Why is mercy so hard to play?

People that are bad at playing her are usually ones that flex onto her. Either that or the duo Qs. Mercy is hard to play, I’m in masters and I can instantly tell which Mercy earned their rank vs which one just thinks they can flex onto an “easy” hero and win. I can see them walking around confused healing a hog when their full hp, damage boosting a teamate at 1hp and valk pistolling and then dying and swapping to Zen or Moira. It’s a sad sight really.

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They had us in the first half not gonna lie

But I’ve heard so many times on this forum alone that mercy requires no skill? :thinking:

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USE DMG BOOST ITS AN ADVANTAGE!
if u kill them faster, u dont need to heal. :ok_hand:
AIM FOR OVER 2K OF DMG BOOST PER GAME!
And mercy is ment to be the ultimate teammate who does a lot of the communication.
Read ults, tell if you can rez or if you see the moment being too risky to even try.
And uhh… under 5 deaths per 10 mins separates bad mercy from a good one.
Less the deaths, more the value!. :angel:

(im not being agressive)

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Because there’s more to playing the game than just shooting things. Mercy’s skill comes from assessing the situation around her and making proper decisions (when to boost, when to Res, where to GA to, when a super jump is actually safe, etc). But people just see her beam, say “oh thats easy shes such a free hero” then subsequently do crap with her because they’re in over their heads. But then of course instead of admitting the hero is harder than she appears at first glance, they just choose to blame their teammates for not protecting them during their dumb decisions, which just perpetuates everything further.

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I’m sorry, the resurrect was risky, we moth’s have a bad tendency of going for the lightbulb, but we try avoiding temptation for the sake of the team

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Mercy is HARD. I’m sure I could prob get decent at her if I played her for like 50 hrs but no way I’m doing that.

As a player who has played non-mechanic intensive heros and mechanic intensive heros in Diamond I can tell you Mercy has extremely weird movement. She also requires an extremely unique field of vision.

I could pick Mercy and play safely and get base value but against good teams that isn’t enough.

I know a good Mercy when I see one and a bad one is easily spotted and then focused. The Mercy who doesn’t know where to be and when, the no idea how and who to rez Mercy, the GA past the tank into enemy line of fire Mercy. Ext Ext.

When I was a WB 1-trick back in the day a good Mercy would quite literally fly with me as if I was Pharah. It was an amazing thing to see and an even more amazing thing to watch my Piledrivers damage boosted for 100% chance of assassinating a squishy.

Yup. I adore amazing Mercy players but I still respect players who try to use her (to an extent lol). Mercy is extremely frustrating for me to play. Aside all the skills she needs to be good, the mentality needed to play Mercy is beyond me.

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Oh yeah I know about that but I meant that she has a low skill floor and can get some value easier then some other support.

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Yes and no. Knowing where to put her easy value is sadly above a good portion of the community.

Also if you don’t actually know how to use Mercy well and try to flex to her when your team is losing she often won’t change much.

My supports of choice are Ana and Lucio since they are active play makers, to me finding value on them is far easier then Mercy.

I think that beam of her sadly overshadows what it means to actually play Mercy well.

Well because Mercy is expected to be easy, not saying that playing her actually is.

But this fact means that most not so good players will tend to play her, just because they think it is easier.

So naturally you will have much more bad players on Mercy then on nearly every other hero.

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Same thing happened with medic in TF2, they both appear easy at first glance but there’s miles difference between a good one and a bad one. Medic for a long time was considered an easy class until people figured out that’s simply not true.

Low skill flor yes but a good skill ceiling. A lot of players dont get the difference between the two…

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On the very rare occasion I do play mercy, when we need valk to secure a fight, I heal them, then when theyre all above 90% health, I dmg boost. The problem being I get flamed whenever I dmg boost, even from the boostee.

A lot of the bad play is from pressure to do those things. “mercy why didn’t you rez me” as theyre in a place where, if they rezzed, it would cost fights. “I have gold heals report mercy”, pressured to heal tanks more than needed.
“mercy why’d you leave me to die” as they GA out of a lost fight.
super jump isn’t taught by the game, not all players look up techs.
Valk is kinda a wonky ult, since a lot of players think ‘oh, its not that good of an ult, we’ll still lose with it’ or ‘we’re already winning I don’t need it’.

So a lot of how they play is from past flames. As from what I’ve heard my teammates tell our mercy from 700sr-2300sr. Also the ‘no aim no skill’ thinking people have make them think they’re better than the mercy, so they can control how they play.

Mercy is fun when you’re not the main healer, comms are decent, and people don’t flame.

I thought this was going to be a post where someone outside the mercy community for once says something nice about her.

Silly me.

All jokes aside: she’s easy to play Mechanically. So she attracts new people and people who aren’t that good yet. She’s a lot of people’s starting healer. Nothing wrong with that. And once you get a feel for the game, I dare say anyone can be competent with her.

But being actually good with her requires you scraping the bottom of the barrel for every ounce of output you can possibly get from her kit. I think THAT is why so many of us are mediocre at her. She requires a very specific mindset (all heroes do, though some can be grouped into pretty similar categories. Like Ashe and Widow). A lot of people don’t put the time in to develop that mindset.

I don’t think I’m a fantastic mercy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have the most time on her of any of my normal group I play with. We have some truly great dps and tank mains. But every time they play her, I’m baffled by their decisions. They never learn to super jump or min/max beam priority because “mercy is easy”. But if you don’t put in the effort, even on an easy hero, you’re loosing value.

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Every supports skill floor is low except for Anas. Even Bap has a low skill floor that doesn’t really say much when we are discussing playing supports at the highest level where skill floors don’t matter, only how close one is to the skill ceiling.

It’s not even the highest level. Outside new players the whole easy value thing doesn’t matter.

Most players play a select set of heros so even if Mercy does provide a decent base value for skill, those players are almost always better off playing the heros they know and are accustom 2.

I don’t play support much now a days but I pretty much will never swap off Ana or Zen because I’m just that bad at the other supports. Only the occasional Lucio/Brig to get on point fast and stall as a last ditch effort to save/take a point.

Any other situation having me on those heros feels like soft throwing.

Because the game is a lot more game sense focused than people give it credit for, and consequently game sense is the most neglected skill players focus on. Mercy for the most part only requires game sense.

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there are 2 versions of mercy in my opinion

  1. the mercy that has step and be a main healer, basically try and heal everyone equally and prioritize depending on the situation. hoping that your offhealer/2nd healer can heal near as much as you or provide tons of utility for the squad.

  2. the “boosted” mercy. basically your dps is elite and your offhealer/2nd healer is elite enough to dish out insane heals while you just boost either your one or two elite dps. this version has more of a chance to get carried to Grand Master and all they have to do is push the blue beam

She has such a simple kit that you have to literally min-max every moment to get even slightly above acceptable value. Also, 90% of Mercy Mains don’t understand that you should be damage boosting more rather than healing

From what I’ve seen, by the time you hit plat, Mercys know how to play with their limited kit. I rarely see one that doesn’t super jump or damage boost, it’s pretty common knowledge.