So… every single one of those you pulled your pistol and burned someone down, with the exception of number 8 which you yourself say “This wasn’t super exciting” and even then you did pull your blaster… you just didn’t kill the Tracer.
I see zero exciting examples of Valkyrie that do not involve her blaster in your list.
With that in mind…
Here’s Geoff Goodman saying flat out, point blank that Mercy’s pistol is not supposed to be the main way to use the ultimate.
Yet here we are… back to using the pistol seeming like the best, most fun way to use her ultimate because after the initial PTR pistol nerfs, everything else has gotten nerfed to the point where the pistol feels the best again.
This isn’t proof that Mercy is fine… this is proof that Blizzard seriously messed up Mercy’s rework.
I did pull the pistol out in all of these clips, but the reason I did that is to show Valkyrie’s versatility. I purposefully tried to do as many different things as possible during each activation to show that the ability is most effective when Mercy varies her abilities throughout the fifteen seconds she gets in Valk. It’s very rare that a full fifteen seconds of solid healing or damage boosting is needed. More often than not, it’s the smart play for Mercy to take a few seconds to shoot at somebody after the team is topped off unless there’s a coordinated push happening, at which point damage boosting would be smarter.
There are times when I just use Valkyrie for healing, but I didn’t post videos of those because they’re not exciting. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them. I also wouldn’t want to watch a video of Widow popping her visor or Zenyatta using Transcendence because neither are very interesting even though they’re both very strong and impactful abilities.
“Her job is to heal. We want healing to feel good for her and to feel good for the people she’s healing. Healing is the thing that is core and primary to Mercy above all. Secondary to that it would be her mobility. We don’t want her focus to be resurrect.”
The ability does clash with what some believe to be Mercy’s primary function. I’ve admitted a bit further up in the thread that putting such an involved, unintuitive ultimate on a hero who’s intended to be accessible and straightforward (as far as her role goes) is an odd choice, but I’m glad it was made nonetheless. I’d rather not get hung up on labels. I don’t want to be limited to one aspect of Mercy’s kit just because it’s her “job”. I spend about 90% of my time healing on Mercy, so I’m still doing that, but I still take any opportunity I can get more involved and innovative and I don’t think that’s a problem.
Hello world! It’s very anxiety inducing to be silenced when someone makes a literal topic to counter your argument. Infuriating, really. At long last, here I am.
I’ve watched all the vids and you certainly are a great Mercy, but I’m not bad either. I know how to use Valkyrie and I can make use of it. Your clips are nice but I don’t see anything game changing. Valkyrie still the same, you didn’t invent a new way to use it that I had missed somehow. It’s just not there.
I must say my point got missed completely in shuffle. I said I wanted a VOD review not because I literally wanted someone to show instead of tell, but because I was tired of the argument that I can’t use Valkyrie. Animetic’s videos have been posted here too for the same reason. You certainly put a lot of effort in it and that’s thankful, but I’m sorry, It’s a non-argument and irrelevant when we’re talking about design choices, player feedback and so on, putting it in nice topic doesn’t change that.
And for the sake of argument, lets go with it, lets say I don’t know how to use Valk (which it isn’t true), but lets go with it. I don’t think the issues that I raise about Valkyrie change at all. Those issues relate with Valkyrie’s design and how it fits with Mercy’s kit, it barely relates (if at all) with how powerful it is or how good it can be at capping a point.
I’ve put it in a lot more detail in here, if anyone is interested. The tldr is that Valk covers way, way too many skills deficiencies of Mercy’s already shallow skill pool and that hurts Mercy’s kit. Combine that with how chain beam keeps her base kit shackled (another issue I did not talk about in that particular topic) and I believe it’s fair to say Valk is one of the worst ults in the game design-wise (not balance-wise, mind you) and that’s why it needs tweaking/rework/whatever.
I was wondering if you’d ever seen the thread. That sucks about being silenced. It’s cool you came back to discuss once you could, though.
Anyway, I read the thread you linked. You make a good point that Valkyrie pretty much removes the skill deficiencies associated with Mercy’s base kit. The reason I don’t have a problem with that is that I think it opens up a big opportunity for Mercy to show off decision-making and game sense.
The way I look at it, the more Mercy can do the more is expected of her and, when she’s in Valkyrie, there’s a lot she can do. It’s kind of a “With great power comes great responsibility” situation. While she doesn’t have to worry about things like beam management or mobility, which she normally does, she does have to worry about whether she’s using her full fifteen seconds to the best of her ability and to the maximum potential. I’m not saying she doesn’t to worry about decision-making outside of Valkyrie. She definitely does. It’s just that she has to do it on a much larger scale while Valk is up. It’s kind of like being the mayor when her ult isn’t up (she has a lot of decisions to make but her options are only limited to what’s around her and what she can reach) compared to being the president when her ult is active (she can do pretty much anything she chooses to do but there’s a lot of pressure to pick the right thing).
My favorite thing about Valkyrie is the options it gives you. While I enjoy that, I’ll admit that it can be problematic when paired with Mercy’s design. There’s a discussion further up in the thread I had with Lazypeon where they made a good point about Valkyrie being an odd fit for Mercy, who’s intended to be a very straight-forward, easily-accessible option. I’ll agree that it is a strange fit for her, but I’m happy with it as somebody who really likes to push things to the limit in any game I’m playing. I get that that might not be what everyone wants. Sometimes people just want a strong and consistent healer and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I made this thread hoping to inspire people to try to use Valkyrie to its full potential regardless of what role they believe Mercy should fill. I hope that it sticks around because I don’t want Mercy to be a healbot, which pairs nicely with my hatred of snipers. I don’t think anyone’s wrong in this discussion since it doesn’t come down to an issue of balance. It’s all preference.
That’s simply not enough, every button press in the game requires that, not to the same extent of course but it’s always there. I didn’t even mention that in the thread because game sense and decision making is there by default, you don’t press WASD without it.
That’s yet another issue to add in the Valkyrie pile. Its power is spread out across too many things, like Bilbo, it’s butter over too much bread. “Swiss-army knife ult” you called it and I certainly agree. It’s not a great tool for anything, but it’s serviceable for many things.
I heard Valkyrie was an idea scrapped from alpha. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can certainly see it why it should have stayed in the garbage bin.
Rework is a strong word, but I believe Valk should be tweaked. For one, to be better overall (I don’t think it’s good design even in a vacuum), second to fit Mercy’s kit (it clashes with her design in more ways than one), third because I don’t think it’s expensive to do so, simple tweaks would go a long way and fourth I believe there’s certain tweaks that wouldn’t change what players such as yourself like about it, a win-win scenario is possible.
Remove chain beam, make the pistol more damaging instead of more forgiving, make GA better but don’t give infinite mobility, give one full health bar or some immunity frames instead of insane self heal, etc. In other words make Valk less forgiving and more skillful, she doesn’t need a high skill ceiling, but if the ult didn’t drop said ceiling on the players toes, that would be great.
I think the power comes from the possibilities. The enemy team doesn’t know what to expect when they hear German shouting. She might be healing her team, starting a push, or she might be charging at somebody. You know what’s happening when you hear Transcendence or Sound Barrier activate or pretty much any other ult in the game for that matter.
I’d say Valkyrie is a great tool for mobility but you’re right that it’s mostly only serviceable for everything else when you examine each aspect of it individually. I think mixing it all together is what does it for me, though. I’d rather have an all-you-can-eat amount of pretty good pizza than a small amount of great pizza.
The changes you suggested are solid, though. If they do make changes, I hope very much that they still allow for me to have several options for how to use the ult. I don’t want to be pidgeon-holed into a single usage purpose like most of the other ults. It needs to stay dynamic and exciting for me to be happy with it.
Valkyrie does a lot of things.
More dmg, AoE heal/boost, self healing and mobility.
But it does none of them in a way that is very impactful.
The AoE heal isn’t enough to counter Ultimates like Zen and Lucio can.
The AoE boost is a weaker Orisa Ultimate (and that one is already trash tier).
The Blaster and Mobility feel fun to use but actually lure you into abandoning your team and getting yourself into a bad position.
Also most Mercy Players don’t really have the aim to gain full profit from the Blaster on the Rank they are as a Support Main (and the weird giant reticle doesn’t help either).
It just feels like a lot of stuff mashed together without having a plan what the player should be doing with it and it actually reflects in the way players are using the ultimate. They don’t know when they are supposed to push Q and if they do, they mostly behave like someone who didn’t expect to get nano boosted.
Just keeping the mobility and either unnerf her blaster OR let her AoE heal and boost at the same time.
Just give the ultimate a direction and allow it to have the impact that other ultimates have.
These highlights clearly showcase how impactful Valkyrie is. Mercy is viable and she works. Some people here just want to make Mercy OP again unfortunately.
Pressing Q to kill off a Sniper while putting your own life on the line and leaving your team behind as a main healer isn’t exactly what I would call an Support-Ultimate worthy game impact.
And that is what most of those Highlights were showing.
Sure. Sometimes it will work and it will feel awesome for the Mercy player and serve as a fun to watch highlight.
But in the end this list of highlights is nothing but a collection of “best case scenarios” that says nothing about how impactful the ultimate is on average.
As a tank main I HATE it when the Mercy on our team uses her ultimate, simply because in most of the cases the situation tends to get much more dangerous and unpredictable for me.
Seeing any other Support Ultimate ready makes me able to plan ahead and feel confident about the next team fight.
This isn’t exactly a highlight reel and it’s definitely not exclusively best-case scenarios. All of these clips came from games I played over two days (around four hours of play). I didn’t even play Mercy every game in that time. These clips are actually around half of the times that I used Valkyrie total those days, which makes them pretty average Valkyrie uses for me. It’s not like I saved my best all-time plays over a long period. I think the fact that they all came from such a short time span says a lot about how achievable these kinds of plays really are.
Anyone claiming these plays are not achievable or something that requires incredible difficulty to accomplish has either not played current Mercy at all or is quite honestly a very low ranked player in terms of the competitive tiers.
It’s really not that hard to use Valkyrie and make impact with it.
Protecting his entire Team from dying to an ultimate even if they are in an otherwise hopeless situation (Huge Shatter/Grav, Soldier Ult and no cover, Genji Ult, you name it)
supporting an engage with AoE burst heal
still has both of his Orbs up
mobility
Lucio:
see Zen
supporting an engage with a 750 HP Shield
still being able to deal damage and heal/speedboost
Ana:
turning a teammate into a killer machine that is way scarier than a Valkyrie Mercy
still beeing able to heal, deal damage and use her abilities
Moira:
burst AoE heal AND damage
mobility
Brigitte:
high sustain for a strong engage or to stop an enemy engage
mobility
Meanwhile Mercy has to decide if she wants to deal damage, boost damage, heal, or waste some precious ultimate time while trying to res a single teammate, hoping that the rather weak selfheal will keep her alive.
Every other Supports Ultimate has the potential to consistantly counter ultimates and/or enabling your team to engage recklessly, while all of them can do their usuall job simultanously.
Only Mercy has to decide and no matter what she picks, other supports would do a better jobat it.
Her AoE heal is too weak to save her team even from a single ultimate (Zen or Lucio can get a 2 to 1 trade on a regular base).
Her damage boost is just about half as strong as Orisas and she can’t even keep shooting while using it.
And if you go for the Blaster you basically trade a main healer for a weaker form of Nanoboost and put yourself into danger.
You know, you can be reported and be banned because you are a “more active Mercy player” and not a “press a buton” one. So if you can’t change most of the community view on this then most of the solo players in comp have to press lft mouse and heal or they will be reported by the angry teammates.
For starters, you will only get reported if what you’re trying to do leads to no result or to a negative result, no one will report you for killing an enemy when your ally was about to die to said enemy, no one will report you for killing Widows or Pharrah effectively enough for you to go back to heal/boost mid valk, no one will report you for using your whole kit and winning games
They will however report you if you could have saved them by healing instead of shooting and missing all of your bullets, they will report you if you fail to actually kill anyone with your gun when you choose to use it, not because you’re using it but because you made the wrong choice
So it’s very simple actually, if you wanna be able to use Mercy’s gun, get good
I’d agree with you if Mercy had to pick one aspect of Valkyrie per use and stick with it. The strength of Valkyrie, though, comes from her freedom to choose and switch abilities on a second-to-second basis.
I don’t think anybody’s arguing that any one aspect of Valkyrie isn’t slightly less powerful than other abilities with similar aspects. Yeah, Transcendence does more healing and Supercharger does more damage and all that but neither of them last for fifteen seconds and both of them have only one function that you’re committed to once you press Q. With Valkyrie, you can have a slightly less powerful (but mobile) supercharger for as long as you need it. You can then switch to a less-powerful-than-Transcendence group heal for a few more seconds. You can then switch back to the supercharger and there’s usually time left over to straight-up chase down and kill somebody with an infinite-ammo pistol.
If at any time during Valkyrie you feel like using one ability will leave your team open to dying (like chasing somebody with a pistol like you mentioned instead of healing) you don’t have to do that thing. If healing is what they need more than you killing somebody, you have the freedom to do that thing. That’s part of the decision-making skill that comes with using a fifteen-second ultimate. Basically, Valkyrie gives your team a fifteen-second advantage that takes whatever form it needs to at the time. That’s what’s unique and powerful about it.