The Brutal Truth: Old Mercy Was OP

General Discussion
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I mean I played Old Mercy, and also dabbled in the other supports, but for argument’s sake I am going to use the two heroes I have with literally less than an hour of game time separating them: Mercy and Zen because they both have sustain heals, but the impact the individual brings is completely different even without touching the fact Zen deals damage.

Both their base healing is nothing to write home about 60/50 hps and 30 hps. It gets the job done but with other supports in their category they might have the highest (or second highest) healing per game in their respective category, but the impact of those heals aren’t anything to write home about.

Getting slapped in the face with a Zen orb can be a “oh thank you!” moment but you have to chill for a little bit and let the healing do it’s thing, same with Mercy beam. Ana, and Lucio get a boost to their healing which makes it feel more in the mid-fight. Ana has a base 75 healing per bullet, 100 burst heal with her nade that then grants a 1.5x to any healing to that target. Lucio’s amp though is close to Zen’s single target heal, could at least heal multiple people (and has great synergy with Ana nade). Also, Ana gets about the same amount of healing as Zen, the reason she is a main healer is because of how the burst of her heals work.

What Zen has that Mercy doesn’t is an ultimate that kind of makes up for this subpar consistent healing. His ult heals for 300hps within a 10m radius. Mercy only gets +10hps within the same radius. No wonder a lot of Mercy’s feel that this is “meh” in terms of power. Same with damage boost Orisa can do it better (50% vs 30%) and she can still contribute to the fight with her pew pews.

Mass Rez was Mercy’s Trans. Not only that, but mass rez was the counter to ult stacking and it of itself was countered by things like D.va Bomb, and Tire, and now Hammond. The counter to rez was to know your ult economy.

It wasn’t without faults though, and personally at this point I don’t care if it comes back. Seeing how the off-supports have more defensive ults and main supports have more offensive ults, I’d actually prefer that it didn’t. I just want more zest in her kit. Personally I would like a rez-version-of-nanoboost. You rez a single target and they are like nano’ed. Basically make the Ana/Mercy ult relationship like Zen/Lucio and make it instead a choice between which type of utility (meaning we’d have to give Mercy a new E preferably something that makes her better in the mid-fight) and types of healing (burst vs sustain) would work best.

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122

“Sorry Officer. In my opinion, the speed limit is 90 here, so I wasn’t actually speeding, thus you can’t give me a ticket, and if you do it’s just because you don’t like me.”

“Sorry, Teacher. In my opinion I got the test answers correct, which is obviously why I wrote them down, so you can’t dock me points for answers you just don’t like.”

Do you see how ridiculous the logic is when actually applied?

You’re right to say that opinions can’t be wrong, only disliked, but you can’t have a subjective opinion on an objective matter. The universe doesn’t care if you think one way, the reality is still the other.

You’re free to believe you’re correct, I suppose, but that doesn’t make your belief any less wrong when objectively measured.

While we’re at it, in my opinion, your name is Ernesto, so I’ll just address you as that from now on. You can’t say I’m wrong, because it’s my opinion.

Your movement is not disabled, and thus does not apply to the very definition you gave.

Is it limited? Sure, severely limited. But we’re not talking horseshoes here. Either you get disabled or you don’t. You don’t, so you do not get stunned.

Besides, if we count Mercy as a self stun, then we should also count Rein, Orisa, Dva, Widow, Brig, and probably more I’m too lazy to remember as having self stuns as well, since they get their max speed capped when doing certain actions as well. Surely they all need buffs or reworks to make up for that “self stun” effect, right? All’s fair, right?

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123

She was not “OP” in a meta where everyone was running Lucio/Zenyatta as their healers. And then Ana was introduced, and we went straight into triple tank.

Mercy wasn’t OP. She had a strong influence over play, but people didn’t pick her to climb. At only 50hp/s, people were using old Lucio as main healer instead.

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Where you get that stat? I think most people are casuals actualy. who play competitive mode just for gold weapons.

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They think Mercy is under whelming now, but that’s only cause she had massive impact before. More than any other hero.

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You can enjoy skill without going into the competitive mode.
There is no specific statistic, but it’s easy to tell how people revere that aspect in the community at large. Just have a look how many people want to pick a high skill ceiling DPS every game. They find the aspects of skilling up or at least playing a hero with a skilled portion more fun that the heroes that flat out just don’t give them anything to get better at. They even enjoy that so much more that they are willing to not form a proper team composition and would rather lose than play those heroes :smiley:

Don’t need a specific stat to know these things :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hoping for your reply/feedback within that thread

Same to any reader: all replies/feedback is welcome

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They pick this hero because its “fun” for them to kill, they are still casual players.

Casuals dont try to lose, but they dont complain that abilities dont need skill every time.

Competitive mind set is filling role tho. Is doing EVERYTHING possible to win, including ruining fun in the game for them. Because winning for them is the most important thing.

Casuals pick what they like, and dont care about team comp.

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I remember hearing the patch note about Mercy receiving invuln during res (I was a diamond Mercy main back then) and my ONLY response to hearing it was, “Why…?”

It was a high risk/high reward ultimate for a reason. BECAUSE IT WAS HIGH REWARD. Invuln busted the ult and made it annoying to go against, before then, I never heard complaints about Mass Res either. To remove the high risk out of the high reward, you’re left with an imbalanced ult.

I also miss getting to meme before games and saying, “Hello. My name is Angela Ziegler and I will be your ‘heroes never— EUUUGGGHHH!” (That’s the noise of her dying during res). It was fun. Sure it sucked if you died, but that was the risk of waiting for too many people to die to pull off the res. high risk/high reward. As it always should’ve been. Just with a slightly reduced risk if it were too much.

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130

I mean I seem to recall jeff saying that mercy had one of the largest playerbases in the game.

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131

She was fine before she got invincibility after mass rez.

Again, she was only seen as OP because Ana had just gotten a sledgehammer of nerfs, making Mercy the more optimal pick for main healing and utility.

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A singular hero doesn’t make up the majority of the playerbase, but back when she was the ONLY viable main healer the results on that may have been skewed.
She probably doesn’t have the biggest playerbase anymore.

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Sombra could hack her, but I understand nobodies every really played her.

Same could be said about other ultimates as well though, the ult can go off and you can counter a hero or entity, but the ultimate itself has no direct counter other than killing the hero before they can use it.
Rez is obviously capable of doing much more than other ults, but in practice it wasn’t.

I can tell you hiding with Rez is a bigger scapegoat than brig.
It didn’t happen, if you think it did below diamond, I’m sorry but you were just bad.

The sr gains are true, it was better for mercy to Rez less people more often, than to wait for more impactful rezzed

Mass Rez was one of the rarer/rarest achievements in the game pre rework and that’s because prior to reviving a team wipe from say, a Grav combo, you wouldn’t get 4 people dying in a conveniently timed fashion, all within range.

Moreso people say she was hiding, when she wasn’t xo
But if she was, how are you losing that fight? Should be an ez stomp, they trade Rez to start the fight again but you should still have lite to use unless you overcommitted to a 6v5, which is your fault.

3 Likes
135

Oh look the Reaper’s/McCree’s/S76’s/Pharaah’s/Junkrat’s team lost because they went to hide and ult for SR exploits, rather than fight by their team.

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Im all for a civil discussion here.

All competitive matches have someone with shields. At least a team that wants to try and win. We are talking about competitive play where Mercy is on a team and she is healing. :slight_smile: In competitive play we need a Mercy player that is grounded, and NOT up above, flying around. This Valkyrie mercy ability isn’t providing the consistency we need for a competitive match because she instantly loses ground ability placement and instead is “floating”. During intense fights, this ability almost becomes a “troll” ability. Because she is longer on the surface and if there is a 76, widow, a Hanzo or Ana. The exposure chance of Mercy is much greater when she activates this ability. This means that those enemies have a greater chance to defeat her.

A good team will re-stack for a Mercy to pick her off when she does decide to do Valkyrie. Which i’ve been in PLENTY of matches where she gets picked off and our main healer is NOW in the spawn room.

The bottom line is. NOBODY wants to play a healer in this game, and so most of the time it is someone that decides to play Mercy because it is the “we need a healer” statement. Generally these are NOT players whom have much time on her. But they are willing to switch off in order to fill.

WIth the current mechanics in play with Mercy. The single-target rez is something a non Mercy-Main, will NOT know how to properly use, and this leads to BROKEN matches. People get MAD at Mercy because they chose NOT to Rez the one person they needed. The thing is Mercy mains are FEW and FAR now. This means that she needs to be someone that can be picked up by ANYONE, and NOT a Niche Character design like she is now. I’d think that Blizzard would LEARN from their past and that with their previous titles… the one class NOBODY wanted to play was healer.

That said, healers cannot be a complicated class to play otherwise nobody will play them. It’s the “custodian class” of the game and already people do NOT want to heal. Because you aren’t out there getting to FIGHT the enemy, so healers are always going to have low picks.

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In my experience, even in competitive, there isnt always a shield tank present

Often? Yes

Always? No

Although there are of course players who are throwing at times, the vast majority of comp players appear to me to want to win

Factually, there are players who are support mains, and they generally only play a support character.

I am one of many such support mains.

I almost always play a Support character. Call it 97 out of 100 games, and in those 3 matches, typically 2 or more others have already instalocked a support character.

As such, I respectfully disagree with the statement I have quoted here

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Prepare to be mass flagged

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for… stating an opinion??

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if it is the brutal truth why was she a throw pick above plat?

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I’m going to be mass flagged? why?