(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.