Seeing your presence in this thread is an honor !
Hope you’re doing fine 
(Sorry I’m slowly catching up the replies here)
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I’m doing good. I’ve been flexing into Mercy a lot lately and snagging a few wins. I still need to burn my ult to have a chance in keeping my tanks up lol.
Omg it’s RichC!!
Fangirling aside, I’m really interested in your perspective on Mercy. Most of us on this thread are either Mercy mains/ex-mercies who been playing her for years, and most of the rest are a group of players who dislike Mercy and come here to rile up the first group.
It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a fresh, outside-of-the-box take on Mercy. How would you describe her current design?
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Okay I’ll give it a shot with my thoughts. Keep in mind I’m a tank main (I main the entire tank roster) and I flex into support (Mercy being my first pick usually, especially for defense).
I made a thread awhile back where I discussed that Mercy mains did not deserve the rollercoaster that Blizzard put them through with their hero. This is the thread:
I made that thread out of sheer empathy, because I would have certainly been expressing frustration if my favorite main hero (Reinhardt) had gone through an enormous rework while riding the ups and downs of buffs/nerfs.
Okay all that said and out of the way, I still love flexing into Mercy. I also think, despite what so many lowbrow people say on the forums, she is incredibly difficult to be good with. It’s not easy committing yourself to a dive push only to know you are going to be the main target. It’s not easy spam crouching and side stepping widow players who have you in their sights. It’s not easy trying to keep your main tanks up with a reduction in healing. It’s not easy having a proactive ult instead of reactive (despite what others argue).
She isn’t a heal bot, and she doesn’t just hold down right click. Her positioning must be flawless otherwise a team fight is lost as soon as you die. She still thrives on certain maps, and certain hero comps.
However there are still aspects of her kit that are lackluster, but even so, she still is used (although rarely) in some OWL comps, and we might be seeing more of her now that dps heroes are making a comeback (she does enable dps heroes well)
There is one final point I want to make. The support class is starting to fill out. It’s not enough to one trick a support hero anymore, this is because support heroes actually do help counter enemy team compositions (and also a support pick can help you kill, counter, or survive against a specific dps hero). I have switched to Mercy many times to “help” enable and survive. I have also switched off Mercy to help enable a my teams composition choice (often switching to Ana because our team had many potential nano targets.
So my thoughts are, it’s fun to encompass many heroes into your pool, especially now that hero counters are extending themselves into the support class. Is she a main healer? That really depends on the comp. Is she a solo healer? Oh gawd no. I have won a lot of games where my teammates go 3 dps because I help them “frag out” , we also have a zen with us in these comps because we go for the full fragging comp, with a zen ult to cancel/counter their grav/combo ults.
I think support players and Tank players have more in common now than we ever had before. It’s all about the synergistic qualities that best enables the team comp (but supports go further because they also have to look at their own personal survivability against specific heroes too).
Whew. Long read. Sorry 
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The stats are starting to reflect this and I believe it is accurate. Mercy, against common arguments, has lower win rates compared to other supports and the lower ranks. Crazy, right?
At GM, among supports, her win rate is only surpassed by Moira, but Moira’s pick rate is too low to get good data, she’s in that “picked in niche” category.
It’s safe to say Mercy is not a “no-skill” character.
In higher ranks (at least a few weeks ago) she is the healer picked in solo-heal comps, strangely.
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that’s good to know. I’m probably not good enough to solo heal with her. I needz my other healer to watch over me. I often make risky positioning moves that are high risk/high reward. That’s probably why I always feel more comfortable with another healer, it fits my mercy play-style, but nevertheless, I’m sure those REALLY good mercy players can make it work solo. I’m just not one of them ![:smiley:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
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Same here, I would never even attempt it – I just thought it was interesting that’s the way they went. Probably for the damage boost, nothing prevents damage taken like a dead red team.
When I have to solo heal I always go Moira unless I’m supporting a bunch of flanky, spread out DPS.
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Why are you apologizing? 
I agree on the “survival” aspect on Mercy. It’s a lot harder and takes a lot more skill than some will give Mercy credit for, especially as you go higher up the ladder to face more coordinated, more competent teams.
What sucks is that Mercy’s “reward” for hanging onto life by her fingernails doesn’t feel substantial enough to justify the harrowing stress of outrunning assassins and keeping up healing duties. Whether or not multirez was “healthy” for the game, it provided a high point that made the player feel like they were being rewarded for a job well done.
Valkyrie lacks that satisfaction. The amount of effort it takes to play Mercy properly in a competitive setting vs the pathetic payout of individual impact Mercy can have on the match leaves me feeling cheated.
If a Mercy plays their butt off and does everything right, they should have at least some carry power! That’s the way it is for literally the entire roster except Mercy, and it upsets me that there are players who think that this double-standard is justified.
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I don’t have a closed opinion. I have yet to receive a reason to hold any different opinion. (Yes, this is Quest, my Brig one trick ult account to be perfectly accurate)
So, I’m going to make a relatively lengthy post cuz who knows what will happen to this account now that I’ve disclosed that. 
I’ll start it off by quoting the other part that you directed to me:
You’re right. Me stating that, and so much more of what I said in this thread, was not constructive. It was… Combative. It was antagonistic and it was dismissive. The reason for this is… Disappointment I guess. I had wished that the discussion around Mercy would evolve BEYOND the things that were summarized in this thread, and the other recent thread of “Mass Rez was healthy for the game” or whatever. I had hoped that the discussion around Mercy would transition toward something more “of the times.” Like when I started seeing people talk about Mercy being a DPS enabling support, etc. That made me happy.
Unfortunately, there is a reluctance to move on from the mechanism of Mass Rez. I don’t know fully why that is, perhaps it’s the safe answer? Perhaps people feel that… Complaints about Mercy could be washed away if there was simply a revert to Mass Rez with the introduction of restrictions such as LOS limitation, cast time, no invuln on cast, etc?
It’s the simple answer, it’s something we know, so it’s the perspective we lean on? Perhaps the fact that Mass Rez was in the game before gives appeals to have it reinstated some sense of legitimacy? Where as thinking outside of the box appears as a sort of pipe dream?
Anyways, on to my previous behavior in this thread. I shouldn’t have taken the path that I did. It was, like I said, combative and antagonistic. At the time, that was because I was frustrated with how certain people have held onto the narrative of arguing in favor of Mass Rez, and not being open minded to alternatives.
Expressing what “feelings” Mass Rez gave you, and then dismissing arguments as to why it wasn’t “healthy” for the game or for Mercy, and kind of just being in this mind state of “Mass Rez or nothing” imho is unconstructive. It’s counter productive, it feeds into this “us vs them” mentality that certain users like to fan the flames of with stuff like #Whatevers and the like.
On top of that, I was terribly disappointed in the quality of the arguments that were made FOR Mass Rez. I have said before that I could argue their position better then they can, so now I will demonstrate it.
Mass Rez offered a variety of ways to respond to any given situation. Due to the various restrictions it had placed on it (that is AoE radius, the fact dead team mates are required, etc) the Mercy player had to assess the circumstance and situation in a very unique and potentially rewarding way. They had to ask themselves “should I just bring this one individual up to maintain the numerical advantage? If I let this person just respawn, will we be able to hold at a numerical disadvantage long enough for them to get back from spawn? Will someone else die within the 10s respawn time frame after this person due to our numerical disadvantage? Will I be next to die after this person?”
There was MANY ways to approach the application of Mass Rez in any given situation. It also offered a potentially unparalleled shift in how a fight was going. It was as Silawatsi says:
Again, as they say, they feel a
When it comes to Mercy.
These are legitimate concerns and feelings. With Zen you can clutch trans, or clutch volley a pick. With Lucio, clutch boops and beats. With Ana you have sleep dart and anti nade that can be very clutch. Moira is probably the best comparison to Mercy, however, due to the fact that she is able to be DPS orientated in a sense easily she can clutch out kills and such.
Mass Rez offered that playmaking potential and introduced a large amount of decision making to Mercy as outlined above. Outside of the hide and rez sort of stuff that we all know was not SUPER common due to the fact it remained an SR exploit. If you participated in hide and rez, you’d gain HUGE for wins, and lose little for losses when it came to SR. If it was a common practice, then that type of extreme SR variance would not exist due to you being compared to your peers as far as the algorithm or whatever is concerned.
Not only did Mercy have to worry about healing and supporting her team during the fight, but she had to also preserve herself if the fight turned sour for her team. She had to weigh so many factors when it came to “do I rez this person now, or wait it out and see how things change” and such. It was a hard swing moment that felt incredibly rewarding.
The enemy team had to pay attention to what they were doing, and not simply spam out ults. If for instance your tanks were caught up in a grav and erased, you could counter that with a well timed and well placed rez, making everyone sort of play in a more mindful way.
Mass Rez in essence counter balanced the lack of playmaking ability and individual clutch potential that Mercy’s base kit offers. In many games, for the average player, Mercy’s base kit isn’t so much “making things happen” as it is “enabling things to happen.” As far as the player playing Mercy feels. When your team just dies out, regardless of how on point you were with your beam juggling, etc, it feels like there was nothing you could do to clutch it out, or hard carry your team. And you’re just like “hookay, time to walk back to spawn.” For these reasons, Mass Rez was a good, and enjoyable, gameplay mechanic for some.
Mass Rez Mercy was not OP, was not meta defining. She operated well in the lower and mid tiers, and then tapered off in the top. That seems to be what many people want, right? Mass Rez was in a sense easily countered or simply denied in higher tiers, yet it operated well in mid tiers, and allowed Mercy players to feel and experience the things outlined above. How many people are truly invested in Mercy being viable? Or would they rather just be able to, in the settings that allow it (mid tier, QP, solo Q life) be able to feel what was outlined about? I think many that for instance liked and advocated the stance in this post fall into the latter group. Unconcerned about Mercy viability. Many have said that straight up.
Now… I could carry on, rack my brain to try to recall what various arguments have been made and reword them in the way I did above. I think I’ve summarized quite a lot of it decently… So we’ll now move onto the problems.
The problem with Mass Rez wasn’t just that it was “unfun” to play against, it was that it required your team mates to be dead tbh. Even with invuln, instant cast, no LOS restrictions, it was still a niche af (bring the Pharah back) sort of ult. It’s usage, due to it being tied directly to team mates deaths, was HEAVILY restricted in any sort of coordinated setting. Really regulating her to just a pocket healer, a Pharah pocket specifically.
You then have the problems that arise in the mid tiers and the chaotic settings that really allowed Mass Rez to have swing potential. In those settings, it incentivized self preservation above all else. Can’t rez if you died first. This was then taken to the extremes of hide and rez, which was also contradictory to the whole premise of a purely support orientated hero that utilizes their mobility to keep their team mates alive.
The devs stated they did not like this operation. Many say give it LOS restrictions, give it cast time, remove invuln, tweak it in these ways, and it’ll be all good. Sure, it’ll be all good FOR YOU. For other people though? No. And then you have the arguments that have been made about Mercy requires viability in order to support Bunker and DPS orientated comps. Mass Rez as an ult is a threat to that viability.
E Rez actually works really well. It allows you to have that more poke orientated sort of playstyle, and react to that first pick occuring. If the enemy Zen got lucky with a volley and dropped one of your team mates, you can respond if they can’t control the space around the dropped target. Without a need to charge ult or anything then blow it for 1 person. It puts a step in between securing a pick and rolling the enemy over. That’s huge.
A lot has been said “well give her Mass Rez but give her an E to compensate for the weakness that Mass Rez exhibits in higher tiers and coordinated settings.” That’s got to be a hell of an E. And then balancing that E will bring about it’s own set of problems, and we have no way of knowing if it will secure her viability throughout the tiers and settings of play in this game. However, we also acknowledge her viability is important in the enabling of diverse comps and DPS heroes.
What we have currently does enable diverse comps and DPS heroes. What we have now is viable in higher tiers. Imo, adjustment should be focused on what we have now, as opposed to speculating on “what could be” if we restarted everything. It took a LONG time to get to where we are now. I don’t think we should just throw that away, or as Orion said in that other Mass Rez thread “throw the baby out with the bath water.”
There is no way to make Mass Rez really operate in a viable way in higher tiers/coordinated settings. It will always be just a single target rez in those settings for the most part simply due to it’s reliance on members of your team being dead. Adding restrictions and such to make it less problematic in chaotic QP/mid tier etc settings, only further regulates it to that role, and perhaps even jeopardizes it.
We can’t have that imho. And imo, if you then introduce an E ability or whatever that DOES compensate for the weaknesses of Mass Rez in coordinated settings, it has a HIGH likelihood of being extremely problematic in those very chaotic settings and tiers that Mass Rez itself was problematic in. Now not only do you have the Mass Rez mechanic that those environments struggled with, now you have an E ability along with it that secures her viability in the settings where Mass Rez was used in the same sense E rez is used now.
When you take into consideration ALL OF THE ABOVE, can you really say an argument for Mass Rez is one that is trying to appeal to and serve the best interest of ALL parties involved? This isn’t even starting to touch on the complaints that sprung up from the chaotic tiers and settings that involved lack of counterplay, the “unfunness” etc etc.
This is why when people basically base their entire argument around their own individual subjective feelings I get dismissive, combative, condescending, and antagonistic, as I did before. Should I do that? God no. It’s just easier than doing what I just did.
So, to complete this circle…
Do you understand now? Do you still feel I have a “cosed opinion”? (I’m assuming you meant “closed”).
And hey, this account might get swiftly hammered as well so I probably won’t respond. These are just things to think on. To potentially open closed opinions, and to hopefully encourage people to consider various underrepresented elements of this conversation. People to be considerate not just of themselves and how they feel, and how they feel playing a hero, and how they feel playing against said here… But to be considerate of the devs, the principles and fundamentals of the game, the overall picture, and each other. Hopefully, one day, this forum won’t be so BabyRage and can actually turn into a place where discussions can be held in an exploratory and appreciative way. What a pipe dream that is though, amirite?
I think it’d be better that this discussion evolve, and take place in topics that don’t involve the elaborate defense of Mass Rez that this topic originally started as.
Looking back at it all after typing this all out… Makes you question who’s the one with a closed opinion, doesn’t it? 
Cheers. I hope y’all can start talking more about Mercy, her kit, and improving her in the current state of the game, as opposed to the feelings surrounding Mass Rez. Good luck.
Quest over.
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I think that Mercy is uniquely positioned for a new E that scales inversely to mass rez. Something that is “meh” in the chaotic mid-low ranks, but scales into something more powerful the higher you go and the more organized teams are:
Cleanse.
CC creep has punched Overwatch in the face, but it’s more powerful at the highest ranks where even a split second of disruption can decide a fight. It stands to reason that a cleanse ability would follow that power scale.
Cleanse is generally an ability associated with holy priestess archetypes, and Mercy is the game’s resident holy priestess character.
Mercy also needs a supplemental healing ability to reclaim her “main healer” status, and adding a healing effect is a great way to keep a cleanse ability from being too niche.
Adding the cleanse effect is a good way to justify the healing ability not being too powerful. Mercy with a healing E needs to be handled with kid gloves, otherwise we risk making other healers obsolete.
Tell me what you think of this:
Cure: Heals an ally and protects them from cc
4 second duration, 10 second cooldown (starting after ability ends)
Cast like a Zarya bubble
40hps on target, which can stack with Mercy’s healing beam for a temporary burst heal.
(The burst heal will put mercy on par with other main healers for responding to focus fire, or healing a tank in a reasonable amount of time.)
Cure cleanses pre-existing cc on cast, then provides CC resistance for the remainder of the ablity.
CC resistance: crowd control effectiveness is reduced by 50% on target. This means boop distance, stun/debuff duration, and mei freeze timers.
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That’s a good ability design actually.
It’s probably not something you’d want to give to Mercy at the moment. Since the patch her healing numbers have been great, she’s even surpassed Ana in GM for throughput which is pretty significant. Any increases in throughput does threaten to push her into must-pick territory again, unfortunately.
It’s basically a Zarya bubble with potentially a bit more duration and the inability to protect the target from incoming damage etc.
Zarya bubble is superior in every way. Then you have Mercy have Mass Rez which is… Just terribad in any coordinated setting tbh.
Like… I would add your idea to Mercy’s current kit, without Mass Rez, and adjust Valk accordingly to compensate. Or something to that factor. Like…
I don’t think people on this forum appreciate just how much of a THREAT to Mercy’s viability Mass Rez is in coordinated settings. And, as this past stage of OWL and the ladder has demonstrated, Mercy being viable IS VERY IMPORTANT in order to enable compositions like Bunker, DPS, etc.
Mass Rez just… It’s too jank. Too gimmicky, to be really built around in the current state of the game. Things have changed so much in the past year. I think a lot of people, like Titanium, have failed to realize that. Probably because they stopped playing shortly after Mass Rez was removed.
I do like your idea, of a sort of cleanse/CC preventative ability with a little added healing. It makes sense especially when it comes to healing tanks and such that are eating damage. However, like someone said earlier in this thread… Making Mercy viable in tank orientated situations is very dangerous and opens the door toward her dominance imo.
Gotta be so careful when it comes to tuning her, and I don’t think people around here appreciate that. A lot of posts regarding Mercy come off as ignorant and selfish imho, not saying they are, just how it appears to me. She is VERY important in the construction of diverse metas, based on maps and defense/offense. Like Bunker defenses being assaulted by dive comps, Mercy is an important part of making that an actual thing on a good amount of maps.
I don’t want to reintroduce something like Mass Rez and jeopardize that. And I don’t think the devs want to either.
I think, at this point, entertaining the idea of Mass Rez ever being reintroduced is a total exercise in futility. I wish the community that is clearly passionate about Mercy focus on adjusting her kit in realistic ways that adhere closely to her current configuration.
Edit: I’d like your ability incorporated into the current state of Mercy. Not a replacement for E Rez necessarily. I actually think E Rez is quite important, due to what I said about the poke, pick, dive, sequence I outlined earlier and how E Rez allows for a more bunkered and responsive sort of approach. Also very important for Widow duels imo, which can be game deciding.
Her overall healing numbers are very good because of the her healing’s “never miss and never run out” nature, but Mercy has fallen from grace as a main healer because her healing isn’t enough to save an ally under focus fire, or heal up a low health tank in a reasonable amount of time.
Mercy needs to be able to do that. Having high overall healing numbers isn’t enough to make a character a main healer - Lucio heals as much as Ana on average, but no one’s trying to pass him off as a main healer.
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Messing with her healing is risky imo. It runs the risk of her being too dominant.
She’s been used successful in solo heal situations at the highest levels. The playoffs of the final stage of the last season in OWL she was solo healing triple tank 2 dps comps. It was a bit much…
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Quest: when will you be back on your regular account?
Never, it was perma banned from the forums for what I said in this thread. It was even in game banned until the 26th I think it was. Good thing it was just my forum account.
I think that the balance concerns of certain abilities being too powerful in a “triple __ role” will be solved once we get a 2-2-2 lock.
Blizzard never gives a straight answer to a question about future content unless they’ve already made said content, and are getting ready to reveal it to the public… and Jeff Kaplan has been giving straight answers to questions about role que/2-2-2 in his most recent interactions with the playerbase.
I’m certain that the overhaul to the matchmaker Jeff mentioned would be needed for a role que was the “big thing” they were working on last year (to the exclusion of meaningful new content).
They kept assuring us in interviews that they were working on something “big”, and once it came out we’d react with an understanding “oh, so that’s what they were working on!”
Sorry dude
Without discussing disciplinary actions, as that’s against forum rules, it may be useful to discuss with the forum mods whether one can create a new account and under what circumstances that can occur. I mention this because a certain blushing forum member is using a new account as of a few months back…so there would seem to be a “right way” to go about accomplishing this.
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This is very true. A 2-2-2 lock opens up so much as far as balance goes, however, it also will require a great deal of rebalancing of current kits. It also then runs into the problems that have been outlined, rightfully so, in reasoning against such a strict application of role.
These restrictive elements are again something that say benefits the highest of tiers and coordinated play, but perhaps hurts the more casual playing of the game. Such as like super long Qs for DPS players.
It’s kind of similar imho to the situation we currently face with Mercy. We kind of just move the problem from one part to another, not necessarily addressing the core problems. Like when it comes to the Mercy situation, those core problems can be summarized as accessible player expression and experience.
We kind of just hand the problem off to another group of people as opposed to remedying it. It might be the only answer, but it’s hard to tell.
Appreciate it man <3 I’m not overly concerned. I’m just trying to sort of… Move the discussion forward. If I find this account ate a perma ban tomorrow for whatever reason it won’t bother me. Is what it is. At least I got a little more out 
And hopefully I did so more respectfully and constructively compared to my last outburst of frustration.
I don’t disagree with their decision. Is what it is.