They keep making Mercy easier (and less fun) to play by nerfing her

General Discussion
1

Mercy is not a difficult hero to play, but she used to be about choices, timing, and decisions.

Before her rework the best Mercy players would decide whether to tempo rez or mass-rez by tracking enemy ultimates, sometimes baiting enemy ultimates, and try to optimize their use of the ultimate based on chance for success. Mercy was easy to play and pick up, but by understanding and reading enemy movements you get really good at doing your job as Mercy.

The rework removed a lot of the decision making and choices. Valkyrie removed the need for target prioritization as chain beams does all the work for you. The choice when to use it is also relatively trivial: use if team is alive and pushing, or if team is alive and defending against push, or if you need to escape and have no GA target. So, you press spacebar and hold a mouse-button, then observe people running around on the ground - not very engaging or fun.

When they removed the cooldown reset on Guardian Angel after successfully rezzing someone it meant Mercy could no longer swoop in and rez, and then swoop out. While this was a minor nerf, it made her less engaging to play and also limited her choices a lot.

When they nerfed rez as an ability and gave it a cast-timer they also removed some of the decision making and target prioritization. It became less about rezzing the right target and more about rezzing a convenient target. Mercy also lost some of her calculated bravery because healing someone in the frontline meant she might end up there alone if her healing target dies and she couldn’t instantly rez this person; so Mercy moved towards the backlines and became less engaging to play.

With the recent healing nerf you have to heal your target for longer to keep them alive, so there will be less swooping back and forth. It makes her a little easier to play, a little less engaging to play, and a lot less fun to play. Swooping around is what makes Mercy really fun, and I think there’ll be a little less of it if you want to play Mercy effectively.

So, I don’t want a revert. I don’t want Mercy to be overpowered. I think if they manage to get some balance between the support heroes it’ll be great. I just wish that after the dust settles and we know how things turn out they start looking at giving Mercy a few more choices and a few more decisions to make to give Mercy players a little bit more room to use their skill… Cause right now Mercy’s skill ceiling is much too low, and that makes her boring.

49 Likes
2

But she’s balanced now.
Her balance is all that matters.
Forget fun, and embrace balance.
Skill comes secondary to balance.

:roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

17 Likes
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Hopefully they’re looking into it…but who knows…

2 Likes
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Yeah it’s like the devs forgotten that this is a game and people want to have fun and that includes the players who play mercy. This nerf makes her so… boring isn’t even the exact word I’d use… more like horrendous, a disaster, disgusting, a mess, but yeah also very boring extremely boring. So bad I am not even playing her, and she was my main, every time I logged into the game and wanted to have fun I picked mercy, now I log into the game and think “well I guess I used to play a lot of Ana, let’s try!” 2 games later I quit and go play another game.

It’s not about being unable to play other heroes, it’s just that I found mercy the most fun hero in the game… and now I don’t. So why the effing heck should I be playing.

I used to find her fun when she was a “troll pick” with 60hps, so it’s not about her being OP. It’s absolutely the fact that 50hps makes her play style feel bad.

14 Likes
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Too bad there’s an inherit bias against Mercy among both the community and the Devs.

We didn’t ask for this rework and we warned them about it during PTR, but they only listen to their own opinions and OWL players. Player enjoyment matters when poor DPS players were getting their kills undone by Ress and they get frustrated, but us being more and more tired of the Mercy gameplay doesn’t matter.

Their rework was supposed to make her “more fun and engaging to play”, then they strip away everything that makes it fun and engaging. High-speed dodging with GA? Gone. Clutch Resses in the middle of a fight? Gone. The danger of being in the middle of a teamfight? Just fly away to a safe place and heal from afar.

11 Likes
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Only read the title, but how does nerfing her healing to 50 make her easier to play? K i read more of the post, still dont think that makes her any easier tho. Should be the same amount of bouncing between teammates if they are low and need the healing more.

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Yes very much so, you have valk up less often, so your q pressing doesn’t matter. And dmg amp doesn’t even exist because your healing is so slow, in other words you spend so much time healing you have no time for amp. Also by spending more time healing targets you stay with them longer so your GA use becomes less.

2 Likes
8

Thought someone would ask that :slight_smile: It doesn’t make it easier for Mercy players to keep people alive… but in terms of choices or decisions it makes her easier to play. There’s only so much you can do, so if your healing isn’t enough you do the best you can… but it makes her more stationary as she has to stay with one target longer to keep them alive.

Yah, and what Leewo said…

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trust me she still op rez on cooldown is op

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You know, i understand. Happened to Lucio, happened to Sombra, happened to Mercy. ((There is a belief that its happening to Zarya too))

Players have been saying it for a while that this game is becoming easier and that re-worked heroes become easier to play to entry-level players.

And while i wont discredit Rez on E as some ability thats both overpowered and useless because effective Rezzes is what differentiate a gold Mercy from a Masters one, i still understand your point. But i do not agree with this bit:

"Making Mercy less fun to play by nerfing her"

Because you’re inherently saying Mercy was fun when she was OP. Aka in her “un-nerfed state”.

Moreover, as unfun as it feels Rez cannot exist without a Cast-time. Players (and the game) need counterplay. Bad rezzes (usually Rezzing without backup and rezzing overextended allies) should be punished as hard as overextending damage dealers.

Do whatever you want with Valkyrie but know this: the place where Mercy is at is thin ice. There is no way Blizzard can change Mercy without any of y’all complaining.

If you re-work Valkyrie so its more engaging and turns out to be stronger than its current version, Mercy will inherently be nerfed hard somewhere else.

If you Re-work Mass Resurrection so it has the counterplay it deserves Mercy will still feel “unfun”, because the reason Mass Rez felt good to use (for the Mercy player at least) was because it was an instant, unstoppable “culmination” of a build-up.
However, if you give it a cast time not only does it not fixes the counter-intuitive aspect that got the ult changed in the first place: (Mercy wouldn’t survive enough to complete the cast time alone versus the enemy team because Rez works on dead allies, relegating it to Tempo Rez mostly, which is what we have atm.) But also it would feel much more unfun than Season 2 Mass Rez: (Because you’ll get killed for ulting, but with a cast time you’ll get killed for ulting and not even Rez).

If blizzard takes Rez out of the game nothing they’ll give Mercy will be accepted by the Mercy community because it wont feel as good to use than good ole instant Mass Rez.

11

This balance doesnt make here more or less fun. It was a healing reduction by 10hp to a hero that’s been considered a must pick for a long time. They didn’t change any of her abilities. You still play her the exact same way. It’s really not a big deal. This is coming from a mercy main

12

I’ll fix you.
“They’re laughing into it”

More realistic

1 Like
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When to Rez use to be like its own little mini game, but now it’s just “Rez if I can”

5 Likes
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Well, your analysis is not wrong. It was not the fact that she was OP that made her more fun than she is now, but the mechanisms. Unfortunately the mechanisms (of instant rez) were also powerful. And I enjoyed pre-rework and pre-invulnerability Mercy more than I enjoy current Mercy, so it’s not so much about power but the feeling of playing Mercy.

But you are right. Rez is powerful, especially as a 30 second cooldown ability, and it needed to be toned down. In hindsight I would much rather have gotten rid of rez during the initial rework phase than to have suffered through these 11 or so nerfs. Perhaps the drama would have been about the same, but we would probably have had a more fun hero right now. Perhaps it’s worth taking on the ensuing drama in order to have a fun hero a year from now with Mercy 3.x? I think so anyways, but I’m one of the Mercy mains (former) who is ok with losing rez.

15

I actually find that the healing nerf forces you to do (sometimes crucial) decision making quite more often than before.

If your team is in a brawl with the enemy team and multiple teammates are in a critical state, who are you going to heal first since you know it takes you longer to bring them out of critical state now? Tanks for longer sustainability or dps squishies to make sure there is enough damage to finally turn the tides by getting a kill?

Also, deciding to go for a rez mid fight needs to be well calculated even more now to ensure that no one even reaches said critical status because this is often a death sentence for them even if you beam is back on them.

I dont think it makes her easier (but neither harder) - people just need to adjust to it. And about the fun/boring gameplay - thats always debateable and individual preference.

16

To be honest i never have enjoyed playing Mercy. I only played her because Rez was a huge factor. But I got so tired of playing her and her boring play style that i just stopped and played other supports. Now they all got buffed and Mercy got a nerf, so all the more reason not to go fall aslee-I mean play her again.

17

Titanium already offered a rework of Mass rez so that it feels good to use, is balanced and has counterplay, and fixes all the inherent gameplay problems like “hid n rez” or “let your teammates die for a better rez”.

It’s in their “Solution” tab of the best written feedback post I’ve ever seen:

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Praise balance
let it flow around you
and through you
and into the game because it’s balance could use all the help it can get.

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This sums up the complaints about Mercy’s rework quite nicely.

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you talk like its hard to hid behind everyone else on your team and hold M1…

Mercy needs to be reworked to Reflect the Term “Support” instead of holding m1 and getting carried :confused: