I think the difference between Mercy hiding and a DPS hiding is that one of their ults can still be used proactively after the hiding and the other (rez) could only be used reactively, only after people were dead. Hiding for positioning and waiting for an opportune moment to maximize effectiveness isn’t the same as intentional inactivity for the purpose of being able to reverse that inactivity.
1 Like
Again, a lot of people did not do that with Mass Rez unless they were abusing the fact the SR system over rewarded for hugh Rez count and low deaths. The people who were doing wrong with it absolutely deserve to be called out for it. Just like those who did not abuse it or participate in it absolutely deserve to be acknowledged as having existing instead of the blanket statement that Mass Rez was used that way and implying it was only used that way. People use DPS ults in an equally as bad of manner as Mass Rez was used, and again, I still believe it is not within peoples ability to admit that fact is a fact.
Hiding and waiting for a huge Rez without contributing also could have been fixed by adding a cast time, removing invulnerability, and fixing the SR system rewarding bad play. Mercy’s game play is still not interpreted correctly by the system as seen by the abysmal fire rate she has had for many months because the only thing that gives her any form of positive amount of fire is Rezing and kills. In fact during Mass Rez there was someone posting a play by play on the forums of their streams as they exploited and abused the living daylights out of this problem and telling people literally how they were getting insane SR for really poor play that contributed very little to the match and actively hurt the teams chances at winning.
As Scott Mercer even said, while on fire and rank rewards are not literally linked, they measure the same things and have correlation. In other words, if Rezing gives a much larger chunk of fire than anything else Mercy can do, think about getting lots of Rezes and how it gives a TON of fire. While not a 1:1 the ranking system sees your play similar to how the fire system sees your play. Getting a TON of fire is likely also going to be seen as doing something really worth while even if you literally set up the entire team for everyone to just get killed again and actually end up hurting your teams shot at winning. Dying basically wipes out your fire rating, so to capitalize on the huge fire rating you need to avoid death meaning avoid fights. Therefore, hiding from the fight to make sure you never die, and flying in only to get a huge Rez then bailing from the fight in the confusion, then rejoining the team after they wipe to go farm up ult while staying safe and doing it again.
That is the “hide and Rez” gameplay and it is 100% explainable why it was done purely based on ranking rewards. Your on fire rate would explode and consequently your rating would go screaming upwards through the ranks. Thus boosted Mercys who abused hide and Rez. Thus higher ranks seeing it disproportionately. This type of play does not give an advantage to the team and hurts the chances at winning which means the win rate of this play style is low but because its rewarding so much in the way the system views value it counteracts the bad win rate, thus why high rank players saw Mercy as nothing but a troll pick because they are seeing more hide and Rez game play because of the rank.
Mean while think about what that does to the Mercys who didn’t hide and inflate their stats for SR. They didn’t gain rank because the lack of inflating Rez count means they didn’t have an inflated SR reward and the system sees them as performing worse. If the only things that gave you any form of reward were these two things, then the only two stats you’re being measured by are “under performing”. Even with a 65% win rate I was dropping rating because I refused to “hide and Rez” because it was cancerous bad play. Because of that, my Rez count was lower and death count was higher than those who did “hide and Rez”, and as a consequence despite numerically and win rate wise doing very well, my game play was considered playing “average” or worse because the two stats that were heavily weighted were not needlessly being inflated.
The refusal to acknowledge that the problem existed is beyond infuriating especially when posting a clip of OWL McCree hiding to ult, and the response is “but consider the rest of the scenario, available ults, etc”. Mercys did that as well and didn’t get that consideration and in fact STILL don’t get afforded that consideration. Thus, there is a double standard.
5 Likes
I wouldn’t say it is unique.
Everything besides flying can already be done without Valkyrie.
GA boost can help you get more than enough air time to do the same job except getting the best kind of boosts from GA requires more skill.
It is dull because I am doing the same thing in a more challenging way on the base kit.
When I ult, I want another ability that takes thought and game sense to use properly, that has a proper impact in it’s own right and doesn’t just enhance the base kit.
Orisa’s ult suffers the same fate.
2 Likes
I do not acknowledge that reasoning in a meaningful way because regardless of the reasoning Mercy is still acting on, and waiting on, team mate deaths when it comes to her version of hide and ult.
That is completely different from every other version of hide or ult imho.
I dont understand where this sort of measurement comes from. So we’re assuming each source of damage is doing 30 dps? That seems unrealistic. Why do we assume each damage source is outputting at 30dps? Seems incredibly low.
Yeah I can agree with this. Pretty accurate description of Mass Rez type interactions.
Yeah, controlling when they die, hiding to ensure your survival, etc. Mass Rez stuff. Completely different from all other forms of hide and rez.
How can you outheal 2 source of damage if they’re at 30hps? So now were expecting each source to output less than 30 dps? Why?
Same with everyone else. No one else can do anything about a team mate dying.
Arguable. Depends on the setting and circumstance imo.
Valk and Mass Rez do not encourage similar behavior imo. I consider that a false equivalency.
Do to the vast and fundamental differences between Mass rez and Valk I can understand why someone would rally against one of them but not the other.
Again, I consider those quite different, due to numerical advantage, its importance, and the fact rez is limited on a 1:1 mechanic now so a second person dying is a massive problem.
These are completely different situations. Mass Rez hide and rez is not even comparable to what McCree did due to Mercy needing to wait for deaths.
I still dont see the double standard. I dont think there is one when realistically assessing all elements of the behaviors.
2 Likes
We can not assume the reasons for why people used Hide and Rez tactics. We have to assume that they did win games, as winning a game is necessary for any sort of SR gain.
I wouldn’t put much energy towards those that legitimately think Hide and Rez is all Mercy players did. We can see clearly in pro level that Mass Rez with no LOS and it’s invulns and all that was still very much used just to bring Pharah back up from the dead.
I don’t think anyone benefits from trying to generalize one way or another. Accurate assessment and consideration of the situations is of utmost importance. Otherwise, we’re just throwing noise at each other.
DPS ults do not require your team mates to be dead in order to be used. Fundamentally different.
It’d discourage it a lot. And then you have it regulated to 2-3 rezzes, possibly even just 1. It’d still be able to be used in QP and tiers where coordination is lacking and all that noise. Furthermore, it doesn’t remedy the sort of fundamental design issues that are involved with a 1 button press can equal 1 to infinite people being rezzed within a certain area.
Yeah the fire rate sucks. It’s a joke. It’s obvious the system isn’t working properly when it comes to Mercy. It also has no in game impact.
Yes, that’s due to the performance based system which compares you to other people in your tier on the same map with the same hero. That is still in place from Plat and below. The Mass Rez Mercies would output much higher #s of rezzes, leading to reduced SR losses, and increased SR gains. That, while worthy of consideration, is an aside to how the 1:1-5 mechanic interacted with the game as a whole.
Yes. They should adjust Mercy on fire rates so that SR gains and losses are fair in Plat and below.
No, it’s not. It’s not 100% explainable purely based on ranking rewards. It still had to win games. This is an oversimplification to an extreme degree imo. You still had to win in order to gain SR.
There is an EXTREME AND FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE between the McCree example of hide and ult and Mercy’s hide and rez. Extreme difference. McCree gains literally nothing and cannot do a damn thing about his team mates dying. If he waits til his team is dead then pops out and ults… Thrown ult. Stagger. Super bad. For Mercy THAT COULD BE A GOOD PLAY.
Take ANY OTHER example of hide and ult you can think of, and then put Mercy in that same situation. What would Mercy have achieved if she hid and ulted like McCree there did? She’d bring up that 1 person that had been killed on her team (which was Mercy btw so LULZ on that one).
They are not the same. There is not a double standard.
If this is true, regardless of this is true, it’d show that hide and rezzing was prevalent enough to weigh down your performance comparison. That there admits it was a significant problem.
3 Likes
You make some good points, but I think Quest already made all the counterpoints I was going to make, especially as far as assuming hide and rez people did it to artificially inflate their SR. I also had issues with losing SR with a positive win percentage because I refused to hide and rez. It was absolutely expected that that’s what Mercy was supposed to do in the GM games I was in even when, as you described, hide and rez mostly just set up your team to be wiped again. I appreciate the thoughtful defense of your position, though.
Valkyire is my favorite DPS ultimate.
1 Like
Same. But it has heals, too. It’s like when you Tac Visor while standing in your own biotic field, but you can also fly.
I see this all the time in comp and I applaud our Mercy players who do it. It’s a lot of fun.
2 Likes
I think “Awesome” is not the word you are looking for - it’s something I guess
The only difference is Ana’s kit is designed around healing and being able to fend off attackers. Mercy’s kit is purely for her team and not for herself. She doesnt have a way to shine on her own. Her kit glorifies her team. Mass Rez allowed for her to have that one big play of the game that really could turn the tide.
2 Likes
Nice try, Jan. 20 characters
VALKYRIE IS AWESOME IN MY OPINION should be the post
2 Likes
Ya I love her playstyle I just think other healers need nerfs.
1 Like
This point is key. Blizzard intentionally designed it so that the off-healers are the supposed to be ones with the “impactful” Ults so that you don’t get two Transcendence-like Ults on the same team, unless you play both off-healers together.
2 Likes
Okay, can I at least get an ult like Coalescence then for Mercy?
- Charges faster
- Does more healing
- Does more damage
- Does more self-healing
The downsides to it is the duration, spread and limited mobility - totally fine with that.
2 Likes
I think I made it pretty clear in the body of the post that it’s my opinion. I wanted to offer the forums a perspective other than #rework angle that we see on here ten times a day. All this is is my perspective, but I offered up visuals to back up my claims for what the ability can do.
I think most players have never seen Valkyrie used creatively in action unless they watch OWL or some other post-OP-insta-double-rez play. Even some of the top-ranked Mercy streamers don’t use Valk for anything but floating and healing. I think they do that, though, because they want it to look useless, which is disingenuous. At least one of them posted a video of just floating and holding M1 as though that made any kind of point at all. That’s their opinion and this is mine.
Your videos basically showed what the real problem is.
Valkyrie is fun when you can Battle Mercy and fly in for resurrect. The rest of Valk is honestly pretty boring. Yeah, we get the enhanced healing, but it’s back to 60 HP/s. Something we have already had in the past that doesn’t make Valkyrie any more fun.
If we just drop resurrect, we can finally do more with the rest of Mercy’s kit. Res is holding her back and I hate it.
5 Likes
I’d honestly rather drop rez, too, in favor of something more proactive. I’d rather keep people alive than undo the fact that I didn’t.
As far as the fun part, one of the reasons I posted this is that I wanted to show that fun is subjective. I have more fun when I have more options. Some people would rather just have an ability that’s really strong in only one aspect. I think that’s boring, but that’s just me. Like I don’t understand why pressing Q and standing near people with Transcendence is fun for some people because it feels so uninvolved to me, but some want Valkyrie to just be a pure healing ult like that. To each their own. I don’t think using Valk to secure kills shows any kind of problem from that perspective.
4 Likes
If Mercy hides, her team gets rolled, and she pops them back up only to get immediately demolished by an ult, she gains nothing from it (aside from the SR exploit or just good old-fashioned stats padding for the sake of feeling cool). The enemy team should be able to punish this kind of hide and rez hard.
If Mercy stays in a battle that she cannot hope to sustain her team through, then she either staggers their deaths to where she can’t rez them, or becomes part of the teamwipe. This is really not far off from a deep flanking McCree, or jumping off a cliff to reset and avoid a stagger, or “wasting” an ult, knowing that it will get no value but that it will bait the enemy Trance in order to then wombo them, or a flanker who knows he won’t get out of a dive alive but believes it’s worth it to take out the Ana, or anything else that looks like self-sabotage in the moment that will end up setting your team up to succeed a step or two down the road.
Like I said above, I 100% accept and respect that the devs decided they didn’t want these kinds of calculations in the game, and that the way Rez could be abused was enough for them to go back to the drawing board. But I think people do have some overharsh interpretations of the “selfishness” of Mercy ensuring her own survival for the sake of outplaying ults that she couldn’t counter through raw healing in the first place. It’s true that Rez only gets value if Mercy’s teammates are dead, but Mercy is literally incapable of keeping them alive through certain kinds of damage, so the choice is not “heal my team or rez them”, but “die with (or stagger) my team or be able to rez them”.
I’m pretty sure they meant that there are only three heroes on the roster that do 60dps or less, not that a group of three people will only do 60dps collectively.
3 Likes