People tend to underestimate, just how important high healing is, for your teammates to get away with mistakes, instead of dying.
Already had situations you described, where being bad Ana I am, my team managed to get through chokepoint on shear healing power. Just by shooting that Reinhardt leading the push and throwing biotic nades.
True. As long as your teammates are alive, they have a chance to do useful things. By accident or on purpose, doesn’t really matter. And if they do enough of those things, you may win.
Keeping teammates alive is always useful, as it doesn’t depend on their skill level, awareness, etc. but only on them being at correct spot. You can have Reinhardt that is unable to hit stationary Dva with his hammer, but as long as he is alive and on objective, he is being useful and those flaws aren’t that important.
And it’s not uncommon, when tank and support are only heroes bothering with objective, while DPS are busy doing their own thing away from objective.
I hope to wrap up this exchange and let this thread die. I’d like the discussion around Mercy to move beyond the scope of this thread and focus on realistic adjustments to her kit mindful of the meta and state of the game.
Posted this earlier – _https://www.winstonslab.com/news/2017/10/05/blizzard-please-mercy-winstonslabs-ptk-model/
The reason why Mercy feels imbalanced is because her most effective measurable skill is healing – and only healing. Everything else about her depends on how well her team mates are playing – -- especially resurrect, which requires a team mate to die on a resurrect-able spot.
The measure of performance with regards to other supports isn’t just heals, it’s also their kill contribution – WinstonsLab calls it the PTK Model (shorthand for percent-team-kill). Championship teams have higher than normal PTK from tanks and supports as compared to DPS.
Fast-forward to today, I was listening to a podcast whose guest is ggBarroi, former analyst for WinstonsLab and now working for Toronto Defiant, and he still thinks kill contributions by supports and tanks matter a lot even in compositions other than 3-3/GOATS.
If there are going to be changes to Mercy, the most likely change which will happen is to give her offensive options that would make her aligned towards the PTK contributions of other support heroes – it’s not an unusual conclusion, the point of the article I linked above is that she needs to contribute to support PTK to make her aligned to other OW supports. And I feel that Blizzard making her heals at the level of other healing heroes is the first step in that direction.
And it has always been such. That has not changed.
As it always has. Mass Rez also depedended on how well her team mates were playing, as it required them to be dead in order to be used. Again, nothing’s changed.
Agree. And Mercy also has one of if not the highest DPS of all supports. 100 dps on body shots with her pistol. You just gotta swap.
Oh wow, a podcast? What great “literature.” Ofc kill contribution matters. Smh.
Mercy doesn’t NEED to be securing kills herself, though I’m all for lowering swap times or whatever. Via damage boost she does a LOT as far as kill confirmation goes given the comp is built as such. Mercy does not and should never operate extremely well in tank orientated compositions.
STEM comprises science, technology, engineering, and math, but there’s a whole other curriculum that many universities subscribe to – STEAM, which includes the ARTS.
Literature in the academic arts sense literally equivocates to “required reading” for class… video essays are literally used as teaching material in film studies, film/video production, video game development, programming classes. Entire studio-based classes and seminars literally use YouTube tutorials as supplemental reading.
So I’m failing to see how your archaic view of literature as it relates to science applies to video game theory, design, and development.
They’re literally separate fields, therefore they have different requirements of their literature.
I LITERALLY have a design degree based on this.
I wish I had my syllabii so I could cite the books just so you’d shut up about ethos.
No. I don’t. Because that wasn’t what I said.
You said, and continue to say, that all I’m talking about is "feelings"
I said it’s more substantive than that. That there’s literature on this, literature that IS valid (despite your efforts to undermine its credibility because it exists in YouTube form, it is indeed valid… Extra Credits video essays were literally used in my game design courses) in the schools that teach video game development/design.
You said balance takes priority.
I said that balance WAS NEVER the thing that Mercy mains were contesting. I said that satisfaction, as it relates to fulfilling character design, is the thing they were contesting. And that balance can be separate from satisfaction.
You said satisfaction is too rooted in emotion, and that that I’m secretly talking about balance.
I LITERALLY SAID…
…which, if you didn’t know, “lateral shift” means to remain the same. To retain the same relative power, in a new fashion. As in, switching from a Lamborghini to a Porsche.
You said that satisfaction can’t really be measured because opinions differ.
I gave you criteria in which you can generate more engaging gameplay through compare and contrast evaluation – 1. Expression, 2. Creativity, 3. Excitement
I explained to you multiple times how each one of these elements existed at first in her rework, but were slowly chipped at and taken away
new ways of expression were diminished to the point where they have little-to-no impact on the game
flying in the Z axis is a novelty that already partially existed with Pharah, and by itself does not generate impact on your gameplay… it must be tied with another ability to have impact
that creativity was stifled the moment that they both copy-pasted some other character’s (Orisa) unique ultimate niche (chain beams) and where optimal play all looks the same there there’s no individuality
being able to carve out your own individuality through Battle Mercy is not optimal play… channeling your inner Neptuno is suboptimal and only to be used as a last resort
excitement is decreased for the player, their opponents, and the spectators
compared to Mass Rez Mercy, anyone who says they have equal amounts of lethargy and catharsis when Mercy dies during Valkyrie is flat out lying…
finding personal enjoyment out of kit requiring more actions per minute does not equate to excitement
You misinterpreted talking points, and painted them in a light so that you could attempt to discredit my argument…
You brought your personal anecdotes, I didn’t…
You mentioned things that were tertiary to the discussion
If there were an alternate version of history where she was never reworked, it’s more than likely that they would have introduced bunnyhopping in that timeline because they wanted and reintroduced the technique by decoupling it from Valkyrie
You haven’t disproven anything I said, you intentionally cherrypicked the statements that could be perceived as just my opinion and then intentionally misframed what I was saying.
If you think a swat down is somehow winning an argument, then you’re mistaken.
Any counterargument you bring up right now, I’m just going to flat out ignore because you’re just going to contort it into “balance” and “muh feelings” again. Two things that I explicitly NEVER said.
You’re talking down to your imagined version of what I’m saying, not what I actually said… and it’s so ridiculously infuriating.
Please. What is it you feel I haven’t addressed? How did I intentionally cherrypick statements when I’ve for the most part responded to each and every thing you’ve said?
You lamented that I was overly critical oof what you said, dissecting it bit by bit, now you’re saying I’ve neglected to address things, and am cherrypicking…
So what’d I neglect to address? Or is this going to turn out like your “literature” where you cite something that really has no basis in reality?
If Valkyrie would give aimbot to teammates, for example, that would be outplay potential: your teammates suddenly aren’t so bad.
I do want Mercy to be able to make up for teammate’s downfalls. Other ults compensate for poor surviving skills, so Mercy should be able to compensate for poor aiming skills.
What sort of outplay potential is someone allowed when their team mates are bad? Fragging potential? What else is there? Mercy can heal and damage boost, and rez. Arguably, when her team mates are truly bad, she has the most potential to turn it around compared to any other support. Unless we’re talking raw fragging potential… Even then, when Mercy has her pistol out she is doing the most DPS of any support tbh. That’s just fact.
As if she has time to have her pistol out that much to be the one that can do the most DPS. She doesn’t have the time with her healing rate to spend as much time dealing damage as other supports.
It’s a potential for highest damage out of supports, but that’s it “potential”.
I never said anything to the contrary. Yes, there’s a lot of considerations to make when it comes to whipping out the pistol. I even said in this thread I’m down for reducing the swap time. That doesn’t change the fact she does 100 DPS on body shots with that pistol, which is one of if not the highest of all support hero DPSs.
Just facts.
Are you going to try and argue I’m wrong? As far as how often it’s taken advantage of, yeah, the kit could be changed to encourage more usage of the pistol and more agency on that end, but it also comes to a player and team issue. If you’re just face tanking damage like a derp, what can ya do…
Well, Blizzard want Mercy to be pocketing Ashe/Widowmaker, right? So let’s make sure, that your pocket simply can’t miss. Give them damage boost for good measure, too.
It’s rare kind of pleasure, when your support ult turns average teammate into monster, that destroys everything.
While Mercy does excel at pocketing situations like that, I don’t think that’s the like… “totality” of what blizzard wants from her.
She is VERY important in the viability of like bunker comps, long range dps comps, etc, not just because of damage boost and rez, but also because of her mobility which allows her to rapidly respond to changes in the match and such.
I think it’s important we respect and acknowledge the value and contributions that Mercy has, so that we can best adjust her to fit the metas, as opposed to trying to play off her kit like it’s weak af in a meta she’s not suited for and demand things be changed so we feel good about ourselves when we pick her at hero select.
Whatever comp it is, she has to be able to compensate for teammate’s drawbacks. Bastion with aimbot in bunker comp would do nicely. Just like same Bastion with nano or transcendence, except without being nearly invulnerable.
I agree with this 100%. And I think it’s important that we recognize these abilities that Mercy has when it comes to considering how she be adjusted in the future. I’m not arguing that Mercy is fine. I’m all for adjusting her. I just think we have to have a realistic understanding of just what she can provide to a comp and the game in her current state, and adjust from there.
