Valkyrie is awesome (video evidence)

General Discussion
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I was in a thread last week discussing Valkyrie (shocker, right?) with a group of players who find the ability boring and unimpactful. This is a common sentiment on the forums and it has been since Mercy’s rework. It actually goes beyond common. I think the hate for Valkyrie can be safely labeled as pervasive at this point based solely upon the number of Mercy threads that are on the front page of these forums at any given time of day, almost all of which focus on changes to her ult.

Anyway, while in the thread I mentioned earlier I was making my usual arguments in favor of Valkyrie. I usually offer things like that I believe it’s the most versatile and interesting ult in the game right now; It’s much more involved than mass rez ever was; It’s much more fun to actively participate in the fight than it is to wait for your team to die and resurrect them; Valkyrie is the Swiss army knife of ults that allows you to choose the best tool for the job on a second-to-second basis for fifteen seconds; etc. Then, somebody said this to me.

This person made a good point. Talk is cheap and it’s easy to tell people what I believe Valkyrie can do, but it doesn’t mean a lot to people who’ve only experienced the ability as a “spectator mode”.

This is my response to that comment. I clipped some Valkyrie plays that I made this week. I want to show people that Valkyrie can absolutely be interesting, impactful, and, most importantly, way more fun for everybody involved than mass rez ever was.

Keep in mind, these are not my all-time greatest hits. This is just some stuff I did this week. Most of it is quickplay with my buddies because we can’t queue for competitive together, but some of it is from competitive.

1: Mercy 3 - YouTube
In this clip, I was solo healing. I had a strong enough front line that I was comfortable leaving them alone for a bit once they were topped off so I could get rid of the Widow that kept getting around our shield.

2: Mercy 4 - YouTube
There’s a lot going on in this one, but what I chose to do with the situation was much more engaging and impactful than just floating and holding down the heal button.

3: Mercy 5 - YouTube
Valkyrie is what got us onto the point here. My team was hardstuck in a choke point and my Pharah was too far away to reach. Valk has a range extender on both Guardian Angel and the heal beams. I didn’t win the fight by myself, but sometimes starting something is all you need. Supports are more than just healers.

4: Mercy 10 - YouTube
Play of the game on a triple kill with nanoboost. This play won us the team fight because that D.Va bomb took two people out while I was on my way in. I gave us enough time for our dead to get back on defense. Also, this was really fun. How could this be considered less engaging than other support ults? Valkyrie can be more engaging even than some DPS ults if you want it to be.

5: Mercy 11 - YouTube
Play of the game in a competitive game with Top 500s and GMs on both teams. I see a lot of complaining from Mercy players that think they never get a chance for recognition or to impact the game with Valkyrie, but I got play of the game several times in the last few days and a lot of recognition, so I have to disagree with those complaints.

6: Mercy 9 - YouTube
Another play of the game. The PoTG system cut off most of the actual Valkyrie use, but I just wanted to show another example of Mercy being recognized for being creative. Side note: I saw no other support players get play of the game on either side of any game I was in this week. It’s much easier for Mercy because of the nature of Valkyrie. You can get it as often as you want it, folks.

7: Mercy 7 - YouTube
A good example of multitasking and recognizing what we need and when. I started the ult to be able to top off my team and reach the Genji that was way down the hallway from me. I finished it by cornering both of the enemy supports by myself, effectively removing them from the fight before I killed them (which I also did). Such impact. No spectator mode.

8: Mercy 6 - YouTube
Here’s a good example of just being available to everyone. This wasn’t super exciting, but I made it clear to that Tracer that she wasn’t going to pick anybody off. I also forced her back into the fight by shooting her in the face and forcing her to recall back into danger. You don’t have to get kills or do tons of heals to impact the fight.

9: Mercy 2 - YouTube
Here’s one where I didn’t have anything specific in mind when I popped the ult, but found things to do along the way, just whatever we needed most in the moment and it turned out to be really impactful. One of my favorite things about this ult is that no two usages ever have to be the same. You have enough time in Valk to pick and choose what you want to do and then go do something else.

10: Mercy 1 - YouTube
Sometimes I pop Valk just because I hate snipers. Genji did most of the work here, but I helped make it work and was responsible for getting Widow down off of her perch so he could get in there more easily.

A little about me, I’ve been playing this game since beta and I’ve played Mercy heavily every season since then. I’m not the best in the world, but I’ve hit GM almost every season and I hit top 500 for the first time last season. I know I’m better than the average Mercy player, but you don’t have to be great to pull off anything I did in these videos. You just have to be engaged and willing to take a chance. If I did all of this fun stuff in a few days, any of you can, too.

Valkyrie is as engaging as you choose to make it. It also charges really quickly and you can have it up nearly every single fight even with just a moderate amount of healing done. Remember, Mercy players, you’re not a healer, you’re a support player. Sometimes supporting the team means getting your hands dirty and I love it. I hope y’all will, too.

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You see this emptiness? It’s because forum mercy mains want that fat revert. Nice post though

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It is disappointing when threads that are just arguing over nothing get more attention than posts that had a lot of thought go into them. /shrug. Thanks, though.

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No problem. Well done post

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I’ll watch in a bit, Gold. I gotta take care of some stuff around the house first. I’m not sure if this will change my opinion on Vall (I don’t think it’s really bad, you can see my opinion in the thread you were talking about and various others haha) but I’ll give them a watch when I’m free.

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i just trust that the developers are smart and ignore the outcries to buff mercy even more. she’s received enough attention. there are other heroes that actually NEED attention.

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Your videos are nice. But they don’t hide the fact that it does ALL the work for Mercy. No strategy needed other than keeping away from enemies. It’s not exciting, it’s not fun. It’s just “do what you already do, only you can fly now”.

Resurrect at least required a lot of thinking and planning ahead to pull off successfully.

Mercy doesn’t need a buff, dude. She needs to be fun again. Mercy has just been a boring, dull, soulless shell of her former self ever since her rework first hit live.

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Be carefull when using your pistol as mercy, you can be called a troll and banned, even if that was the right thing to do in the situation. Happened to one of my friend.

So be carefull if some over extending player dies during the time you go for a kill or two, they are going to report you for throwing and playing “battle mercy”

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I get what you’re saying. It’s not fun for everyone, but it is for me. You’re right that Valk is usually less of a planned thing and more of a “Do cool stuff on a second-to-second basis” thing, but that’s what I like about it.

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You linked me to this thread and so I’ll comment on my own take on these videos.

From the few that I’ve seen, your assumption that “Valkyrie is awesome” is only true if we think awesome must mean getting kills with Valkyrie. You have taken clips where you got eliminations (and in my opinion, pointlessly used an ultimate when your team was already winning the fight) and have passed it off as truth to the choir, the choir being the regular anti-Mercy crowd who will upvote literally anything related to making Mercy worst or keeping her in her current state.

I have several clips saved where I use Valkyrie and within milliseconds my team dies to focus fire. Should I post a thread called “Valkyrie is trash” based on them?

Edit* Just as an example; you literally posted a clip of you hunting a Widow who had no impact on the fight, was behind a wall and had blocked LOS from your team and did that for 8 seconds, meanwhile your team won a fight without their main healer. How much impact were you really having on that game if you can abandon your team for 8 seconds and they still win?

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but you guys are literally the same group that said “fun” is subjective.

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It takes time to read and watch each clip. :wink:

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All the clips do have kills in them, but the point was to show that Valk is most effective when you vary your activities throughout. Mercy can really only heal, boost, or kill, so I tried to include all 3 things. The one thing Valk isn’t supposed to do is counter burst damage, so I think making a compilation of trying to do that and failing would be disingenuous.

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Thank you OP, Mercy is great and so is Valk :sun_with_face:

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I really don’t want to sound mean by saying this but…
I’ll agree with one thing, Valk is very fun to use like this! … In quickplay games… where you can run at the widow and she can’t even hit you once and your team isn’t all dead when you turn around.
There was a widow staring at you from behind on Numbani, you had no clue she was there, and she missed. That doesn’t happen for some people.
I don’t get to fly miles away from my team to chase snipers in my comp games. The most effective thing to do in most of my situations is fly up high and heal the team.
Again, I’m not trying to sound mean, I just don’t think these clips really apply to how Mercy is played in a lot of situations I guess.

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Have some patience, if you want someone to watch 10 clips that are around 20-30ss and actually think about it then it’s going to take a few minutes.

For many of those clips, your gameplay is definitely more personally impactful than mine but, it’s also far more risky or at least it would be on the PC. A big part of the reason the play on PC as Valk Mercy can be passive is because Mercy can get shot down and that the chain beams provide more value than the gun most of the time.

Yes, when the gun works it makes a far prettier highlight but, tossing out 300 healing/s or 30% damage boost to the team wins more fights.

For example, in your first clip I doubt I would have hit valk when you did and if I had, I would not have gone up to go for the Widow. Even if for some reason I had gone for the widow the instant the Mei ult went out I’d have gone back to my team. Killing the Widow isn’t worth having some or all of the team die and it’s entirely possible the widow could kill me. Your Rein ended up dying because you ulted and went for the Widow.

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I know what you mean. Quickplay is definitely a bit easier than comp. That Widow did miss me there, but she was pretty effective through the first couple stages of the map. I still use Valk pretty often to take people down (especially snipers) in high-level comp games, but I didn’t get to put in very much comp time this week. Maybe I’ll put something together from comp matches in the future.

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I’m really glad you have fun playing Mercy OP, and the fact that you pulled it off in comp t500 with a PoTG is goals for me haha

I get so many good plays with Mercy but PoTG usually goes to someone else in my bracket. Also I feel her on fire rate kinda sucks because I’ll be making impact and get 8 fire points T.T Whereas if I was playing Ana, I’ll be on fire immediately… that’s pretty much my only complaint about current Mercy.

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That hide and Rez in #9 tho. I don’t care that its properly taking cover to Rez. If taking cover to Mass Rez automatically means hide and Rez, then so does this.

There is a lot of over healing, and you can tell its QP since there is no focused fire and you went largely unfocused and your efforts largely uncontested.

Thats not really representative of what really happens outside of quickplay where you can goof off and do what ever you want however you want with little pressure or concern.

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I love this thread OP. Totally gonna use it as reference for every person claiming Valkyrie is “spectator mode”. Was debating to actually upload some videos of using it myself but you’ve done the work. Respect and enjoy the holidays.

Now hopefully we can put the matter to rest. Valkyrie is awesome. Gonna use your thread as a link in mine as well, hope you don’t mind.

PS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9ofDE0wsQ

Takes out two of their supports, sustains team. But naah, Valkyrie is not impactful /s :joy:

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