The Mercy Problem, and potential solutions (I would love some player/dev feedback on this!)

General Discussion
1

I’m currently studying CS and plan on trying to get into the games dev field. That being said I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about all things balance and player experience. I honestly think Mercy is a big problem for this game simply down to a single reason. Currently her optimal play style is to pocket a single DPS or (rarely) a tank. Ask any high skill support player and they will agree.

That being said, this post is simply to bring light to how her kit is not well suited for the game in its current state. I don’t hate Mercy, I actually really like where she currently is gameplay wise. But I think without a rework of some kind she is and will be a big problem for the game as a whole.

Balance is a big talking point in games like this. That being said individual balance is how most people think about game, Genji too weak? lets buff Genji, Bastion pickrate too low? Lets make him stronger. For the most part this is a good way to think about balance, but Mercy breaks this. Unlike the other supports she can ONLY support, every other support in this game you can do other things while you support, Mercy? Not so much. This along side her relatively low healing and how strong Attack boost is her kit lends itself to pocketing. This is a problem because while her healing is low its still more then enough to hard enable some characters, for example Pharah, Ashe, and Echo, these characters are hard to actually be balanced in a individual way. Because if the devs made them balanced as a solo character, with a Mercy pocket they would be incredibly strong.

Solution 1:
Lower her healing and attack boost to around 40 hps, and 20% extra
but give her a new ability that provides a short period burst heals/attack boost on short 5-6 second cooldown (for example that doubles her healing/attackboost for like 2 seconds) This would prevent her pocketing being too annoying in low ranks and actually let her have a decent healing ability in higher rank games. This means characters Mercy tends to pocket could actually be balanced without being broken with a pocket

Solution 2:
Make her healing much higher, say 70 hps, this would make it so that pocketing a single target would be equivalent to throwing in many situations because that pocketed target can still get one shot by the likes of Widow etc, and now you’re losing out on a lot of potential healing so she would become more of a main support hoping from one target to the next, again fixing the pocket issue

Solution 3:
Rework her to be more similar to the other support. Let her have value outside of just healing/attack boosting her team. Every other support in this game has such value. I think this shows that “pure support” characters are something that the dev see as not exactly fitting for OW and personally I agree.

Conclusion:
I honestly think solution 3 would be optimal but I understand that reworks take a lot of time and money and that the dev team is working hard on OW2 so I see how it may be unviable.
So my next suggestion would be to do solution 1, seeing as it wouldn’t change her play style an insane amount and would allow for her to feel more clutch with the burst healing/attackboost and would allow for her primary pocket targets to actually get balanced well in an individual way without becoming demons of the underworld.
Solution 3, I think is what many of the Mercy mains in the community would want, and while I do see how it would be fun, and I do think it would help with some of the issues, seeing as pocketing would no longer be the optimal strategy it would still allow people who DO decide to pocket to have even more value from that pocket, and while this wouldn’t happen in the upper bracket as much it would happen lower down in the ladder and be incredibly unfun to deal with for many many players.

Feel free to respond I look forward to hopefully having at least having a few responses to this by tomorrow morning :smiley:

1 Like
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I’d hate to see Mercy moved too much from her design so I think solution 3 is out.

Ultimately it’s a matter of trying to get an equal value between damage boosting and healing that neither is a must pick for all situations, but one that’s cycled constantly and between targets.

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yeah, the problem is that until they do something about Mercy’s Pocketing being her optimal strat they literally can’t balance several of the DPS, which is quite unfortunate

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Give mercy speedboost for pocketed people (for all targets in ult) + you can pocket and use pistol + last heal buff.

Its will be interesting radical maybe mercy start be op or good. where my radical changes jeff

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5

Reverting the damage boost change would be a nice start. It was a considerable detriment to juggler playstyle since one can’t react to fired projectiles any longer.

Solution 2 is never gonna fly. People were freaking out over 55 and 70 is just OP.

5 Likes
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oh that’s actually a pretty interesting idea, and I agree it would be a nice start, but they’d have to do more

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Her current playstyle is “pocket a monkey or DPS” and don’t die

That’s not much of a playstyle tbh plus, even if you reworked her to have value outside of just pocketing it doesn’t mean you couldn’t still have the pocketing be a thing, just not the only thing

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I’m talking about her old playstyle of bouncing around her team, healing and supporting whichever teammate needed her the most.

No other character has even close to the right kit to do that. Mercy did back before her Heal nerf and Boost got reworked.

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10

oh sure! but they could actually bring back that playstyle with a rework, idk it would be cool to see what people could come up with!!

for example they could make it so her attack boost/healing is pretty strong at first but gets weaker as time goes on or something, so staying on a single target isn’t ideal!

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They could, but any rework that makes her more similar to other healers won’t bring that back.

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fair enough, I should have worded that differently, I simply meant “more similar” as in, doesn’t just pocket single targets so hard they’re impossible to balance correctly haha

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A lot of players think that Mercy is in a great spot and doesn’t need changes.

A lot of players think that Mercy can use a small buff to make her more impactful.

and

A lot of players think that Mercy needs a new design done to her kit.

It’s a back and forth battle on the forums that people have been going at each others throats for years. (Which is crazy to think about lmfao)

So i’ll give my response.

Personally I think Mercy needs a rework. I know ALOT of players will disagree (and I know I will probably get replies saying “she doesn’t need a rework etc. etc.”)

ANYHOW

I think Mercy needs her kit re-visted. Shifting power into her ultimate and away from her basic ability.

Personally, I feel as if Rez is just way too powerful as an ability, and it feels extremely punished with the restrictions it has in place BECAUSE it’s so powerful.

HOWEVER, I do think the restrictions actually help in balancing Resurrect out because (back in the day) when it was instant it felt very unfair and you couldn’t counter it.

Valkyrie I think should be shifted to her basic ability and here is my reasoning for it.

  • I feel as if Valkyrie when you use it as an ultimate, it feels very restricted in its use. Like when you use it you HAVE to be in a teamfight scenario, and you HAVE to have people around your beam target to make it feel impactful. It just feels very LIMITED. Or when you use it for a different option you are punished severely because you used an ultimate.
  • If it was an ability it opens up the possibility to use it in more ways without blowing an ultimate. Like using it for its long-range GA capabilities, maybe to help a Genji and Tracer coordinating a dive, or to help your tanks that are being pushed at the same time. Or to even use it as another alternate escape other than GA.
  • Of course, it would need to be totally reworked to make it fit as a basic ability by removing some of the added survivability and reducing the impact of the chain beams by half the amount instead of the full amount.
  • Then you get more frequent Valkyrie uses during the match, you can use it more often in many different situations and it opens up more possibilities for Mercy to help her teammates (Which is her whole character design) :slight_smile:

For Resurrect I think it should be moved back into her ultimate slot.

HOWEVER.

I don’t think it should remain as just a Resurrect.

I think it would need changes to make it feel more impactful and if you miss out on a Rez by being booped or stunned you get some return instead of nothing.

So in Heroes of the Storm Anduin has an ultimate called Holy Word Salvation.

What I would want to see done with Resurrect would be to keep it as a single target Rez because Rez in itself is very powerful.

But while Mercy is casting Rez, a dome of healing energy surrounds her and the Resurrected target providing all allies who are living and Mercy herself HPS until her cast is over. (Which gives her some survivability when casting a Rez)

Here’s a link below of what I would want it to look like.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcommunity.com%2Fsharedfiles%2Ffiledetails%2F%3Fid%3D1209287290&psig=AOvVaw3tuvzYoJrlHZ_GXYK7K3Rm&ust=1589431057638000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCJCZwqOCsOkCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI

So there is my opinion on the whole Mercy debate lol. Hope you enjoyed the read.

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I did! and I love the ideas!

Yeah, I just hope if they ever do change her it will be away from the pocket playstyle, or at least more like a Zen Pocket, where it requires good coms and teamwork to get value

That way they can balance Pharah, and Echo, and Ashe, and stuff more easily!

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I know they have said ‘ress is here to stay’ and it has been in videos etc, but I really find it boring in it’s current state.

The argument of ‘it’s high risk high reward’, just doesn’t make sense. Since people realise she has to be near to the body, it’s now higher risk than reward. And the time you spend going for that ress just leaves your team to die, and then you most likely.

I remember when it was completely fine to go for most resses, but now, even with LoS, people will push and stop you.

Your positioning is already the main part of your gameplay and the ress mechanics is just a counter to that completely.

The idea of having a burst heal/dps on a long cooldown would be more fun to me than having to die because people realised how easy it is to counter, and because you can’t heal anyone while you’re doing it.

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I mean, I don’t really disagree with anything you said, but this post was more meant as a way to show that Mercy pocketing is making the game substantially harder to balance than it would be otherwise haha

Love that people are coming up with cool idieas tho!

2 Likes
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Yeah, sorry. I was kind of focusing on your first solution, but I think that would have to impact her ress, so that her E becomes the boost.

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I really have to disagree here. While Mercy will perform better when she has key targets she can rely on, she should not be solely pocketing just one person the entire game, or even a majority of the game. Playing like this is forfeiting her responsive power; she has one of the best mobility abilities out of the supports that’s nearly always available to her, and her support beams are generous and cannot be interrupted. If you’re not applying these beams to all five teammates when they require it, then you’re playing a very shallow Mercy that’s putting all her eggs in one Pharah-shaped basket, where you will spend almost half of your game providing no actual support – all those times you’re pocketing a DPS at full health that is not able to shoot anything, those seconds add up and leave Mercy behind if she isn’t actively engaged with the entire team.

I really don’t think Mercy “has” to be a pocket to just one or two other players the entire game. She already has fine enough potential to empower her whole team like any other support.

This sounds extremely unfun and puts Mercy in a very passive role where, for much of her playtime, she’d be offering almost nothing in terms of support. This ability would have to make up for so much of the power now gone from Mercy’s kit, lowering her HPS to being a bit above a Harmony Orb and making damage boost a measly 20% ruins so many of her interactions and prohibits her from really feeling involved. This is the equivalent of reducing Soldier’s damage by almost half just so you can give him a new ability (which would need to be created, animated, balanced, etc.) that exists just to make up for the damage he just lost.

This is definitely not a good direction for Mercy. She provides the best individual support in the game and has the most consistent way of doing that. Reducing that strength to put it elsewhere would make the Caduceus Staff feel like a waste. It’s her entire weapon, nerfing it like this would be ridiculous pretty much regardless of whatever ability you gave her.

How would this discourage pocketing, exactly? If anything I think more people would want to pocket people knowing that can just hold left click brainlessly on one person and be able to provide an unhealthy amount of healing onto one person without interruption. This solution doesn’t really solve anything, it just makes Mercy way stronger for the sake of being way stronger, it wouldn’t change her playstyle largely at all. She would… just be better.

I know Mercy just recently got an HPS buff, but there’s a valid concern worth keeping that number “low.” It has to be remembered how consistent and easily applied Mercy’s healing is, and if that number is too high, it begs the question why other healers have to manage accuracy, positioning, ammo, and other resources just to stay up to speed with her when all she has to do is hold left click and not let go of it.

That’s a very boring option and not even achievable. Can you compare Zenyatta to Brigitte and find an “average” value between them to fit Mercy into? Can you compare Ana to Lucio? All of the supports offer unique options and are made with unique playstyles in mind. This is the most boring of the solutions, just pitching Mercy into an “average” so she doesn’t feel like a unique hero.

I think it’s also really wrong to suggest a “pure support hero” hasn’t worked, when clearly, for four years… Mercy has achieved being a playable character, the entire time. Nope, she isn’t always meta, but that shouldn’t matter. She’s playable, she can keep up with the others, and it’s incorrect to assume she’s drastically lagging behind just because top level play can maximize other supports in a more beneficial way for their top level games.

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lol yeah its fine! :smiley: and I agree, having an amp it up style thing instead of res could be cool

Honestly (I don’t think this would fix the problem I was talking about before)

Just just for fun-ness sake I would personally love her to get changed so she has slightly lower HPS and attack boost with an amp instead of res, and then make it so either the amp works with valk, OOOOOOR give her a single target insta res as her ult, kinda an anti-pulse bomb, that takes a bit longer to charge than Pulse

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Something like that would definitely make her gameplay more engaging.

IMO if her healing/damage boost goes that low outside of the ‘boost’, then it would have to be a pretty short cooldown.

It would definitely play into the strengths of good players on Mercy though. (boosting when it’s needed. e.g. roadhog hooks someone)

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1:
as I said before, any high rank player will confirm that pocketing 1 or 2 players the whole match is literally the optimal way to play Mercy, I was literally talking to a top500 support player earlier this evening about this topic. I’m not saying you can’t play her in other ways, I’m saying its not optimal

2:
and I don’t see how it would be passive exactly? It would be the same as now, pocketing 1 or 2 teammates, except now you can use communication and good timing to clutch more often (also those numbers were examples, they don’t have to be exactly that, its the change in playstyle that’s important)

3:
and it would discourage pocketing because any time spend pocketing is time where you could’ve been healing others. This makes you lose value, meaning that optimal Mercy gameplay would be hopping from 1 target to the next healing because your goal is to get the most value out of the character

And I’m not saying her play style hasn’t worked, All I mean if that the way she currently exists doesn’t mesh well with OW right now and makes balancing a pretty big headache. Which isn’t ideal because it means to balance the game they either need to change her, or leave all of her primary pocket targets underpowered

1 Like