Why Mercy's Valk is NOT boring and NOT unimpactful

General Discussion
103

There’s no way you could get the high ground access, get the ress, get the pick, and the AoE healing ALL at that same time frame without Valk. You are definitely kidding yourself.

Junk was not on my LoS without me needing to walk another 5 meters and wasting my time and potentially get my whole team killed.
It was impossible to kill the ashe without Valk at that instance, I’m not talking about 1v1’s.
You can’t keep your whole team alive solo healing with her base healing when everyone is taking damage.
Letting your team die because you decided to do something else is completely human, even more if you didn’t have the AoE healing. Apparently you claim you can keep someone alive that is getting blasted by Moira’s ult with Mercy’s base healing (70 dps vs 55 hp/s) that is just mathematically impossible.

I provided a very specific clip because it was literally impossible to accomplish the exact same thing at that same time frame without Valk, not because it was the most insane Valk ult ever. I’ve done my own share of 4k’s with Valk but that’s extremely situational and outside the point.

If you can prove otherwise, give a clip of your own.

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104

Honestly I’ll tackle it short and wise, I think both ultimates really have it all and ended up boring overall.

Firstly, Ressurection Ultimate era of Mercy pretty much was “the jack of all trades” ultimate. Honestly the idea was super amazing, swooping your way in and just getting your team back online in hopes of possibly winning. The problem with that is that, yes it was fun, it was also blatantly unfair to win a fight and go back to a second fight from a reset-ressurection ultimate, making games exhausting from literally just “who’s got ressurection at the best time”.

It was also boring you know, in some maps you could cast it in spawn, under the point. That’s the equivalent of standing still and just holding your beams activated on the side literally.

Then you have Valkyrie Ultimate era, a very weird one, her ultimate lacks definition still to this date, but his impact def has some good stuff even if it looks minimalistic, but this is also quite boring. You see, you basically do the same thing you usually do as Mercy, but times the allies in close range and bonus of perma fly. This came at the cost of so many things at the time, eventually had to be toned down sadly. Sometimes the team power boost is super usefull, but clutching a fight with healing chain is actually usefull at given times, and I think we shouldn’t necessarily dismiss it.

I can see also that people overall dismiss the entire ultimate since, most other supports have like, more impactful ultimate, or even equivalent-alike abilities. It probably needs a little sprinkle of something to be interesting and I know it really doesn’t have it right now, but to me, both Ressurection and Valkyrie are quite boring frankly. I’ve played both eras of Mercy and i just don’t get how “waiting everybody to die” was fun in a game where dying should be punished in the first place and the other where you just “repeat my kit, but wider and omg I fly” where it’s also not any better simply put, unless you DPS with it, it’s just the same old recipe.

That being said it was at 2 given times of the game’s history and so many things changed that, imagine at all what old ressurection would be in current Overwatch environment, and I honestly think it’s better gone rather than tweaked out.

2 Likes
105

The only super jump target I could do would be Winston, which is very front forward and would waste me way more time compared to the direct vertical flight I did. I could also just walk more sideways to see Junk’s corpse, but again, wasted time, less room for other plays and my team.

I completely agree that Valk is “just” Mercy+ in a nutshell and I also do agree than Ress is better moved to her ultimate to make room for a better engaging E. What you said completely makes sense and I do 100% agree with it, though my post was more of a why her current Valk CAN have it’s use cases that would otherwise not be possible.

I honestly hope more people actually express their problem with Valk and HOW to correct it, rather than just crying that it is a boring spectator mode and just want Mass Ress back (completely against, because it is super lazy and just plain broken).

To that I say, if you find her Valk boring because it only does what she already does but better, then you would ALSO find her whole design as a hero boring. I mean, all she does is just pressing M1 or M2 and watch your teammates do the job no? I just find it extremely contradictive that people scape goat Valk as boring when in the first place the hero’s whole passive nature is why people play her at all.

True. In the contrary, Valk let’s you do offensive play that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do off Valk.

If people really just want a very engaging support that’s constantly moving, then why not play Lucio or Brig?
If people want a mechanically demanding support that requires and rewards careful aiming and offensive plays, then why not play Zen or Ana?

I don’t get this notion of forcing a hero to be what it isn’t when there’s other choices in the table. What people really want on Mercy is not engagement. They want the glory of undoing the enemy team’s whole resource investment with the press of a single button because they’re bored the whole game of being heal/boost slaves. That’s lazy and not skilful at all.

106

Which I do. Very much so.

107

Cool. Glad you’re honest about it unlike people who pretend they’re having fun being heal and boost bots whole game but not when they can do that and more.

108

I just wished they removed damage boost for some other ability.

There’s a reason damage numbers were balanced as they are. Having someone who can mess with those numbers, on an infinite duration is just… a bit jank?

109

They literally balanced Ashe’s damage numbers according to mercy’s damageboost. They even stated that “ashe is a buff to mercy” when ashe was released.

It’s not that mercy can mess with the numbers which should be supposedly tuned properly, it’s more like the characters are very intentionally created in a way that allows mashe like synenergy and they are tuned for mercy damageboost used on them. It’s basically working as intended. It’s kinda like Genji is tuned with the fact that Nanoblade is a strong ulti combo despite that it requires Ana nanoboost to use.

However, damageboost is here to stay if mercy’s gameplay and character fantasy is to stay intact in an fps game where she otherwise is incapable of dealing damage. I have told you this before.

You need to have a source of damage. Direct or indirect. Otherwise you’re a liability.

110

Healing and boost are two very distinct identities of Mercy’s kit, removing either would change the hero very considerably.

Which I don’t really agree with, but am more than welcome to actual discussion on changing the hero rather than just asking to bring Mass Ress back.

Actually, people have been suggesting to move her Ress to her ult and make her E more engaging. One of the suggestion I really like is a small heal burst on E and a cleanse to clean off cc’s/effect’s.

111

Why in the hell should heroes be balanced around a 2 hero combination?

If it just makes it so they eventually can ONLY be useful through the mercy pocket, because their raw numbers have been tweaked and lowered because of mercy’s existence?

Which should happen IMO.

I hate her pocket design. It’s boring, lazy, and requires minimal effort from the mercy player (when pocketing someone, not saying her overall gameplay) to instantly turn a half decent ashe, or a decent echo into just some unstoppable thing that really will only get stopped by some OTHER damage boost from the enemy team.

112

Because you’d need a way to completely remove synenergy between heroes to make them more “individualistic” so heroes could not benefit from other hero abilities and the abilities could then be buffed, such as pharmercy, but to do that you’d essentially need to remove the whole hero because their abilities are so important to their hero designs. Like removing damageboost and mercy’s guardian angel so she can’t fly after pharah. This goes for basically every hero design and their synenergies with other heroes.

Devs have designed this game from the ground up with synenergies in mind, they aren’t gonna redesign everything from the ground up again just so genji can work less as a team and more like a lonely flanker after glory moments.

These synenergies exist because Overwatch was designed as a team based game, basically. Removing them would be removing core abilities and it would no longer be a proper character or even Overwatch anymore. Think team compositions, why is dva good with winston? Why is zenyatta good with dive? Why is ana rein zarya a good brawl? Zen without discord or harmony orb would… he would not be Zenyatta anymore. Ana without her abilities would also not exist.

113

You could just… remove damage boost and replace it with a better ability?

So that there isn’t an ability in the game that messes with the numbers set in place (that were thought to be balanced by the dev team) on an infinite duration with no cooldown or resource meter?

Yes. But you also can’t just say “okay well this hero and this hero are only allowed to be good with a mercy pocket”

That’s just kinda ridiculous don’t ya think?

114

You’re saying that we also need to cripple this one hero out of the fps genre completely because they have a smaller, less effective way of amplifying damage when other damage amplifications, rather strong ones too, are completely ok.

Just because they synenergise with certain heroes you personally don’t happen to like because mercy damageboosts these certain heroes.

Heroes need to co-exist and synenergise. It also won’t do, if a hero becomes overpowered if they are already strong without a damageboost. Ashe was basically this when Brigitte was still meta and Mercy wasn’t. Brigitte got nerfed, Mashe became oppressive. This was adressed with Ashe nerfs and now she’s a middle tier hero, certainly capable of causing havoc on her own regardless if she has a mercy boost or not.

No, damageboost is not too strong and doesn’t need a nerf nor removal, it’s tuned just so it doesn’t allow heroes to hit breakpoints UNLESS intended by the devs. If anything, factually damageboost is still weaker damage source than having other support heroes doing damage still, assist, elim and pure damage wise and the only boon is giving the damageboosted hero more agency in controlling what they want to attack and from where.

I’ve said this multiple times in the damageboost thread anyway, this thread is about valkyrie and we’re getting off topic because you insist they should remove her only source of damage dealing. But somehow I never see you complain about discord orb, which is roughly 6 times as devastating as damageboost.

115

Your ideology of this post is the same as saying “Cats are better than dogs because I have a cat”.

Just because you had one good moment with Valkyrie, doesn’t mean you always will. One highlight doesn’t make it as impactful as you claim. If I trans and jump off the map, does it mean trans is trash because it didn’t help my team? No. Me jumping off the map and losing my trans wouldn’t make trans a bad ultimate. Just because you won a fight because of valk does it mean valk is a great ultimate and never unimpactful? Nope.

2 Likes
116

Every other damage amp is on an ultimate ability.

I like ashe, I like echo, I like pharah. So what’s your point?

I like them as individual heroes, and I don’t like seeing them get held back because of the existence of another hero in the game.

Because it doesn’t come from a hero with hyper mobility, and it doesn’t affect every enemy on the enemy team. It only affects one person on the enemy team so it actually takes coordination to get value out of it.

That’s why you call out discord orbs, and you don’t call out that you’re damage boosting your ashe or echo.

117

You could have done it with SJ.

118

If Valkyrie was Mercy’s cooldown ability, I might agree with you. Flight is an ability that Classic Mercy mains (which includes myself) begged for back when she had no E ability.

But as an ultimate?

It’s a glorified movement ability. Valkyrie can be useful and versatile, but only by the standards of basic cooldown abilities. Valkyrie does not make Mercy any more powerful, it just makes her easier.

I resent Valkyrie, because Mercy basically doesn’t have an ultimate ability as long Valk is taking up her Q slot instead of her E.

6 Likes
119

I always cringe when Mercy players use melee during Valk when it’s a guaranteed shot. You were right in that Ashe’s face and she didn’t even move. If you hit the headshot before that one, it’s pretty obvious you’d hit the next if your crosshair is in the same spot and she didn’t move. If the target is 1 hp running around then sure, use melee so you don’t have to aim, but 1 more bullet would’ve done it for that Ashe and you know you have unlimited ammo available. It didn’t change anything, but it’s a lot quicker just shooting than using melee. Obviously if you’re flying around in valk on healing or damage boost and you see a 1 hp target beside you, then just melee so you don’t need to switch weapons, but other than that a guaranteed kill can be done quicker if you shoot your gun. Not a big deal, nor would I call it a mistake, just a pet peave of mine since you know you don’t need to reload in valk.

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Held back being, you just don’t like mercy making heroes stronger, but you don’t mind when zenyatta makes bunch of heroes a lot stronger, you don’t mind that ana zarya reinhardt have exceptional brawl synenergy and you don’t mind that divers have synenergy with other divers.

But only mercy holds back these heroes from reaching their full potential or something, instead of synenergising with them. It’s like saying tracer is trash because she doesn’t have harmony orb or discord on demand and Zen should be nerfed. :roll_eyes:

And that’s why damageboost is 6 times weaker than discord and only amounts to less assists, elims and damage than running every single other potential support in this game. And the only boon is giving agency to the person being boosted. Rather than whole team being boosted by discord orb.

You can complain about echo’s mobility on another thread, it’s still not a mercy issue that this particular hero flies and shoots out sticky aoe explosions, instead of being “unexciting normal hero” like mccree who just shoots straight bullets.

?
Melee does 30 damage on 2.5meters in front of your character. Mercy bullets do 20 damage. Headshot is never guaranteed if target is moving, but if you’re close enough a melee strike is very easy way to finish targets and also something mercy players get used to doing if they need to duel someone outside of valk. Close up targets can erratically move away from your FOV quickly and any and all hitboxes in this game are super wonky.

I mean if they kill the target, what’s the point of complaining? It might be just habitual, I’m sure you got plenty bad habits of your own.

1 Like
121

The only thing I find useful about Valkyrie is the beam length, double rez radius and mass damage boost. Valkyrie is so unimpactful I think there should be a way to cancel it without waiting out the timer. If you pop valk and wipe the enemy team with damage boost, I’d rather cancel Valk and heal my team for ult charge rather than sit around doing nothing in the air for 10 seconds or heal my team and not get ult charge from it.

1 Like
122

I feel like I definitely get more assists with damage boost since it’s consistent and it allows teammates to get kills quicker. Discord works in a similar way, but just because an enemy is discorded doesn’t mean they can’t just run away until they break LoS and lose it. Discord is deadly, but a Mercy who prioritizes damage boost over healing is just as much so. Mercy also gets more defensive assists than Zenyatta since she can flick her beam to heal different targets more frequently resulting in her getting assists for healing them if they get kills, compared to Zenyatta who usually just keeps his orb on one person and waits for them to heal up before switching.