I don’t share the opinion that Mercy isn’t fun. For me, she’s by far the most fun character (or was, up until the last nerf).
I understand the nostalgia for old res. It was a really fun ult, and you got some awesome and memorable moments out of it that are hard for her to get now. When you play a dps or a tank, the moments you remember from your games are the big multiple kills that totally swing fights. When you played old Mercy, you remembered the resurrections. That was her time to be a hero.
Despite that, I don’t really miss mass res myself. What I like most about Mercy is her base kit. I love the flying, the dodging, the trickery, the constant monitoring, and moving, and planning, and prioritizing, and most of all - the healing. I want to be a highly mobile throughput healbot. That’s why I play Mercy. I don’t mind not having hero moments. I like being in the background, knowing that even though people might not notice it, I’m keeping everything going.
That’s part of the reason I’m not having fun anymore past the nerf. She’s gone from fun to frustrating. The Mercy experience is only fun when the healing component of it is effective. When you have to stay longer on targets so that they don’t die, then you have less time to fly about and less time to damage boost. You’re mores stationary, and your apm goes down.
What makes it so much more frustrating, is that you can’t really keep people alive anymore. You can still heal the incidental damage, but when push comes to shove you’re losing your patients, and lost patients means lost fights, which mean lost games. It’s a frustrating experience. Ana and Moira can put out so much more healing in terms of burst and aoe. They have a lot of options to keep people alive. Mercy’s beam used to be enough to hold the fort, but it’s just not anymore. There’s nothing more frustrating for a healer than to see their patients constantly die, knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. Saving lives is why we play healers in the first place. I keep going back to her in games and thinking that this healer would be so much fun if she could do her job.
So, where do we go from here? First and foremost, she needs her 60 hps back. She’s just doesn’t work properly without it. The win rates show this very clearly, and it’s evidenced by people’s play experience. But it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t cause her to dominate the support roster again.
So, what can we give? Res on E comes to mind first. I don’t think any other ability in the game is this controversial, both with the players and the detractors of the character. I don’t know of any other character whose player base is actively campaigning to have one of their abilities removed. It’s made her too powerful for a year, but it’s also feels bad to use right now. It’s not a fun ability. Not for Mercy, and not for the opposing team. And it warps the way that the game is played whenever she’s in it. It’s been a millstone around Mercy’s neck, hogging up her power budget, while being actively disliked by a large portion of Mercy players.
There seems to be a lot of resistance from the community and the devs against returning mass res. I don’t think it’s ever coming back. So, that being the case, I think it’s time to let go of res entirely. It was a fun concept, but it’s time to let it go. The game can move past it. We can find something else to give her in its stead. Maybe some ability that helps her deal with burst damage. Titanium has an idea that I like. I also like the idea of a heal over time that can be placed on a character.
The second thing that should probably change is Valkyrie. I initially disliked this ultimate, but after evaluating it for a period of time I’ve become convinced that it’s a good ult. It can often result in a 2-3 person swing in a fight. But it does go against a lot of what Mercy is. It adds aoe to a character that should be about single target healing. It takes away a lot of the fast paced decision making from a character that should be all about that. Personally, I’d like to see it changed so that the chain beams are removed but the healing is buffed. Maybe the heal beam could heal for 90, and the damage beam could also heal for 30. That way, it would feel more engaging and more impactful, while also not negating her aoe weakness.
