This question has been in my mind for a while. Since the beginning of the rework. I’ve been pretty quiet on the issue in these forums, but during my usual skimming through the comments I’ve noticed something that intrigued me.
A lot of the people (at least on these forums) who are pushing the idea that “Mercy is fine, you’re just a bias Mercy main” tend to be in Diamond and above. This is just a rough estimate of course.
The people who are vouching for a relook at the hero tend to be lower on rank, this of course includes myself. Of course there are exceptions, but regarding Valkyrie specifically it’s just something I’ve been seeing. I guess I can include the OWL players views on her as well. Especially that YouTube video of London Spitfire talking about Mercy and her Valkyrie.
But I don’t want to be bias in this, so I’d like to ask. Do you think that the rework only benefits pro players? Or do you think that the rework benefits everyone. If you can give reasons why that would be amazing as well. Thank you!
~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
#RevertMercy
7 Likes
It’s a boring and a not even remotely interesting ult. Practically makes your job 3x easier but even then it’s not enough to sustain allies through ults without using another support ult. The rework made her more viable as an offensive healer and more viable in pro play however this is a game, games are meant to be fun. Playing Mercy in her current state isn’t fun and doesn’t feel rewarding, nothing exciting in her kit outside of her new GA movement.
And that last sentence you wrote made me choke oml.
22 Likes
The valk nerf benefits everyone. Having to kill a player drains a lot of resources to do. With a single res, it is all erased. And you are now down in the fight.
Additionally, mercy isn’t in a bad spot. OWL, still uses her in a lot of matches.
9 Likes
Mercy double rez made her have a 100% pick rate and if your team didn’t Mercy you usually lost
This change benefits everyone, although Valk is still a boring ult
3 Likes
Before Mercy’s rework, she wasn’t part of the meta in pro play, so the idea that she got reworked only because pro players were complaining about mass rez as an ult, doesn’t hold much weight imo.
I also don’t think Mercy is in that bad of a spot either. She is just a character you pick when she fits your comp now. For instance, if you are running a McCree, Pharah, or a Widow, Mercy is still very strong (especially the last, because rez is very safe on a Widow far in your back line).
People just don’t understand when to pick what healers. I see ladder players running Moira with full dive comps, on maps where you have to go really deep like Eichenwalde and Gibraltar. Mercy would also be better in these situations, but because the community perceives her as week they would rather afk on the payload while your team is 5v6ing.
Also, I don’t fully understand the complaints that somehow Mercy is less fun, her base kit is still the same playstyle as launch, and I would argue Valkyrie is more interesting than mass rez (imo). If a character’s ultimate was the only thing making them fun, she has much deeper issues than just the rework.
Finally, Mercy wasn’t nerfed solely because of pickrate. She was nerfed because she changed the way the game was played for the worse. The pace of the game, the length of teamfights, punishing mistakes, and the viability of other supports were all affected by Mercy.
6 Likes
I don’t play mercy but, for me, the game lost a little of its shine when the rez got moved from an ult. Those last minute saves on the point were pretty epic, and a standout experience in the game. Now sadly lost.
9 Likes
I can at least say that the fun aspect for me was gone when her mobility was nerfed with the slow and cast time on rez. Her fun for me didn’t come from ruining the enemy team’s ult combos, but from being able to fly in and save someone from nearly dying, and then fly to someone else and damage boost them, and then get someone up after they died.
Now she’s just healing from the back, and will only be safe to rez with a tank escort, or after the teamfight is over. Ulting is now a weak Trans, or weak Supercharger. There is nothing Ultimate about what she can do when she pops her wings.
4 Likes
I was just in Competitive doing my placements with a few friends on King’s Row. After the enemy team got the first point and started to push forward with a Pharmercy combo, I swapped to Mercy from Zen because we needed some extra healing. This was maybe two minutes into the round. I stayed as Mercy for the remainder of the match, but I only used Res once and didn’t even pop Valkyrie until the very last push with 10 seconds to go until we’d won.
There simply weren’t any reasons to use either ability vs the risk or reward for Res or Valkyrie, respectively. And that’s the weirdest thing about Mercy right now - she’s basically back to the old 1.0 version in every bit that relates directly to healing and movement, except now she’s missing that high-risk/high-reward factor that brought out the thrill of playing her back then.
So she feels like this strange “half a character” compared to the rest of the roster, since Valkyrie and Res on E were all meant to be used in conjunction with the original Mercy 2.0 design, not this (necessarily so, sadly) nerfed version. So I’d still be much in favor of scrapping Valkyrie and finding some way to put Res back as Mercy’s ultimate; Res needs the high-risk/high-reward aspect to really work, and right now it’s just an obnoxiously long cooldown with high-risk/low reward.
4 Likes
I understand what you’re saying, I just disagree. I don’t think the instant rez was high risk, just high reward. This is also why I don’t think the rework was just because people complained, I think the devs realized she had design issues.
She was basically a character that couldn’t be balanced, because if she gets rez charged faster than tanks and dps, she is S tier like she was in beta (because Overwatch revolves around ult economy). If her mass rez charges slower than dps and tank ults then she is F tier (for the same reason).
So they decided to move her power away from her ult, unfortunately it backfired and they didn’t understand how much more powerful the rework would be. I feel like it was just a lack of understanding how rez gets the highest value, which is through tempo rezzing the moment people died, and valk let you do that 3 or 4 times in a row.
Honestly emp has very similar issues to old mercy ult, which is probably why they removed ult charge from hacked health packs. We’ll have to wait and see how that one plays out. Too much stuff is changing all at once, plus a new character joining the mix, its probably the most unsure I’ve ever been about any meta.
I’d say the reason they couldn’t balance her right was because they nerfed her like five times in six months, but that’s just me. The amount of hamfisted changes they made meant that no one was able to actually sit down and figure out the best way to play with and against her.
People will never be happy with resurrect mechanics, because resurrection removes the opportunity for capitalisation on key pick-offs.
Nerfing mercy was necessary, as she was the most broken a hero has ever been in the game’s history. My guess is that Mercy is going to stay the way she is for a long time, because most of the rest of the community is happy with it.
I was referring to prerework Mercy as a design issue not valk Mercy.
You are right about this part, they should have given her the nerfs she needed the first time, but hindsight is everything. I’m not sure they fully understood just how strong valk Mercy was. Although, I think the larger contributor is they were too hesitant with nerfs because they know how popular Mercy is and didn’t want backlash.
The thing is, when it comes to class based shooters, it’s pretty much universally true that people want the classes played in high skill brackets to be the ones that speed up the game.
It’s true in many games, like in tf2, the competitive players actively banned weapons that made classes like the heavy usable outside of niche situations because he slowed down the game.
In Overwatch it’s true too. If Mei or Torbjorn had Genji or Tracer’s pickrates, people would get upset. If Mercy had Lucio’s pickrate, people get upset. Even high skill cap heroes like Ana can slow down the game, which is why she was so awful to play against, but Moira (who speeds up the game) isn’t.
So to a degree, yeah, I think people don’t want resurrect in particular to be good in high end gameplay. Valkyrie is a powerful ability, but its power isn’t in resurrect, so that’s good.
However, that’s a separate factor to balance, and she is balanced atm.
I think Mercy is in a great place right now, actually. She feels engaging enough, at least for me. I use Valkyrie prior to a fight in order to give me team an edge. Valk, like Coalescence, is a really bad “oh ****” ultimate, and using it preemptively and helping my team engage instead of recover makes for very enjoyable gameplay. As someone who plays most of the supports (except Ana, who is hard for me) I find myself using Mercy for respectable healing output and buffing my Bastion and Zenny instead of Res. Her gameplay has slowed a bit, but I think that’s better- it’s a middleground between doing nothing except team reses and zipping around like a jackrabbit on 16 hours worth of energy drinks.
I think her rework benefits everyone right now, yes she’s boring at the moment but the nerfs were needed for the health of the game.
and honestly, now it makes me happy seeing her used in the OWL because they’re using her because they want to, instead of being forced into playing her. she’s being used outside of being only a pocket for pharah and widow.
she’s not a must pick anymore, and so far in stage 2 we’ve seen every single healer used and it’s such a nice change.
Are you really judging the value of character changes by how it affects the top 0.00001% of players? You should work for Blizz.
5 Likes
the rework is a mess, but she’s in the best state she’s been since Valk was introduced. Pre-invuln rez ult was still the best mercy.
I don’t play her anymore unless mystery mode makes me do it.
This pretty much sums it up. They balanced her after the catastrophe of her rework finally, but the way they went about doing it made her even more boring and passive than ever before (the thing this whole s***show of a rework was about changing). And her ult is basically just spectator mode. Does absolutely jack for a teamfight with ults and honestly barely does anything better than she can do without it in teamfights without ults. Bizz REALLY dropped the ball on this one, and they just need to fess up to it and make it right. That being said, it will probably be a minute till we see them do so because everyone is tired of seeing mercy’s name in the patch notes.
2 Likes
What they needed to get rid of was the resurrect to be replaced by something else. Not the movement on her ult ability. Since there are counters for things that you cannot shoot up on the skye; like deadeye, or visor for example.
Resurrect was the one ability mercy is known for, they couldn’t get rid of it entirely because of the lore behind it. How it was part of her character. Instead, compromised with nerfing her movement ability, cool down of res, and how long it takes to res.
Edit: I notice that most of the arguments stem from; This isn’t CSGO or your normal first person shooter game. It’s a fantasy game, but being resurrect the one skill that can turn over a match from 6v6 to a 8v6 was just overpowered. To answer your question, it was a blessing for everyone to have had valkyrie changed. This is from someone who has had experienced her in the lower tiers.
1 Like
My post, describing my feelings at replacing the rez ult with Valkyrie, apparently contains words that are “not allowed”.
Here is a picture of a cat instead: 