Valkyrie is awesome (video evidence)

General Discussion
267

Because I don’t get to carry a team as Mercy no matter how capable I am at playing Mercy at my level, I am only able to be as good as my team. I love playing with my friends and they make this game more fun for me, however only one of them can give me any climbing potential and even then he cannot carry a game where we are playing in against silvers with a bunch of Bronze players because our friend is in Bronze.

For example, I got 20K healing today. I had 7-9 resurrects. I had a few elims under my belt and created so many openings with and for my team. I was incredible. That doesn’t cancel out the fact that we had 3 DPS, the one with lowest DPS refusing to switch and the points kept getting over run because the enemy had two tanks and was working with each other better. People don’t work together or communicate as well as they used to and people often play selfishly in the lower ranks when playing DPS.

You can only climb as well as your team can let you when playing Mercy because her design is so fundamentally team dependent. Which is why Mass Rez made such a difference in her ability to climb, because regardless of whether it effected the team or not, it was one of her abilities that reduced her team dependency. It was a moment that relied on her, what she could do with what she was given and how to best gain advantage from a disadvantageous situation. This meant avoiding needless risks or reviving a team into a well-prepared enemy. These choices were her own, no one could make them for her and it was her time to be a little less team dependent.

A character who is solely team reliant and so constantly mechanically easy with thought being taken away with things like Valkyrie, results in a character who cannot stand up to the state of the game.

I have seen plenty of bad Mercy’s with no clue on her base kit, but are able to press Q and still get decent value because the design at it’s core is to make Mercy’s already mechanically easy job, just flat out easier to do.

Just because the job is made easier, does not imply that it is OP or that it will make you climb. The ultimate itself is relatively balanced, perhaps actually far too weak considering it is meant to be a tempo ult and cannot stand a leg against any other tempo ult. I have no problem with the balance of the ability in a game sense. I have an issue with what it promotes at the core of it’s design. I have a problem with it’s design at its core because Mercy being mechanically easy shouldn’t mean her challenges and weaknesses should be taken away for an ult. She needs challenges exactly for that reason that people feel she is a brain dead hero for lack of mechanical skill, so she needs to be challenged in other ways. When the base kit is harder to use and feels more fun all around because of that, it raises alarm bells.

An ultimate should feel impactful in its own right and let a player shine, so long as that character’s core kit is not already loaded to have exciting, engaging and powerful gameplay already.
Eg. Ana and Nano. Widow and Infrasight.

Mercy’s core kit is not loaded. Because of reliability, it is much weaker in healing and single target compared to the healers she is supposed to contend with. Therefore, they either need to adjust her in greater ways to make her more like a Tracer with her ultimate and single target rez as an ult, which makes it earned, not too fast but can show skill by how fast it can be earned and it won’t have to feel clunky because then speed limitations should not be as great a concern. This leaves room for an E ability to give her just that little more independent play she needs.

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You cannot ask for independent abilities while playing a team based game.
You can only climb as well as your team can let you when playing any hero. Unless you solo kill the entire enemy team, yeah sure. But you can get focused pretty easily.
Valkyrie is impactful if you know how to properly use it. Nanoed target can die right after Ana used it on someone which means ult got wasted. What engaging you think Infrasight has? It makes the enemy team to hide for 15 sec?
Mercy’s core kit was always the same. She’s supposed to pocket someone, damage boost other heroes so they could get their ults faster\do more damage. She’s not supposed to outheal burst damage. If you want burst healing - pick Moira, she can easily provide AOE heals, but she doesn’t give your team anything else. With Ana you have to be mechanically skilled enough to carry.
If you can’t climb without mass rez - you don’t deserve to climb.

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269

I’m sorry but I can literally solo-carry my team at your level while playing Mercy (actually I can do this with literally any hero). This means that you are competitively at the right place. Which means your mechanic skills, positioning, game sense, situational awareness are not utilized properly or to its full potential. This is not to shame you in any way - many people are not pros and that’s okay. But claiming you know how to play Mercy properly is a false statement. If you did you would be able to solo-carry. I can literally kill 3-4 people with Valkyrie at that level and solo-carry my entire team.

It used to be this way. Not anymore, Valkyrie allows you to literally solo-carry at those ranks. Mass Rez revived teammates who if bad would continue to be bad. Mass Rez was a multiplier like Symmetra’s old teleporter.

Thought was given to you with Valkyrie. You have many options.

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Many heroes can use their abilities whilst also performing their own tasks.
Other supports can quickly switch from being team focused to enemy focused.

Soldier can heal himself, it allows him to be independent and make brave moves but he still needs a team.

By independent, I don’t mean being solo.
I mean that that kit gives the player the capacity to make judgement calls that don’t always rely on the team, which Mercy’s kit severely lacks.

Mercy’s base kit is the more challenging version of Valkyrie.
I don’t like pressing the Q button, no matter how balanced or what kind of impact it provides because it still feels like you lose all your challenging game play and get some of your greatest weaknesses removed. I don’t want to do the same thing I was doing moments ago but easier because I now have less to juggle, less to do, less to think ahead about because chain beams makes the juggle and prioritization easier to cope with, being able to position yourself high with flight to gather intel, is easier than using GA to do so and having to think ahead when you can’t always see the battle field in front of you.

My point was that these abilties are not impactful in their own right because of how loaded those two character’s kits are.
They get to be impactful all game if played right, that their ultimates are meant to enhance their experience and test other aspects of them.

Yes and that’s all well and good.
But she was also only supposed to be single target when it came to healing and boosting because it added challenges to her reliable and mechanically easy design. Her limitations and weaknesses is what allowed her to be balanced as a lower skill requirement hero.

Never said she should, but she should still stand a chance at helping her team recover after the burst damage as been done. But she can barely fight consistent damage because across the board damage has risen significantly. It’s not just Mercy who suffers from being unable to have the time to heal. It is all the supports when trying to heal DPS nowadays, it’s more about killing quickly than having the sustained fights that we had way back when.

People say they wanted a faster paced game, that sustained fights were too long. But look at all the people who reflect on games where they get rolled or killed so quickly and they reminisce on their favourite fights being the ones where they weren’t getting melted too fast and their team had to work together and coordinate to take the point and the fights felt tense because it was about outplaying the enemy and creating opportunity.

These creations of opportunity happen far too quickly now for any support to try and stop it. It just adds to the list of reasons why tanks are better, especially when they keep being given more damage.

I can play Moira. I don’t always enjoy playing Moira.
She doesn’t have the kind of playstyle that brings me the most joy.

Ana is amazing, but not for me. I am sure with practice I could be fine with Ana, but I prefer to be reliable as a support. I prefer to mostly care for my team.

That doesn’t mean I want my main role to be a sniper or Pharah’s pocket B****, which is why I refuse to play her as such.
I can still play her with all the same base kit skill, if not more skills than I had back during Mass Rez days. That still doesn’t make Valkyrie fine.

I don’t need Mass Rez back.
I could go on with my life never having mass rez back, that isn’t the problem.
The problem is the dynamic that mass rez provided to her kit was important, it gave her something different to do that was all her own then the same thing I was already doing.

I want something different. When I press Q I don’t want to go from a single target beam healer to I’ll heal one person and it will heal many. I don’t want freeflight when I press Q because the team reliant mobility is important and having too much access to free movement is too strong for Mercy to have. The ease of escape. The ease of positioning. The ease of doing my job with Valkyrie is underwhelming because I was already doing that before I pressed Q.

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What dynamic of mass rez are you talking about? Telling everyone to die in one place?
Mercy is an entry hero. She’s supposed to be easy to play. That what she was about from the start. Mercy was always about I’ll just boost you, while you slaughtering them all kind of character. And Blizzard don’t want to change her design since they think it’s iconic.
If you want something different - try other heroes.
Also, what’s the problem with pocketing Pharah? In lower ranks people aren’t that mechanically skilled to deal with her and Mercy makes it even more harder to kill this flying thing.

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Do you know how often I am complimented by people for being the best Mercy they have ever seen at their level of play?
That they felt like I was carrying the team, regardless of if my team lost or won.
I know where I sit does not make me the next Animetic and I am not going to have some god tier aim, but I frequently compare stats with the who the community considers the best Mercy’s and for my rank my averages often match theirs. Which means I am performing at the right level for where I am at and playing her likely as intended. Of course there are things I will need to perfect, that is how climbing works. But you are only ever as good as how you work with your team because this is a team game. Unless you are purposefully in a rank far below where you are supposed to be, you aren’t carrying games as anyone.

If you are going and solo-killing 3-4 people as Mercy at the rank you are supposed to be in on a regular basis, then you must be letting your team down all the time because you would spend most of your time getting kills rather than assisting your team.

I am not saying Mass Rez is the right ultimate either, but it was bold, different and exciting and that is the core component of what Valkyrie is missing.

If I am thinking of near the exact same things I was thinking of before I pressed Q, it’s because the ult is hardly any different from the base kit. Your usual concerns are still a problem, except managing them in Valk becomes much MUCH easier.

273

It really didn’t. But the current rez does, at least more than mass rez.

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274

E Rez Thinking - Will I live or Will I die?
That’s pretty much the only thoughts you need to have. Wow, so in depth.

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Will it be safe to rez?
Do I have to rez?
Close to spawn\no teamfight soon?
Can I make a dangerous rez?
Is someone protecting me so I could rez?
Ask someone to protect you so you could rez
If that rez is worth risking?

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276

Oh, but a brainless “revive everyone in the area with the click of a button” is?

Current rez requires you to actually think about the scenario. Now, you need to prioritize who you need to revive. You need to know where your enemies are, you need to know where your team is. You need to calculate whether you will have time to pull of the rez or if it’s even worth the risk.

But please, ignore all of those to attempt to get the mindless “Press Q, revive 3 people, and get invulnerability” button back.

277

Heh… If only the mass res had a cast time from the start…

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That would be one of the worst ults in the game since you would almost never rez anyone xD

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Fun fact: I hardly ever if at all, told people to die in one place.

What I did appreciate is that regardless of it I decided to use my discretion to tempo or try and Mass Rez, it was my moment to plan out and make the call or hold off. It was something I had to plan for and work with that came down to my decisions in playing around that fight.

Valkyrie doesn’t do anything to change me from what I am already doing except adding somethings to make that job easier for me. I don’t like that.

I want an ult where it gives an added layer of something different to think about and use. That adds some actual bit of complexity to her thought process because that is all she has. This is what Mass Rez was to me and I think there are Mass Rez supporters out there who can agree that Valkyrie just doesn’t cut it when it comes to Mercy because it just doesn’t feel like there is this other dimension of thinking because of how similar base kit and Valkyrie are. It means there thinking styles are so fundamentally similar and yet one just ends up feeling easier.

Being an entry hero does not mean her skill ceiling has to be so atrociously low.
Look at Rein, he is considered an entry and staple hero but he isn’t the easiest hero to master. Why can’t Mercy be that way?

I do try other heroes. Unfortunately, the game has broken many of my favourites which results in only having DPS left and it is pointless to play DPS because that is all anyone wants to play.

I want to use my mobility to fly around and assist my team and be my own hero. Not a permanent accessory to another.

Playing new heroes simply isn’t an option anymore, not with the state of the game. To me, it has felt terrible for a year and it’s only getting worse. It is why I am moving on to Paladins more permanently.

Paladins may have it’s faults but at least I feel like I can heal a team and my DPS actually get given enough time to be healed. :tea::v:

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You act like none of this applied to Mass Rez.
Which it did, to a greater degree because Mass Rez could get your team killed all over again.

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And how you would know that? That would be solid downside from its power.

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You can’t just pick Mercy and be great at positioning and gamesense. Same comes to Rein, he depends on his team same as Mercy.
You never thought of Valk as an engage ult? You can boost 5 people in the same time, providing them ult charge and more damage? Valk is an ult not for you only, it’s a supportive ult. And that’s what Mercy does, she supports, but with Valk she can pocket pretty much entire team. And Damage boost is a very strong ability.
When Ana nano someone, she doesn’t get any fun from it herself, it’s for her teammate.
The result is what should be more important when you play support.
You said you’re so amazing with Mercy, but it’s your team that enables her, without them she has no mobility outside of Valk.

You already have solo rez with a cast time. For almost 2 seconds you are very vulnerable target with no movement. Imagine trying to rez 5.

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Cast time may vary, it doesn’t need to be a match with current E-res exactly.
And I can easily imagine that - Mass Res with LoS and cast time, so could it be tide changing, or not. But at least it would have that layer of counter which many people complained about.

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It didn’t, that’s my entire point. And those that did applied to a much lesser degree. Mass rez was far less thoughtful, required far less skill, and was far more forgiving.

You didn’t need to prioritize, you brought back as many as you wanted.

You didn’t need to know where your team was, they didn’t need to protect you if you’re way off in the back hiding.

Where your enemies are didn’t matter, if you flew in, your rez was going off with no way to cancel it.

There was no cast time to pull of rez. It was instant.

There was no real risk, you became invincible as your team came back.

You can’t argue that her new rez requires far more thought and skill, unless you’re just rezzing someone the moment they die without actually thinking. Then, I don’t know what to tell you.

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285

Rez is a very strong ability on it’s own. It was very frustrating to play against even without hide’n’rez.

Having mass rez means if the enemy team has Mercy, you pretty much have to have one too. Not every support player liked playing her, but she was mandatory, and that wasn’t fun AND wasn’t healthy for the game.

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When? Mass res Mercy was F Tier. Her GA was worse and her self-regen too.
Furthermore, as soon as there were more main heal choices (Ana), Mercy was a throwpick.
Even her mass res invulnerability buff and the self-regen buff didn’t make her the better choice when there was Ana.

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