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

Although the above indicates this is how all players play tank, that isn’t actually the case.

Here’s a pop quiz: can you charge with your shields up as Reinhardt? Because only Reinhardt can come “aggressively charging in”. No other main tank has the “charge” ability. Let me answer for you: the shield is down when Reinhardt charges, so factually, he “charges in” with “no shield”.

Semantically speaking, all tanks that comes “aggressively charging in” (aka all Reinhardts, the only hero with the “charge” ability) does it with “no shields”.

That’s how trivial and small minded your statement is. I understand the wider point Cleopatra is trying to make, Megadodo. You seem to miss the point every time.

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I see ‘THEY’ have still not fixed Mercy, and the misplaced hatred for Mass Rez is still abundant. So many ideas in the past year on how to fix Mercy, an still getting flack that “Rez has no place in a FPS.” (among other colorful iterations). An ‘THEY’ are confused about why so many people who have the game are no longer playing it.
In a nutshell it’s like this, the Rework was and still is a complete failure. If a rework requires 15 (last I checked) Nerfs to a Heroes ability to make said Hero balanced, it failed.
It only took a couple of slight buffs to Ana to make her viable again, but 15 Nerfs to “Balance” Mercy after the Rework. Something is wrong with that equation.

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Wonder if Overwatch will face same fate StarCraft 2 faced.

But then even less players will be in rest of gamemodes. At this point, it’s kind of too late.

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It’s ok, Aria…lots of us enjoy playing Mercy in her current state, and there are over 2 dozen other characters to choose from if you no longer enjoy playing Mercy

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Blizzard is treading a very thin line when it comes to balance right now. The current 3-3/GOATS has 80%+ team fight win percentage on “first pick/kill against the enemy team” because it is the sort of meta where ultimate economy and abilities on cooldown matters. Because of this, critical team skills like shotcalling, communication and coordination are THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILLS, not “clicking heads”.

The challenge for the Blizzard team is to extend the need for these team skills in the team compositions that Mercy is good at – this is the gist of how I want Mercy to be rebalanced.

I agree that the toll it took on the players who main Mercy has been bad ever since the initial rework. Up to this day on PC, Mercy still has the stigma of being a no-skill hero, despite the fact that it takes as much skill as playing Rein or Winston or Hammond to play Mercy – in contrast, DPS playing badly do not get as much trolling directed at them.

Game sense and positioning doesn’t get a lot of credit in this game especially at lower tiers, and that’s a shame, really. My hope is that DPS playing Baptiste would open the eyes of the plebs who only play the game to click heads.

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You can blame a couple of Streamers for the “No Aim- No Brain Hero” and “Mercy is ALWAYS hiding” when even a layman could see that Mercy was doing neither of these things.

"No Aim- No Brain Hero" Funny, I just took out an Ulting Genji with my pop-gun.

"Mercy is always hiding" Funny, I seem to be surrounded by my teammates, taking out a Doomfist this time.

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Well, a huge part of it is that when a Mercy goes battle mode and a DPS team mate dies while he’s requesting healing, the DPS player goes ape against the battle Mercy. The thing is – aim is an overrated skill in this game. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, can aim well at close- to mid-range.

True story: I got hosed by a Mercy at close range at spawn as Reinhardt in QP once, so I know the feeling of being at the receiving end of a Mercy bunny blaster :smiley:.

I feel that the only hero that can deliver value with aim at long range is Widowmaker, the rest needs to position properly at close- to mid-range in order to do well. I agree with ggBarroi’s PTK Model (former analyst for Winstons Lab, now working as analyst for Toronto Defiant) that DPS is the least important role in the game, and if it wasn’t apparent before, it should be very apparent now that Blizzard allowed 3-3/GOATS to exist in Stage 1 of OWL Season 2.

TLDR: Being able to support tanks better is big on my wish list for Mercy. I hope they’ll re-balance Mercy somehow so as to make this possible.

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That runs the risk of Mercy being OP. This forum has come around to the fact Mercy is a DPS enabling support and with her mobility, survivability, and ability to respond to a pick, she becomes an incredibly strong keystone to a lot of comps. Esp dps orientated comps.

An on demand ability to reliably provide for tank emphasized comps can easily make her broken in dps orientated comps. That level of burst/tank enabling healing is huge when Tracer or Widow duels are deciding matches or w.e.

Yeah the HPS nerf sucked and perhaps was not necessary, but that doesnt excuse your team for botting out and eating damage to the point where that 10 hps difference determines a win or a loss.

I know it does at times, obviously, but those times arent overly frequent. Typically 10 hps wont mean the difference between my bot DPS team mate dying or not.

A lot of things said comes down to player error more than 10 hps difference.

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Why enable most selfish role this game ever has, when you can enable tank, that actually makes your odds of survival higher?

Focus on tanks anyway, if given a choice, as alive tank helps to keep rest of the team out of harm’s way. DPS died? No problem, we still got time. Tank died? Well, we are screwed, whole team has no cover now and boards train to spawn room.

Teamwork is a two-way street, and while tanks return favor by shielding supports from damage, DPS often refuse to do that.

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That’s why I preface my change request with rebalance – take away something, add something.

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If that something is Valkyrie parts like chain beams, infinite ammo, etc. we have a deal. Take whole ult, if you want to.

^^^ Cleo, we don’t need stuff like this. Wtf “most selfish role this game ever has” etc? What’s with this like “us vs them” mentality you’re perpetuating?

This is that player error. This is that QP stuff. This is that “my team mates are morons” type mentality kind of thinking. Sure, if you have bots as team mates, playing Mercy will suck, Rez will seem pointless, etc, etc. When you DON’T have bots as team mates tho, suddenly rez can be SUPER play making, super game deciding, etc, etc.

That’s fine. It really is.

However, all suggestions for compensation are purely speculative. We don’t know if they will be OP, or if they will be UP. I don’t want UP Mercy.

A lot of Mercy mains on this forum seem to be willing to say “I don’t care if Mercy is UP, muh feelz, when I log in I want to feel something.”

Personally, I do care if Mercy is UP. I do care if she is OP. Viability is a HUGE PART of if I have fun playing a hero. Not only that, due to Mercy’s uniqueness and her ability to enable DPS comps, Orisa and bunker comps, etc, etc, is also, very important to me. I don’t want to run the SAME COMP EVERY SINGLE MAP regardless of if I’m attacking or defending.

You guys that Q into QP and are like “MUH FEELZ AND MUH TEAM MATZ ARE DUMZ” like I empathize, I get it. I feel for ya. But, I that stuff doesn’t factor in when it comes to the discussion of Mercy for me.

I require viability. I believe this game requires viability. And her current state is the closest to balanced and viable we have had her. So when y’all are like “WELL JUST ADD THIS AND CHANGE THIS” I’m like plzzzz man. Appreciate how much that can mess everything up. We got something good right now, let’s see how PTR changes play out, and adjust her from there.

But it won’t be drastic, it be huge swings in her kit, the mechanics, and characteristics of it. Minor adjustments to her current kit, safe. So those that are like “MUH MASS REZ! MUH PLAY MAKE!” a lot of them won’t be satisfied with that sort of approach to Mercy, Valk, her kit, etc.

For them I say tough luck. It’s how things go. Mass Rez would be TERRIBLE in this game in it’s current state. And by terrible I mean like trash. Useless. Sure in QP you can do some gimmicky sort of strategies. Outside of that?

Trash.

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Because it’s true: not a single DPS protects their supports. Whole dive meta was born from it. And even if teammates are not bots, it’s still how it is.

It’s not limited to QP either.

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Not true at all.

Every flex player, you know, that “come on guys lets just work together” dude who might have god tier widow stats but is flexing for the sake of the team… They look at this “dps vs support” stuff like it’s childish nonsense.

DPS do protect supports, dive meta was not born because people that play DPS are just totally ignorant of their supports.

The vast majority of what I read you saying just comes across as player error to me. Not necessarily your own, but your team mates. You can’t argue issues of balance on the premise of your team mates not doing their job.

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You really think someone would switch their target, just because second enemy decided to target their support?

I played game, where support is actually protected, and Overwatch isn’t one. It’s also why we got heroes like Moira or Brigitte, who don’t need other teammates to protect them.

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Sounds like some Widow/Mercy mains I know – Animetic the Mercy main streamer is a really great Widowmaker, and warms up prior to CP on FFA custom games with Widow. I just watched Logix, a really great Widow Contenders player, play Mercy on a PharMercy comp.

They should, since Mercy is a main support – which means knowing how to play Lucio, and being able to shotcall and track ults.

The way DPS protect support and tanks is to position properly and take/make peel opportunities. Here’s a pop quiz: do you think DPS mains know how to peel properly in the game? Quick answer: the most communicative bunch has always been flex players, support and tank mains. Hence my bias against DPS mains who can’t flex to support and tank.

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Just because she enable DPS, doesn’t mean she should be a useless healer to the tanks.
Like, maybe if it was based softly on percentage so that the bigger the health pool meant she could get a slightly higher boost to healing, it would feel a little less bad healing tanks.

Basically, peeling should be necessary.
But Mercy should be able to provide someone:
a) Be able to help someone peel.
b) The ability to have someone return to the fight fairly quickly after peeling.

Alternatively, let Mercy heal a higher rate on people who haven’t taken damage in ___ amount of time. This means tanks don’t have to stand in hiding for 20 years waiting for a Mercy to heal them up. That seems fair to me, because if someone peels from a fight to heal and they aren’t being followed to secure a kill, a main support should be able to heal them as fast as what peeling for a health kit could do. The thing is, people don’t have to peel very long for Ana or Moira, but they do for Mercy. That is a problem.

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I never said anything to that effect. I personally don’t consider her useless when it comes to tanks.

Yeah but like at the same time I don’t see much reason for her to be that effective with tanks. We have Moira for that. Ana is also, obviously, strong af with tanks. The strongest. Moira is great for the vast majority of the community, but is pretty much irrelevant in higher tiers/coordinated settings.

I don’t see why Mercy needs help when it comes to her ability to support tanks.

She does provide that. She can help someone peel, she can bring someone back from the dead… Like wtf?

Mercy literally bunnyhop super jump GAs off into orbit and then flutters around the field with crazy mobility. At least good ones do. Mercy doesn’t need much peel at all. Not like Zen or Ana.

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See, that’s the thing – Mercy is not really that relevant in coordinated settings. The most coordinated settings are 3-3/GOATS where first pick results in team fight wins on the average 80% of the time – best teams win 92% of the time. Mercy? Her team comps win 60% of the time on average – best teams win around 70%+ of the time.

And the team fight win correlation isn’t based on proper ult or ability cooldown management – it’s based on first pick, and the conduct of the subsequent cleanup afterwards.

Hence my previous post –

The risk Blizzard is taking in allowing 3-3/GOATS is that it’s hard to understand for the casual viewer. But what it showed me is that whatever the meta, Blizzard has to promote communication and coordination. I don’t find the sort of tight coordination present in GOATS in the sort of team compositions Mercy is good at.

Uh, what? She can help someone peel… by bringing someone back from the dead?

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