Unpopular opinion: Mercy's viability

Right now there is a reason she is considered an off healer. She is the most capable of solo healing, but labeling roles in only useful in high level play, where you WON’T be running a solo healing mercy outside of really gimmicky comps that don’t last. At GM whenever a mercy is present (atleast on PC, idk about how people play on console), the other support runs an ana. Even in OWL or the world cup, ever since mercy got a 50 hps she was ran as mercy/ana. The only time you’ll ever see a mercy as main heals is in a dive comp, and even then it’s debatable on whose better, mercy or lucio.

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Agreed, but I also think other heroes need balance changes to make mercy the “super viable” pick they think she is, at least in GM.

From what I can gather you are a playstation player. I suspect Mercy is a lot more viable as a hero on console than on a PC. I suspect that aiming as Ana is more difficult on console than on a PC, and if that is the case I suspect that Mercy has a stronger position on console…

So, while your arguments are not invalid because you are a console player, I think it may be helpful if you point that out when you talk about viability when it comes to Mercy…

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Not how that works. I’ve noticed that’s something that mid-ranked PC players tell themselves, though.

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You got a lvl 33 PC account as I see. Getting a rank soon or you gonna wait until you reach GM to unprivate it?

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Tbh this isn’t really effective since its on console

Ana is gonna be the worse choice on console while Mercy is the best. On PC its a different playground

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I haven’t put much work into the PC account. Not ranked right now. Shooters just feel worse to me with M+K because those weren’t designed for gaming like controllers were. I don’t like having my movement limited (you can’t move in a circle while looking in one direction with M+K). I don’t think any of that matters to you, though, as you’ve already expressed your “PC master race” way of thinking.

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Pick Ana since she just outclasses the other 2 healers currently**

There’s really not a major difference. It’s the same game. Aiming isn’t that big a difference on console because of aim assist. It’s not that hard to make shots as Ana. We just use Mercy more because using a controller lets us move more fluidly with her than with M+K. There’re no balancing differences between the platforms outside of Torb’s turret, but I don’t think Torb factors much into things on either platform right now.

Also, metas evolve differently among different groups. Even PS4 and Xbox players play differently and pick heroes at different rates. Metas are much more due to player behavior than skill or balancing. Mercy could just as easily be the most-picked hero on PC right now, too, if things had evolved that way.

What do you mean with this? As far as I know, left stick is for moving and right stick is for looking around.

Right, but I can rotate the left stick around the edge in a perfect circle without touching the right stick and I’ll just move in a perfect circle while looking straight ahead. On PC, you can only move at 45-degree angles unless you change where you’re looking with the mouse, too. It limits options for where you can move and look at the same time. Overwatch is even more limited in movement than other PC games because Q and E are used for abilities rather than a more severe strafing angle.

Ah, I see, something like Zangief in Street Fighter.
You guys got it weird lmao

Come On, there is a reason Pharah is straight trash at GM on PC but very viable on PS4.

PC pick rate at GM 0.64%
PS4 pick rate at GM 5.83%

It is pretty obvious why those pick rate are so different.

If unrestricted movement is weird, I’ll take it. Our only challenge (using default controls) is that it’s hard to jump and aim at the same time because your right thumb controls both of those. Spacebar makes that easier. We also can’t ADAD spam, so we move a little bit more deliberately and we’re less twitchy about it.

It’s differently-evolved behavior. It’s way harder to aim with Pharah and delayed projectiles than with hitscan on console, too. I play often with Widows and McCrees who don’t miss shots in comp and it forces me to switch off Pharah, too. It’s not like we can just ignore hitscan. I’d argue that it’s even easier to hit Pharah on console because of aim assist, which should make her worse, but it doesn’t matter. She sees use anyway. It could also be due to how much easier it is to control flight with a control stick than with a keyboard. It’s why helicopters use flight sticks.

It is because on PC she will get blown out of the sky the second a high level PC hitscan players sees her.

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One thing that’s worth pointing out is how different games are in GM from your average player’s.

Down here, people take a ton more unnecessary damage, and fights always last longer as people struggle to hit anything, let alone focus an enemy down quickly as a team.

I honestly think Mercy is in a weird spot right now, where if you were to somehow graph out her usefulness, it’d form a sort of U shape.

Low ranks she’s good because of how simple she honestly is to pick up.
High rank she’s good because people know how to play around her.
Mid ranks though? She struggles for the reasons I stated above.

Again, I don’t mean to call her bad, she isn’t, but one has to recognize the difference between different levels of play, and can’t just say “Well it works for me up here, so you should be fine”.


Edit:
Just remembered, difference of platform is also worth noting to a very heavy degree.

As according to Overbuff, Mercy’s pickrate in…
PSN’s GM - 11.69% (From what I can tell, this is where OP typically plays)
XBL’s GM - 8.11%
PC’s GM - 1.66%

That sort of difference doesn’t happen on accident. We can debate until we’re blue in the face about how console play is just as difficult, if not more difficult than PC, but fact of the matter is Mercy performs significantly better on console. So for a console player to come onto the forums and say “lmao Mercy’s fine, ya’ll are just honestly bad” really isn’t saying much given the advantage they inherently have as a console Mercy player.

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I’ve gotten this all of once. I was told to switch to Ana if I cared about winning. I stayed on Mercy and we won, me with gold healing and a commendation card. I asked in vc who was it again I was supposed to swap to? Dead silence ensued…

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This sort of post appears to me to be a case of what I have seen others refer to as PC elitism, or console shaming

It’s the same game - same name, same characters, same maps, same modes, same etc etc etc

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Hey I’m fine with how she plays now…

Would still like a tweak to her on fire rate though. It seems really low. And since it’s totally arbitrary, wouldn’t have any affect on the game.

Also… more wing colors. Would be the best mercy buff.

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To be fair, there is a difference between how those characters, maps, modes, etc, are all played. We can see this by something as simple as a difference in pickrates. Picks between XBL and PSN tend to be relatively similar, whereas PC is almost always the odd one out.

Now, how they actually differ (eg saying GM’s belong in PC’s Diamond) is up for debate, but they aren’t 100% the same.

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