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Deleted member 15440

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,191
Witchdoctor (I think) in Dota 2 has an ability that when cast on himself or an ally prevents the ally from dropping below 1 health for a few seconds. I think something like that would be a good replacement for the res ability, but I haven't played Overwatch in a while.
that's dazzle's shallow grave and i could see that working

or something like wraith king's aghs ult where allies that die in range of WK get revived as ghosts for a few seconds before disappearing
 

Bhonar

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
6,066
and some people think/complain that it should be "easy" to balance PVP video games

players can't even agree amongst themselves lol. balancing PVP class games is hard as hell
 

Chindogg

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,241
East Lansing, MI
Wasn't a fan of the mass resurrection últ, because in practice it usually meant just holding it forever waiting for the perfect opportunity. Only two dead? Better wait and see if more die first.

But I do agree that she has become boring to play

Pretty much.

Casual Mercy fans want the ability to get play of the game while being fairly useless for the rest of the match. The rework still made her absurdly good with good players using her, so she got nerfed. So now you're in this weird spot of appealing to the casual fanbase and the competitive fanbase with a character that'll somehow piss off both regardless of what Blizzard does.
 

LycanXIII

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
10,039
Give her a Healing Aura in Valkyrie mode that way she can heal and fight at the same time like the other supports. Right now her Ult just feels useless after they took out the bonus resurrect.
 

Greg NYC3

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,524
Miami
seriously? she was unbearably OP after her rework. i think she had the highest winrate of any hero across any patch in every skill level.
IIRC, her winrate back then was "pretty balanced" at 51-52%. However the only reason that the winrate looks balanced is because at that point in time both teams simply had to run a Mercy so one side's Mercy had to take a loss. Her pickrate then was highest across all heroes.

But yeah, Mercy was crazy OP directly when her rework first came out. She had:
- Faster Guardian Angel flight-speed.
- Valkyrie lasted longer at 20 seconds (currently its 15 seconds)
- A free rez the very moment you activate Valkyrie.
- Rez only has a 10 second cooldown when you are in Valkyrie. (meaning possibly up to 3 rezzes including the free one you get from Valk activation)
- ZERO cast time on Rez both in and out of ult.

If your team had a Mercy ready to ult, you have an extremely high chance to win a team fight (up to 3 instarez is a very big deal here as you will always have a numbers advantage) as long as your Mercy stays alive which was easy to do as unless the opposing has auto-lock Ults like Tactical Visor or High Noon on her its difficult to kill her while she is in flight due to her flight speed. Ladder games became the race of whose team's Mercy gets to ult first. And if your team wasn't running Mercy... you weren't winning team fights where the opposing Mercy ulted unless you kill her first, which is difficult as mentioned.

The nerfs were a neccessity as she seriously very much was on a level of must-pick for a good couple of months. There's a reason why the OW community call the Mercy meta the Moth meta lol.
The thing is you can say the same thing about a lot of the ults. It feels like the problem here is how game changing ults can be in general. Mercy's primary function is (or was supposed to be) as a pure healer so it makes sense that she should be the most picked in that role just as it wouldn't be surprising to see Rein highly selected as a must pick tank. DPS players are going to rightfully be frustrated by an OP Mercy because in her old state she can essentially erase an entire push worth of work in one ult but it's no less frustrating as a healer to level off your entire team only to have all that erased in an instant by a flanking McCree or Pharah ult. Mercy just attracted a hell of a lot more hatred when she was in her old state as healers just aren't as respected in the game as the DPS roles are.
 

SapientWolf

Member
Nov 6, 2017
6,565
This is the shit that happens when you give the Fandom an inkling that whoever is the loudest have a lot of influence in your design decision. Designing by popular vote is inherently bad, mmkay.
It's not inherently bad unless most of the people playing the game have terrible ideas. The rapid feedback loop of community suggestions and patches has done wonders for a lot of smaller games so it might work in the AAA space as well.

Players are at least good at knowing there's a problem, even if they're not always good at finding the fix. And knowing that there's a problem is half the battle.
 

Tbm24

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,411
Give her a Healing Aura in Valkyrie mode that way she can heal and fight at the same time like the other supports. Right now her Ult just feels useless after they took out the bonus resurrect.
She has chain heal, chain damage boost, and can fucking fly when she's in Valk. How is this useless? More to the point, Mercy is the purest support in the game and I think many people dislike the fact that she's not as offensively inclined as the other supports. Which, to me, is fine. She's a specific type of support.
 

Genesius

Member
Nov 2, 2018
15,689
Maybe lose the resurrection all together and have her ult make her heal/dmg beams spread out to everyone on the team while she's flying overhead
 

Mesoian

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 28, 2017
26,706
Give her a Healing Aura in Valkyrie mode that way she can heal and fight at the same time like the other supports. Right now her Ult just feels useless after they took out the bonus resurrect.
You are drunk.

Valk basically is a hard stop for any push. It is SUPER good, as long as the team stays together.

Current Mercy is fine. All the supports right now are in a good place. Mercy may be a stronger pick now more than ever now that Ashe can pair with a mccree for super crazy mid to long range damage.

Tanks need to be looked out before Mercy.

Maybe lose the resurrection all together and have her ult make her heal/dmg beams spread out to everyone on the team while she's flying overhead
I see what you did there.
 

Deleted member 24118

User requested account closure
Member
Oct 29, 2017
4,920
it's partly map design. tf2 maps tend to be larger and more open than OW, and heroes like tracer thrive in more cramped areas. she can flank out of sight and then jump supports with no warning at all.

plus she's played on a team where basically everyone can be as mobile. i never got into competitive tf2 but i doubt there was anything like OW dive meta where an engagement would see an entire team engage from across the map, instantly landing directly on top of an enemy and destroying them in less than a second.

It would logically be the opposite, choked maps are detrimental to fast classes because there's not as much room to evade or flank. If you look like an Overwatch-esque TF2 map like Dustbowl, Scout is pretty useless. Tracer and the other "dive" characters still being really great has more to do with the character balance and is largely in spite of the map design.

TF2 meta was two scouts, two soldiers, a demo, and a medic. All of them but the medic are pretty fast, though I don't know if I'd say it was comparable to dive specifically.
 

Deleted member 15440

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,191
The thing is you can say the same thing about a lot of the ults. It feels like the problem here is how game changing ults can be in general. Mercy's primary function is (or was supposed to be) as a pure healer so it makes sense that she should be the most picked in that role just as it wouldn't be surprising to see Rein highly selected as a must pick tank. DPS players are going to rightfully be frustrated by an OP Mercy because in her old state she can essentially erase an entire push worth of work in one ult but it's no less frustrating as a healer to level off your entire team only to have all that erased in an instant by a flanking McCree or Pharah ult. Mercy just attracted a hell of a lot more hatred when she was in her old state as healers just aren't as respected in the game as the DPS roles are.
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.
 

dabs furiously

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
244
The big rez ult only really affected low tier play, anything above that would just save ults for rez and win the fight anyway

The sentiment when valk was somehow worse than the old rez is actual insanity

I say change her back so that she may fall into irrelevancy again (who knows with how team comps are these days it can prolly work way better)

Game won't be entirely fixed until supports stop having as much power as they have anyway
 

mreddie

Member
Oct 26, 2017
44,452
These people just want to camp and heal again. Bridgette took a lot of Mercy's thunder lately.
 

Deleted member 15440

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,191
It would logically be the opposite, choked maps are detrimental to fast classes because there's not as much room to evade or flank. If you look like an Overwatch-esque TF2 map like Dustbowl, Scout is pretty useless. Tracer and the other "dive" characters still being really great has more to do with the character balance and is largely in spite of the map design.

TF2 meta was two scouts, two soldiers, a demo, and a medic. All of them but the medic are pretty fast, though I don't know if I'd say it was comparable to dive specifically.
yeah but tracer and scout aren't exactly the same in playstyle besides being fast and having burst damage. tracer having triple blink means she's faster over short distances since she can essentially teleport on top of you, so tighter maps help since she doesn't have to be in the open much. in a map like king's row or blizzard world she can instantly reach the back lines from around a corner at any point, scout can't do that.
 

optimus8936

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,174
They won't be happy until she's broken as fuck again. Can't accept that she's actually balanced for once.
 

Osu 16 Bit

QA Lead at NetherRealm Studios
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
2,934
Chicago, IL
I started playing the game in February of 2018 and loved playing her until the August nerf. Since then it was just brutal and I've essentially given up. Felt like I couldn't keep up and contribute enough in comp and my SR plummeted. I know I'm not a great player but man it was just depressing and not fun anymore.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,355
The problem with Mercy's original ult was that there was no way to counter it. As long as she's sitting on it, there's nothing you can do outside of killing her ahead of time, which can be hard sometimes as you can just sit and a corner and pop it.

If they had a window where you could kill her in the process, it would be fine. However, if I'm remembering correctly, they patched it from having a small delay, to no delay.
 

Alex

Member
Oct 27, 2017
514
Should have left her alone to begin with, at least not such a drastic redesign. Half of the problems in Overwatch are solved by rolling back to 2016.

Other half are solved by content updates, god fucking forbid, though, right? Just keep shitting out lootbox holidays.
 

Deleted member 24118

User requested account closure
Member
Oct 29, 2017
4,920
yeah but tracer and scout aren't exactly the same in playstyle besides being fast and having burst damage. tracer having triple blink means she's faster over short distances since she can essentially teleport on top of you, so tighter maps help since she doesn't have to be in the open much. in a map like king's row or blizzard world she can instantly reach the back lines from around a corner at any point, scout can't do that.

That's more the core of what I'm getting at, which is that Tracer's mobility is based on what's essentially a teleport function on cooldown. It takes skill to utilize it at a professional level but mechanically it's so easy to use that even the newest player can effortlessly bypass a choke point, which is why it has to be balanced with stuns and such. If her mobility were more "natural" and skill-indexed it wouldn't be necessary for every other character to have a stun specifically to counter Tracer.
 

rochellepaws

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,459
Ireland
It was bizarre her ult was changed to begin with since she never had the sort of high end representation compared to someone like Lucio . It seemed to me as if the reason for the change wasn't for balancing but rather to satisfy a particular section of the community who dislike any sort of strategy or alterations to traditional deathmatch shootouts. It was never as if walking behind a wall to find their Mercy was difficult, it was just they didn't like doing it since it meant taking their finger off the trigger for a few seconds and doing some actual scouting and strategising.
It would be nice for Blizzard to admit they made a mistake on this and revert Valkyrie back to Mass Ress and make Mercy feel special again.
 

shintoki

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,178
Nah, bunch of low skilled players wanting the lowest skill bar character to return. Mercy prior to the rework was shit. Hide and wait. Mercy after the rework was literally god. She wasn't fun to play or play against in either scenario, outside of individuals who only wanted to play just her. She's in a good spot now, because to use her, you actually have to make adjustments to your play.
 
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Tbm24

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,411
It was bizarre her ult was changed to begin with since she never had the sort of high end representation compared to someone like Lucio . It seemed to me as if the reason for the change wasn't for balancing but rather to satisfy a particular section of the community who dislike any sort of strategy or alterations to traditional deathmatch shootouts.
It would be nice for Blizzard to admit they made a mistake on this and revert Valkyrie back to Mass Ress and make Mercy feel special again.
I really encourage you to look back at OW events from before her ult was reworked because you're not at all remembering what actually went down with her at high levels(it went down at all levels of play).
 

Deleted member 6511

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
432
I would be happy with some rework.
I do believe she is balanced now, but she is just not much fun to play...
But the "all team ressurect" should not make a comeback!
 

Big Yoshi

Member
Nov 25, 2018
1,813
The thing is you can say the same thing about a lot of the ults. It feels like the problem here is how game changing ults can be in general. Mercy's primary function is (or was supposed to be) as a pure healer so it makes sense that she should be the most picked in that role just as it wouldn't be surprising to see Rein highly selected as a must pick tank. DPS players are going to rightfully be frustrated by an OP Mercy because in her old state she can essentially erase an entire push worth of work in one ult but it's no less frustrating as a healer to level off your entire team only to have all that erased in an instant by a flanking McCree or Pharah ult. Mercy just attracted a hell of a lot more hatred when she was in her old state as healers just aren't as respected in the game as the DPS roles are.

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.
 

rochellepaws

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,459
Ireland
I really encourage you to look back at OW events from before her ult was reworked because you're not at all remembering what actually went down with her at high levels(it went down at all levels of play).
I'm basing that on a video from Aria Rose (who the thread is about) from Mercy's pick rate and tiers through the seasons.
 

Nimby

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,224
For a long time there was no viable reason to pick Ana. Not sure what game you were playing.
Honestly, no. She was always viable, but Zenyatta (and Mercy at the time) were too strong and dictated the entire game. Healing through teammates is a godsend though.

Overwatch has a lot of problems fundamentally. Ultimates are way too impactful, some heroes do too much or have been buffed significantly to the point they are borderline overpowered (even if they aren't meta), and the lack of hero bans or role limits means you are going to play against some busted composition most of the time. Hero bans in a competitive environment would combat a lot of overpowered comps and would actually make the heroes at play more diverse. Role limits might seem like an overstep, but it would make balancing individual heroes much easier since now they only have to compete with the other heroes in their role.

Mercy needs to be designed similar to other supports in my opinion. Ana could be considered primarily a healer, but she can actually kill people and because she has to aim at teammates to heal this gives the player satisfaction. Mercy is a healer who cannot deal damage reliably, her only focus is support her allies with her heal and damage boost, occasionally resurrecting someone. Then you get her ultimate and nothing changes, but your beam now chains and you can fly. Mercy needs some engaging abilities, but I definitely agree I would not just address Mercy.
 

Semfry

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,967
I don't really play much Overwatch anymore, but as a Mercy main - the *constant* changes were one of the reasons I totally fell off. All because the ~*pro mlg*~ competitive players couldn't stop whinging all the time about Mercy.

The major Mercy rework happened because of the opposite; at the top levels Mercy was irrelevant outside of tiny amount of situations (and since she's one of the lower skill-ceiling characters no-one really cared outside of getting a Mercy main making games much harder), but mass-res was brokenly good at lower levels where people didn't mitigate it's effect or exploit the flaws a Mercy comp had vs better healers, so most of the whining came from the lower tiers. Then the initial rework made her the hands-down best hero in the game at all levels, and she's only just starting to approach being somewhat balanced again now.

As someone who gravitated towards becoming a pseudo-Mercy main after the rework (like a lot of flex/support players) I actually unironically enjoy playing her now (even if I still mostly prefer to play the alternatives), so I'm fine with her staying how she is with some tweaks here and there as things develop *cough* GOATS goes away *cough* and metas that naturally play to her strengths more come back.
 
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LazyPanda

Member
Oct 30, 2017
952
I want a reworked valk with an insta mass rez and movement/healing rates back to prenerf valk. Also healing AoE. Like soldier, but better.
 

pinkurocket

Member
Oct 26, 2017
752
Her original ult was really bad. Often it led to Mercy hiding while the enemy team did their push with, after which she would float in to resurrect the team. That wasn't fun, if your team sucked with their placement and you had to fiddle your location to get the most revives as well as Mercy being extremely vulnerable in that moment. Not fun. I don't think current Mercy is bad, she does healing well and her ult is great. I would like more healing, or the damage boost to have more visible impact. Maybe an ability on cooldown to boost heals or damage in a small radius (like a mini Lucio), because flipping through teammates can also be tiring and annoying.
 

SirKai

Member
Dec 28, 2017
7,444
Washington
At the very least they need to restore triggering Mercys ult immediately ending her res cooldown and rezzing while in ult being instant, like it was right after the rework.

Fuuuuuuuuuck no.

I can't believe how many think Mercy is weak or overly nerfed. You folks know she still has Damage Amp right? That ability is amazing, and with Ashe and the newly buffed Mcree she enables them beautifully.

Ana is on top for supports right now but all of the healers are perfectly viable and powerful.
 

Nimby

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,224
The functionality of Valk is where you would honestly want most ultimates to be. It's a great advantage, but not overpowering as much as Brigitte, Lucio, and Zenyatta's ultimates. It just is not engaging to me personally, and why I no longer play the hero.
 

DNAbro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,974
I feel like Mercy is in a pretty good spot actually. My most picked healer currently.
 

KarmaCow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,168
I don't get the jump from Mercy being boring to play now to wanting mass rez back. That was awful, where she had less utility and options on top of literally hiding in corners, telling your team to die faster was a better than being out in the fight healing people. That was a truly awful meta for anyone playing Mercy.
 

stupei

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,801
People always talk about how low skill Mercy is, but that just reveals how unfamiliar they are with the character. At the actually low skill levels of play, your tanks do not protect your healers at all and Mercy has the most challenging toolset when it comes to survivability of any of the supports, barring perhaps Zenyatta. If you're actually playing among low skill players, keeping alive as Mercy actually is a challenge. If you're amongst high skill players than presumably you have the ability and just prefer her play style.

It seriously feels like sometimes people are arguing that Mercy should stay broken because people who play her aren't "good enough" to deserve a fun experience. Not only weirdly spiteful, but honestly uninformed about the dynamics of healing at low levels.
 

no1

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Apr 27, 2018
954
Reworking Mercy's Resurrect into a basic ability was one of the reasons I fell out of love with this game so I agree with the sentiment that it should be brought back
Blizzard literally had everyone tell them not to change mercy and just like that they did and killed her with it.
 

Deleted member 24118

User requested account closure
Member
Oct 29, 2017
4,920
I'm basing that on a video from Aria Rose (who the thread is about) from Mercy's pick rate and tiers through the seasons.


This is honestly misunderstanding the original Mercy Problem.

There was a particular strategy employed by many Mercy players at that was rewarded by the game's skill rating system. This strategy — hiding from your team to resurrect them after they all die — is not a very good strategy. It was likely quite effective at low levels of the game, but as reflected by Mercy's low tier rating and the typical Mercy's sub-40% win rate it isn't that great beyond that, to the extent that at higher levels there was a perception that Mercy players of this kind were making games harder to win for the rest of their team. The SR system favored these mass rezes so much that players who pulled them off would be given boatloads of SR if they won and lose practically nothing if they lost.

And it wasn't really a secret that she benefited disproportionately from the SR system. That made Mercy ubiquitous in high level games even if she wasn't necessarily all that popular at lower levels. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but Mercy requires so few conventional FPS skills that experience with her doesn't provide you with the skills necessary to play other heroes. This is a big problem if there are two Mercy mains on the same team since one of them will be forced to play something else and they probably won't be very good at it. This is a really big problem when you're playing in the highest matchmaking tier and you've got four Mercy players on your team that have dramatically climbed in a short period of time who, on top of probably not being very good Mercy players, almost certainly can't play any other character at a level appropriate for the game they've been matched into. So there was that, but maybe they've fixed the SR system by now.

She also was completely broken on some maps. I remember all the 2CP maps were pretty much unplayable because the maps were small enough that Mercy could literally resurrect her entire team from spawn.
 

Anteo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,103
People always talk about how low skill Mercy is, but that just reveals how unfamiliar they are with the character. At the actually low skill levels of play, your tanks do not protect your healers at all and Mercy has the most challenging toolset when it comes to survivability of any of the supports, barring perhaps Zenyatta. If you're actually playing among low skill players, keeping alive as Mercy actually is a challenge. If you're amongst high skill players than presumably you have the ability and just prefer her play style.

It seriously feels like sometimes people are arguing that Mercy should stay broken because people who play her aren't "good enough" to deserve a fun experience. Not only weirdly spiteful, but honestly uninformed about the dynamics of healing at low levels.

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