I look at support in the broadest way possible – supports are not supposed to focus on helping a single carry hero achieve his/her goal, a support is supposed to help the whole team, and in the process of helping the team, the support can build themselves up to an ult that swings a team fight.
I have seen so many games by streamers where they want a Mercy to pocket them because they are DPS masters that can carry a game solely through their superior DPS mechanics, and this idea is wrong (a game by Seagull a long time ago playing S76 comes to mind – Mercy was pocketing him exclusively to defend 2nd point Hanamura). The idea that a single DPS hero is capable of carrying the whole team solely because of a healing/rez pocket is unfair to the rest of the team who isn’t part of the DPS-Mercy pair.
I loathe the idea that Mercy should be played as solely as a pocket support, it just doesn’t promote good team play strategies, and I detest the streamers who promoted this idea to Blizzard in the first place.
In my view, the meta Mercy belongs to is supposed to encourage their team mates to take prudent risks (aka chip damage) that does not one-shot them, and the resulting heals are supposed to build up to a team-fight advantage once Mercy’s ult is achieved. Where, in the greater scheme of things, do you think Pacify belongs to in this sort of meta?
I agree that a single target Pacify would not address my concerns. The scenarios where I see Pacify used: a.) an ability meant to provide a DPS pocketed by Mercy a decisive advantage in a DPS vs. DPS duel, b.) another escape ability for Mercy being targeted by a flanker, and c.) if the Pacify debuff goes on for a long time, an ability to counter an enemy DPS ult. There could be more, but these three are the immediate ones that come to mind.
One scenario where I think Pacify is useful against – an annoying Doomfist and his uppercut-shotgun combo.
Pacify, as originally proposed, feels a lot like an Ana sleep dart.
That’s why I prefer an area-effect sort of debuff that is short to mid range, something more akin to an Ana bio-nade that tells the enemy team, “Back off from my tanks!”. My favorite hero is Reinhardt, and the most annoying tactic by the enemy team is a Brig-shield bash combo followed by damage dogpiled by every short and mid ranged DPS in the enemy team – MCree FTH, S76 rockets, etc.etc.
As soon as shields are down, I want Mercy to have an ability that stops the free-for-all that follows – multiple debuffed enemies would just back off and let Mercy continue healing her team. And if the cooldown is long enough, it can be timed to coincide with Mercy’s ult so that the decrease in enemy overall damage would incentivize Mercy to damage boost on Valk for a decisive team fight advantage.