Throw this thread into the Mercy Feedback Thread. Suspend me for “rocking the boat” on this discussion, lock and unlist this thread, do whatever you have to do. I am no longer concerned. To those who are like “There goes that evil #revertmercy fanatic, xavvypls again” and just want this crazy old “mercy one-trick” to get to the point, check out the TL;DR at the bottom (still kind of long for a TL;DR tbh, so I’m sorry about that. I tried!)
It’s just at this point I believe it needs to be said.
People who criticize Mercy Mains tend to say that “Mercy is fine,” while conveniently leaving out key details in why some Mercy mains still find her un-fun and unrewarding to play. I’d like to address these key details that are often not talked about when those same people make the argument that she’s “still sooooo rewarding to play and engaging.” Oh and yes, Fun is certainly subjective, so it means very little in context. I will be addressing the “rewarding and engaging part” that is seemingly thrown around without much insight to Mercy’s kit at her core.
Most of these critics conveniently leave out the following details to push the narrative:
-Her Ultimate. It’s widely known that her ultimate is the main source of discussion when talks about her nerfs being “too harsh” arise. Let’s not forget, even the pros who initially wanted Mercy removed from the game are also the ones who agreed that “Though Mercy is balanced, she was nerfed a little too much.” I believe part of this reason stems from her resurrection ability and Ultimate.
-A res on a 30 second cooldown is not rewarding. No matter how critics would like to argue, they can’t deny the fact that having one of the most powerful abilities in the game on a fixed cooldown not only gives players an artificial sense of accomplishment (verses building it in Ult form), but it also blurs the line between Low and high ranking Mercy mains who were punished for improper resurrections at incorrect timings. With a static cooldown, those mistakes are largely irrelevant with a hard reset on the ability every 30 seconds - no matter how well or badly you do. Overall the decision to have res on a cooldown was and is a bad sense of design, even from a mechanical standpoint.
-Her Ultimate healing ability having the res slow her down to a crawl, counteracting her own kit, is still one of the most contradictory parts of her playstyle. A playstyle that thrives on movement and strategy, positioning and placement. If in ultimate form her abilities are to be “supposedly improved”, it makes little sense that one of her own abilities cripples her more than helps her during the ult.
-Lack of improved healing impact on her healing during the Ult. With the exception of Ana and Symmetra, Every healer has an Ultimate that greatly boosts their team’s health pools. What Mercy is given is essentially three staffs and flight for her ultimate - nothing more, nothing less. She maintains the same healing, damage boosting, and speed in ultimate form. But hey, she has spectator mode, and of course, those lovely infinite bullets, because Much impact, very Ultimate. Magical Wow.
The same critics like to again make the point that “Mercy is exactly the same except better cuz she self heals 20% more (Along with just about every other healer in the game), she has guardian angel (which she had since day 1), faster self heal (was actually faster before, they nerfed it during the rework), and bunny hop!”
And sure I’ll accept the title of being the only Mercy main who has this view, but I believe that it’s going to take a lot more than a bunny hop to suddenly make Mercy “more fun to play”. Again, I could be wrong, but I believe that Mercy is not only unrewarding to play, but she’s been unrewarding to play ever since her Ultimate was put as an E move, reworked into a S-tier goddess for 5 months (that largely no one wanted), and nerfed into oblivion.
She was always a defensive hero in my eyes, but was forced into being an initiator like Lucio, Brigitte, Ana and Zen, while forgetting that unlike those four who can use their Ults both offensively to initiate fights (especially Ana and Brigitte), and (Lucio and Zen specifically) defensively to end them, Mercy doesn’t have that luxury due to her lack of any kind of spike healing or damage boosting as her counterparts. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
“This was a huge success.”
For all intended purposes, just about every other hero has ultimates that fit their character. It means something when they’re used and they feel powerful on the field, making the enemy think twice and changing the tide of the outcome. I’d argue that even “almost useless ults” like Widow and Orisa not only play a huge role in their specific purpose, but do them a lot better than Valk does with Mercy, but that’s a totally different discussion.
I don’t think Mercy has any of that currently, and it shows, when her ultimate goes up against any of the others, and paling in comparison by a large margin in trying to counter team-wiping ults like Death Blossom, D.Va bomb, Tactical Visor, and the like (team wiping ults that a defensive healer, and yes Mercy is a defensive healer, are supposed to be able to counter). Her Ult simply has you sitting there, watching as your team gets destroyed. And there’s nothing you can do about it, except be happy that you “initiated” the fight. Valkyrie is not an Ult for Mercy. Valkyrie was a mistake. It puts Mercy in a weird “Jack-Of-All-Heals-Saver-Of-None” Limbo. A shell of her former glory when Mass resurrections, and resurrections in general had more of a purpose other than desperately trying to put more bodies on the map to make up for your team getting hopelessly steam rolled on the second control point.
Everyone is of course entitled to their opinion. As for mine, no. I don’t think Mercy is suddenly “fun to play”. I don’t think Mercy is “So rewarding and the best iteration ever” and I most certainly don’t find her “engaging and impactful”. I believe it’s time for her to achieve True Fair and Fun balance again. We’ve tried the rework for 5 months, and it’s largely been a failure. In my opinion, It’s time to go back to what was never broken in the first place, and tweak her from there. It’s time for a Revert.
TL;DR - In my opinion, Mercy’s kit is not a problem of being “weak or useless,” its about her being unrewarding and un-engaging. This is due to a contradicting res slowing her Ult to a crawl, forced to be an initiator rather than the defensive hero her kit is designed to be, and having a contradictory Ult that pales in comparison to stopping team wipes to most of the healing cast - effectively making her a “Jack-Of-All-Heals-Saver-Of-None”. No matter how “fine” critics say she is, they conveniently forget that she was originally designed to be this high-mobility defensive healer to stop plays like Lucio or Zen. Now, her kit goes against all of that, and forces her to be more like a Ana or Brigitte to start fights, without having the tools to properly do so effectively.
~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls 