Kotaku: "Overwatch Players Want Blizzard To Rework Mercy, But Can't Agree On How"

[EkStatiC]

In my total ignorance about game design i have to propose this simple solution:

Keep the new Resurrect but instead of a cooldown let her recharge the skill based on the damage dealed with her weapon, let's say every landed hit can give 5% of the recharge and headshots 10% (maybe buff her weapon in some areas).
With this, Mercy player will have to be more aggresive if he/she want to Resurrect making her playstyle to have a little more variety.
Some players may be prefer only to heal and some to chase enemies in order to Resurrect every few seconds.

 

[Tbm24]

In my total ignorance about game design i have to propose this simple solution:

Keep the new Resurrect but instead of a cooldown let her recharge the skill based on the damage dealed with her weapon, let's say every landed hit can give 5% of the recharge and headshots 10% (maybe buff her weapon in some areas).
With this, Mercy player will have to be more aggresive if he/she want to Resurrect making her playstyle to have a little more variety.
Some players may be prefer only to heal and some to chase enemies in order to Resurrect every few seconds.

Click to shrink...

Honestly sounds like the mercy would be better off keeping her teammates alive than fishing for a res. I can't imagine a scenario where you'd be in a position to try and farm up a rez unless you've already used it, which means there's like a fight going on and you have to heal.

 

[Anteo]

In my total ignorance about game design i have to propose this simple solution:

Keep the new Resurrect but instead of a cooldown let her recharge the skill based on the damage dealed with her weapon, let's say every landed hit can give 5% of the recharge and headshots 10% (maybe buff her weapon in some areas).
With this, Mercy player will have to be more aggresive if he/she want to Resurrect making her playstyle to have a little more variety.
Some players may be prefer only to heal and some to chase enemies in order to Resurrect every few seconds.

Click to shrink...

the design of the character doesnt support being agresive except while in valk and even then its better if you support and survive

edit: i guess it would be nice if she was more active in battle. Have her dual weild her pistol and her staff or something

 

[kurahador]

If they want to bring back her old ultimate, it need to be a double edged sword. Like revived allies only has 50% hp and lost 50% ult charge or something.

 

[DimitriLH]

I got used to this Mercy, how about they do something to make Lucio and Zenyatta feel less outdated (especially Zen)

 

[Sparks]

What about swapping Mercy's Ult back to Rez and then make her secondary ability a temporary Valkyrie mode that adds increased healing/damage output. Similiar to what they did with Torb (making his Ult a smaller ability version). It'd increase her HPS and movement capability and then give the glory of her ultimate Rez (with a slower percent gain) more oomph.

If they want to bring back her old ultimate, it need to be a double edged sword. Like revived allies only has 50% hp and lost 50% ult charge or something.

Click to shrink...

Yea I like this. Although not the Ult because I would just be annoyed to be rezzed by Mercy then haha.

 

[Legacy]

The original one was broken as fuck & promoted the "hide & res/die on the point" play-style, which wasn't fun for the enemy or for Mercy.

Click to shrink...

This. It went against the very purpose of playing a support, waiting for your team to die.

 

[CrocodileGrin]

Never bring back the mass Rez ult. I have people on my friends list that claim to be Mercy mains and say she's garbage tier now. When I went to check past competitive vids on how my friends played her, they would literally hide, shoot and never heal, and wait til everyone was dead for Huge Rez just so they could get POTG. Horrible.

 

[LAM09]

Leave her as she is or remove rez completely in a rework.

 

[Tbm24]

What about swapping Mercy's Ult back to Rez and then make her secondary ability a temporary Valkyrie mode that adds increased healing/damage output. Similiar to what they did with Torb (making his Ult a smaller ability version). It'd increase her HPS and movement capability and then give the glory of her ultimate Rez (with a slower percent gain) more oomph.


Yea I like this. Although not the Ult because I would just be annoyed to be rezzed by Mercy then haha.

Click to shrink...

This still has the fundamental problem of once her ult is up, she runs and hides to maximize it. Doing anything else is deliberately irresponsible as a player. No one wants that.

 

[Greg NYC3]

nah that's a load of crap. there's 3 main healers in the game and for months 1 was picked at a far higher rate than the other two, which is a clear balance problem when the entire idea behind your game is pick flexibility and different synergistic compositions. mercy post-rework was the best pick in every conceivable situation and picking ana or moira as main healer was tantamount to throwing.

a flanking mccree or pharah ult solo wiping your team means your team sucks shit and deserves to lose. you can win fights with those ults but it requires coordination and multiple abilities, never just one DPS going behind and pressing q.

and a good healer is easily more valuable than a good dps. hell the league MVP of OWL season 1 was a zen/ana player.

Click to shrink...

A couple of things, any hero that gets a major rework is going to see their pick rate shoot up especially if it's a good rework. Ana also got a buff after Mercy's rework that made her a better healer so I've found myself using her most of the time since then which had nothing to do with the multiple Mercy nerfs. The thing that really bothered me about what was done to Mercy and what is the major point that I've been trying to get across is that I don't see what made her so OP compared to the other highly picked heroes in the game that required her to be nerfed into irrelevance. The same thing is happening to Brigitte but it's at least a bit more understable in her case because of how irritating her stun can be. Playing Mercy is never easy due the attention you receive compared to other healers so having her in a place where she had hightened abilities compared to the others made sense.

I mean if your team runs no tanks and has the game sense of a potato that can happen, but what your desribing here is "my enitre team got bodied by the weakest flanking ults in the game and i want to be able to correct all their mistakes instantly". Its incredibly easy to block both of these ults especially if you have any sense of what is going on (especially mcree, because he has no mobility, is super loud, and glows red while he's charging it up).

I've played a lot of mercy poat super nerfs to 50 hps and I gotta say she's still a lot more fun to me then ana, basically only because of the Guardian angle cancel that can let you zip ariund the entire map and juke everyone.

Click to shrink...

And again, that's not the point I was making. I'm pointing out that a lot of heroes have ults that can alter the course of play significantly in the right hands so why so much angst about Valkyrie? I never liked team rez either but I wasn't as offended by original Valkyrie as most of the posts I've been reading.

 

[stupei]

and at low levels your divers go fight tanks and ignore the healers for whatever reason. that was the main problem with ther mass rez, she was always alive at the end of a teamfight

Click to shrink...

I'm not talking about keeping mass rez. It's fine that it's gone, but she's still not properly balanced with her healing output as low as it is currently and there do seem to be a lot of people who respond to any suggestion that she still needs work by saying that she's supposed to play like shit and feel like shit because she's for players who are shit, as if Junkrat has some kind of massive skill prerequisite.

Tracers and Genjis still know to look for a Mercy and she's not very strong against either. Requiring a lot more work to stay alive against the enemy DPS is already a weakness, she doesn't need to barely heal the damage her team is taking too.

 

[Kuga]

And again, that's not the point I was making. I'm pointing out that a lot of heroes have ults that can alter the course of play significantly in the right hands so why so much angst about Valkyrie? I never liked team rez either but I wasn't as offended by original Valkyrie as most of the posts I've been reading.

Click to shrink...

Valkyrie in its original state, especially the PTR version before the pistol nerf, provided an insane amount of value. This was in addition to her broken res mechanics (e.g., Valk refreshed it and gave a reduced cooldown, allowing up to three instant res during a team fight).

Not every hero's ultimate needs to be to single-handedly change a teamfight. If you gave current Roadhog an ultimate with as much impact as Grav, he would be broken with his non-ultimate kit. At the time (and arguably still now), Mercy's core kit was powerful enough to justify a weaker ultimate. Valk was Blizzard's "we don't know what the fuck to do Mercy's replacement ultimate so here's a mishmash of buffs instead". And it was too much.

 

[Deleted member 15440]

The thing that really bothered me about what was done to Mercy and what is the major point that I've been trying to get across is that I don't see what made her so OP compared to the other highly picked heroes in the game that required her to be nerfed into irrelevance.

Click to shrink...

there were never any heroes comparable to mercy 2.0 (20 sec valk with higher regen, rez reset and 10 sec cooldown change during ult, instant rez cast, shorter GA cooldown). she was by far the most broken character that's ever been in the game and the stats bear that out.

she was basically impossible to catch, could escape even more easily than she can now, instant rez made picks meaningless, and trying to kill her in valk was so difficult that even pro players would either ignore her or blow an ult like tac visor to bring her down.

they nerfed her over and over for a year and she was still a top pick that rendered other healers useless. that's how strong she was.

 

[rulerk1]

I stopped playing when they nerfed Mercy to Hell. That was the only character I played with.

Click to shrink...

really? no one else

 

[Deleted member 43070]

You know reading this thread it proves the story right. Everyone here is all over the place on her too. They're never going to make everyone happy. It's one reason I hate why games have taken to try to balance for both competitive players and regular players. You never please anyone that way and just slowly drive everyone away.

 

[Greg NYC3]

Valkyrie in its original state, especially the PTR version before the pistol nerf, provided an insane amount of value. This was in addition to her broken res mechanics (e.g., Valk refreshed it and gave a reduced cooldown, allowing up to three instant res during a team fight).

Not every hero's ultimate needs to be to single-handedly change a teamfight. If you gave current Roadhog an ultimate with as much impact as Grav, he would be broken with his non-ultimate kit. At the time (and arguably still now), Mercy's core kit was powerful enough to justify a weaker ultimate. Valk was Blizzard's "we don't know what the fuck to do Mercy's replacement ultimate so here's a mishmash of buffs instead". And it was too much.

Click to shrink...

there were never any heroes comparable to mercy 2.0 (20 sec valk with higher regen, rez reset and 10 sec cooldown change during ult, instant rez cast, shorter GA cooldown). she was by far the most broken character that's ever been in the game and the stats bear that out.

she was basically impossible to catch, could escape even more easily than she can now, instant rez made picks meaningless, and trying to kill her in valk was so difficult that even pro players would either ignore her or blow an ult like tac visor to bring her down.

they nerfed her over and over for a year and she was still a top pick that rendered other healers useless. that's how strong she was.

Click to shrink...

I'm not going to change anyone's minds on this issue but there were better ways to address problems with how impactful Valkyrie could (and I can't stress that enough) be at key moments rather than nerfing her in every patch. It's really hard to disprove a negative in that you can say she was highly picked because she was so OP and I can argue that she was so highly picked because she was the best utility healer which was always supposed to be her role in the game. There's still a place for her but it seems the answer was to reduce her usefulness to the point that it doesn't make as much sense to pick her as opposed to making the other healers better.

A big issue I have with her now is that even with Guardian Angel she has the least defesive capabilities if she's cornered. Why would I choose her when I can pick Ana and terrorize sneaky Tracer/Reaper/Sombras trying to flank me?

 

[Wraith]

While I agree she could use a little something to make her a healer pick on par with Ana/Moira (Ana especially seems really powerful these days), I do not want them to bring mass rez back. I've liked Mercy so much more since her overhaul last year. She went from my third most played healer to my second most played hero overall. Guardian Angel got a lot better, and single rez is still pretty powerful. Feels great when you pull it off in a tight spot, doesn't feel like a gigantic loss if you fail a rez or manage to get picked off. Plus playing against mass rez felt so demoralizing, and basically made the game "always kill mercy all the time." Which wasn't balanced either.

But yes, a little something added to her kit would be great. Maybe something so she isn't so easy to pick off while using her ult, or something to help her respond to flankers a little better than simply gliding away.

 

[tr00per]

so i know that you can have custom matches in overwatch, but is there a way to play with custom abilities? Maybe a way to appease players is to have custom options to tweak abilities/kits (perhaps even play with different "patch versions" - say you liked the meta of last summer so you can play in that specific sandbox) or even a 'classic' playlist. Think of it sort of how MTG sets work with custom and standard

 

[Buttchin-n-Bones]

Yeah, Mercy mains and the rest of the OW community basically don't have any overlap anymore. There is no other hero that has such an utterly baffling amount of one-trick players, and they won't be happy unless the game is ruined by her. There were people complaining about her during the year-long reign of moth.

 

[Alucrid]

I'm not going to change anyone's minds on this issue but there were better ways to address problems with how impactful Valkyrie could (and I can't stress that enough) be at key moments rather than nerfing her in every patch. It's really hard to disprove a negative in that you can say she was highly picked because she was so OP and I can argue that she was so highly picked because she was the best utility healer which was always supposed to be her role in the game. There's still a place for her but it seems the answer was to reduce her usefulness to the point that it doesn't make as much sense to pick her as opposed to making the other healers better.

A big issue I have with her now is that even with Guardian Angel she has the least defesive capabilities if she's cornered. Why would I choose her when I can pick Ana and terrorize sneaky Tracer/Reaper/Sombras trying to flank me?

Click to shrink...

i mean yeah if you can 180 sleep dart flankers trying to get you do that. otherwise mercy probably has better options for players who aren't as good. still it's weird to say that of course she was always picked because she's supposed to be the best healer when the game's ethos is supposedly about changing heroes as needed

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

It's so painfully obvious that I don't know why no one suggests it:

Change Valk so that she gives both a passive heal and damage boost for anyone close to her, like a mobile Orisa bongo, while allowing her to Battle Mercy.

There, now you have a fun ult.

 

[Big Yoshi]

A couple of things, any hero that gets a major rework is going to see their pick rate shoot up especially if it's a good rework. Ana also got a buff after Mercy's rework that made her a better healer so I've found myself using her most of the time since then which had nothing to do with the multiple Mercy nerfs. The thing that really bothered me about what was done to Mercy and what is the major point that I've been trying to get across is that I don't see what made her so OP compared to the other highly picked heroes in the game that required her to be nerfed into irrelevance. The same thing is happening to Brigitte but it's at least a bit more understable in her case because of how irritating her stun can be. Playing Mercy is never easy due the attention you receive compared to other healers so having her in a place where she had hightened abilities compared to the others made sense.

And again, that's not the point I was making. I'm pointing out that a lot of heroes have ults that can alter the course of play significantly in the right hands so why so much angst about Valkyrie? I never liked team rez either but I wasn't as offended by original Valkyrie as most of the posts I've been reading.

Click to shrink...

okay so lets say on average you get a 5 man res EVER TIME with the old ult (BIG ASSUMPTION). The unnerfed Valk Brings back 3 of those people instantly, increases your healing a ton, gives you a sniper dleeting pistol, AND group heals and damage boost. All while making you almost invincible sans visor and deadeye because of your regen and speed. AND you get the other buffs she received when res was an ult with the GA changes and instant res out of ult its STILL better than getting a 5 man res every time. It was so obscenly overpowered every team ran mercy in OWL stage 1 and 2 even after loads of nerfs. it took until stage 4 for her to not be a ridiculous pick rate.

I think theres a part of the playerbase that just wants mercy to be OP in every meta which is understanable, but like think of other players my dudes and dudettes.

 

[Kirblar]

Mercy is fine. She's deliberately low-skill cap and that's ok. Battle Mercy kills are fun and hilarious.

This still has the fundamental problem of once her ult is up, she runs and hides to maximize it. Doing anything else is deliberately irresponsible as a player. No one wants that.

Click to shrink...

Yup.

 

[Greigor the FellHand]

If they want to bring back her old ultimate, it need to be a double edged sword. Like revived allies only has 50% hp and lost 50% ult charge or something.

Click to shrink...

Could do.

If 1 ally effect 100% HP, 90% ult
if 2 ally effect 50% hp, 40% ult
if 3 ally effect 33% hp, 25% ult
if 4 ally effect 25% hp, 15% ult

 

[Greg NYC3]

i mean yeah if you can 180 sleep dart flankers trying to get you do that. otherwise mercy probably has better options for players who aren't as good. still it's weird to say that of course she was always picked because she's supposed to be the best healer when the game's ethos is supposedly about changing heroes as needed

Click to shrink...

It's one thing to say that's the game's ethos but it's not actually what happens is it? It's great to want to work towards that future but the hate individual heroes get along the way feels misplaced.

I know that balancing a game this complex had got to be a nightmare but changing heroes as needed doesn't mean much when it simply means switching from one hard counter to the next (a bit off topic but since we're all venting lol).

okay so lets say on average you get a 5 man res EVER TIME with the old ult (BIG ASSUMPTION). The unnerfed Valk Brings back 3 of those people instantly, increases your healing a ton, gives you a sniper dleeting pistol, AND group heals and damage boost. All while making you almost invincible sans visor and deadeye because of your regen and speed. AND you get the other buffs she received when res was an ult with the GA changes and instant res out of ult its STILL better than getting a 5 man res every time. It was so obscenly overpowered every team ran mercy in OWL stage 1 and 2 even after loads of nerfs. it took until stage 4 for her to not be a ridiculous pick rate.

I think theres a part of the playerbase that just wants mercy to be OP in every meta which is understanable, but like think of other players my dudes and dudettes.

Click to shrink...

Let me just correct one thing here, you did not get three instant res, if you had one charged you had two in your pocket and would get a third prior to the ult ending. Top tier players could do a lot with that and even low tier players could make capture maps instant wins without a ton of skill but you still had to pick and choose which of her abilities you were going to exploit as you couldn't heal/buff/res/snipe all at once. It feels like people are basing their hatred of the old Valkyrie mostly on how top players could abuse it which I guess is understandable.

 

[Big Yoshi]

Could do.

If 1 ally effect 100% HP, 90% ult
if 2 ally effect 50% hp, 40% ult
if 3 ally effect 33% hp, 25% ult
if 4 ally effect 25% hp, 15% ult

Click to shrink...

No
this is a terrible idea, it would just cause people to flame the mercy because they ate their ult for the next push and then they get rolled.

Losing your ult because of a teamate is just such an insanly bad idea in so many ways.

 

[Janna OP]

mercy should just stay shit lol. only the rabid 1 tricks want her to be good; everyone else remembers the shitshow that was the initial rework and the year of the valk afterwards.

 

[Ferrio]

The original ult was the worst. I don't care how you rework her just don't bring that back. Personally I find her fun to play currently.

 

[Deleted member 5545]

How about figuring out how to make Pharah, an already mediocre dps, usable at respectable ranks without a gaslit mercy attached to her 24/7

Mercy gets way too much attention, she's fine where she is

 

[Mesoian]

It's so painfully obvious that I don't know why no one suggests it:

Change Valk so that she gives both a passive heal and damage boost for anyone close to her, like a mobile Orisa bongo, while allowing her to Battle Mercy.

There, now you have a fun ult.

Click to shrink...

Valk does that. Just alternate between left and right click. It's Mercy's entire kit.

"Let her do everything at once" is silly and counterproductive. No one gets to do everything they have at once when they're ulting.

 

[1000% H]

If they want to bring back her old ultimate, it need to be a double edged sword. Like revived allies only has 50% hp and lost 50% ult charge or something.

Click to shrink...

I never understood why Blizz never tried out giving rez some caveats for after someone comes back. They're coming back from the dead, it would be easy to justify them being limited in some way immediately after the rez.

 

[Ferrio]

I never understood why Blizz never tried out giving rez some caveats for after someone comes back. They're coming back from the dead, it would be easy to justify them being limited in some way immediately after the rez.

Click to shrink...

No one would want to get raised, better to just respawn.

 

[1000% H]

No one would want to get raised, better to just respawn.

Click to shrink...

But then you're not in the fight at all.

This is why rez is a trash ability.

 

[Salty_Josh]

This is so interesting. Mercy is in the best place she's ever been. She doesn't need a rework she's good enough...
You're all tripping

 

[Ferrio]

But then you're not in the fight at all.

This is why rez is a trash ability.

Click to shrink...

Rez is trash because it doesn't have an ability that would make it useless?

 

[Mesoian]

No one would want to get raised, better to just respawn.

Click to shrink...

Yup. Hell there are times where I get rezzed in the middle of a group of 3 enemies and just sigh because I know I'm going to die instantly and now we don't have a more useful rez. Rez with all abilities cooled down or with a health drop would likely be a similarly useless scenario.

But then you're not in the fight at all.

This is why rez is a trash ability.

Click to shrink...

It's more about the time of being rezzed and instantly dying again, which is likely the case unless you're cleaning up after a successful push, which is useless, vs the time of just staying dead and respawning at spawn.

 

[Deleted member 15440]

No one would want to get raised, better to just respawn.

Click to shrink...

no it would just require actual teamwork and coordination, like having heals in flight from the offhealer or shields protecting the rez target from orisa/zarya

or just layer trance on top

but i guess that's asking too much

 

[Timeaisis]

You could bring back her old ult with a mechanic where it takes longer to charge for subsequent uses depending on how many players you resurrected.

 

[1000% H]

Rez is trash because it doesn't have an ability that would make it useless?

Click to shrink...

Rez is trash because if it's not just an undo button people would rather just respawn normally, apparently.

Right now, having to aggressively zone out/kill a Mercy after getting a kill is lame af.

 

[Mesoian]

no it would just require actual teamwork and coordination, like having heals in flights from the offhealer or shields protecting the rez target from orisa/zarya

or just layer trance on top

but i guess that's asking too much

Click to shrink...

I mean that IS a lot though, having to protect the Mercy as she's rezzing and then instantly shifting to protect the person she rezzed for, let's say, 3 seconds? That's a lot to ask during a team fight. That would raise Zarya's worth though.

Right now, having to aggressively zone out/kill a Mercy after getting a kill is lame af.

Click to shrink...

I mean you have to do that anyway to make sure the mercy isn't just straight up erasing damage.

Hell, in most cases if Mercy is the primary healer, you should be prioritizing her to begin with.

 

[PrimeBeef]

Rez is trash because if it's not just an undo button people would rather just respawn normally, apparently.

Right now, having to aggressively zone out/kill a Mercy after getting a kill is lame af.

Click to shrink...

My issue is I'm always rezzed in the middle of of a pack of the other team and then instantly die before getting a chance to do anything. So yeah, I'd rather just reapawn.

 

[Ferrio]

Rez is trash because if it's not just an undo button people would rather just respawn normally, apparently.

Click to shrink...

Rez already puts you in a dicey position where you and mercy can die and lose precious time. Being nerfed would pretty much guarantee that you would die right again or at least be completely useless. The mercy would have no reason to put herself in danger to rez, and a player getting rezzed wouldn't want to be shacked by some weird debuff. Maybe if spawn times were waaay longer sure.

 

[Deleted member 15440]

I mean that IS a lot though, having to protect the Mercy as she's rezzing and then instantly shifting to protect the person she rezzed for, let's say, 3 seconds? That's a lot to ask during a team fight. That would raise Zarya's worth though.

Click to shrink...

layering trance on top of a rez to make sure mercy can get it off is already pretty common in higher level play

 

[Immortan]

They should have stolen the medic from TF2 long ago. Super can have 1 person and her be invincible for 5-8 seconds for a push and boom you are done. None of this resurrect BS always thought that was a cheap ability and not fun to play vs when you spent time flanking and placing yourself perfectly for the kill to have it all erased with a single button press.

 

[Mesoian]

layering trance on top of a rez to make sure mercy can get it off is already pretty common in higher level play

Click to shrink...

While true, it sort of turns it from a good rule of thumb into a requirement.

Perhaps if there were more wide sweeping defensive ults that directly effect people's health this would be reasonable, but other than Lucio, no one really has that. Maybe you could use symm's shield for cover and dancing, but then we'd be back the whole issue where, if you're going to use mercy correctly, you need a lucio to cover with shield.

Regardless, I think she's fine the way she is and multirez should stay gone.

They should have stolen the medic from TF2 long ago. Super can have 1 person and her be invincible for 5-8 seconds for a push and boom you are done. None of this resurrect BS always thought that was a cheap ability and not fun to play vs when you spent time flanking and placing yourself perfectly for the kill to have it all erased with a single button press.

Click to shrink...

That's basically what valk is, only instead of one person, it's anyone within range.

 

[Mido]

Increase base healing to 55hp/s. A rework is not necessary. The nerf from 60hp/s was the last straw for most Mercy players, including me.

 

[Mesoian]

Increase base healing to 55hp/s. A rework is not necessary. The nerf from 60hp/s was the last straw for most Mercy players, including me.

Click to shrink...

IMO - Mercy shouldn't be outhealing winston.

Though I say this as someone who uses winston far more than mercy.

 

[finalflame]

Bring back her original ult.

Click to shrink...

I will never play the game again if they do it. Her original ult was absolute fucking bullshit and made playing the game extremely fucking frustrating.

 

[Firima]

Whining about resurrect was a popular pastime among dps shitters who didn't have the brains or skill to KILL MERCY FIRST and now we have a different problem completely. She needs a rework in the worst kind of way. Poor Hoshi still flying that Mercy flag on Twitch and YT and one of the flagship characters is still getting the redheaded stepchild treatment. Interesting to see that Aria hasn't been banned from Blizzard forums though.