I know your not exaggerating just saying its amazing that the post sparked so much conversation to stay afloat for a month, its rare that a thread outside of a mega can do that
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Tbh they will hate Mercy whatever we do. The only way they will stop hating her is when we propose a rework that makes her a DPS hero. Valk and mass-rez both got their hatred and salt already even if we come up with something entirely new and balanced some of them will always hate the “no aim no skill brainless sup hero”.
While I want Mercy to be balanced and fun in the game I dont think pleasing a few crybabies who will cry regardless of what we do is helpful. So I rather focus on what makes Mercy interesting and a bit more skillful to play again.
The thing is… 33% damage reduction is too much. It sounds good but this doesn’t take some important factors into account.
The aim and precision of the damage dealer, dealing damage.
The fall off damage and the fact dps players don’t counterplay as often as they do.
If mercy manages to reduce the damage of Soldier or McCree who already struggle to take down Pharah that is being pocketed, it will be bad on the dps players and it will fuel their hate at us.
The faction of dps who hate mercy always will. Trying to change their minds is what brought Mercy to the state she’s in now - she can’t do squat to make a play anymore, so in their minds she’s “fine.”
I don’t understand the sentiment of “don’t put X in because it will hurt dps egos.” It certainly hasn’t stopped blizzard before (Moira and Brigitte).
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Yes but the thing about Valkyrie and Pacify is that these two abilities directly affected the balance of the game. Single res being too op at Tempo reading people and eliminating individual mistakes as oppose to 1 large mistake.
Whilst Pacify hard nerf damage dealing.
All in all, we need to consider what went wrong with Mercy. Mass res was never a true issue, it has been in many other genre of game and it has been equally liked and hated by the community.
The community didn’t hate on us until Jeff Kaplan made that video and accused us of hide and res.
If hide and res or res behind a wall is an issue, then they merely have to change it from Within Area of Effect to Line of Sight, of course LoS will have its own downside but that enforces Mercy to always dive in.
Invulnerable was the number step towards our inevitable demise at entering redevelopment hell.
They could have reworked Mercy in other ways to improve pre 1.0 survivability. As the core issue with 1.0 is that Mercy is invulnerable to damage and can survive literally all usage of resurrect in majority of cases and most people tend to tunnel vision onto the res target, hitting them and feeding that 2nd and 3rd res usage and extending overtime
(I won’t quote everything because it’s so long)
I think you look to much on the side which is using Mercy. There are many ways to negate Mercy’s effects by heroes which are not Mercy. DPS’s, other support comps and some Tanks can stun, disrupt, block or eliminate Mercy’s abilities. Ana+Brig with maybe Zarya could completely destroy Mercy. Doomfist, Mccree and others could stop Mercy’s res before it even happens (so that Mercy loses her charge). The possibilities would go more into counter picking Mercy than it was before.
The suggestion thinks about the issues of old Mercy and fixes them with nerfs and buff which wouldn’t make her frustrating to play, to play with and against while not making her OP/UP.
Also the fact that she is stepping on the toes of other supports is not really valid to be honest. All the other supports if mastered would do Mercy’s stuff much better in the same context.
As an example:
Genji is Ulting. In one situation you have Ana which hits the Sleep Dart. In another situation you have a Mercy which hits the Pacify.
In Ana’s situation, Genji is absolutly useless for 5s (best case).
In Mercy’s situation, Genji can still attack. Sure with 33% less dmg, but he can still get value out of his Ult (best case).
(worst case) In Ana’s situation, Genji wakes up immediately. But the disorientation of the Sleep dart stun he will most likely get only little value out of his Ult, if not nothing if he get’s killed. That’s not that worse actually.
(worst case) In Mercy’s situation, Genji is bubbled by Zarya which means that the effect is not even occurring in the first place. And Ana’s Ult also eliminates the debuff. That’s much worse.
The Utility from other sups is not effected in a negative way buy these changes. Good in low ranks, not so good in high ranks, but still useful in some comps. (As it should be).
Yet agian with the new ability. Debuff/abilities in general can occur with the same effects in the game (it’s already the case). If they work in different ways, they also have different areas of application. Only because she could get a debuff does not mean that no one in the future will get one.
I see your point that she will be picked again with that ability, but that’s the reason why she should get it.
You see, her res will get nerfed in some very big ways. Res won’t be her E anymore (which is the biggest reason for her Meta dominance since the rework) and with the nerfs on her Ult the new E compensates that. Her gameplay get’s more depth with fair power, which is also fit for E sports (Thats important for the devs apparently).
Again, i really don’t see the problem so far. While making the ability we thought and talked about most things you said. It’s not like we didn’t considered that.
Again, i think you look at that too one sided. The ways in which you could counter this Mercy are good enough to make her useful in some situations and bad in others. We know that the old Mass Res Mercy was close to be very well balanced. If we go back to that and look at the issues (No preemptive counterplay, the incentive to hide and wait) we can fix them quite easily. The cast time with no movement penalty for preemptive counterplay, without making her gameplay sluggish and frustrating and already discouraging hide&res. The healing burst to discouraging hide&res even more and to make it more useful in the midfight. No invulnerability for more outplay potential. But because this is a quite heavy nerf to her only play making ability, she needs an E ability.
I was thinking and reading just/almost as long as you about ideas and suggestions. You could say that i maybe even thought to much about that as it would be healthy, but anyway.
The thing is no idea so far was a really good one. but than i started to think about what is an nogo for her as an ability:
And after discussing that with others (before you joined) for a month, the idea of Pacify was born. It fit’s very well into Mercy’s weaknesses and strengthen without making her stronger with removing weaknesses or weaker by removing strengthen.
It was the only real logical solution which almost everyone agreed on.
And i say that again after a month of discussing that ability we made the best concept we could do without testing. It’s not just the idea of one player, but of 40+.
We did the same. Which heroes are affected by that change? How is Mercy affected? How the overall Meta? Is it good for something like E sport?
Thinking about that is very important and as someone which grew up with Nintendo games, i always want games to be fun for everyone and not just less than 25% of the community.
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But in their minds pre 1.0 and 1.0 did squat all. They never flared up about the issue until Jeff and streamers made it known by accusing us all for hide and res
Pacify is a great idea but it won’t save Mercy from continuous rework hell since it won’t solve the immediate issue Mercy, it will just be a repeat of history and then more nerf will come one after another until pacify is imbalance or useless and Mercy pick rate is restored to 1.0 standards or lower
Mercy needs an E ability if rez goes back on Q, or else she’ll go back to being extremely ult dependent.
If anything, Pacify might actually soften dps hate towards Mercy players. These dps are hung up on “aiming is the truest expression of skill;” and ridicule Mercy for not using it.
If Mercy has an ability that relies on a form of skill that the dps have practically enshrined, she might get more respect.
I’ve been catching snippets of the conversation you’ve been having with Silawatsi, so forgive me if you answered this already… what are the immediate issues of Mercy? You mentioned up above that mass rez wasn’t truly an issue, but an LOS requirement as well as no invincibility would have helped the complaints. Those issues are addressed in the OP. How does Pacify factor into that?
And if 33% seems too high (which I kind of agree with), what number would be more acceptable to you?
No doubt she does need a E ability but we cannot ignore the bigger picture when looking at rebalancing Mercy and the game itself.
Valkyrie was perceived to be cure for Mercy and Mercy mains and haters all thought so and the few who voiced against her got shunned.
Yes it may seem fun and amazing but we cannot ignore the potential risk and threat proposed by Pacify.
I honestly do think it is a wonderful idea but this is an open debate and I am voicing an opinion from a Game designer perspective and staying neutral.
If pacify goes through, it will be tweaked and at the end of the day it is a question of, will it be too strong of a debuff towards dps that annoys them or too weak of a debuff that it feels insignificant
As far as an E ability goes, there aren’t many other options.
Mobility: would make Mercy too mobile.
Damage dealing: contradicts Mercy’s “peaceful pacifist angel doctor” character design.
Shielding: it doesn’t contradict mercy’s character design, but it doesn’t mesh with it either. It also risks mercy being too good at too many things.
Burst heal: having this in Mercy’s base kit would step on Ana and Moira’s toes.
CC: we already have too much in the game.
The only options left are either buffing a teammate, or debuffing an enemy.
The Mercy collaboration team took the second option, because we think it’ll feel better and give players the opportunity to make “OMG MOM GET THE CAMERA” plays.
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I switched over to console after I had to sell my gaming PC a few years ago. So I haven’t logged into blizzard for a while now. Patch after patch a new mercy nerf keeps hitting and I have had enough of Blizzards idiocy. I saw Aria Rose’s youtube video’s and watched the hour long read-through of your post. Came here to read the entire thing myself and upvote the post. I have had enough. I want to be able to enjoy Mercy again. I was explaining to my friend (who does not play overwatch) about how Blizzard continues to change and nerf my favorite hero and initially my friend’s response to Mercy’s old ultimate was: “Well that seems a little broken don’t you think?”
My instant rebuttal was “Well, an ultimate ability is supposed to be strong. When you have heroes that can wipe an entire team with one ultimate, Resurrect doesn’t seem like such a overpowered ability now does it?”
Her response? “Oh you do make a point.”
Blizzard. Do your job. Open your eyes. You made a mistake. Fix Mercy. We have all had enough. Resurrect is not a basic ability. Resurrect is an ultimate.
Thank you Aria Rose for introducing me to this post and thank you Platinum for creating it.
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Pretty much everything we have said about mercy strengths has been said and done lol we had 1 year to discuss it so it is regurgitation at this point
In regards to damage reduction, this is hard to configure because 33% means you are reducing that hero by a 1/3rd of their damage.
Even 25% is a significant chunk of Damage reduce and as a skill, it can be arguably quite powerful. I mean if we were to create a new support hero, pacify could work as a ultimate like EMP, hitting the enemy team and significantly reducing their damage output.
This would be an insanely strong ult, heck we don’t even have a hero that cause blindness or cures
i fail how to see how the rework suggestion will make her require 9000IQ to play tho. Anyhow, im glad u found a solution ur happy with
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You sound like me from like half a year ago xD
This us the reason why I feel a bit irked because Mercy doesn’t actually needed this 2.0 rework in the first place.
In fact tweaking her current stats actually break her by making her too op or too weak (look at Valkyrie and her recent HPS adjustment)
This is what happens when you take a balance character and give a rework that she did not require in the first place
Also buff and debuff fits into Zen territory more… a hybrid between Zen and Mercy (that isn’t moira) could work as a viable replacement/option to Mercy and introduce a more diverse support gameplay and option
Also in terms of the mobility suggestion… quite a lot of ideas were initially suggesting free flight and water down e, but at same time it is something she needs for independent manuever (straight up super jump/ascent) but again it is the concern of too much mobility (like Pharah but more for her survival)
But I think the problem was that Mercy was largely fine but Blizzard refuses to revert admit they were wrong
pressing shift, and occasionally switching between right and left mouseclick is fun… tell me have u even tried other heros lmao
That may be so, but everyone has a different opinion and thoughts on the matter. On top of that, as I mentioned in my previous post, those issues that I’m assuming you feel existed (or exist? which is why I asked) are addressed in the OP. And I’m still wondering why you feel Pacify somehow connects with that?
I don’t think 25% Pacify on a CD would break anything. Would it be annoying? Sure, but what ability isn’t when you are facing it? At some point, people just need to get over it. Mercy needs an E. They can’t shoot down any and every ability idea that somehow helps her team or herself.
You mean like left clicking on heads? If you boil it down to that level of simplicity, every character is going to sound boring. Apparently, you’ve never juggled healing. It can be stressful, especially when people are careless, or when they are fully relying on you to heal through whatever they are doing or planning to do. Really, your argument is kind of pathetic.
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If only our haters would be accepting lol
But we will have to wait and see,
There is only so far that we can cater to “feelings.” People need to adapt.
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