Valkyrie's flaws

General Discussion
1

There’s a whole lot of things going on with Valkyrie that make it bad and uninteresting to use. Let’s go through them shall we?

  1. Valkyrie is 15 seconds long.

That makes it tied for longest ultimate in the game. An ultimate that is that long cannot be particularly strong, otherwise it would be ridiculously overpowered. Picture a 15s long Tac Visor or a 15s Dragonblade, yeah that’d be broken.

So if a long ultimate cannot rely on its raw power to be interesting or fun… what can it do? Well it has to rely on what’s known as a “Difference of Kind”. The best example of this I can give is Nidalee’s ultimate from League of Legends. Her ult actually has infinite duration. How is it balanced and interesting? It literally swaps out her entire kit. In human form she is a Poke based Mage and in cougar form she is a melee range assasin; her ult allows her to swap between the two… nearly at will. Which form is better? Well… that depends on the situation, raw power wise, in theory they’re balanced. Yeah… Mercy’s ult doesn’t do that. At all. You’re still doing the exact same thing you were doing before.

  1. Valkyrie “enhances” Mercy’s current kit.

Now, you can make an ultimate that is an empowered version of your normal kit. Problem is you are hamstringing yourself as far as making it interesting through providing a different experience for your players. You can include some difference in kind as part of the enhancement but it is potentially still a problem.

So… how do you make an “enhance” ultimate fun to use? Short answer, make it short and punchy. There’s actually another example of this to be found in League of Legends. The champion Karma has an enhance ultimate that works. How does it work? You activate your ultimate and then your next spell cast and ONLY your next spell cast is empowered. All of the empowered spells have significant improvements to the abilities primary use (usually over double the power) PLUS they add an extra thing that isn’t in the base ability. In short, Karma’s ult provides a short punch of extreme power with a bit of extra spice thrown in. Again… this isn’t what Valkyrie does in the slightest. Valkyrie pretty much provides zero spike of impact because it just applies her normal heal and boost to everyone.

  1. Valkyrie’s primary draw is supposed to be the chain beams which are basically an aura.

This is a problem for 2 reasons. Firstly, auras barely feel better to use than that same ability as a single target ability. Why? Because you rarely can see ALL the effects your aura is having. If you’re lucky you can see… maybe 2 of your targets. Also the AoE nature of it makes how useful it is incredibly variable. “How many people are in range?” “How many of those people actually need this effect right now?”. However… AoE does without a doubt make the thing stronger… so it couldn’t possibly actually have the raw power of the single target version. Add that up and you’ve got Auras generally feeling worse than their single target versions even though they are close to the same strength.

The second problem is that… Mercy’s Auras are healing and damage boost. Trans and Supercharger exist… so that limits how powerful Mercy’s aura’s can be because hers are more flexible… and if the more flexible ult is close enough in power to the non flexible ult… why would you ever use the inflexible ult? You wouldn’t. So Valk’s auras have to be kept weak to not overshadow Trans and Supercharger.

  1. Flight and Beam buffs.

So Valkyrie gives both Flight and a range and AoE buffs to Mercy’s beams. This is a problem. Flight is great… it gives Mercy the ability to get wherever she needs to go much quicker than she can in normal form. Range and AoE buffs to Mercy’s beams make it so she doesn’t need to move as much. With a 30 meter range… how likely is it that there’s actually someone out of range? How likely is it that that other guy who needs healing you aren’t currently healing isn’t within your 10m chain range?

Do you see the problem here? Oh hey here’s a cool new mechanic that lets you get wherever you need to go. Oh and also some buffs that make it so you… don’t actually need to go anywhere at all. Yay? Did anyone think this through?

So yeah, those are my reasons for thinking that Valkyrie cannot be made into a fun and impactful ult without rework levels of changes.

tl,dr:
Valkyrie is a long, kit empowering ult which cuts it off from being able to be interesting either via impact spike or feeling different to use.
Valkyrie’s “primary use” is an aura… auras are nearly impossible to make feel impactful.
Valkyrie giving Mercy unrivaled mobility and removing any reason to use it is just mean.

13 Likes
2

It’s actually not, Widowmaker’s is 15.5s.

You just picked an random example and then said Valkyrie doesn’t do that. It means literally nothing.

Torbjorn mains don’t have issues with Molten Core.

Let’s look at Valkyrie versus some other options.

Molten Core: 13s of a powered up state, very similar to Valkyrie.

Infra-Sight: 15.5s of Wall-Hacks, a set advantage for your team, similar to Valkyrie (as Mercy is near invulnerable during Valkyrie).

Nanoboost: Givr your ultimate to someone else. You’re literally a spectator.

You’re not managing your AoE correctly. You should make a conscious effort to correct maximize the value of your Aura. If you don’t do that, don’t blame the game.

Trans lasts 6s and Supercharger is an immobile 200hp object that can’t heal. Valkyrie’s power is in its flexibility and consistency.

Pretty likely. Even in a Dive composition where a lot of the time you will be spread out, you will eventually converge on one target, and Valkyrie will have insane value. The flight and additional beam range allow you to project your beams into that Dive without sacrificing your safety.

The whole point is to make Mercy very, very survivabile. Adding range and mobility achieves that.

4 Likes
3

Let’s also not forget that in “enhancing” Mercy’s kit, it actually makes her already lackluster resurrect on E even worse. But hey!

“This was a huge success!™®”

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

2 Likes
4

It doesn’t make Resurrect worse at all. It allows you to exploit verticality to avoid fire and especially headshots, and it increases your move speed and passive healing.

Getting a Resurrect in Valkyrie is fairly easy. You effectively have 235hp and maintain free flight.

1 Like
5

This is not very accurate as something dealing 200 hp burst damage will kill you regardless of whether you are in Valkyrie or not.

6

If you’re getting hit by Hanzo or Widowmaker during Resurrect you’re doing something wrong.

7

But that wasn’t what I reacted to, I reacted to the claim that somehow her maximum health-pool was increased.

8

As someone who mains the hero, I completely disagree with you.

  • Verticality means very little when you can have your res cancelled whenever it’s outside of an already small res-zone. Ressing without some form of cover is generally a bad idea - and that especially includes doing it during Valk, where you’re an even more visible target.

  • Movement speed is exactly the same as she is without it. And when you res, it is slower. That’s been a common problem talked about in the forums for a long time with Valk, and it still exists today.

  • If you truly believe that you can avoid any competent Widowmaker or Bastion while still maintaining flight in the air, I will commend you. Sorry, such a feat is not commonly achieved with her current kit, and even less so when she’s trying to res.

  • “235hp” won’t save you from burst damage, focus fire, or a sniper headshot. Some of the most common ways to die as Mercy when trying to res.

If you’re resurrecting at all during Valk, you’re doing something wrong. :blush:

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

3 Likes
9

That’s splitting hairs and you know it.

What are you doing as standard Mercy? Healing and maybe damage boosting. What are you doing as Valkyrie Mercy? Healing and maybe damage boosting. If you don’t see how you’re still pretty much doing the same thing post hitting Q… well I just don’t know dude.

True, Molten Core is mostly doing whatever you were already doing. Thing is Molten Core isn’t trying to be interesting based off of changing things up. It’s trying to be interesting based off of the 50% attack speed increase and substantial buff to his and his turrets survivability. I don’t play Torb enough to know if it succeeds.

Infra-Sight isn’t an enhance ultimate. How is her rifle better? How is her grapple better? Answer: they aren’t. So it’s not a “Take your base kit and make it better” ultimate. It is something else entirely.

Again… not an enhance ultimate. It doesn’t take Ana’s kit and make it better. No, it turns one hero on your team into a juggernaut.

Also post buff that argument falls apart. With a short enough CD, a 300 HP burst heal could easily be an ult. Then it also gives Ana essentially 2x healing on her nano target? Yeah… not a spectator.

mmhmm… Why would I be staring at my teammates while in Valk? I’d be much better off watching the enemy team for things that can potentially shoot me down. You going to say that Lucio doesn’t need that indicator that he’s got that tells him how many people are in his aura?

That’s literally my point. If Valk gave 50% boost, it would 100% be better than supercharger. Meaning that Valkyrie’s auras will never get enough raw number buffs to make them feel good because… well then why would you ever take Trans or Supercharger?

2 Likes
10

Both of you are making great points. I need some popcorn

11

Over the 1.75s, you will heal 35hp for free.

Considering there are tons of heroes who have difficulty hitting Pharah, this is just wrong. Verticality is very, very effective against a large portion of the cast.

Just as an example, you can’t get Charged, Rocket Punched or even Shield Bashed if you’re in Valkyrie.

No it isn’t. Valkyrie increases her base movement speed, so the 75% reduction results in a higher next move speed (about 64% higher).

Hide behind a wall.

If you can’t find a Resurrect in the massive downtime sniper heroes tend to have (they look somewhere else, they get pushed away etc.) it’s on you.

If you’re not, you’re doing something wrong.

Good thing this is an alt and I’m a 4.4k Main Support that primarily played Mercy for the last 3+ seasons.

12

But it’s still not above 200 hp, she can’t heal over her maximum hp pool. I’m not very good with math, but I’m pretty sure if you hit a Mercy in Valk with exactly 200 hp worth of damage she will die and not be left with 35 hp.

There’s enough misconceptions about her already without adding “Mercy has a personal overheal” to it.

4 Likes
13

Isn’t hide and ult exactly what this rework was supposed to get away from?

Debatable, but more in RevertMercy’s favor. You can use resurrect outside of ultimate. Valkyrie isn’t good but it is better to use all of it than do something that prevents you from using most of it for 1.75 seconds. However, if you don’t get a Res off in a fight that could use it… then you are ACTUALLY not doing your job. That perma self heal in Valk can give you opportunities for Res that otherwise wouldn’t work.

k, then post on your main. Also having a lot of experience or high SR doesn’t automatically make you right.

1 Like
14

This is only true if you live for 1.75 seconds, if you get one-shotted then you still have 200 HP. Actually, now that I think about it you don’t even need to get one-shotted. For all intents and purposes burst damage completely negates her passive during Valkyrie, unless you get over specific thresholds.

3 Likes
15

Well then we’re talking about subjective situations at this point. That would depend on the skill of the person aiming at Mercy. That doesn’t translate into “how effective” her verticality is. And we’re talking about resurrecting here. In my opinion, there is next to no benefit to resurrecting during Valkyrie over ressing outside of it. The -75% cast time is not worth the risk in most cases.

And it is possible to get Charged, Rocket Punched and SB’d while in Valk… It’s unlikely to happen, but it’s certainly possible - and especially so when you try to res. Not sure what you’re talking about there… You can’t res a soul on the ground if you’re in the skybox, so you’re still vulnerable to getting killed off when ressing while in ult form. Even more so.

Oh I misread, apologies. You’re referring to movement speed. And while her movement speed is overall slightly faster, her Res is still slower and her guardian angel stays the same. I wouldn’t really call that an ult that makes her “near invulnerable”. Maybe back in the early days of the rework. Now? Sorry, laughably false.

So the solution to using a rework that was supposed to solve the issue of “Hide and Res” is infact “Hide and Ressing”? Interesting. Then what was the point of reworking Mercy to have Valk again? Sounds like a failure of a rework in my opinion. :blush:

235hp” won’t save you from burst damage, focus fire, or a sniper headshot. Some of the most common ways to die as Mercy when trying to res.

And I suppose we’ll also act like the bolded text above just doesn’t exist either right? Either way, the point remains the same. An extra 35 hp is virtually useless in most / all of those situations. But yes, let’s continue to assume that it isn’t.

Oh? Can you give me an example of how ressing while Valkying is better than ressing as normal mercy?

Except… Not sure if that’s a good thing in this case… This version of mercy is very different from the Mercy in the last 3 seasons. Her ult is less impactful now, and you can no longer play her the same way as you could back then. Some even consider her to be an off healer at this point and her dropped winrate and pickrates prove even more how much weaker and less engaging she is overall. I would suggest you start getting familiar with the nerfs, before assuming that she still has the “invulnerabilities” as she’s had back then before speaking on it. :smirk:

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

16

Ummmm Ana’s ult is far far far far superior than Mercy’s ult. Ana’s is also easy.

1 Like
17

Well, it was supposed to enhance Mercy’s base form. Until the devs had to nerf it so hard that it’s literally unrecognizable to a portion of the player base.

Mercy needs a new ult :expressionless:

2 Likes
18

Agreed. I’ve been thinking of going Ana this season because of it. Nano is crazy impactful right now.

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

19

Ana isn’t easy, but Nano is better than Valk currently.

3 Likes
20

at this point… yeah basically.