Why Mercy is one of the harder heroes

General Discussion
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Mercy has a lot to compete against with all the additions to the Support roster, so making her work is much more difficult than it used to be.

  1. Mercy has no burst heal or secondary healing ability so she has to “beam juggle” and prioritize targets. Mispredicting the needs of her teammates can lead to disastrous consequences but good beam juggling can clutch a fight even if everyone only survives on low health. Mercy always has to make a choice, unlike the majority of the other healers.

  2. Rez is one of the most risky abilities in the game to use successfully. Because when someone on your team dies often times the rest of your team is taking damage as well and MERCY HAS TO STOP HEALING TO REZ. So if you mispredict you can lose another teammate from lack of heals effectively negating the Rez. Also, with the sheer amount of CC and one-shots in the game, it’s very easy to get your Rez canceled or die mid-cast.

  3. Mercy has one of the least impactful Support ultimates. Heroes like Ana/Moira/Zen/Brig/Lucio can use their ultimate to negate misplays and bail their teammates out of bad situations. Mercy can’t do that really so again she’s dependent on good prediction of her team’s needs. Too much damage=Wasted Ult. Too little damage=Wasted Ult. Mercy has to find an oddly specific sweet spot window to use her ultimate while most Supports can get value in more scenarios.

Playing Mercy is like driving a classic car. It looks pretty but it lacks the standards and features of more modern cars so you have to learn how to cope with what you’ve got. AOE heals and/or burst heals are the standard in this game and you’ve got to work with a single target mid/low heal over time. It’s kinda like driving stick shift in a world with automatic shift and drive assist

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I just wanted to point out that Brig’s ult doesn’t negate misplays or bail people out any better than Valk (worse actually). Its HPS is lower than Valk and with all it’s nerfs and the nerfs to armor, it’s really just a mediocre AoE heal. It also can’t damage boost so it has very little flexibility. Easily the worst support ult in the game and a straight downgrade to Valk.

I know Valk is no Transcendence, but please, don’t pretend it’s worse than Brig’s garbage excuse for an ultimate ability.

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And then there are folks who like Mercys kit and enjoy playing her…many, many such players, myself certainly included

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Yeah she really isn’t.

If you wanna be a good Mercy you ult track and position yourself properly because the rest of your job is piss easy to do.

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Positioning yourself properly as mercy isnt much of an issue. You have the best mobility ability in the game.

The hard part is knowing when to damage boost and stuff

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Personally, i dont see playing mercy well is an easy thing to do, and it is easy to tell a well played Mercy from a poorly played one

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haha

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And then there are folks who enjoy playing Mercy - such as myself - and can still acknowledge that her current kit is not the best.

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And then there are folks who consider Mercy well balanced in her current state

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  1. You need the patience of a god to even start playing her in a team of random people. The sheer amount of flak you get for things that weren’t even your fault is simply amazing.
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Just turn off the comms when folks get abusive, and after the game, report, mute, block, and add as avoid as teammate

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All main healers do not have ultimates which can counter another, only off-supports can do that such as Lucio and Zenyatta.

Moira, Mercy and Ana enable fights. The others are meant to defend.

For example, Moira’s ultimate cannot save people from getting attacked in a grav. That’s Zenyatta’s and Lucio’s specialty.

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yeah I do that already. Still pretty sad that people blame the healers for everything even if they were doing fine.

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Indeed…but we both know that will happen sometimes, so we do the aftergame ritual i described, and we hope for more appreciative teammates next match

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yep. Always warms my heart to see that “thanks for reporting” screen when launching the game the next day.

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As a mercy main… nope she is pretty easy and just requires some game sense

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I disagree, and would recommend that you watch some videos of high level Mercy play. My personal fave is Animetic.

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He never said he didn’t enjoy playing mercy, stop itching for fights the second you see a post with mercy’s name in it.

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Nothing I have stated in this thread constitutes a fight

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I feel like in general Mercy is an intuitive character and that’s why most people deem her easy. Playing Mercy well takes time and experience, though, and you won’t realize it until you have a teammate die because the .7 second break in healing that occurs when you press Q to Valk ends up killing your teammate, or your tank goes down because you had to gun down the flanker that’s been on your tail for the past 4 minutes.

3 Likes