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

General Discussion
10877

Yeah, she is. Thanks to reword she became SUPER relevant in coordinated settings, and now is balanced in a lot of ways.

Yeah, first pick has always been a massive focal point. Thus why E rez, especially when it was instant, lead to a lot of different approaches and responses to that initial pick.

Can she use some help? Sure… Ish. I feel like so many people on this forum try to play it off like Mercy is in some TERRIBLE position and that it requires attention like NOW. I don’t buy that noise at all. She is in a good position, and with the upcoming PTR changes and such the meta might shift in a way that benefits her a lot.

It’s like when during Dive people were talking about buffing Rein. Hell I entertained the thought myself. Now in hindsight, WHAT A JOKE that would have been now with the 3-3 meta right?

Mercy related discussions have historically been FARRRR off base, the “majority” or “the feels” and such have been wrong more often then not, and it really isn’t something that I find worth considering all that much. Waste of time.

She can help peel by healing and damage boosting her other support. Classic example is Zen. You GA to the guy, who suffers from lack of mobility, he throws discord on whoever is pressuring him, you damage boost, and he head clicks them into oblivion.

The meta doesn’t favor Mercy. That’s fine. Doesn’t mean she needs to be changed so she can be highly relevant in every meta etc etc.

These Mercy arguments are getting kind of ridiculous tbh…

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10878

How?

Not as much as in GOATS. Team fight win odds: 80% vs. 60%, correlated to first pick on GOATS vs. 1st pick on other team comps.

That’s not her doing peels, that’s Zen doing peels, which isn’t the same thing. This is Mercy’s biggest glaring weakness – every support has peel abilities, abilities which might or might not be on cooldown that makes the other team back off. Mercy? None.

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10879

E rez provided a reliable way to react to first picks. For instance, in organized/scrim type settings etc, there’d be the poke and prod phase, and the moment one pick was made you JUMP on that and just go for the roll. That’s dive.

E rez made it so you had to be able to control the space around that pick. You had to be able to apply zone presence for a period of time, to deny that Mercy the ability to rez. That changed the whole approach and fight dynamic.

But you don’t feel that type of stuff in QP or whatever. And I understand that. And like hey I’d love to help you with your feels.

The fact of the matter is though, I don’t want to risk or sacrifice Mercy’s viability to feelz. At the same time, I don’t want her to just be an obvious standard choice. I like how for instance Chengdu can run a 3 DPS Hammond comp with Mercy, and take it to a team like Vancouver Titans. That’s great. And then seeing how the maps influence the comps and the decisions.

Mercy shouldn’t be relevant in GOATs efficiency related discussions. That’s not her meta. We have NO REASON to try and make Mercy work in a GOATs meta. It’s a good thing she doesn’t, as we all know how quickly a meta can start to revolve around her.

Same with Tracer. The “MAKE PULSE BOMB GREAT AGAIN” movement isn’t really one that is supported by many Tracer mains. Even though Tracer has a hard time in this meta just like Mercy does. Be it silver, GM, scrims, or OWL.

So… Tell me. What is your definition of “peel”?

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10880

E-rez is difficult to balance on cooldown. N7Warrior made it clear in his long discussion on that topic several hundred posts ago.

On 1st pick, the team with the 1 man down rushes to get the counter pick to equalize quickly, and succeeds on average less than half the time.

One way to equalize is to make e-rez instant, but the Montecristo and the rest of the OWL crew made it abundantly clear they don’t want that to be a legit counter to a first pick.

What Mercy needs is similar to how Ana bionade/sleep dart works – if the opposing team jumps in, sleep dart the main tank or bionade their rushing formation when barriers are down. Now that’s real peel. You already correctly stated how Zen peels.

GOATS efficiency has everything to do with synergy coming from tight coordination and communication – I don’t think it’s unreasonable require that sort of synergy between the team members in non-GOATS composition.

Same as in CQB – in a cross fire situation, if the enemy is not paying attention to you, fire at them so that you can divert fire from the other team under fire. It’s called peel because someone from the team “peels away” from the main body to setup the cross fire.

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10881

Hm? E rez is balanced on cooldown right now in game.

Instant was broken, man. It was ridiculous what you could get away with, imo. Regardless. E Rez is in the game right now and Mercy is not dominating the meta. That is nice.

Everything in this game is about synergy coming from tight coordination and communication. Dive was the same, just applied in a different way.

Peel isn’t specific to cross fire. Peeling is far beyond that. You got the right idea though, peeling from the main body of the team and supporting the backline etc. There’s a lot to peeling. That said, heroes can’t be balanced on your team mates inability to do their job. There’s lots of ways to support someone but if they’re a bot it doesn’t matter much. Shrug.

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10882

It is, by limiting its applicability in-game.

N7Warrior argued that balancing resurrect on cooldown is difficult to balance.

Which dive? Tracer-Genji, or Tracer-Widow? Either way, viewers got fed up by mirror comps on both sides, hence the introduction of Brigitte to make deathball comps great again.

Peel is a CQB term, and it’s used with only slight differences in OW – in a general way, it means relieving pressure on a team mate through the use of abilities (Zarya bubbling a Rein whose shield is down) or through pressure from fire coming from a different direction.

You have a different definition compared to how it’s done in real world fire teams, or the made up world of OW?

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10883

Well… Yeah… All applicability is limited in-game. That’s not a bad thing.

That’s cool. Good for them. Regardless of it’s difficulty to balance it exists in a state in the game where it is for all intents and purposes balanced. That’s good. Many people didn’t think that was possible.

What does it matter what Dive? Variations of the same concept. Just like GOATs has numerous variations. The very fact Winston is often swapped out for Rein says a lot in that regard.

Peel is far more than that, at this point. It was used far before OW in MMO, MOBA, etc, settings. Let alone FPS.

Made up world of OW? I don’t understand your point with this sentence. Please rephrase?

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10884

She just barely provides it in most situations. Unless the person is already incredibly close to cover, she barely extends the time for someone to get to cover and peel for healing anymore.
And once peeled, the only people who get out back into the fight fast enough are the squishies and even then it feels slow considering.

If you peel, which means you literally stop taking damage to get healed to full which shouldn’t take that long because you stopped taking damage. It shouldn’t ruin the pacing of your fight to peel for a support who is supposed to act in a main support position. It does for Mercy. If you have to stand there, tapping your toes and have time to alt tab and send a small message, etc. while Mercy is healing you OOC, then that is a problem. (Which I have done as D.va. I stood behind cover and waited for my healing and had time to send off a discord message and come back because healing from Mercy takes that long).

You don’t have to spend forever peeled for Moira or Ana. You do for Mercy. That is a problem.

Mercy having the ability to heal someone out of combat situations or after they haven’t taken damage for ___ amount of time would merely allow her to get someone back to the fight at the same pace as other supports that she contends for a position with but does not give her the capacity to keep them in the fight longer or drag out the length of time which someone could peel.

Peeling should merely be a small moment where you avoid taking damage to return to the fight with fresh health.
That peel should not take too long as you already sacrificed some ground backing off to get healed to try and push back later.
If it takes too long, then people will not want to peel because then they keep losing the ground they are holding to peel for healing.
That is the problem with Mercy and her current healing rate with peeling potential.

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10885

Currently takes 4 seconds to heal a 200 hps hero from 1 -> 200.

With 60 hps it would take 3.33 seconds.

I would venture to say, myself, that if you are healing someone and they fail to reach cover/LOS/mitigate damage… They’d still die even if you had 60 hps. That’s on them. Poor positioning.

That is not what peeling means.

Yes, it should most definitely effect the pacing of the fight.

No, it really shouldn’t.

:confused:

Dunno how to approach this tbh. I really think that we just experience very different things within this game.

I don’t think balance should be based in any way on our team mates being bots. Should never be a factor imo.

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10886

It’s really not surprising - the absolute bottom of competitive tier resembles nothing like the average, let alone the top. Fortunately the game isn’t balanced according to the absolute bottom. Otherwise you would be having bad and broken ideas like OP’s incorporated in the game.

Mercy is fine and she is more than viable. A player being bad doesn’t mean the hero is bad.

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10887

Why keep bringing this thread back

10888

I said ruin.

Effect yes.
But ruin, not necessarily.

If you have one or two people peeling, the effect will be felt but the rest of your team should be holding it together.

But Mercy cannot return people to the fight fast enough or keep them out there to prevent too many from having to peel and therefore it can absolutely ruin/destroy the pacing of the fights you are in.

You have to remember and take into consideration that high ranks may not always notice certain effects of Mercy being bad compared to low ranks and it comes down to the fact that;

Lower ranks are more likely to take careless bits of damage compared to higher ranks. If you are a good Mercy player, you are able to work with this but for a far greater effort when any other support choice has better capabilities at dealing with your team taking careless damage, suddenly it becomes incredibly clear there is an issue. If Mercy is an entry level hero, should she not be able to have decent capabilities to sustain a team at that level. Should it not be a space in which she excels incredibly well and likely better than most of the other heroes in the roster?

Eg. Why put into 200% effort in to keep a team sustained on Mercy when I can sustain a team on Moira at about 50% effort?
And that doesn’t just come down to situations, when it is every situation for me.
Why put out 20K heals on Mercy at 200% effort, when I can 20K heals on Moira at 50% effort.

The only reason I keep playing Mercy is because my game sense and skills are overall better on her, my aim for shooting is better. I am better at securing situations with Mercy, but the overall effort I have to put in is much higher. At the end of the day I like playing Mercy’s base kit and I like her aesthetically. I don’t mind having to put in that effort but it feels wrong to put in so much effort and be given very minimal reward and have various aspects of Mercy’s kit dumb her down while also still giving her very little.

She feels like a very imbalanced hero in the sense of the power distributions on her own kit. She may look like a balanced hero stat wise and in the game, but playing her is like a whole different experience.

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10889

I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a need to peel etc. I don’t see why you see it as “ruin.” Like… I don’t understand your subjective perspective on the matter.

I think having an element of peeling etc is healthy, adds depth to the game, emphasizes awareness and positioning, etc, etc.

I’m not really understanding your point rn tbh.

If people bot out and just eat damage, they die. It’s always been that way. Any team, regardless of how strong Mercy is at the time, taking needless damage is making mad mistakes. That’s on the team. Balance can’t be based off of “well my friends just suck so plz buff this hero I like playing.” Ridiculous.

Then play Moira. Why do you ALWAYS need a reason to play Mercy? I play all roles, SO MANY HEROES, and I do so according to the situation and what best suits our comp. I’d suggest you do the same.

Spoiler alert: Moira becomes a real bad pick outside of plat.

She is powerful, and she is viable. That’s not to say she can’t use adjustment. But acting like she’s useless and this game needs to cater to you or your team’s inability to play the game is just getting tiring. It’s like holding back a child throwing an arm flailing tantrum.

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10890

Who’s arguing that she’s not viable, or imbalanced? She’s balanced, but feels bad to play – her skill expression used to be: a.) a base kit which flows through continuous GA-heals/dmg boost-GA over and over again until b.) she can’t GA anymore because of dead team mates – after which it culminates into a resurrect where she has enough team mates to use her base kit of continuous GA-heals/dmg boost-GA. It’s similar to Reinhardt’s: a.) on-shield-off-shield-hammer skill rotation, b.) keep the focus of the enemy on Rein as a threat through fire strikes, c.) culminate in a shatter-fire strike-charge combo.

There is a rhythm is skill expression, it’s not difficulty that drives it – it’s an emotional experience when the abilities and the way it is used feels connected with the hero’s lore and personality.

It certainly doesn’t help when players harp on balance and viability, because these players seem to view Mercy solely as tools in a game to win.

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10891

For you. And other people. Her “feeling” bad to play isn’t inherent to her or her fundamental kit design, as people can very much find her current kit fun. Her “feeling” bad to play is entirely on you. You know that whole fun is subjective stuff etc.

It still does that.

Wtf? Team mates just getting head clicked by God tier Widow something?

Tbh you come across like your reasoning is “BUT DEAD TEAM MATES! JUST DEATH! Everywhere… Death… They were my friends… But dead team mates… WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR BARRIER??? WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE SO QUICKLY!!! Oh yeah, I can rez!”

There is no “culmination” into a res. 1 dead team mate = Rez. It’s not like “OMFG! We’ve lost 3 people on our team! BEST CAST MY SINGLE TARGET REZ NOW!”

Like… ??? I don’t understand your approach at all.

Yo, you’re free to get whatever kind of emotional expression you want. So long as it doesn’t impede or make it hard for me to get my emotional expression on. Shrugz.

Balance and viability are more important than your individual emotions when it comes to this game. That should be like painfully obvious…

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10892

This is just an emotionally driven paragraph devoid of any facts or anything resembling logic. I really can’t comment on any of it at all.

Mercy is balanced and viable to play. Reworking heroes because of the emotions of a small group of players at the bottom of the competitive tier is pointless.

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10893

brokenstyli says it best:

And…

I believe it was a response to your usual balance arguments, Quest, in a different thread. But I think it holds true in this discussion too.

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10894

Yeah it was. And that ended in me dissecting Brokenstyli’s approach and them leaving that thread without responding to me.

I guess refer to the thread you linked if you want to know my perspective on that. I don’t know why you’d link it to me in response to what I said to you.

Defend your own arguments. Why you trying to deflect onto someone else?

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10895

That doesn’t mean he isn’t right.

10896

This is a bunch of non-sense said in a pompous and elaborate way to appear more credible (kind of like what OP does).

Mercy has always been the easiest hero to play in Overwatch. She is a simple hero that had low skill floor and low skill ceiling. There was literally nothing complicated about her. You hold M1 and you press Q when everybody is dead, you try stay alive. That’s it. It ain’t rocket science. She wasn’t more expressive, she wasn’t more creative.

Current Mercy is pretty much the same thing except she is a bit harder to play now. Her skill floor has been raised slightly and the good thing about is that her skill ceiling is also raised. Which is a good thing all around. Mass Rez was unhealthy, good riddance to it. Current Mercy is good and viable, that’s it.

She can be boring to some and they are more than welcomed to play some other hero. We don’t do balance changes cause of emotions.

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