Overwatch

Mercy has a pick rate above 90% across multiple skill tiers, she's picked approximately ten times more than her direct competitor Ana and her (single team) win rate is quite a bit above 50%. I would call that a problem and I don't really see how it can be solved without nerfing her - except perhaps buffing every other support, which runs the risk of tank battles or triple support becoming meta.

Some numbers: Meta Report Oct 9th

Patch 1.16b impact

Winston's Lab Mercy stats (current patch)

Sorry, the Winstons Lab link doesn't seem to show all the supports. Just add them with the drop down menu for some context.

edited 31st Oct '17 12:47:58 PM by Farnion

Not anything against Mercy, but an observation I found hilarious despite being on the receiving end: the other night I played Mystery Heroes and the enemy team randomed 3x Mercy. Literally unkillable. There was one point where we even downed two of them, but didn't have enough momentum to finish off the rest of the team.

Well if they nerf her she will go back to being absolutely worthless, one step above ‘banned for playing’ widowmaker tier.

Right now she is actually fun to play and you don’t get yelled at for picking her.

edited 31st Oct '17 12:51:12 PM by Memers

Eh, Mercy was always broken in Mystery Heroes. That was long before the rework. Only she has the ability to let her team retain their heroes AND their ultimate charges(as even if you have the same hero when you die normally in this mode - the Ultimate charge still resets). Using her performance in that mode(especially if there's more than one of her) as evidence of her unbalance in general is just silly.

I wish they would ever address broken SR system always favouring DPS and punishing switching heroes, or the resulting omnipresence of 5-6 DPS teams unless you're in premades, or Junkrat's stupid tire deciding games by itself(nowadays nothing stops him from dropping it right in the middle of a skirmish and killing everone before anyone can locate him - at least D.Va's ult has long windup and is visible from Saturn), or reports still being as useless as ever, or... sigh.

edited 31st Oct '17 12:56:31 PM by Luminosity

Hey, I did put a disclaimer that that wasn't a point against Mercy, just something really funny. Before the rework, it _was_ easier to get picks and stop the Res loop, though.

Anyway, as I've said before, I think Mercy's current dynamic is good, even if maybe a little too powerful. It helps make it so that there's an option other than hiding behind a Rein shield or trying to run a dive comp (gooooood luck pulling this off most of the time in rando play) and damage racing the enemy.

I mean, honestly, I'd argue that Mercy is picked more often because she's a direct healer compared to the others who are a little more niche or have other functions. If they want Mercy to drop in play time, maybe they should create more supports who challange what she does to some extent?

Didn't we already have that when Ana basically dominated the meta by out-healing everything? Mercy probably shouldn't be challenged in raw healing because she doesn't have much other utility.

The balance would never be correct unless you got the FFXIV route and give them the exact same toolkit with a different super. And even then one will always be shit tier as one of said difference will always be better than the other.

We saw a lesser version with Ana, she outright replaced Mercy till these buffs.

edited 31st Oct '17 2:04:33 PM by Memers

Tracer Halloween costume

Speaking of Ana, the event has been a great way to practice her, being that I've slowly gotten more interested in taking her up as a character (my healer of choice thus far has been Lucio).

I like Ana, personally, though I feel she requires more precision than I'm capable for anything beyond Easy or Medium AI games.

An Ana player has to multitask like crazy, especially if you're the solo healer.

• Shoot at allies for healing(which may be jumping around and not give a shit)
• Sometimes shoot at enemies
• Personally fight every flanker, as you have no mobility and no one will protect you
• Pay attention to which enemies are getting healed to deny that with a grenade
• Sleep with incredibly-hard-to-land dart in endless nanosecond clutch situations(and woe is you if your sleep is on cooldown when a Genji or a Mc Cree are ulting or enemy Rein is charging someone - everyone will blame you even if other people had ways to stop them)
• And of course relying on other people completely for your ultimate - a wasted nanoboost will always be "your fault" even if it's the DPS you boosted who missed every shot.

P.S. I had a weird game as Reaper today. We were on Volskaya defense, and there's this little shack with a health pack right in front of the point. I used my ultimate right below it and somehow it was hitting the Doomfist standing above on the roof. Hitboxes wtf.

edited 31st Oct '17 7:10:27 PM by Luminosity

Mercy nerfs are out on the PTR.

• Resurrect
  • Cast time increased from 0 seconds to 1.75 seconds
  • Mercy’s movement speed is now reduced by 75% while casting
  • Can now be interrupted when Mercy is knocked back, stunned, or hacked
• Valkyrie
  • When activated, Resurrection no longer has a cast time

I think I got japed a LOT this event. Even got a Gold drop only to see it was Coins.

Hmm... I haven't played new Mercy at all so I can't really tell but from what I saw people saying, this doesn't look too bad.

That pretty much nerfs the hell out of her, the ability pretty much cant be used while enemies are around. You got almost 2 seconds of having a huge HUGE target on yourself and it slows you down in addition to requiring line of sight and a short range...

That just isnt going to work in this game.

RIP Mercy, back to F tier.

edited 31st Oct '17 10:16:44 PM by Memers

Yeah, that basically makes Rez useless unless the entire enemy team just moves out of the area after slaughtering the teammate you're looking to resurrect.

You know how hard it is to hack an enemy with Sombra when they see you, as your hacking is constantly being interrupted by damage? Imagine that, but with lowered movement speed and double the time it takes to do it. That's the PTR version of Rez.

To be precise, it makes over a third of the characters in the game able to counter her (Cree, Soldier, Junkrat, Doomfist, Rein, Pharah, D. Va, Winston, Lucio, Sombra) with a couple being able to do so extremely easily. Junkrat in particular shuts down her Resurrection simply by aiming in her general direction. Likewise, she basically can't use Res anywhere near an enemy Rein.

Though the primary characters that are going to be a problem for this build are Pharah and Soldier, given that among the characters that can stun or knockback or hack, they're the most common.

Also, I wonder if it counts Orisa's gravity well. It's not technically knockback.

The patch notes don't say anything about the move being affected by taking damage, so it's not quite the same situation. If the notes are to be believed, she can perform it thorugh any amount as damage as long as that damage doesn't also inflict a "knocked back" state, a stun state or a hacked state - so, essentially, the same criteria for cancelling an Ult. plus the additional caveat of being cancelled by nearby explosions (or hits, in Reinhardt's case).

It's still pretty cringey, but it's not quite as bad a situation as a spotted Sombra's hacking.

edited 1st Nov '17 1:52:18 AM by KnownUnknown

Just think of all the REAL SKILL Mercy will require now, after her revamp that made playing her require "skill".

edited 1st Nov '17 2:23:39 AM by Rotpar

Man, this is undoubtedly one of the best "Moments" vid Rapida made so far.

Highlights include:

• Reinhardt using ult twice within a span of 15 seconds
• Two Mccrees simultaneously using Deadeye on each other
• Ana and Mercy beating enemy Roadhog to death

Oh god that nerf is horrible. As if Junkrat wasn't fucking omnipresent enough, now every bit of knockback interrupts Rez? Fucking shit, might as well remove the ability completely.

Why even have healers in the game if they're always such a "problem"? First Ana was a "problem", then Lucio was a "problem", now Mercy constantly requires "no skill" regardless of reworks(as assessed by sub 20% accuracy DP Ses, of course...). Zen only escaped major nerfs so far because he's a half-healer like Soldier.

I predict a shitstorm coming.

Therefore, the next hero is going to be a Defense hero. Because Blizzard is smart AF

It'll likely be a Defense hero in the same vein as Junkrat is a "defense" hero - another flat DPS.

Ana was strong enough that an entire meta revolved around her, Lúcio got reworked not because he was a problem but because Blizzard wanted him to take a more active role since otherwise he basically contributed just by existing in the field, it's not really the same thing. Zenyatta also got the Discord Orb nerfed once by the way.

I'm not really seeing why there seems to be issues with supports getting nerfed when characters like McCree have also gone through tons of changes through the game.

Because everyone demands that somebody pick a Support rather than one of the enjoyable heroes, and blame said supports for basically anything and everything that goes wrong, yet the nanosecond that said Supports is anything other than a free kill, those same people scream "OP NERF PLZ!!!!!!!!!!!" at the top of their lungs, and Blizzard happily obliges them in the vain hopes of stemming the incessant whining until they find something else to complain about. And also because, in Blizzard's view, playing support is SUPPOSED to be like taking out the trash - one of those things that nobody ever wants to do but somebody has to.

Yes, I'm unhappy about this, can't you tell?

edited 1st Nov '17 8:59:25 AM by Reflextion