Alright, let’s break this down. I’m going to lay down all of Mercy’s problems as I see them and why +5 HPs isn’t going to change nearly any of it.
1. Mercy is too reliable.
Now Mercy was always more reliable than most. Her beams barely require aim and her blaster is one of the more forgiving weapons in the game. However, when Mercy got reworked from 1.0 to 2.0… her reliability skyrocketted. The new GA tech, while fun, made Mercy almost impossible to pin down. For those few times you maybe did pin her down, well now she has Valkyrie and can start flying and stop letting you interrupt her regeneration with the push of a button.
This made Mercy both nearly impossible to counter and nearly impossible to mess up.
2. Mercy’s raw output is way too low.
This one is connected to #1. How do you balance out a hero who can’t be shut down or denied value? Make their value so low that it can be safely ignored. That’s what the 14 nerfs to Mercy after her rework accomplished. Who wants to play as a hero who can’t actually accomplish anything?
3. Mercy is still the only healer without a way to respond to damage spikes.
Once upon a time, Resurrect was how she responded to damage spikes. However after it got relegated to a 30s cool down, given a cast time, and a self snare… it isn’t fast enough, up often enough, or reliable enough to react to almost anything. Her next best way to react to damage spikes is to GA through her heal target, body block some damage, fall back, and let her regen kick in so she can “push out” another 20 Hps. Not only is that weird to say the least, every other healer has a button they can push to just… get more sustain. No weird acrobatics required.
4. Resurrect is still an ultimate on a cool down.
Most heroes, if they have an ability that gives them a large power spike but make them much more vulnerable than normal, it is their ultimate ability. Not Mercy though. Resurrect does in fact give her a large power spike and make her significantly more vulnerable than normal… but its on her E. That’s not where abilities like that belong. Pretty much every other hero has to charge up and earn their most powerful ability. Not Mercy though. She gets it for free at the beginning of the game and every 30s after she uses it, regardless of how well or badly the player is doing.
5. Chain Beams during Valkyrie still make Valkyrie significantly less engaging than her base form.
Mercy is at her most engaging when she’s using Guardian Angel to jump between nearly every single one of her allies, providing them with whichever beam they need at the time and ideally also dodging incoming attackers.
Valkyrie and chain beams put the lid on ALL of that. If her team is close enough together for chain beams to reach them all, Mercy doesn’t need to GA around. If Mercy is ~20m up in the air, there’s no incoming attackers that can reach her up there. Unless you are actively trying to attract enemy attention, Valkyrie has a tendency to turn Mercy’s movement from resembling a pinball to resembling a kite. None of that is a good thing when it comes to making engaging gameplay for the Mercy player.
6. Valkyrie is too long and not different enough.
What do I mean by that? Well, Valkyrie is just… Mercy+. It makes Mercy just generally better at anything she does. That’s not particularly interesting or exciting. Its not like Dragon Blade, Riptire, or any other ultimate that actually temporarily gives you a different play style that can break up otherwise doing the same thing all game. Also… its 15 seconds long. An ultimate that is that long just can’t be interesting by having the raw power level of Nano, Beat, EMP, Earth Shatter, Grav, etc. That leaves Valkyrie… pretty much no avenues to actually be interesting and engaging.
The closest thing its got is that its massive personal survivability boost can be used to bait other, more important ultimates.
The New Changes
+5 HPs does somewhat address issue #2. That’s it. That’s not even close to enough.
