TL;DR at the bottom
Hello everyone!
There has been a lot of talk about Mercy’s current state and different ideas towards reworking her and I’m here to propose three complete rework ideas that I’ve thought through while gathering information based on other feedback I’ve been reading and thinking them through with a few of my friends.
Keep in mind that these are rework ideas where I’m trying to take in consideration all of her kit and that means possibly nerfing aspects of her that you feel are fine at the moment, but they are there to keep the overall balance of the game in mind.
Also, another thing to note is that while I’m a Mercy main, I’m not a very good player and the friends I’ve talked to are all from Silver to Diamonds, so we have no real input from someone who plays this game on a pro level.
Now, let’s get started.
The first rework I’m presenting is the one that will accommodate the current state of Valkyrie being her ultimate, while the other two are made with Resurrection ultimate in mind. Keep in mind that all these ideas are being done with the current kit available and no new abilities are being added. We wanted to work with what we have.
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Primary fire is 50 healing per second
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Secondary fire is 25% damageboost.
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The loss of a 10 healing is notable and the reasoning behind is feels kinda stupid (Winston should be hitting the Mercy and not the one she’s healing but not the point). However, it is not a massive loss when considering the impact the rest of her kit has on the flow of the game. And while I’m trying to change her kit to make it not so dominant in every rank and it is possible that 50 hp per second would be too little for the final product I’m cooking here, I’m more willing to show an UP Mercy that feels rewarding than an OP one.
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Nerfing damageboost from 30 to 25 feels like a natural next step if her healing is reduced from 60 to 50. That way it stays as a half of her Primary fire, and the loss of a 5% isn’t as impactful or harmful for the player, while it helps give more power to Orisa’s ultimate, which a lot of people say is too underwhelming. (Honestly, they could give Supercharger half armor HP. It would be like a mini Orisa on looks that way as well.)
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Second on the list is of course: Resurrection
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Mercy no longer has a Resurrection on a cooldown.
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Instead, she now has a resource meter, similar to Torbjörn’s scrap meter. This would show up on top of her abilities, similiar to Zenyatta’s Harmony and Discord targets.
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Mercy can charge up to two resurrections.
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The cast time of resurrection is reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
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Mercy can no longer Resurrect through barriers.
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This is a point that a lot of people are trying to make: Resurrection is not a good ability while it is on cooldown. Yes, I am aware of the fact that the devs have said installing a resource meter would be difficult, but unfortunately that is something they would have to make for this ability to be balanced.
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The way the resource meter would work in this scenario, would be that it would take note of both Mercy’s heal and damageboost. As I said earlier, it would look the same way as Zenyatta’s Harmony and Discord targets health in his HUD. One meter would keep tabs on Mercy’s Healing Resurrection, while the other would be for her Damageboost Resurrection.
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The way the resource meters would charge could be with both raw healing/damageboosting as well as with her assists. For ex, the Healing meter could become fully charged with 2000 healing done, or with 7 defensive assists, while the Damageboost meter could charge with 200 damage boosted or with 7 offensive assists.
- (Keep in mind that these are just random numbers. The first thing me and my friends were thinking was 1500 healing/5 defensive assists and 150 damage boosted/5 offensive assists. The numbers looked like this at first because not a lot of people used the damageboost to a great extent, however, we got a lot of defensive assists done in our games and after damageboosting Soldier’s ultimate, we usually already got 2 to 4 offensive assists. What this means is that these things should be tested with a wider amount of players than just us five.)
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The way Mercy would use this Resurrect would be similar to the way Moira uses her Biotic Orbs. When Mercy would press her Resurrection button, she would get the option to choose which Resurrection she would want to use. (This could be removed if Mercy only has one Resurrect). The way Mercy chooses which Resurrect to use would be simple, she’s just press her Primary fire-button for Healing Resurrection, and her Secondary fire-button for Damageboost Resurrection. (If Mercy doesn’t have a Resurrection available, nothing would happen.)
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Since Mercy would no longer be given the resurrection, but would instead be earning it, the cast time of it would be reduced a little. However, I listed the possibility for a shield to stop her from resurrecting an ally. This would be just a small change, and honestly I’m not sure if it would be even meaningful or if anyone would even want it, but I listed it there anyway, as a one possible way for people to counter it.
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To summarize; These changes are just looking for the best way to implement the resource meter for Resurrection, and they are brought up with the overall balance to the game in mind, but more importantly, it’s looking for a best way to get people use her damageboost more. It is the most underutilized tool in her kit right now, and giving people who can utilize it better an advantage gives also more variety for Mercy players in general.
Also, with the Resurrection being on a resource meter, it gives the Mercy player more thinking outside of can I res them safely and is my res on cooldown, again making more of a difference between good and bad Mercy players outside the amount of times they’ve died in the match. A worse Mercy player is bout to waste their hard-earned Resurrection more often and also not having it as often.
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To summarize; These changes are just looking for the best way to implement the resource meter for Resurrection, and they are brought up with the overall balance to the game in mind, but more importantly, it’s looking for a best way to get people use her damageboost more. It is the most underutilized tool in her kit right now, and giving people who can utilize it better an advantage gives also more variety for Mercy players in general.
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Lastly, her ultimate: Valkyrie
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The duration of Valkyrie is reduced from 15 second to 10 seconds.
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The beam target of Valkyrie now receives a larger output of healing/damageboosting than the rest of their teammates.
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This could be 70 healing per second and 35% damageboost.
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Mercy no longer has infinite health regeneration during Valkyrie.
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The current Valkyrie is way too long and not at all interactive the way the devs probably meant for it to be. The duration could be fine tuned between 8 to 12 seconds, but I feel like 10 will be okay for now.
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Having the primary beam target receive a higher value than the rest of the team also gives the Mercy player more interactive role during her ultimate. The current state of Valkyrie doesn’t feel that interesting, you can check your phone during it, and it doesn’t feel that impactful, as there’s nothing you could do for your McCree, no matter how much you try to prioritize him, rather you can only hope the enemy team forgets him for a moment for you to bring his health up even a little bit. Giving the Mercy player the option to prioritize targets is also healthier for the experience you have while playing her.
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Stopping Mercy’s health regeneration is a thing I personally am not sure about. However, it is one of the problems of her kit. People don’t call her an Unkillable Moth for fun. I’ll leave you guys with my and my friends thoughts on the matter and you can tell us in the comments, if you’d change it or not.
- I wouldn’t be against taking it away with the current state of her in the game, as you rarely pop Valkyrie to counter ultimates. However, if we’d give the primary target more healing output, countering ultimates would became a lot more viable option and if Mercy gets no infinite regen, she’d be more vulnerable. However, giving her the regen would also mean that more people use resurrection way more during Valkyrie. However, however, the duration of Valkyrie would be decreased, making the Mercy players who do use Valkyrie to resurrect allies lose valuable time.
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- So, to summarize this first rework idea, Mercy needs to use a lot more thinking and trying to outplay other players with the use of her abilities than with the current state of her on live servers. She also has the possibility for a double Resurrection on the duration of three to four seconds, however this would be a risky play and she’d really need to think all of her options. Do I use my res on our Soldier? Can I make this res and have a new one for the next fight? Our Zarya just died, can I charge one fast enough to res her? Should I try to farm for a double res as they probably have Barrage or should I res our Lucio as I’m not sure if he can make it back in time? Our Reaper has Death Blossom, should I res our Genji from a risky place so I can start farming my next res or should I play it safe? The shorter Valkyrie and it having more value also adds to her decision making and this kit should overall make her more interactive to play.
This second rework is going to be working with an ability Valkyrie and one man Resurrection ultimate.
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Primary fire is 60 healing per second.
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Secondary fire is 30% damageboost.
- Because her ultimate is going to be a one man Resurrection, I feel like her having a stronger Primary and Secondary fire is fair play and considering they weren’t a problem before, they most likely wouldn’t damage this rework.
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Next, would be her second ability: Valkyrie
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Valkyrie is switched from an ultimate to her second ability to replace Resurrection
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The duration of this Valkyrie could be 4 seconds. When the player would activate it, it’s duration would show on screen the same way Sombra’s Invisibility used to.
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The cooldown of this ability could be from 12 to 15 seconds.
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Mercy would no longer gain any sort of healing regeneration buffs. The maximum length of her beam would go from 15 to 22. Her gun no longer gains infinitive ammo. Guardian Angel no longer resets after Valkyrie has been activated. The beam no longer attaches to nearby allies and it gives no extra healing benefits for the beam target.
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Visually her wings would not glow so much anymore.
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Mercy doesn’t gain any speed buffs for her Guardian Angel when the ability is activated.
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The duration of the ability can be messed around with, as well as the cooldown.
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The longer beam is there so it wouldn’t break as often if Mercy is flying higher or dodging the incoming damage.
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Visually the ability isn’t as big of a threat to Mercy herself as she wouldn’t glow with the power of a thousand sun, but she must still be aware of her position during it, as she doesn’t gain any healing, speed or cooldown resetting buffs when activating it.
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And lastly, her ultimate: Resurrection
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Mercy can only Resurrect one ally with this ultimate.
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Mercy can gain her ultimate faster now. I propose 7 seconds of consecutive headshots, and I give more insight of what I mean by that below.
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The duration it would take for her to resurrect an ally is between 1 and 1.5 seconds.
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Mercy doesn’t gain an invincibility while she’s channeling the ultimate, instead she gains a 50% damage reduction.
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The range of Resurrection is increased from 5 meters to 7.5 meters.
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The Resurrection resets the cooldown of Guardian Angel.
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The ultimate can be stopped with a barrier.
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The first thing I want to point out is that I’m not actually sure how fast Mercy can gain her ultimate right now. I am aware that she could get her first Resurrection ultimate the fastest with 9 seconds of consecutive headshots, and after the rework, she could gain it the fastest with 11 seconds of consecutive headshots, but I’m not sure if that is the case anymore. However, those are the statistics I’m basing these on, so; I propose the one man Resurrection charge being fastest with 7 seconds of consecutive headshots.
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I think the best cast time for her ultimate would be 1 second, it being a one man Resurrection after all, but I also propose 1.5 seconds cast time if the 1 feels too overpowered.
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The invincibility was always really powerful, however, having Mercy have a total lack of any protection like right now if Resurrect was her ultimate would feel really awful. That’s why I’m proposing a 50% damage reduction. However, I am aware that that is a big number, so it could be tweaked to 30%.
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Also, I am again proposing the Resurrection being stopped with a barrier thingy. This is to give more counter-play for her that I feel like could be healthy for everyone.
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- To summarize this second reword idea, it’s purpose is to give Mercy a lot of movement, without giving her too much power in terms of switching the fight in her teams favor. You would pick this Mercy mostly for a pocket. However, I am aware that this rework idea is mostly same on the terms with the current Mercy we have right now, but I’m not sure which way she should be tweaked to change that, or would this be okay.
The last rework idea is with mass Resurrection ultimate in mind, though it is also the one where we are least sure of where we should take the idea. However, we did want to include it here all the same.
Let’s again start with her Primary and Secondary fires:
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Her Primary fire is 50 healing per second.
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Her secondary fire is a 25% damageboost.
- A less healing and damageboosting impact is, as I mentioned earlier, a notable change. However, the healing is a change I feel like wouldn’t go away if they’d revert Mercy back to her earlier stages, so I feel like the damageboost change would go well with it. If the devs do say that her healing could be reverted, then 60 hp/s and 30% dmgb absolutely.
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Next up would again be Valkyrie:
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The Valkyrie gives Mercy the same value as listed above on the rework idea #2.
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The Valkyrie duration could be from 2 to 5 seconds.
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The cooldown of this version could also be from 12 to 15 seconds.
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The Valkyrie for this version could give Mercy a slight speed buff, something along the lines of 15%.
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Mercy’s hitbox is increased to count for the metal parts of her wings.
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This version of the Valkyrie still gives Mercy no healing or cooldown ressets, but it gives her a slight speed buff. This is countered with a slightly bigger hitbox than the one she currently has.
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The duration and the cooldown of this version is a lot harder to decide. However, if I’d were to give my best estimate for balancing it, I’d say the duration should be 3 seconds while the cooldown is 14 seconds.
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Again, this ability version of the Valkyrie wouldn’t give Mercy the glitter of the Junker Queens gold and it’s duration would show on Mercy’s HUD like the previous Sombra’s Invisibility.
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Lastly, would be her mass Resurrection. And, there are two ways which we can go on about this. First, I’m going to tell the basic concept of it, and then the two ways that Mercy could cast it.
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This Resurrection has a line-of-sight requirement and it’s range would be increased from 5 meter to 10 meters.
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This ultimate would be slowest charging in the game. Right now the slowest charge time of all the ultimates is Lucio with 15 seconds. We would change this by making mass Resurrection’s fastest charge time to be 17 seconds of consecutive headshots.
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During it’s cast time, Mercy gets a 50% damage reduction.
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The ultimate can be stopped with a barrier.
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There are few things that need to be on a mass Resurrection, and those are line-of-sight and slow charge rate. No matter what kind of solution seems like the best one, these are the things that need to be implemented on it. I have also reduced the area of effect from the original 15 meter to 10 meters, but that can be worked around with.
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Second thing I want to bring to this ultimate is again the damage reduction. I’m not sure if it would be too overpowered, this is a mass res we’re talking about after all, but I feel like there should be something to replace invincibility with.
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And again I am proposing the option to block the Resurrection with a barrier to allow more counterplay.
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The first way of casting this Resurrection would be for the cast time to be longer the more people Mercy tries to bring back. The cast time would be from 0.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
- I feel like 0.5 seconds per person is a good balance for the game. This would mean that the Mercy could try to get off a beautiful five man, or they could get a safer one or two man. Whatever the Mercy chooses, they had spent a lot of time charging their ultimate, so an observant Mercy could really thrive with an ultimate like this.
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The second way of casting this ultimate would be with a 1.5 to 2 second cast time (I feel like solid 1.75 seconds could be the best.) With this Resurrection, Mercy can start channeling it as soon as an ally dies, but if another one dies in her range, they will be brought back as well.
- This Resurrection is a more interesting one, but could be harder for players to bring the full value out of. It could also be possible that Mercy would heal the allies that are in her range by the time she Resurrects the dead to full health. However, I said earlier that we’ve tried to work with what the game has given us with her kit. So this is just an input on how this kind of Resurrection could work, though it could be a little overpowered.
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- So to summarize this third rework, it’s purpose is to give more power to Mercy’s ultimate as she would have to spent so much time charging it. And with the ultimate locking her in place for a pretty long time, a faster Valkyrie is there to help give her some mobility and make her a little more “fun to play” as people say.
(For those interested, I got my information of Mercy’s ultimate gain speed from RageGamingVideos on YouTube. Feel free to check them out if you want.)
I feel like it is no problem for Mercy to have a kit that requires a lot of thinking, as she would still stay as a one star hero because of her lack of aiming. She would still be an easy hero for newer players to pick up, but it also wouldn’t make her a safe “I can have a huge impact on her” -character that people would just play 20 hours straight and when they tried something else, they couldn’t keep up with the game.
- Also yes, I am aware that this post is probably going to get deleted or moved into the megatreat, but I felt like this would be the best way to bring these ideas up. Or if it happens so fast that no one even sees this, then it was a good run soldiers, at ease.
Well, that was a long one. Full book coming in soon.
TL;DR
Idea 1:
Primary fire 50 hp/s, Secondary fire 25% dmgb.
Resurrect now works with a resource meter which can charge up to two Resurrections, one for each beam.
Valkyrie now lasts for 10 seconds and gives the primary beam target a larger output than the rest of the team: 70 hp/s and 35% dmgb.
Idea 2:
Primary fire 60hp/s, Primary fire 30% dmgb.
Valkyrie would be her second ability with 4 second duration and 12-15 second cooldown. It gives no previous Valkyrie benefits other than ability to fly.
Her ultimate is a one man Resurrect that has a 1 second cast time and gives Mercy a 50% damage reduction, though it can be stopped with a barrier among other things.
Idea 3:
Primary fire 50 hp/s, Secondary fire 25% dmgb.
Valkyrie as an ability doesn’t give her any more benefits other than a slight speed buff and an ability to fly. It’s duration is 2-5 seconds and it’s cooldown is 12-15 seconds.
Her ultimate is a mass Resurrection. It would be the slowest charging ultimate in the game, has LOS requirement and it’s range is 10 meters. It could have a cast time of 0.5 second per teammate, or a solid 1.75 seconds but would resurrect everyone that dies in it’s range during it.
All of these ideas can be worked around. Neither I or anyone I’ve discussed these things with have been a hundred percent sure about any of these suggestions. Throw some ideas around in the comments to make these better or tell us what kind of changes you’ve been thinking.
