The reasons Mercy was removed this week

General Discussion
1

There are two sensible reasons for the devs to remove Mercy from the pool this week.

Last week was meant to test the strength of Pharah and Ashe absent of heroes that either outright counter them, (Pharah and hitscans) or do the exact same job as them but better (Ashe relative to Mccree and Widow).

The devs were able to confirm that people opted to play Ashe and Pharah (Less so) but they literally require a Mercy stuck to them to be effective in high elo (3800+).

With Ashe and Pharah changes on the experimental card now, the devs remove Mercy to get the final bit of confirmation that they need to push them out, Pharah and Ashe’s pickrates predictably plummeting with Mercy gone and their counters back in the rotation.

tldr: She had a massive pickrate last week, and they need to confirm that pharah and ashe pickrates will fall without her

11 Likes
2

Huh. interesting thought. I just thought it was her turn to warm the proverbial support benches. It was gonna happen at some point anyways.

2 Likes
3

Exactly. What are the odds that

  1. The week hitscans were blocked:
    Mercy Ashe Pharah pickrates rose

  2. The two dps received experimental buffs

  3. Mercy gets banned the same day

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4

Maybe it is that, but I think they are just trying to figure out how to make Ashe, Pharah, and Mercy more independent as heroes

5

There’s also another flying hero coming out in a few weeks, and devs might be looking into a baseline for the game without Mercy to look at some long overdue changes to Mercy.

1 Like
6

They don’t need to test this for a week, it will obviously happen.

7

I don’t like how they have to use competitive as an experimental area. Simply listening to the community when we say “x and y hero is too weak” is much better than letting certain heroes run rampant because they’ve banned their counters for a week.

8

Well its how they gain information. Using forums for only 10% of the ow population is not enough

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9

if we aren’t enough, why bother having forums in the first place?

10

Thats some super wishful thinking, this is mercy we are talking about

11

For “discussion”. Almost every game has forums anyway

12

According to the forum mods, this is to “provide feedback”

13

absolutely not. I have never read so many bad takes regarding balance than by people who specifically use these forums.

with hero pools at least the devs get actual data, lol

4 Likes