not begging constantly.

And you have expressed your disappointment in them.

Come on; you’re literally giving reasons to not do what you are telling me to do.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

Why wouldnt the mercy changes follow the same pattern, theyre looking to fix her slowly, like theyre doing.

Because “fixing her slowly” fails to address our concerns entirely.

They’re not going to make the current build of Mercy fun without some fundamental changes to how Resurrect and Valkyrie work. A few number changes won’t do anything in that regard.

Mercy 2.x wasn’t fun when she was absurdly overpowered; what makes you think that a properly balanced version of 2.x would be any better?

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

But what youre doing is not helping anyone, not the mercy movement, not the rest of the forums, not your own statements, not blizzard.

You’re wrong.

The worst possible thing I could do right now is to sit down and be quiet. Because as soon as we stop complaining, Blizzard will think they’ve gotten things right.

Therefore, we will not stop complaining until Blizzard has gotten things right.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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

You need to read the OP.

You’d see why you’re only defeating your own points here.

We don’t want buffs. We want a rework.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

because everyone just complains about the state of a hero theyre trying to slowly fix.

Except it is impossible to fix Mercy slowly.

So by “slowly trying to fix” her, they are doing nothing to fix her.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

I didnt stop advocating for it, but we stayed silent,

These two clauses contradict each other.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

because we have faith in blizzard

Oh, that’s nice.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

They listened to our feedback and playtested buffs and came up with a good buff to roadhog.

Hold on.

In your previous reply, you literally said:

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

We gave up on roadhog after only halfway through 2017 when he got nerfed, and only one and a half years later, we got some sympathy from the ow team, and what did we get? we got spread randomization reduction.
Not spread reduction
Not more damage
But spread randomization reduction.
we wanted old hog bag, we wanted the oneshot ability with lower shooting rate back. but no, we got something that barely covers it, hell mercy is getting a far better buff in the same patch than roadhog, whose had diminishing pickrates ever since the nerfs on him.

So…

You gave up on Roadhog in 2017 but you kept advocating for him, but you were silent at the same time…

You complain about the Roadhog’s buff, saying it’s not what you wanted, saying it is worse than Mercy’s buff, calling it something that “barely covers it”… And then you turn around and say that it’s a good buff, it works, it’s far better, and you are very happy with it…

It’s pretty obvious that you’re just grasping at straws when you take one side and then take the polar opposite side in your next reply.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

Youre making a bigger mistake by complaining about it constantly and not giving blizzard the freedom

Sorry, what?

Me voicing my feedback in no way impedes Blizzard from making decisions or making progress. I don’t have that kind of power.

What you said makes no sense whatsoever.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

of making the game the way they feel is balanced,

“Making the game the way they feel is balanced”, caused 10 months of Mercy meta, I might remind you. That alone would be enough of a reason to realize that maybe they need someone to hold their hand.

I’m not inclined to sit by and say nothing while the balance team destroys the game.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Wow. There are so many things wrong with these statements.

First, there’s the problem that you yourself, as far as I can tell as of the time I am typing this out, likely have no idea what our suggestions actually are, but you’re dismissing them anyway because… I don’t know. The only reason I could think of is the same reason you very subtly hinted at in your previous post:

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

This. Isnt. Your. Game.

This is blizzards game, they dont want mass rez, and they dont want mercy to be a must pick? they can do that. You can change heroes or change games. its getting annoying to everyone else but the dev team on the forums because were tired of all the threads, derailings from other threads just to get attention to mercy.

Hint: “Shut Up”.

For someone who supposedly is so tired of seeing our threads, you really don’t seem to know much about them… Hell, you’ve even brought up balance, which you would know to be irrelevant to the topic had you read the OP:

@Titanium-1686

Our concerns are based around something detached from balance; Mercy isn’t fun to play in her current state.

Second, this assertion depends upon the assumption that developers are actually reading the feedback in the first place, and considering that #1 complaint about Mercy in just about every feedback medium they have has been overlooked for a year, I’m pretty confident that they are not reading the feedback.

If they can’t be bothered to even acknowledge the existence of our concerns, I don’t think they can be bothered to read the proposals based upon those concerns.

If we were to ignore the two above problems and pretend that both you and the developers read some of the proposals, we would have another problem with those statements:

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

If the proposed changes (which to my knowledge, have yet to take the form of a flat buff if based upon the concerns described in the OP) truly were unreasonable, then there wouldn’t be any need to consider it. If they see a suggestion that is blatantly overpowered, then they discard it, and there is nothing more to discuss. There’s not much deliberation going into ideas that don’t work.

Well, maybe that’s not true. We had Mercy’s rework, after all.

My point is that this isn’t rocket science. According to what you are saying, the developers think it is.

They don’t need to scour the forums and find every little idea and deeply consider it. They can just find a few popular ones and play with them for a bit, until they decide upon what they will do.

Sitting on their hands because “the rework was a success” isn’t going to get us there.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Except, those threads also are not spam. They might not be as well thought-out, maybe far from perfectly-articulated, maybe just created from raw emotion, but but it’s all legitimate feedback on Mercy nonetheless.

When you see threads that are carbon copies of each other; that is spam.\

When you see threads that do nothing but cast hate on another person or group; that is spam.

When you see multiple threads on the same topic made in a very short period of time by the same person, that add no value to each other or the discussion being held; that is spam.

When you see multiple unique threads on the same topic, all from different people, but all expressing the same sentiments; that is not spam. That is feedback proportional to the dissatisfaction.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Again.

Buffs aren’t what we want.

The buffs might come… but we won’t be satisfied. Why?

@Titanium-1686

Mercy isn’t fun to play in her current state. She hasn’t been fun to play for a very long time

We want another rework. Why bother trying to balance Mercy 2.x (which has taken over a year thus far and still hasn’t been achieved) when the complaints won’t subside until we have another rework?

You don’t apply the sandpaper and wood finish before you reach for the saw.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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”

Because that’s not the purpose of this thread. It’s not meant to be the comprehensive guide to our concerns and proposals to address those concerns; its purpose is, as I said in reply to someone else:

@Titanium-1686

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:

@Titanium-1686

“Mercy mains are ungrateful.”
“Mercy mains are entitled.”
“Mercy mains just want attention.”
“Mercy mains just want Mercy to be overpowered.”
“Mercy mains will never be happy.”

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.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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?

Technically… Yes.

Realistically? At least, not in the context I was referring to when I brought up the 12 megathreads.

Those 12 megathreads were not created by forumers. They were created by moderators, who then enforced the megathreads. How did they enforce them, you might ask? Well, on the old forums, this constituted of locking Mercy threads that were not within the megathread (meaning that no one else is able to reply to them), and leaving a copy/pasted message that may or may not vary from day to day:

“Hi all! I’m locking this thread to keep the front page tidy but feel free to add your Mercy thoughts to this thread: [insert link to megathread here]”

Example: Overwatch Forums

On the new forums, it constituted of of locking Mercy threads and sending the OP along with all of its replies to the megathread.

Example: Mercy’s Resurrect could’ve been the Reverse McCree Deadeye - #2

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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

But they are happy with it now, are they not?

Hence the fact that they are defending it, trying to ward off those changes to it?

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

But we started to hate Hook 3.0 and 2.0,

But you weren’t talking about 2.0 or 3.0, were you?

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Well then it’s a good thing that a lot of us are advocating for a rework, isn’t it?

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

First, if Mercy is alive to use Resurrect, it wasn’t a “6k”. Even quintuple kills that were countered by Resurrect were super rare. Out of 394 hours of Mercy 1.x (yes, I counted that precisely before playing Mercy 2.x), I had a grand total of 8 five-man Resurrections. That’s counting all gamemodes.

Second, do you know what else sucks?

Getting wiped because the enemy team pressed Q a bunch of times. Resurrect is no different, but only in reverse.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Just like getting wiped because the enemy team pressed Q a few times.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

In which case, no action was needed to remove that playstyle, other than removing the SR exploit that led to its emergence in the first place. As it was a bad strategy, it would have faded out rather quickly when the exploit artificially propping it up disappeared.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

Except Mercy literally had the lowest pickrate out of every support in GM.

Dive, featuring Lucio and… not Mercy, but Zenyatta, was the meta. Hell, Ana had a higher pickrate than Mercy in the top 3rd of players during the Dive Meta.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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

Why?

When buffing a hero, there is no reason that how fun that hero is to play cannot be maintained and expanded upon; buffing a hero means making them better at what they are supposed to be good at, or adding more things to their kit. In that context, there should not be a compromise of any amount of fun. The developers have done something wrong if there is.

@LFBoyfriendǃ-2185

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.

That isn’t possible without fundamental changes to Valkyrie. Buffing Valkyrie up to 80 healing/second wouldn’t make it any more exciting.

[Loba-11371]

I am a Mercy Main and Im happy with this buff, it doesn’t make her a must pick but it brings her back to a more viable state with an appropriate time for her Niche!

[Titanium-1686]

Not really, since my first post was clearly sarcastic

You and I have very different definitions of clear.

No, it was not at all clear that your post was sarcastic. If you wanted that sarcasm to be detected, maybe you should have given your post a different spin on it than those that are not being sarcastic.

Some examples of other posts that were not sarcastic:

there is nothing to explain, mercy mains are never happy until they can be the dominant super healer that everyone else plays around.

Entitled. I have said it.
+Acting like you have the moral high ground

As you can see, your post isn’t distinguishable from the other ones that repeat the insults addressed in the OP. Perhaps you should add something to it next time that makes it clear.

You could have added “/s”.

[RelaxUrself-11536]

whelp i apologize, i figured anyone who’ve read the original post would see the sarcasm behind my post and i shouldn’t have expected anyone on these forums to know about the /thread meme.

Besides that, once again honestly your the last person i would expect to not understand the sarcasm since it was centered on a quote from you.

[SleepyAsheu-1365]

Very nicely stated.

[LFBoyfriendǃ-2185]

I would highly like to reply back to your post with the knowledge i do have, but im trying to give up intense arguing on the forums for now atleast, good luck on your way to trying to get mercy back to being fun for you people!

[AG3-11710]

I like the way to call me out, very classy.

[Titanium-1686]

I like the way to call me out, very classy.

If you don’t like being called out, don’t put yourself in a position to get called out.

That is the response I’m giving, assuming your post was sarcastic.

[AG3-11710]

It was not sarcastic. I meant it and I still mean it.

[Titanium-1686]

Ok… Then I’m not sure how to reply to that comment, because I’m not sure what your intention is posting is.

[AG3-11710]

Because this is entitlement.

[OneLyf1Trick-2867]

… Which is disregarding how much Mercy players want it back …

[Titanium-1686]

Because this is entitlement.

I know that a lot of those cases stem from willful ignorance

You walked into that one again.

[AG3-11710]

I do not have such ignorance. I say the willful ignorance falls on the other side, actually.

[Titanium-1686]

I do not have such ignorance.

Then please explain to me how you might have come to your conclusion.

[AG3-11710]

Valk is not a horrible ult, and

Mercy isn’t fun to play in her current state

Subjective arguments are weak arguments.

She hasn’t been fun to play for a very long time, and this includes the period during which she had a healing rate of 60 health/second in Valkyrie.

Because it’s Valk.

Again, the overpowered versions of Mercy 2.x were unsatisfactory to us

Whoever “us” is

It’s simply impractical to attempt to balance the current build of Mercy when you’re going to need to apply drastic changes to Mercy later anyway due to missing the problem entirely…

You don’t need drastic changes to Mercy. Very simply, have other minor buffs and she would be good.

We need an overhaul.

Don’t agree.

It shows that once again, despite over a year of voicing our concerns, 12 megathreads, countless decentralized threads and posts, and thousands of complaints from Youtubers and Streamers, that the developers are utterly oblivious to the primary concerns driving this discontent in the first place. If not that, then it shows how crippled they are by sunk cost fallacy.

It is because many of the complainers have ideas that are radical (i.e reverting Mercy), and that the developers do not care about doing such. Oh yeah, the Youtubers. They are unlikable to say the least. The devs aren’t oblivious to your “concerns”, they don’t care, and they shouldn’t care unless way more people, and not just a loud minority want changes to Mercy.

and we are over a year into this mistake of a rework.

This rework is not a mistake you call it a mistake because you dislike it. The rework was needed, and if you ask me, I’m fine with it. This argument, like the argument about fun, is subjective, very subjective.

And the developers don’t have apathy. Heard of “forum Brigitte?” They can ignore all they want. This isn’t our game, it’s Blizzard’s, and even if it was our game, I still don’t think a revert would happen.

[Titanium-1686]

@AG3-11710

Valk is not a horrible ult, and

Hold this:

@Titanium-1686

Why is this thing still an ultimate ability?

Functionality:

Valkyrie is a disgusting… pile? I’m trying to think of a good word to describe it…

Looks up synonyms for “pile”

“Conglomeration”.

Valkyrie is a disgusting conglomerate of existing abilities that were all thrown into a single ability with seemingly no regard for cohesion or player experience. There’s nothing original in Valkyrie.

Flight? Pharah has that.
Mediocre AoE healing? Hello, Moira, Lucio, and Ana.
AoE damage amplifier? Orisa.

As a result of trying to put all of these into one ability, the developers also made every ultimate that Valkyrie contends with (or tries to, anyway) simply outclass it. The ability can be summarized by “Jack of all trades, remotely sufficient in none”.

Valkyrie poses the opposite problem that Resurrect does. Rather than an ultimate placed behind a basic ability, Valkyrie is a basic ability placed behind an ultimate.

Let’s list what Valkyrie currently offers:

• Allows Mercy to fly in any direction at 9 meters/second. (5.5 is base walking speed for most heroes).
• Extends the range of Mercy’s beams from 15 meters to 30 meters.
• Extends the range of Guardian Angel from 30 meters to 50 meters.
• Mercy’s passive regeneration is no longer interrupted by damage.
• Mercy’s beams spread to all allies within 10 meters of the primary target.
• Guardian Angel’s flight speed is increased.
• Mercy’s pistol has infinite ammunition and a faster projectile speed.

If we were to cut this list down to the parts that actually have a direct influence on the fight, we would get:

• Mercy’s beams spread to all allies within 10 meters of the primary target.
• Mercy’s pistol has infinite ammunition and a faster projectile speed.

That’s it. Everything else either has no realistic use, or it just makes Mercy harder to kill… which doesn’t really matter being that she removes herself from the fight while using Valkyrie anyway.

Let’s throw these capabilities up against the ultimate abilities that are most comparable to Valkyrie: Transcendence and Supercharger.

Transcendence is very similar to the healing aspect of Valkyrie in several ways. Both heroes gain additional mobility upon activation. They both heal all five allies in a 10 meter radius around Zenyatta/the primary beam target. They both become (effectively) unkillable while using their respective ultimates. They are both unable to impact the fight in any way other than healing while healing their team with their ultimates; Zenyatta is a channeled ultimate, and Mercy is unable to heal and shoot at the same time.

What’s the difference between Transcendence and Valkyrie? Transcendence has five times the healing output (soon to be six!). Transcendence heals for 300 health/second on every target. Valkyrie heals for 60 health/second on every target. Valkyrie’s healing rate is simply blown out of the water by Transcendence.

Unfortunately, we do not have statistics that tell us exactly how much healing Mercy is doing through Valkyrie, but we do know that Mercy’s overall healing output really isn’t much higher than it was pre-rework. As of the day I am typing this (August 7th), Mercy’s average healing output is 12085. Her pre-rework healing numbers were around 11900. If we were to just assume that Valkyrie’s introduction is the only thing responsible for the current statistic, we would only be able to say that Valkyrie provides a bonus 200 healing/game on average. In contrast, Zenyatta averages 2259 Transcendence healing/game.

Supercharger is one of three ultimates that increase a player’s damage output, the other ones being Valkyrie and Nano-Boost. Its visuals are similar to the visuals of Valkyrie’s damage amplification beam, and both ultimates amplify the damage of all allies in an area around the Supercharger/primary beam target.

The similarities stop there, and just about every difference between the two abilities favors Supercharger over Valkyrie. For starters, Supercharger has fire-and-forget mechanics. Orisa can deploy it and resume playing as usual, as she does not need to channel the damage beams for them to be active. In contrast, Mercy becomes the supercharger, effectively removing the team’s main healer from the fight while she channels her damage beams. Furthermore, not only does Orisa get to participate in the fight while her ultimate is active, but she also receives the damage benefits from her own damage amplification. Valkyrie is five players and one buff dispenser; Supercharger is six players and one buff dispenser.

As if another source of damage was not enough for Supercharger to outclass Valkyrie’s damage amplifier, Supercharger also increases the damage of all affected targets by 50%, instead of Valkyrie’s 30%. On top of this, it also has a substantially larger AoE radius than Valkyrie; 25 meters. The one downside Supercharger has in comparison to Valkyrie is that it needs to be protected, but considering the rest of Orisa’s kit, that isn’t terribly difficult. She has her barrier to cover it and her hitbox is a good size to body-block enemies from attacking the drum, especially with Fortify to help her do so. The only good options there are to destroy the Supercharger are to flank or to get in close… neither of which are great ideas when the entire enemy team is dealing 150% of their normal damage output.

So… Valkyrie is totally outclassed in both the healing and damage amplification categories by other ultimates. Not only does the ability not have anything unique to its name, but it is simply worse in every category than its ultimate counterparts.

Valkyrie is really just a basic ability. Compare its impact to that of other supports’ basic abilities and that becomes clear:

• Amp It Up (healing aura): 46.8 health/second to all allies within 10 meters of Lucio. Lucio can shoot while this ability is active.
• Biotic Grenade: An instant 100 health when used on allies, along with a lingering healing amplification. When used on enemies, it deals 60 damage and leaves a lingering status effect that negates all healing received by those affected. Fire-and-forget mechanics. 4 meter blast radius.
• Orb of Discord: Increases the damage received by one enemy target by 30%. Fire-and-forget mechanics, allowing Zenyatta to both deal damage and heal while his Discord Orb is active. (Virtually) Endless duration and can be retargeted at will when provided line of sight and a 30 meter proximity. 3-second decay time when target leaves range and/or vision.

Give Valkyrie a 3 second duration and slap a 12 second cooldown on it (beginning after the duration ends), and you have a nice basic ability.

But that’s not what the developers wanted. Instead, for reasons never provided, they wanted to take the pile of dung that they scrapped in the alpha stages of the game (citation ) and slap it into the game as Mercy’s ultimate. How did they do this?

They extended its duration 20 seconds.

Of course, probably seeing that the ability was still flaming garbage, they decided to add a few other bonuses to it. They added a bunch of buffs to Mercy’s pistol (most of which were removed before going live), and they added the potential to get four uses of Resurrect out of Valkyrie (rez, valk, rez, wait, rez, wait, rez). This time they were successful in making Valkyrie worthy of being an ultimate, because they added an ultimate (Resurrect) to a basic ability (Valkyrie). A basic ability in addition to an ultimate nets an ultimate ability.

Now the developers had a different problem. Mercy had two ultimates: Resurrect and Valkyrie… Or to be more direct about it, Resurrect and then more Resurrect. As you probably already know, Valkyrie was nerfed repeatedly. Resurrect was slowly withdrawn from the sack of garbage that was sacked and then unsacked, eventually rendering the sack of garbage to be a sack of nothing but garbage.

When Resurrect was pulled out Valkyrie, so was the ultimate in Valkyrie. Now we’re just left with a basic ability that lasts fifteen seconds on Q, while Mercy’s real ultimate is on her E.

Configuration: Spectator:

Consider the risk and reward for playing at different proximities from the fight for most heroes. Generally, the closer a hero is to the fight, the more impact they have; targets are bigger, and more enemies are visible. Projectile speed, spread, damage falloff, and limited range on abilities become less of an issue as a hero gets closer to the fight. The closer a hero is to the fight, the more they have to shoot at/heal/protect. By the same token, being closer to the fight also means greater risk, as the player becomes a bigger target for the enemy.

With the exception of a few specific heroes (Widowmaker) the risk and reward scale at about the same rate with proximity to the fight.

And then there’s Valkyrie.

The risk still scales with Mercy’s proximity to the fight while using Valkyrie; the closer Mercy is to the fight, the bigger of a target she is.

The reward does not scale with Mercy’s proximity to the fight while in Valkyrie; her team is receiving the same 60 (or 50, whatever) health/second regardless as to how close Mercy is.

As Mercy gets closer to her team while in Valkyrie, the risk increases. The reward is flatlined. This then prompts the question: Why would any Mercy with even the slightest hint of common sense want to be anywhere near the fight?

Trick question. They wouldn’t. The reason to get in close in the first place is to maximize reward. If that reward vanishes and the heightened risk stays, then the obvious choice is to minimize that risk by staying as far away as possible.

On top of this, Mercy has free flight with an omnidirectional movement speed of 9 meters/second and a 30 meter beam range. Not only does the Mercy have the incentive to be as far from the fight as possible, but they also have the tools to do so with ease.

The result? The best way to play Mercy while using Valkyrie is to hide in the skybox for fifteen seconds while sitting 29 meters from the beam target. This poses very little risk and sacrifices no reward.

This would be fine if Mercy had something to do while floating halfway across the map from the fight, but Valkyrie more than takes care of that. All of the skills and nuances of Mercy’s base kit that keep the player active and engaged? Yeah, those are thrown out the window.

• Healing prioritization? AoE beams remove the need for that.
• Damage boost utilization? AoE beams also negate the need for that.
• Positioning? There aren’t really any threats to evade in the skybox, and you are already in the best position you are going to be in for the duration of the ability.
• GA discipline? You’re still in the skybox and you have free flight, remember?
• Awareness? There isn’t much of a need to pay close attention to the fight. It’s not like you would get any real benefit from doing so. Skybox and AoE beams are still a thing.

Consequently, Valkyrie treats the Mercy less like a player, and more like a game object; like a construct. It doesn’t give the player anything to do. Instead, it does everything for the player.

Are you 29 meters from the fight and holding down LMB/RMB? Congratulations! You have reached maximum capacity. That is all you will be doing for the next 14 seconds.

Naturally, an ultimate that is a borderline AFK button doesn’t feel good to use. Whereas most ultimates offer a unique change in playstyle that still demands player activity (Dragonblade, Tactical Visor), offer a brief burst of power (Earthshatter, Rocket Barrage), or leave the hero’s playstyle unchanged (Supercharger, Photon Barrier), Valkyrie transforms the player into a glorified spectator that applies flat bonuses to their team. From the player’s perspective, they aren’t helping their team; they are idle. Instead, Valkyrie is doing all of the work.

And this is a failure in game design. The player and their character’s kit are not merging as one. The player can’t take ownership for the ability and say that they helped their team; they didn’t put any effort into doing it. It was just given to them.

Participation awards and idle-execution abilities isolate the player from their character. It changes the perception from “I did this” to “This was given to me”. The player doesn’t take ownership for the actions that were supposedly theirs, and thus, they don’t feel heroic. Instead, they feel like a sidekick or a tool used to let others take the glory.

It gets worse. Not only is Valkyrie a glorified spectator with an absurdly low skill ceiling, but it isn’t powerful enough to contest other ultimates or even basic focus fire. Valkyrie may have the potential to heal at a combined rate of 300 health/second, but that healing rate is spread out evenly across 5 allies… all of whom either don’t really need it, or need more than 60 health/second to survive. As a result, most of that healing isn’t helpful, resulting in Valkyrie having a nearly identical effect on the fight as a Mercy playing at high capacity without Valkyrie. Hence the “easy-mode” stigma on the ability.

Because of Valkyrie’s inability to sustain a team, not only does the Mercy player feel idle, but they also feel utterly helpless as they watch their team get mowed down/blown up/frozen/knocked down/cut apart.

And this is the biggest problem with Valkyrie. No hero, no ability, no ultimate, should ever leave the player feeling helpless or useless. That is perhaps the worst thing that could ever happen to a playable character, and doesn’t scream anything other than developer incompetence. It contradicts the very point of active videogames in the first place: To empower the player.

Although I guess I should commend Valkyrie for what it is good at. Despite its shortcomings in impact, player engagement, and skill limitations, it is perhaps the most flexible ability in the game. No other ability in the game offers all of these options midfight:

• Showing the world how much you like the color blue by leaving a weight on Mercy’s alternate fire the entire time.
• If you are a strange person, showing the world how much you like the color yellow by leaving a weight on Mercy’s primary fire the entire time.
• Casually shooting down the enemy Pharah.
• Inspecting the ceiling textures.
• Fetching a drink from the refrigerator.
• Drinking some of that drink you pulled out of the refrigerator.
• Checking your social media (or the Overwatch Forums!).
• Petting your cat.
• Petting your dog.
• Feeding your pet fish.
• Using a laser pointer to drive your cat nuts.
• Working on homework.
• Eating a sandwich.
• Looking up cat gifs.
• Reading this entire list.
• And my personal favorite: Using Valkyrie to fly back to the fight after respawning.

You’re right; it’s not a horrible ultimate. It being a horrible ultimate requires that it can be classified as an ultimate in the first place. It still sits at basic-ability status.

@AG3-11710

Subjective arguments are weak arguments.

And yet they were literally the only arguments given for the rework in the first place.

@AG3-11710

Whoever “us” is

The people complaining on the forums.

Or did you miss that abvious implication in the title?

@AG3-11710

You don’t need drastic changes to Mercy.

To fix the contradictions plaguing her kit, the only possible changes are drastic ones.

@AG3-11710

Very simply, have other minor buffs and she would be good.

In regards to balance.

But was balance ever a reason for the rework in the first place?

I see a double-standard here.

@AG3-11710

It is because many of the complainers have ideas that are radical (i.e reverting Mercy), and that the developers do not care about doing such. Oh yeah, the Youtubers. They are unlikable to say the least. The devs aren’t oblivious to your “concerns”, they don’t care, and they shouldn’t care unless way more people, and not just a loud minority want changes to Mercy.

Oh look, it’s the “I don’t actually have any support for my assertions so I’m going to call them a vocal minority” argument.

Sorry, but that argument has already been blown out of the water.

@Titanium-1686

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.

@AG3-11710

This rework is not a mistake you call it a mistake because you dislike it.

Anyone with even the slightest amount of objectivity in their perspective can see that a rework that took a balanced hero and made them unbalanced for over a year, whether underpowered or overpowered, is a failure from that standpoint alone.

Do you want me to list off all of the other failures and contradictions within the rework? I have a quote ready to go, if you want it.

@AG3-11710

The rework was needed, and if you ask me, I’m fine with it. This argument, like the argument about fun, is subjective, very subjective.

On what grounds was Mercy reworked in the first place?

If subjective arguments based upon the objective playstyle of the hero are not valid arguments, then the rework, which was born from subjective arguments based upon the… less-than-objective playstyle of the hero, never would have happened.

@AG3-11710

And the developers don’t have apathy. Heard of “forum Brigitte?”

You might notice that they’ve been caving to that movement bit by bit. Check the PTR patch notes; there’s another Brigitte nerf in there.

@AG3-11710

This isn’t our game, it’s Blizzard’s,

And who did Blizzard make the game for?

@AG3-11710

and even if it was our game, I still don’t think a revert would happen.

The numbers suggest otherwise.

[AG3-11710]

The arguments for the rework had substance
Valk is an ultimate, no whining needed
The forums people are a loud minority with terrible ideas a lot of the time

But was balance ever a reason for the rework in the first place?

Obviously

I see a double-standard here.

I see that a lot too.

Sorry, but that argument has already been blown out of the water.

Since when

And finally, I need to quit the forums because of Mercy.

And who did Blizzard make the game for?

Not you in mind, that’s what.

[BattleMercy-1705]

Obviously

On the contrary, her rework was never due to balance concerns… Heck, she became even more unbalanced after her rework.

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Spreading positivity and ice cream, one Mercy at a time.