I know this has been talked about a lot, but just want to give my opinion from the perspective of a flex player who enjoys playing mercy from time to time. Mercy’s mobility was definitely overtuned and needed a change. In my eyes the devs only had two options.
Revert mercy to her overwatch 1 state completely
Reduce her GA cooldown but keep the omnidirectional buff she received going into OW2
The devs picked option 2, and I have to agree with this decision completely. I never really enjoyed mercy much in OW1, but I actually find her really fun in OW2 primarily due to the omnidirectional tech added to her kit. It makes her a lot more fun to play as well as gives her much more personal agency to move around the map without requiring a teammate to reach certain places.
I do want to point out that the original “super jump” was actually a glitch and never intended to be an internet part of a the game. It was even impossible to complete this tech on console at all
The devs had one more option.
Keep her increased mobility and reduce her healing and damage boost. Even better, rework damage boost to something less abusable and more interactive.
I disagree with that, her mobility was the only thing being abused. With the omnidirectional buff and the fastest cooldown in the game, she was able to completely abuse movement and fly around like a f-16. Movement needed to be nerfed.
Plus asking them to nerf healing instead would have completely dumpstered mercy and made her the worst hero in the game
why touch regen and healing than?
they tried to change everyhting at once and result is – battle Mercy died, mouse Mercy who looks for places to hide was born.
Maybe be if devs would make changes one at the time it woudnt be such a disaster
The healing and regen buffs were a great change for mercy. It allowed her to become a better healer for tanks making her being known as only a “pocket bot” less common.
Not sure what “disaster” you are referring to considering the fact that the devs have stated that mercy has kept the exact same win rate and averages the exact same deaths since the changes?
They could also add CD to the SJ that every one was complaining about… Would solve the issue and kept her fun (since it would be more in line with OW1 philosophy of use SJ to get to a position not as a positioning)
I don’t get this argument at all, so you are going to ah e to explain. What exactly is fun about spamming GA? Plus the GA cooldown was still a problem. Mercy was able to bail out just about anybody without any risk because even if she failed she could just GA right back to her other teammates. The problem was that there was absolutely no risk in using GA because she had it constantly which to me is the opposite of “fun”
According to the devs, mercy’s pick rate dropped exactly 1% since the changes, so she obviously is still fun to a lot of people
What do you think about the changes some people have suggested to increase Mercy’s hitbox or lower her health? As a Mercy main I agree that the GA changes in OW2 were a big mobility buff and needed tuning, but my biggest gripe with the cooldown nerf is that it cuts off a lot of variable movement plays, and it feels like I actually have a lower skill ceiling than before (can’t do certain tech, can’t respond in a meaningful way with a different ability in fights even when I have the reaction time to notice something like I could with Ana nade or suzu or whatnot). I think what you said about omnimovement being better than OW1 makes sense, just curious if you think a nerf like the ones suggested would work too.
No one stated that pocket healbot is her only future. If it was their goal – fine. But killing battle mercy and not admit it – kinda unfair.
You can kill rabbit and put it an oven. Body temperature of rabbit will be normal. Same here , win rate , pick rate cant show matches patterns, or how “fun” are they
Now I find myself more often than not in a situation that makes me say to myself ‘damn, if I fly there to save them I will die, so I guess I keep minding my own business here and let them die in peace’.
This is not fun feeling as a support player.
Also that deletes bunch of fun techs she could do with GA out of LoS and keep her beam on targets…
But I guess you didn’t use them ever then
Most people said it was she is perma airbourne and vertical movement was too much…
As she sould be able, since she has zero protection out of that…
She cannot shoot herself out of bad situations. her movement is her only ability to survive when challenged.
And now Mercy saves it, and do not save her teammates that are out of range of her beam… So it is less fun for Mercy, thank you.
So?
Did you considered all the clowns that started to play her to show me ‘she is just as viable as she used to’?
Did you considered that there is no alternative anywhere (not here, nor anywhere else) for a hero like her? Unless I start playing old school L2?
Being able to dash around and save people is the very core behind her identity and gameplay since the very start. She’s still capable of it of course, but the ability to fly around and do the thing many mercy players love most about her is really disappointing.
Personally, one of my favorire characters in TF2 was the medic. Mercy is medic, but with the ability to literally fly around quickly. That’s incredibly fun.
I think she’s still fun, but I think it’s pretty easy to see why GA is fun.
I think this would’ve been a much worse change to mercy directly. The problem wasn’t necessarily that you can’t kill her, that was just a part of the issue. The issue was she had absolutely zero risk for using the cooldown. She could bail out anybody even in the worst possible positions because the cooldown was just far too short. If these other changes you suggested has been used instead, I genuinely believe it would’ve dumpstered her and she would be playing respawn simulator the whole game.
I do not think the changes killed, or even affected mercy’s battle capabilities at all. As a GM support player, there are really only three scenarios where becoming a battle mercy has ever been a good option.
When she ults is one. While she will get better value 90% of the time healing in ult, there are definitely scenarios in which doing damage and getting kills are a viable/good option for the mercy player. Mercy doesn’t need GA at all in this scenario as she can fly completely freely and can’t GA towards enemies anyways
When she is completely alone and has no teammates near to fly to to. In this scenario, GA is completely useless anyways because she has nobody to use it on anyways.
When a teammate dies after making an enemy really weak. Mercy thrives here, she can pull out the Glock and easily finish them off quickly if they are alone. Again, GA doesn’t help in this scenario at all.
Risk vs reward
Risk vs reward
Her ability to move around the map was far too powerful and annoying to play against, as I said before the devs had two options to fix this. I pick option 2 which is keeping the omnidirectional movement and nerfing the GA cooldown
Risk vs reward. Seriously how many times do I have to say it? Teammates should learn better positioning that they don’t need a mercy to bail them out every few seconds.
You’re seriously going to tell me that all the people you claim to hate mercy and have it out for her have been playing her for the last month just to spite mercy players? Get off your high horse. Your hero isn’t that important.
I agree with this, never said I didn’t. Yes she was definitely fun before the change. That doesn’t mean it was balanced at all. It was easily abused to the point she could fly and move around the map like crazy. It needed changes
I’m having troubles squaring this away then. In your earlier post, you were asking about what exactly makes GA fun to use frequently (spamming as you put it). That doesn’t really align with what you’re saying here.
And I understand the change was made for balance. Your question that I was addressing wasn’t about balance (or at least, I don’t see how it relates to balance). Again, I still enjoy her and don’t think she’s weak or anything. But I also don’t understand the point of the question if you feel you already know the answer to it in this case.
Which made the game healthier and more balanced, so if you are going to cry that you can’t save everyone now because your hero was overtuned I don’t know what to tell you
Yeah, those do conflict so you are right. I revert the original statement. It definitely was fun, but I think it is more fun now because there is more risk involved. As I’ve tried telling the other person, it’s all about risk versus reward. With more risk involved, it made for better balance and I think it also separates the good mercy players form the bad mercy players
My Gm games aren’t flooded with unkillable mercy’s that bail out their GM dps duo every two seconds making mercy a necessity for both teams otherwise it was a instant L.
So your argument is that “well she wasn’t so broken that she could save everyone, so she must not be that broken” yeah that’s not how that works. Otherwise one could say “Sojurn can’t kill everyone, so she doesn’t need a nerf.”
Also it’s not about her “saving everyone” as I have said multiple times before it is about “risk vs reward” even if mercy flies to a teammate that had bad positioning and she can’t save him, she was able to get out Scott free because there was absolutely zero risk involved. You didn’t need a brain to play her because the cooldown might as well have been her primary fire
Honestly, I was in favor of changing damage beam to something else entirely. I still am, but I know that’s almost certainly beyond the scope of what Blizz would want to do with her. While the in combat healing is nice, I definitely would have preferred the old GA. We know that balance wise, it’s about as strong as what we have now according to the devs.
There’s trade offs though, being able to have higher HPS when targets are low is also pretty nice. I’m not so much in an uproar that I think it needs a revert. I think mostly it has just made me be more cautious in how I use GA, which is both good and bad. Good in that, the devs should want their players to have to think on their actions and if they think old GA was too much of a no brainer, I understand that. But on the other hand, I genuinely think GA along with the TF2 Medic style healing are the two most important pieces to Mercy that make her fun, at least for me.
You’re right about risk vs reward too. If there is more risk, you would usually assume there should be a higher pay off. Which they definitely accomplished with this change in some regards. I think the main thing I dislike at this point is how awkward rez’s can sometimes be now since you can’t GA to them, rez, and GA away immediately. There is about a second I think where you still can’t fly which is genuinely terrifying considering how annoying rez can be to pull of sometimes anyways lol.
These are just my opinions of course. Ultimately I think she’s “fine”, but not quite as enjoyable to me as she was previously. I still main her so it’s whatever.
