Valkyrie is poorly designed and doesn't fit Mercy's kit

General Discussion
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Valkyrie has been meta-defining broken, overpowered, nerfed 15 times and now it even has been buffed a little bit. She’s arguably balanced at this point.

tldr: Valk covers way, way too many skills deficiencies of Mercy’s already shallow skill pool, It’s too forgiving and lacks room for player expression, it’s a design issue, not a balance one.

Throughout those balance changes, from must pick to balanced and everything in between, negative feedback has remained and a considerable amount of it revolves around “boring, unfun, unengaging, unimpactful” and so on. It follows that this isn’t a feedback strongly related with balance, even though players who give and read it may interpret and believe as such. I think this is a significant design issue rather than a balance issue.

So Mercy, her skill pool is not big, nor the skill gap wide. One of the lowest skill requirements in game, a newcomer friendly, easy to pick up hero. She demands: Positioning, survivability, beam timing and target choice. I’m sure we could come up with other skills as well, but that’s the gist of her kit. If you’re going Battle Mercy, then aiming is there too.

Now, let’s take that character and give it Valkyrie, a power that allows for:

  • Almost no target selection thanks to chain beam.
  • Much less concern for positioning thanks to insane mobility.
  • Much less concern for survivability thanks to insane self heal and mobility.
  • Less concern for aiming thanks to increased projectile speed and infinite ammo.

Now that’s a beautiful symmetry, it’s almost as if someone planned it. So Valkyrie covers for the player’s skill deficiencies. There’s other Ultimates following this design philosophy, that’s not a bad design by default, however when it comes to Mercy, her skill pool is too shallow and Valkyrie covers too much of it.

For instance, Tac Visor removes aiming demands, but it does not give Soldier any extra mobility, survival, nor it removes target selection. Also Soldier 76 has a wider skill gap, so pressing Q to reduce it a little bit is a good idea, gives even the less skilled players a shot at making “big plays” while still feeling like they worked for it (because, for the most part, they did). It’s part of what makes Overwatch so accessible and great. That’s not the case with Mercy.

Comparing the two is easy to see that Valkyrie is much more forgiving, in fact it might be the most forgiving Ult in the game and it’s attached to a hero with one of the smallest skill gaps. Interesting two-fer right there don’t you think?

The only thing Valkyrie doesn’t cover is beam selection, every other decision or mechanical skill Valk will cover for you. It has been hyperbolically called “auto-pilot ult”, but that’s not too far from literal truth.

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I’m necro-bumping because you linked this thread in a more recent one and I think it’s fairly true. The only thing that isn’t accurate here is that valkyrie no longer augments the speed of mercy’s bullets. It’s just infinite ammo, which is still great though.

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You are prying valkyrie from my cold dead hands. I mean, wheely.

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Still says so in the gamepedia and there’s no said change in the balance patches (at least I can’t find it).

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Everything you said is true except for the increased bullet speed for her pistol during Valkryie, that was removed during the Valk PTR testing

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They probably left it there by mistake but like I said, I’m 100% certain it doesn’t increase the projectile speed anymore and I don’t think it ever did on official servers.

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Hey, at least you can now right click Ashe/Widow and be impactful!
/s

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Valkyrie fits mercy perfectly. They were trying to prevent hide and ult so they gave her an ultimate to hide in plain sight.

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There’s a reason it was removed from her kit during alpha testing, just because you can duct tape a bunch of junk doesn’t fix the core issues of it being uninvolved by the Mercy player.

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Valk is boring valk is boring valk is boring

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Valk just like E-rez are terrible for Mercy and the game if you ask me. They should remove both and give her anything else. Really. At this point a lot of Mercy players are even alright with removing part of her identity (rez) as long as she gets in a better state.
Sad how terrible and disappointing this rework has been and the devs really let us down with it. The only good thing they kept was a bug.

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But what really matters is fun though right? Fun for everyone but the Mercy apparently.

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Well I disagree.
The amount of people complaining it is a “spectator” ultimate makes me believe that there is a skill difference. Someone who is good at Valkyrie doesn’t see it as a spectator mode.

So it’s all pointless because it is subjective and not representative of the player-base as a whole

For some people, yes.

Okay? Soldier’s ultimate aims for him

This is incorrect in my opinion. When you Valk you are a priority and easy pickings for many DPS ultimate abilities if you are in the wrong position.

This is necessary for her to stay alive during it most of the times I think.

Aiming isn’t usually a concern, but yea this is true.

This is where I disagree, why is it bad that it is good? I think you have a “shallow” understanding of what makes a good Mercy player honestly.

Not every ultimate needs to be the same or do the same thing. Why can’t Mercy have her ultimate style while Soldier has his? They can both exist fine.

Zenyatta transcendence would like a word.
Interesting? Not really, and why is this an issue exactly? You keep pointing to what you see as an issue, but you’re not really explaining why

It actually is far from the truth. You can play it as an auto-pilot if you want, but you won’t get much out of it. Just like you can sit still during soldiers’ ultimate and let it “auto-pilot”, but that doesn’t make it bad, does it?

Why is her ultimate covering her weaknesses and giving her more options a bad thing?

I honestly think you kept pointing to what you see as an issue without explaining, adequately, in my opinion, why it is an issue. I also think it fits her kit perfectly from a design standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint

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I feel like Mercy players who think she has a low skill ceiling are the ones who are doomed to get stuck in the low ranks wondering why they keep getting bad teams. She’s not great, but take some accountability.

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You forgot to mention the increase in Beam lenght, so you don’t even need to be anywhere near the fight, making it even less engaging.

…which brings us to this joke of a rework. They sought to make her more engaging and impactful, and failed at both. Save for the GA changes this rework brought us nothing but grief.

This could all be fixed if they:

  • They removed the increase in Beam Lenght, GA extra range and the constant Regen (to make it riskier);
  • Reduced the chain-beam heal(not the main target) to 30HPs/15% DMG UP, but increased the Main-Target’s to 90HPS/45% DMG UP, so beam juggling is still needed.
  • And make Ress 0.75s in Valk (this way she has to be in the fight to go ress, but still can die due the other nerfs).
  • Have her Regen kick in 50% faster(instead being instant and uninterruptible).

All of that makes Valk an actual fun and engaging experience where where you have things to do instead of putting a weight on your mouses RMB and go grab a snack.

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Yes, there is. The goods Mercys don’t need Valkyrie. It’s not enough though. Valkyrie needs more skillful room for player expression.

Like I said:

They clearly don’t need to be. Tac Visor and Valkyrie just happen to do similar things - cover for skill deficiency. And Valkyrie just so happens to be bloated with hand-holding and belongs to already easy to use hero that does’t need hand-holding.

I have a word back for Transcendence: It doesn’t cover as many skills as Valkyrie. The invulnerability can be used to survival, that’s it. It’s other powers, or single power should I say, doesn’t cover for skill at all. It’s also fast, making timing less forgiving. Trans really isn’t designed with the same skill-covering philosophy like Visor and Valk are.

The problem is insufficient player expression, the why is Valkyrie’s multiple skill covering powers that don’t belong on a easy to use hero.

Valkyrie is not poorly designed because players auto-pilot. Valkyrie it is bad because it covers too much and too many of the players skill deficiencies, which in turn is why it has been described hyperbolically, as auto-pilot.

It makes Mercy too easy. It takes the job out of the players hands and gives them result for very little thought or effort.

Options = good. Too much hand-holding = bad.

It sounds as if you did not bother to read at all.

Cool. I’m glad it’s pretty. Can we move away from the unnecessary hand-holding so it’s well designed gameplay wise as well as visually?

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Gladly, Valkyrie gives flight which can get you to that position with far less effort than normal.

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It would seem to be the case, but I’m failing to find the patch notes mentioning that and gamepedia still mentions it even though it’s updated to everything else.

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Incorrect. See ya later!
I also know what a hyperbole is, thanks. You’re not worth dealing with anymore. Have fun spouting opinions as facts via exaggerations

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Well Mercy skill ceiling lies on damage boost, which scales with her teammates’ ability to hit something, they are not totally wrong