The Brutal Truth: Old Mercy Was OP

I found that old clip of back when Mercy not only had “mass rez”, BUT could also do it through surfaces and walls. That? That right there is bad hero design. Especially for something that is supposed to be viewed upon as a “competitive” game. There wasn’t anything remotely skill oriented, or competitive about that crap. Inb4: “But, it took situation awareness!” No. It didn’t. It took Mercy hiding somewhere, and then resurrecting people.

Now look… I know I no longer play this game anymore (quit a few days ago), and I know the devs have a long string of absolutely horrible balance decisions. In fact, I drag the devs through the mud regularly over their atrocious balancing cough Reaper and McRight-Click cough. But dude, no. Mass Resurrection should NEVER see the light of day again in not just Overwatch, but any game. Period. Whether it’s trying to be taken seriously as a “skill-oriented” and “competitive” game or not.

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As someone who played old Mercy and is glad it’s gone.
It wasn’t OP, It was just stupid.

I agree with its removal, it was stupid and unhealthy for the game.
The only good thing about it was the feeling you felt when you pulled of a huge rez. For others, it was either:

  • Best case scenario: Winning the fight after your enemies wasted their ultimates without actually killing you first
  • Worst case scenario: Losing the fight and only feeding the enemies more ult charge.
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Mercy mains are furiously typing

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I’m so glad mass resurrection is replaced with Valkyrie and people learned to adapt with the ultimate.

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Mass Rez was a terrible unhealthy mechanic indeed. Mercy currently is balanced and viable.

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Many haven’t…unfortunately…and some have refused to play the game again until mass rez is restored

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Was it overpowered or bad game design? You say overpowered in the title, but everything else suggests you have a different reason for it.

Overpowered: Nobody believes this. Mercy used to be able to get revive every 20 seconds (one of the lowest ultimate charges required in the game), could revive 5 people up to 30 meters away in spawn and still wasn’t picked more than her competition (Lucio) in beta. You would think her old kit was perfect for a tank meta because she could sustain fights for ever this way; except she had a below 1% pickrate when Ana tank meta was a thing.

Bad game design: The players were making use of an SR exploit. Hiding and reviving was not a winning strategy. Everybody knows it wasn’t. Why do you care about people using a losing strategy?

Edit* I see you specifically skipped over my reply! Here’s more breakdown of your post

There is nothing skill orientated about most ultimates in this game. I suspect you don’t care of course. Ultimates are designed to have insane impact with little input.

This is very vague! What makes something competitive? Is an actual aimbot competitive? Is actual wallhacks competitive? Are instant executions competitive? Is an anti-heal competitive? No! Why? Because I said they aren’t.

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Factually, many of us do see Mass Rez as overpowered, and have said so explicitly in posts scattered over many Mercy-related threads

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It was bad game design, because you, as one of the stronger supports in the game at that time, were forced to hide and actually not support your team during teamfights, just so enemies waste their ultimates.

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You need to qualify that by some metric. What makes it overpowered?

If it was so blatantly overpowered, why was she never used in the most competitive of environments?

Since I know you’re going to twist my words I’ll edit this in; why was she only used on KOH on Pharah compatible maps?

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Lmao. I’m just saying tho’. I was going through my YouTube of old clips, and when posting in the Symmetra thread about why she doesn’t need lock-on restored, I came across that video. And instantly, I was hit with a tsunami of flashbacks of “Hide n’ Rez” Mercy players. Arcade, competitive, and quick-play. They were everywhere.

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Then the solution is to give Mercy a combat ability that says she no longer needs to hide. If Mercy’s base kit is so bad in regards to self defense that some players feel the need to hide, why do we not give her something to compensate for that as opposed to just leaving this glaring weakness in there?

In exchange for nerfing mass-revive of course.

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Sounds easy, right? Just give her an ability 4Head.
No, really. Think of something that wouldn’t make her broken in combination with low effort mass rez, 30% damage boost at will and 60 hp/s healing with no limits except reach.

I know of no valid evidence to back such a claim

Further, I saw this behavior in my own experiences over and over and over again regardless of whether a Pharah was present or not

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Mercy in her 1.0 state never achieved levels of being “broken,” certainly not as broken as Mercy 2.0 was at launch.

As for actual ability ideas…

  • (Pre-invulnerability buff) - New resource meter that at 100% charge gives you a benefit (damage reduction or invulnerability or CC cleanse)
  • Throw a projectile that impairs an enemy (disarm or disable or reduce outgoing damage)
  • Turn your staff into a beam weapon for several seconds (dealing damage or inflicting crowd control)

Those are off the top of my head.

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You said overpowered with no further qualifier.

Surely, if Mercy 1.0 was that “overpowered”, the pro players would be more than willing to use her 100% of the time in every situation like Mercy 2.0 was used for nearly 6 months?

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(edit, didn’t realize that’s a new ability and not something that’s given to you at 100% ult charge, my bad)

That is too much in combination with what she has (or rather had)

This doesn’t go well with Mercy’s fluid mobile playstyle.

Skill activist and “this game supposed to be competitive” kind of people ruin this game.
It have ntohing to do with mercy, just in general/

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That doesn’t make any sense. Why would an ability that doesn’t harm Mercy’s ability to be fluid (as in mobile) interrupt the playstyle?