I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while and after reading some threads on her it has made me question this even more. Mercy is my second highest played hero of all time (slowly taking over my Symmetra) and I’d like to say I’m pretty good at her but even as a 3.3k Diamond support player I have no idea what her ultimate is actually good for.
It can’t counter any of the DPS ultimates to help the rest of the team. A Genji blade and Reaper Death Blossom for example still wipe the team and Mercy is literally helpless against them. The healing it provides is a measly 60hps, her default healing used to be this number… 60hps is not powerful at all and especially for an ultimate
All it really does is give her unlimited ammo and allow her to fly around more freely. But how is this in anyway something a support needs?
Valk should enhance ALL her abilities greatly and make her feel like she has an actual powerful ultimate that can change the tide of battle (which all heroes pretty much have). Valk should reduce the CD of res, make it instant and allow her to res 2 people, the healing beam should heal for 100hps, she should be able to fly around a lot faster, have her gun do more damage, or maybe once you activate Valk it releases a massive AoE burst of healing releases from her suit healing everyone to full health, etc. These are just some examples of how her ultimate could make her feel more impactful.
At this point though her ultimate is pretty much useless.
I’m pretty sure that originally it was designed as a “Mass Rez light but you can now kill her between rezzes”, but when this turned out to be stronger than they thought they moved power from the rezzes to the “additional stuff” they probably just put in as a sort of compensation for losing x5.
Today? It’s an escape tool that’s best used in combination with the damage boost to make pushes.
The chain beams, duration and extra beam range make it feel like a decent boost to her output in this scrub’s opinion, but I dislike it because it’s an AoE on a character that’s about bolstering single targets at a time. I’d prefer it if it had less duration (8s?) and no chains, but granted potent single target to the beam’s target.
For example, Valk’s healing beam was still 60 HPS but also bestowed a non-stacking 50% damage received reduction, while damage boost was raised to 50% (like Orisa’s ult) and/or gave a movement speed boost.
you see, the difference between mercy and brig is that brig has good utility to compensate with a less-valuable-that-others offensive ultimate. while mercy’s utilities are team reliant (resurrect and damage boost) she shouldn’t have what brig has.
It’s good at capitalising/stabilising a fight. An AOE 30% damage boost is a great way of creating follow up picks, or stabilising when your team is down one.
People want Valkyrie to be like her old ultimate and counter other ultimates. But Mercy has a main healer ultimate now. Valkyrie is just as powerful as Nano or Coalescence, it just gets used in different scenarios.
I honestly laughed at your second point because it’s so true.
I literally only use it for pretty much the same reasons as you. To either escape, heal my Pharah some more, or to go kill a Widowmaker who no one in my team can counter properly.
Honestly these are just some examples that could make her ultimate a bit more impactful. I’m not expecting her to be buffed to do all that. It’s meant to be slightly exaggerated lol.
Rally gets a lot of scorn for not being Sound Barrier, but I like it for giving +100 armour to my team. Having a 300 HP Genji for Nanoblade while also giving that armour to Ana, my main tank, and possibly the other teammates (who usually decide to wander off to sniff daisies instead) is pretty sweet, although the ult cost does feel a bit high sometimes.
this is probably the number 1 thing that annoys me about valkyrie, which is the reason why i started playing other supports more frequently (mostly brig >w<)
Look, I don’t want valkyrie to be a damn lucio’s beat where timing is very precise, but I don’t want valkyrie to be that ability-ultimate that it is.
Valkyrie right now:
is not a threat, no one has ever said in their lives after mercy’s last patch “the enemy mercy has valk, careful guys!!”
makes mercy easier than she already is, and tightens the skill cap, which is not good.
losing it isnt the end of the world, you can easily get another one, if it even matters.
you can’t be penalized for losing valkyrie (same as point above)
i really want number changes on valkyrie to make it more important, BUT these things shouldn’t happen with her valk buff
pocketing during valk becomes too powerful
makes her a res bot
healing/effects shouldnt be simillar to transcendence
I believe blizzard can reach that sweet spot with Valkyrie where its not overpowered or underpowered, its relatively easy.
Valkyrie is my biggest issue with the game honestly. Its state reflects very poorly upon the devs and their capabilities. It’s saddening because I’ve been a fan of this company since Rock N’Roll Racing.
If you ask me chain beams need to have split value from the main beam, or just flat out be gone, to allow for more target selection. Infinite ammo needs to go period, give me damage instead.
And then shorten the duration for good measure. It is literally the longest ult in the game. Such ability bloated with “take away my skill” powers should not last that long. Visor only takes away aim and it’s 6 seconds for forks sake…
She had 40dmg when valk instead of 20 (this change never got out of PTR btw) what would happen is battle mercy for the win with nano because… Well… “THAT’S A LOT OF DMG”
So you can’t make her so more dmg because she’s no longer the healer she needs to be
We also had valk to not only reset the cooldown of rez, but also put it instant on a 10sec cooldown, so any pick could get rezzed because respawn timer is 10sec
She could fly faster but people said it was too fast where she was unkillable because of how fast she could get out of a situation where otherwhise she could’ve died, so there’s that.
I wouldn’t mind the 100hp/s, and the last big nerf for mercy was that she only had 1 Rez on valk and that Rez also had the cast time on valk, we could remove one of those, so keep it at 2 charges but with cast time, or only one but get rid of cast time, I’d like to see how that goes
But everyone’s scared of valk, and I just want my 60hp/s heals by default back
You’re over 3K SR and you don’t understand the raw utility of having her beams link up to all of her team as long as they’re not super-far away from the rest of the team?
Mercy’s ultimate is probably one of the more versatile ultimates in the game. Whether or not it’s impactful is what I believe to be dependent on the team and the situation.
Chain heal
Chain damage
Stall/Height advantage escape from heroes like Reaper/Doom
