My experience of mercy is that her playstyle has changed sort of in the past year or so to be less 60%+ dmg boost uptime and more like 50/50, healing often the most in the lobby and on the tank a lot too, even in high elo. I was wondering abt this because flashheal seems like an amazing impact tool she could carry with but damage boost gives so little ult and perk charge, does it make sense to take ult charge from your cosupport and farm heals just to get flashheal and then default back to pocketing/triage? I see top mercy players for years were averaging like 8kheal/10min,2.4k dmg boost/10 kinda ballpark and now its more like 1.7k amp and 10+k heal per 10, like way more defensive assists at the cost of a few offensive assists. Iâm wondering is this just somethig that has yet to trickle down the ladder? Cos everyone still says sheâs a damage boost bot and i just dont see it anymore, even in t500 mercy streams shes healing loads. Flashheal makes me wanna play her, seems like such an interesting and fun ability to use
Ive spent quite a lot of time watching t500 mercys and i think this pocket playstyle while it was definitely the meta playstyle and only viable way to play her for years, i think its also very much a specialty of skiestiâs, she was top10 when soj was hard meta and now theres at least half a dozen mercy mains beating her out on ladder
If your support buddy is 95% to an ult, just grab any and all healing you can to get the perk. Your co-support can get the same amount of perk progress from both dmg and heals, so nothing is really lost.
You hate burst DPS,
Thatâs weird because I donât mind playing against Sojourn, Freja, Cree, Echo, Pharah, Ashe, etc., at all but as soon as any of those DPS are paired with Mercy, I find them to be completely cancerous.
How odd? 
Mercy used to be known as THE primary healer, THE most reliable solohealer, and THE best counter to ult spam.
In fact, Mercyâs original design made her so effective as a team healer, that pocketing was considered a throw strat.
Unfortunately, Mercy has been both nerfed into the ground and left behind by power creep over the years. She was never made for pocketing, itâs just the only thing in her repertoire that the devs HAVENâT gutted.
Burst heroes are cancer to play against with any support pocketing them. Mercyâs just the easiest one to identify.
Theyâre really not and are easily countered without Mercy.
When you throw Mercy into the mix, what couldâve been dealt with with just a simple 1 vs. 1 now turns into an entire team coordinated effort. Itâs completely ridiculous.
Mercy is best played with hitscan, and pharah.
My issue is poke heroes are lame and boring especially when they are hitscan.
At least pharah has to make reads to do damage.
Rush and dive!
In that order!
I loathe her, all she does is turn difficult matches into unwinnable ones, whether sheâs on the enemy team or yours.
Mercy was only known as âTHEâ primary healer⌠because the role literally had no one else. As soon as ana got added that title was stripped pretty much instantly.
And the only time she even took back that title, was because she had rez spamming as a thing and moth meta happened.
If her only other viable playstyle depends on rez being busted, then yea the heroes design is cooked. Itâs not like mercy fell off this pedestal recently. She hasnât been what you describe since like, the release of overwatch. Since then, sheâs been the pocket bot for a much longer time than she hasnât.
As always, when Mercy hate is in a topic, Mercy gang arrives here talking about viability. Didnât you learn a damn thing about the Sombra ban rate? Itâs not about viability, itâs about how Mercy makes everyone miserable except herself and the pocketed dude. Itâs about the ratio effort to counter mercy pocket =/= effort to ââplayââ Mercy, that all you Mercy players fail to see or understand. We, the majority, (as seen in her ban rate, we are a majority) donât like your character, get over it. But hey, as you always do, itâs about misogyny and whatnot. And trust me, i know that. Iâm a Doomfist player since 2017, iâve about 650h on him. Havenât played Ow for like 4 months, came back for Stadium and have played it exclusively for a month. Yesterday i played my 1st quickplay in 4 months as Doomfist and they instantly went Orisa, Ana, Brig, Sombra and Cass. Obviously, they told me to kill myself at the end of a QP. Was that racism? Nope, was hatred towards my character, i know heâs disliked and i get over it. Does it sometimes get to to my nerves to get tbagged, insulted, flamed at, insta counterpicked, solo ulted + emote? Yes, it does. But i donât cry out loud about it and make things up.
TL:DR Your character is highly disliked, grow a thick skin and get over it. And yes, i also hate Mercy with a passion, but i understand the other side of the coin. At the end of the day, except the 0â1%, weâre all casuals and are here to have fun. Mercy makes me have no fun, therefore i dislike Mercy. And iâm plenty aware people dislike my character and ruins their fun, but i donât go preach stuff about a fictional character when thereâs a threat about Doomfist, because iâm mature enough to see the other side of the coin.
I have not seen this in this thread, nor in recent ones about Mercy. But I may not have read everything that was said.
This is perfectly fair and understandable. Itâs super irritating when Mercy gets the rez on the kill you just secured. Itâs super irritating when she can fly around the map and is very hard to target and bring down. Itâs super irritating when she boosts another hero and makes him more powerful, especially if that hero is already very powerful (hello Sojourn / Freja and others). That is true, 100%.
The question is : can we do something about it ? I suggested either : 1) making boost a ressource based ability with an internal timer : you can only boost a hero for a few seconds, then that ability is locked on this teammate for quite some time or 2) make it boost something else : not attack speed (that would be kinda the same), but maybe CD speed recovery, or movement speed, or something like that. Something useful but not too strong. Something that aligns with her âpacifistâ mentality.
Rez is kinda of her âthingâ. Iâm not opposed to removing it and replacing it with a powerful burst heal, for ex. That would encourage Mercy to move around more, be more vulnerable because she has to move around instead of pocketing from relative safety.
Yes, they can do something about it. Rework or complete overhaul. Yes, i know they wonât. Blizzard didnât hesitate to screw up (rework) over and over again heroes like Symmetra, Sombra, Mei, Bastion, Torb and even shifting Doomfist from dps to tank, a shift 80% of Doomfist players dislike, but they donât care. All these heroes i mentioned all combined are not as popular and donât sell skins compared to Mercy alone. They will never change a thing of Mercyâs kit.
Mercy is a support. Not a carry. Letâs talk about it:
Mercy âby herselfâ isnât strong. She doesnât duel, doesnât frontline, and doesnât win fights solo. Sheâs a support through and through.
Even if sheâs pocketing someone, that DPS has to be GOOD. A bad DPS with a Mercy on them is just⌠a bad DPS with more health and damage. Thereâs no value unless the person being pocketed can capitalize on it.
The idea that âMercy is OPâ often ignores the context. Itâs not Mercyâitâs who sheâs enabling. A top-tier Sojourn or Pharah makes Mercy âlookâ broken. But without a solid carry, her impact is limited.
To be fair, there arenât that many great Mercy players either. A slippery, smart Mercy who survives dives, gets value from GA tech, and manages tempo with Rez and Valk? That takes real skill.
Sheâs âeasy to start withâ, yeah. But mastering her is another story. Good Mercy players know when to heal vs boost, how to rotate safely, how to position pre-fight, and how to bait cooldowns.
Mercy isnât strong alone. Her value is in synergy, positioning, and decision making. Give her a god tier DPS, and she shines. Without that, sheâs just another support trying not to die. 
Youâre right. I donât hate MercyâŚwhen sheâs on the other team.
I hate Mercy when sheâs on mine. Literally taking up a slot that could be occupied by a more useful support. At least rework her to be actually useful.
Very well said, Ginsengseng ! I fully agree with that description 
Itâs very possible indeed that they wonât change a thing. After all, they do what they want, not what the playerbase wants (which precisely debunks the argument that âthe community asked for all those changes about Sombra and the devs listened to them all and gave them what they wanted, therefore you asked for it, so sh*t upâ).
As for the âscrew upsâ, I canât speak about that. I was not playing in OW1. Symm, Mei, Bastion, Torb and Doom all seem in a pretty good place, right now. So why do you say it was a screw up ?
Torb is stronger, but as my previous post, iâm not talking about viability, iâm talking about the fun aspect of a character or the fantasy said character brought to the table. Torb might be stronger, but the tinker part of his fantasy is long gone, turret is useless, he doesnât provide armor anymore nor does he need to bring out the hammer. Heâs a better Hanzo, spam choke and donât approach me close range cause iâm dangerous. Symmetra used to be a support with cool and innovative abilities, now sheâs a watered down Zarya. Mei used to be a pseudo off tank, dangerous up close with her cc potential and objective stalling capabilities. Now Meiâs most powerful asset is spamming a choke with threatening headshot icicles. And Doom is a better character as a tank, stronger and less obnoxious to play against. But whereâs the ââfighting game characterââ spirit that was behind his design? Your best damage dealing tool as doomfist right now is the primary fire pellets, not any of his abilities that were designed in ow1 to be his damage tools.
Ah, I understand. Yeah, I was just talking about viability, since I have no idea how they played before.
Itâs my point about why a lot of people dislike Mercy. Itâs not about viability, itâs about fun. At the end of the day, this is a game and we wonât make a living of it
This is the same flawed argument Genji players make. Does Genji take skill at the highest echelons of play where the skill ceiling of the character actually comes into play? Sure. But itâs also a meaningless distinction to intentionally downplay how for the vast majority of players heâs able to reliably generate completely brainless value by shotgunning right clicks into squishies.