Why I Have Yet to Not Despise Mercy's Current State

For me Overwatch is about fast decisions. How you act on them is another category entirely, but 2/3 of skill in Overwatch is how quickly and efficiently you gather and process information.

Mercy 1.0 was the zenith of that.

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But you really don’t, you sacrifice no more than you are doing already, I would say that you are sacrificing less because of how many vulnerabilities you suddenly do not have in favour of tons of added bonuses that you didn’t need.

That’s what makes it an abomination that has very limited skill expression.

I can tell a difference between a good and bad Mercy using Valk, but it’s still hard to tell the difference between the good and great Mercy’s simply because those Mercy’s already know how the kit works and likely the only things they need refining on is things that they need refined in the base kit and Valkyrie covers for most of that slight lack of skill that was a defining difference between the good and the great.

People at my level of play will compliment a Mercy who in my opinion was garbage because the only time they ever really healed well was during Valk, who kept dying unless they pressed Q, who were healing full health people, etc.
People at my level will flip out when they see a good or great Mercy, but there isn’t much of a difference between them unless it is the base kit.

This isn’t about feeling, this is about seeing the impacts Valkyrie has.

I already stated this.

Tracer isn’t easy to play, her greatest value comes with her ability to one clip which takes a lot of effort. You are purposefully making it sound like she is a straight up easy character. She is far more mechanically intensive than some heroes.
Tracer has to learn to stick the bomb and has to use major thought to maximize the effect of something that is actually incredibly small.

Orisa’s ult is garbage and many people criticize it. There is good reason for this considering she is supposed to be an alternative to Rein, a set up ult would be better for her, like a Rooting Ultimate. Because main tanks should have stronger set up ultimates.

Nanoboost on Ana also works because all of her skills and limitations make her a mechanically intensive hero. That’s not to say there couldn’t be better, but it would require her kit to be different but she already has a very loaded kit even with the high skill requirements.

You don’t need a super amazing ult, if you have the potential to be amazing all the time, which Ana and Tracer do. As does Widowmaker.

Orisa is not in that same bracket and her ultimate is just a detriment to making her an amazing and stand out hero, and prevents her from what she is supposed to be.

You can see the difference between a good and bad anything.
However it’s much easier to tell the difference with good and great on other heroes. I know when I see a great Genji at my level. I know when I see a great Tracer at my level. A great Rein, etc. But there is very little skill expression to show between a good and great Mercy when it comes to Mercy 2.0, because it was managing her vulnerabilities and limitations that signified that and those vulnerabilities are so much less now.
Valkyrie has made it so the goods and the greats are harder to tell apart for the duration of Valk and that isn’t okay.
Though a lot about Mercy 2.0 has done that and a lot of it is to do with the entire balance of it all.

This concept can’t apply to Mass Rez because the use of it could help you tell the difference between bad, good and great.

For me it’s more about predictions. You can’t make a decision without having all information, which is fairly limited, when you have no communication in your games. You don’t know your teammate’s emotional status, if they are likely to panic, or do something stupid: you can only guess.

It’s mind games of different kind: all you know about your teammates is their ult status, and their recent story of behavior(reckless charging in, for instance). Same about enemies: you don’t know, how much of ult charge they got, as many fights happened without your surveillance, so you only can use their behavior to predict, if ults are about to be unleashed.

I thought my statement covered that???

step one: gather the information
step two: use it to predict what’s going to happen
step three: plan accordingly

For me there is difference between decisions and predictions :woman_shrugging:

When you have all or most information, you can make accurate decision. Otherwise you can only guess, accurately or not.

Well, yes.

Predictions are made before decisions. They are, “what could happen?”

Decisions are made based on prior predictions. They are, “okay it’s happening now, what do I do about it?”

I always had actions chosen on prediction stage, with adjustments further on, if needed.

Honestly, that’s what makes Valkyrie so boring: outcome of fight is fairly clear only few seconds into it.

I’d call the on-the-fly adjustments to planned actions the “decision” part of the process.

I think we’re arguing semantics at this point, because I agree with what you’re saying.

Not going to argue semantics further, as English isn’t my native language.

Hey, I just want to say that I like how you both used Mass Rez and Mercy differently.
I think it shows how friendly she was as a hero and how even though you used her differently, your love of her is both strong and that’s cool :slight_smile: :heart:

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Apparently my way of using Mercy was used as reason to rework her. :disappointed_relieved:

Since it allowed to win games with worse team. As long as you managed to outsmart enemy team.

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Heck yeah!

I liked using Mercy agressively and loved using her on attack maps, but the greatest thing about Mercy 1.0 was that she had more than one playstyle. Defensive players like Cleo were able to use Mercy’s in a very different but no less awesome way, and this was with the same kit! That’s totally rad!

I resent the rework for shoehorning Mercy players into one playstyle. I want her reworked back into a state where you can choose whether to play super defensively or aggressively.

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Defensive way isn’t working anymore, due to lack of healing…

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Neither is the aggressive way, due to a lack of “BIG IMPACT!” moments…

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Shout out to one of the most alienated playerbases in Overwatch!
Where Jeff Kaplan openly implies Mercy’s are skill-less!

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When did he do that?

Aren’t you part of the OWL team?

Oh, look; it’s this argument again. Time for a copy/paste.

"The developers said/did it, therefore it must be true/valid." These are the same people who:

  • Wanted D.Va to be more of a bully tank, so they granted her 100 additional armor.

  • Wanted D.Va to be less of a bully tank, so they reworked her ("Protect the Rip-Tire").

  • Wanted D.Va to be more of a bully tank, so they reworked her again.

  • Left Sombra in garbage tier for well over a year after her launch before buffing her into semi-viability. They then left her in that state for two weeks before nerfing her into a worse state than she was before her buffs. The patch wasn’t even put in the PTR before going live.

  • Left Bastion in garbage tier for months before reworking him into into god tier. They then left him in that state for about a week on PC (a full month on consoles) before nerfing him once again back into garbage tier. He has remained there for two years.

  • Let Ana dominate the meta for a full season before nerfing her repeatedly until she hit garbage tier. They then took a year and a half to bring her back into relevance.

  • Took 8 months to grant Widowmaker a simple cooldown reduction buff; one that had been universally requested by the community. Then they partially reverted one of those buffs because she became meta for a few months.

  • Left Hanzo in garbage tier for nearly two years before finally reworking him, at which point he dominated the damage category for months before finally being toned down.

  • Take months or years to fix obvious and trivial issues (bugs, hitbox irregularities), or sometimes completely ignore them despite obvious discussion on them: Genji’s deflect, Doomfist’s hitboxes, Reinhardt’s Earthshatter, Mercy’s post-rework GA bug, etc.

  • Have yet to bring Mei out of garbage tier.

  • Have yet to bring Reaper out of garbage tier.

  • Have yet to bring Torbjorn out of garbage tier despite a full-blown rework.

  • Have yet to bring Symmetra out of garbage tier despite two full-blown reworks.

  • Have attempted to sneak changes to obvious features through by calling them “bug fixes” (see Lucio’s Wall-Ride nerf, Mercy’s damage boost nerf).

  • Have failed to balance consoles and PC differently save for Torbjorn’s turret, unlike that which was promised when they first released the game.

And of course:

  • Reworked Mercy, taking a balanced hero and shooting them into God-tier for 10 months before dropping her to F-tier.
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In fact, the numerical evidence suggests the opposite of their claims.

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This thread… I can’t believe people are still on about this lol