Mercy: Overwatch's most DIVISIVE Hero 

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been playing since release day. someone in comp the other day shouted "FIND THE MERCY" and i had vietnam flashbacks

Loved how a genuine strat with release mercy was to hide and let your team die only to come out of nowhere and rez them. Will always remember people screaming “FIND THE MERCY”

Noun: Overwatch's most ADJECTIVE Hero

I think the most interesting thing about Mercy's identity is that her movement centric playstyle was a discovered over the course of the game's lifetime. Early Mercies didn't playthe character for her mobility but right before ow2 the no 1 reason I heard for why they liked playing Mercy was her unique movement system

Something that people forget is that the devs were fine with her ult negating a push from your team by rezzing 5. I mean, they added lamp and suzu to the game. The real issue the devs took with mass rez was that people realized that when mercy ult was up on your team, you could all int in to force cooldowns for no cost as the mercy hid in a corner. They decided to change it because they felt that no support ability should incentivize intentionally dying.

>has an entire section talking about superjump >doesn't include the xQc clip of him having an aneurysm over a superjumping Mercy Smh my head I accepted the fact that Blizz has no idea what to do with Mercy when they implemented the 'triage' changes. Made heals work best for critical allies spread out, yet nerfed the ability that gets the Mercy TO those critical allies by 100% if she has the audacity to slingshot into better positions. I would have actually liked 'triage' playstyle if it weren't for the GA nerfs. Literally just apply the cooldown to superjump specifically, not slingshots!

I think you forgot how the new slingshot isn't just super jump up, you can now fly literally any direction from the GA. In overwatch one you could only really go a little forward from it or straight up (like 4 people could do backwards GA consistently too but thats not rlly relevant) but now you can go literally any direction for it and it feels a lot more fun.

Overwatch community: Player likes Mercy: Persecuted by the community Player dislikes Mercy: Persecuted by the community

The one thing that ill always miss on mercy was the healing passive. It made her an actual pick for ffa deathmatch, it was so fun

One thing you missed or didnt really put much emphasis on, guardian angels active cooldown after usage of a movement tech. Before the 2.5 second cooldown you could cancel guardian angelbwith a movement tech in a way that started your cooldown a little bit sooner. After the 2.5 second nerf, when the "reverted" it it bassicly stayed. Youd have 1.5 seconds after using a movment tech where the ability was still active (even if you were touching the ground) and THEN you have the 1.5 sexond actual cooldown making it a total of 3 seconds until they took .5 off with the flobal projectile changes (which wasnt enough for a character whos sole survivability is based on movement). Mind you this 3 second (now 2.5) cooldown punishment on skill expression will pop up even if youre only doing a slight reposition and can often be the thing that leads to your death making micro movements a detriment in a lot of situatuons which is frustrating because poistioning and movement is how you show skill with this character and you get punished for both

One thing that can be irritating about Rez is how you'll boop her but the game will be inconsistent on whether or not you interrupt it. I've seen my friend boop her way off the soul while in Primal and she'll still get it but then others will barely budge and it'll cancel it.

19:02 the failed nano mercy lol

As someone who played in the mass rez mercy era, the other counter was to manage your ults. you shatter, wipe, enemy rez comes in, rip, but not really because you have reaper or zarya ult and they all die again YIPPEE!!!! And imo, the reason most players arent better with understanding the ult economy is because mass res isn't here. Mass rez made you learn and understand the ult economy if you wanted to counter it, which you did, and thats one good thing I'll give it. The other good thing I'll give it is that i liked it. it felt like an ultimate. Valk doesn't give that same feel in the slightest.

I really don’t understand people’s problem with damage boost. Like it is a dmg boost to one ally, against one enemy (unless you have it on rein who is swinging through the entire enemy team). This is especially astounding when something like discord orb exists yet does not receive near the hate. It is a damage boost to your whole team against a single enemy (99% of the time tank). Even worse, while Mercy sacrifices her own damage output to enhance another’s, zen still does a ton of damage on his own while effectively damage boosting his whole team. People who hate on mercy while still believing that zen is balanced are really on some insane substances. Zen’s mere existence just erases the enemy tank from the game.

started with OW2 and i've been on the mercy lifestyle ever since and while i can understand your plight of the ow1 tech being just... a real simple mechanic now, the ability to break physics and slingshot around cover and teammates like a schizoid is my life's purpose now. no one knows when or where you'll go but you, and even then sometimes i dont even know what i'm doing with how fast mercy can zip and change directions sometimes. I just want her to actually play like a medic instead like a pocket, playing teammate ping pong is way too fun to just sniff your Ashe main GF's hair all game :(

Watching the aria rose #reworkmercy movement in real time back in the day was certainly an experience

as a mercy main i agree i kind of hate the pocketing meta. its really annoying to follow one person and pocket them for majority of the game. i wish it was mercy flying all over the battlefield and healing and finding damage boost in good times (ults, 1v1’s, etc). i think i just want her healing to be buffed a little and maybe reduce .5 of ga cooldown because after any sort of tech from the initial ga the cooldown can be so long. i wouldn’t mind her damage boost also being buffed but i feel like that would encourage pocketing so maybe not

The big sad truth of mercy is that she is a support that "can't carry" She is very reliant on her team much like how lifeweaver also is. If you're playing solo queue it's always a gamble because you'll just have to pray your dps are good enough so you can get value out of damage boost. I've mained mercy for years and years and while I really enjoy playing (it honestly feels like driving an airplane) I do hate the fact that I don't bring any carry value or utility to the team and the only value I bring relies on how good my dps are. I've become too attached to damage boost for it to go away (to the point I get annoyed if I heal a bit too much xd) but I do think she needs some kind of utility in her kit that can change the fight (like Ana nade or Zen's discord) and honestly the ability she got in mirrorwatch which made it so enemies near the damage boosted target took some DoT was a really good step in the right direction. Again I'm so used to mercy's abilities by now that any slight change would be an inconvinience, but I do agree that change is required or else she will always feel like a russian roulette to play.

I'm fine with mercy's core design, but I wouldn't mind a bit more versatility to who I can target. The idea of a ramping beam sounds interesting - could work if you gave mercy a passive that let her see ally cds and swapped damage boost for a ramping adrenaline beam which accelerates cds like kitsune with the boost diminishing from 50% to 0% over the course of 3s. Have separate adrenaline gauges for each player for this so you're incentivized to keep moving around your team and refilling cds at the right time. Keeps the general playstyle the same while allowing for the opportunity to save someone from their cd-less impending doom, or open up the ability for someone with a life-saving cd that is on cd to make that play regardless. This also would facilitate in mercy's role as training wheels - since the passive would likely show the ability icons with a circle gauge surrounding it, the Mercy would learn what ability corresponds to what action, and learn what those abilities do incredibly quickly. Could even implement a bonus for valkyrie where mercy can see the cds of the enemies. Also acts as information obfuscation for the enemy team as tracking cds becomes nigh impossible for them to do. As for rez, I think Vengeance was on the right track tbh. What if instead of doing damage it booped enemies away from it at about 1.5x power to a lucio boop and gave your team a big regen over the course of a second, 150hp sounds like a nice sweet spot. Instead of resurrecting people, you fulfill the dying wishes of heroes to save people. Heroes die physically, but not in legacy. Would honestly be way more useful than rez at this point since 90% of the time if you try and use rez during a teamfight it just results in someone else dying, maybe even multiple, because of your absence. Keep the soul destruction aspect though since that adds a bit of risk for the mercy herself as she loses 1 GA target in using Dying Wish. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. It popped in my head while I was watching the kiriko video.

First, i just wanna say that i liked this video, i need to preface this because i might sound a little rude and half of that is unintentional. First id like to discuss your comments on mercys super jump tech from overwatch 1: The reason for its changes is because it was extremely hard to do on console, and since a lot of people play console, it makes sense to make it so everyone can have the same powerful ability. Riding off the last point, another reason for its changes was for people with disabilities, many people used mercy since they were disabled and the auto lock on made it way more comfortable to play, personally when i play characters that are high aiming intensive i get a really bad headache because my eyes dont focus like they should. The change was made for the mercy communitys disabled community, and i feel like this information is quite easy to figure out so i dont know how you missed over that part. Now, the damage ramp up: I like the idea, i really do, but since you dont play mercy that much i can see how her beam being a part of her movment tech slipped your mind. You say you want her to focus on movement to play into her here fantasy of bouncing around to help her teamates and assist them, but with both beams having the ramp up mechanic it would make her almost useless since mercy often holds beam onto her teamates while not looking at them since mercys job is to know where everyone is. Also, damage boost doesnt need anything added onto it, reload speed messes with peoples muscle memory and can mess people up, thats why the dps passive was changes, having that all the time with mercys damage boost would be awful. One of the few things i agree with in this video is scrapping rez: To keep it quick, rez is an awful ability for overwatch as a whole since the game is so tank dependent, no matter how bad tank may seem, they can soak up more damage than a dps, which i dont think should be their only job but this is where we're at. Rez feels awful for everyone else and mercy too, since she needs to be moving to stay alive, her movement being crippled while a big glowing light shows her head hitbox doesnt do her any favors. Rez needs to go, mercy needs a way to play into her movment more, it might sound selfish, but i personally think her throwing a spear to lodge itself into a wall that mercy can fly to would be amazing. It would give her a way to move around without needing to be dragged on a leash by her dps. Now, i do want to talk about her ga cooldown. It may seem like its only 1.5 seconds but that ability lock out window pushes it to 2.5, which while small, has a lot of impact on her gamplay since she cant fly to people behind walls since her beam disconnect time is the same as her cooldown for ga, removing a tech. Flying to a soul with ga to rez someone leaves you there since youre still on cooldown, meaning youre gonna have to die or whip out your pistol and start shooting. And i really would have loved to see a section on how many bugs this girl has, every single one of her abilities are broken and barley work half of the time, and thats not me exaggerating, i promise. Overall, i did like the video, i just dont agree witht he changes you would have wanted since it goes against her being easy to play. Her abilities are made to have no real downside to them, within reason. Healing is just healing and with sympathetic recovery it gives her a way to heal herself, damage boost is just damage boost, guardian angel lets you fly to your teammate (if it wants to) and her gun is just a gun, simple, easy, with the outlier being rez but you already know my stance on that. Adding the gradual reduction in healing would punish you from trying to heal high Hp heros, such as tanks, which defeats the purpose of you wanting to make her not a pocket healer since, with the dps passive she wouldnt be able to outheal any piece of damage hitting the tank. New mercy playes heal a lot more than damage boost, so your punishing new players for being new to the game in a game that, right now, needs healing and utility to be consistent Oh, i think the ability idea is cool though, it would fit mercy nicely

The only thing I can compare mercy to is the medic from tf2. At their core, both of them are enablers. The difference between the 2 is that mercy is annoying. This doesn't mean mercy is broken as OP (not all the time) But her kit is extremely annoying. She can zip around like an annoying mosquito healing their team and if you get a good pick on the enemy team, more often than not mercy presses one button and your cooldowns and positioning you used to get the pick get negated just because mercy pressed a single button. Medic on the other hand, feels fair. He is grounded so no mobility bs, he has to position just as good as the person he is healing at the moment. Uber charge which is essentially his ultimate, rewards you for staying alive and healing your team by making you and a teammate invinsible for period of time. When you diff someone as mercy everyone goes "bruh you got carried by your hero, mercy is so braindead" But if you diff someone as medic then more often than not you get told you're pretty good.

I don't want Mercy's movement to be reverted to OW1. Her OW2 movement is much more dynamic and allows for more plays (like being able to super-jump at any time, whereas in OW1 you could only super-jump after reaching the end of your flight). I also spent 300 hours perfectioning it and for all of my skill to suddenly get erased in a single patch would feel horrible. The only change I'd do to guardian angel is allow the ability to be manually cancelled again like in the first 2 seasons of OW2. So no more double cooldown, just a constant 1.5 second cooldown. If her survivability is too high after this change, they should either lower her healthpool to 225 HP or nerf her healing passive to compensate. As for her Staff, I think they should change damage boost to be like in Mirrorwatch, maybe a nerfed version of it if necessary. It felt very nice. I don't want to add a timer to damage boost because in some cases you don't have anyone else to pocket (for example: your team is running tracer soldier. You obviously want to stay with soldier because you'll die if you pocket a tracer). Giving it a kitsune rush effect would also feel horrible for the pocketed person as it can mess up your aim and it's out of your control. Pocketing is part of Mercy's identity and it's fine as long as it's not too oppressive (ex: one shot Mercy Ashe was horrible) Rez is a very unbalanced ability and I understand the frustration behind, but it's just so satisfying to pull off those risky rezzes that I can't let go of it. It has the issue of being impossible to stop in low ranks and impossible to pull off in high ranks. Either keep it as is or integrate it into Valkyrie and give her a new ability that's healthy & is used way more often. "During Valkyrie press Q again to resurrect one fallen ally" Her healing is horrible but we can't make it too OP because then pocketing will become OP. They should give her a burst healing ability on a cooldown binded on the R (reload) button. "Mercy overloads her Caduceus Staff, providing increased Healing & DMG boost for a period of time" Her Valkyrie is fine and I love it as an Ultimate. I don't think it needs to be changed, it's okay for Ultimates to be niche when they make the hero 10 times more fun to play. (I love Valk movement). At the very most I'd buff the healing output during it.

Been Playing Mercy since 2017 and one thing I’ve always found relevant to her play style and undervalued is her ability to cool down and ult track. Since her mechanics (outside of her movement) are super ez, it’s kinda her job to keep track of what resources are the enemy has and, w dmg boost you can also boost how fast x teammates ult goes on effect. I like where Mercy is atm for the most part except for the knock to her skill ceiling due to the mobility changes (most mercy’s HATED the changes in ow2) and how annoying the changes to dmg boost are. Originally it was a pretty important part of her kit. You’d want to maximize blue beam as much as possible. I think a cool change id like to see for dmg boost is knock of the damage amp and have it give like a 15% increase to ult charge gain and the ally also gains temporary hit points maxing out at 75? (Idk) depending on how much damage they do. That way she’s also encouraged to peel for her second support and the other dps. I wouldn’t necessarily remove the movement changes. It sucks her skill ceiling was lowered but removing would be a huge nerf for a character that isn’t insane atm (maybe Kiriko should receive that treatment first) but idk that’s just a suggestion.

your channel is so underrated man, i know it's not on topic with the video but been loving your overwatch grind!!! keep it up. excited to watch this one!

She almost needs a complete character rework. It makes me sad that she is so hated and unplayable

There is still a difference to Mercy players' movement from rank to rank. The key one being : low rank Mercys superjump a lot, a lot more than they need and enough that they get punished for it. Superjump once was a semi difficult tech but, now, slingshot has taken its place as the more difficult tech. I think you're coming at it the wrong way, honestly. I don't want Mercy to be unshootable either, but I think the argument that the skill ceiling has lowered isn't accurate. The skill ceiling has increased infinitely with the implementation of slingshot techs and I think that's really good, it's the reason I play her. Superjump being reverted to it's OW1 state wouldn't bother me much, personally but her slingshot kit should remain the same. As a Mercy player, I don't care what her beam does much, I just want to fly around more than I currently do. As it stands, the most valuable way for me to play is hiding behind a wall or standing still next to my DPS, that's boring. Pharmacy is fun but I always feel kinda guilty. My favourite playstyle is triage, like in the patch with crit healing ; that was a Mercy parkour enthusiast's dream! It's a shame they decided to completely revert that patch, I think they were onto something. The crit heals were outrageous and I don't want these to be back, but ideas like the one you suggested (first seconds of yellow beams having increased healing) are interesting and hold potential. I think the devs ought to look at Mercy this way more, I think there's a good chance they will because of how dire a state she currently is in, but also because I've gained more faith in the team lately. On rez : ideas of making (single target) rez her fast charging ult and reworking valk into an ability somehow have been floating around. I think that's neat and I think that could answer her current healing issue. Currently to bring any value to my team I need to be a blue beam machine, healing is fruitless and only provides little time before death unless I'm being assisted by a high healing co support. Most games I win as Mercy are 3k dmg boost/10min because that's the only way she works in this meta. Last point, I love playing Mercy for her movement but there's also great satisfaction to feeling like you're outplaying people by just knowing your stuff. When I play Mercy, I have to think much harder than when I play any other support (except maybe Ana, but I don't play her much at all) because I can focus on strategy, positioning, ult tracking and triage (in healing or dmg boost). Learning Mercy's kit and dmg boost efficiency stuff has taught me so much about the game, about how the game is played and has allowed me to become a better player at every role. People say Mercy's easy or that playing her takes no skill, and while, obviously I agree to an extent (pocketing Ashe being one of the easiest ways to get value in OW), I also think a lot of nuance is lost in this take. Mercy can be incredibly mechannically intensive, just watch a Top500 Mercy contest a point in OT or escaping Sombra-Tracer ; there is indubitable skill in that. Skiesti and Niandra showcase that often in background gameplay of their videos/streams. That mechanically intensive playstyle is the one I want Mercy to be always efficient at, currently playing like that is only useful for escapes, OT or fast paced games ; that's sad. I genuinely think everyone would be happier if Mercy's ideal playstyle shifted to triage again. Interestingly, it's important to underline that when a Mercy is being dove, it's highly likely she has GA available because she was most likely idle and dmg boosting, if her playstyle returned to triage she'd be more easily punished regardless of the fact that she's hypermobile. I think that would be good for everyone and make the game healthier. Anyway, that's my take on her as a Mercy connoisseur, she's the reason I stuck to Overwatch through dry patches and Blizzard being Blizzard, she's the reason I got gud and she's the reason I come back to the game everyday. If I'm tired of the shenanigans, I know I can just load into a Mercy Parkour and spend a good chunk of time enjoying myself. If she lost her mobility, I'd probably stop playing her and stick to Echo/Tracer but I think that would be a loss, not only for me but for the game as a whole. Mercy has so much potential and I think the devs just need to try to give her something new, they need to try something other than dmg boost, they need to think of a way to make rez less frustrating, they just need to rework her! Sorry for the rant lol. I've been following you since the Sombra vid and I really like what you do. Be careful though, you're uploading fast and a bunch, I know it can get taxing. Regardless, love your content and hope you're well, take care!

This launches on my bday! Thanks bro 🎉🎉🎉🎉

rez is such a core part of Mercy atp that I dont think it should be removed. also, rez is NOT as strong as some people think.

I've grown to respect mercy as a character more and more over the years, initially one of the only things people ever said about her was how little skill it took to play her but I honestly think the mercies who succeed in the higher ranks nowadays are some of the most skilled players. The true skill of mercy is being slippery and unkillable and some people have absolutely mastered this to be infuriating to fight against.

hearing the "FIND THE FUCKING MERCY" is sending me WAYYYY back lmao great video

15:28 very excited for the genji video where you talk about his super jump that was patched out

NEW RORY VIDEO LETS GOOOOOO

I've gotta disagree about the GA changes between OW and OW2. The old super jump was nice to be able to pull off but it was super inconsistent because it was a bug and not an intended mechanic and even if you could do it, it didn't really help that often because it was still very situational. The new GA gives the player so much more agency with the slingshot because you have way more control over the character and is an increase in skill expression not a "dumbing down", increasing the GA is what lowers the skill ceiling.

your ideas sound cool but i’d like to add some thoughts mercy bouncing around and keeping the team cannot occur when let’s say, your tank is under high amounts of pressure. the healing/dmg boost ramp down would make it nearly impossible to support a focused target, making the balance incredibly hard on the mercy and the other support to keep an ally who’s been targeted by a coordinated enemy team. she would would only thrive against uncoordinated gameplay, which is more common in lower elo. it would make her extremely vulnerable alongside with the 25% sympathetic recovery that you suggested as dps passive would make it 5%. my suggestion and this can be seen somewhat OP is make dmg boost the primary beam that experiences ramp down from 25% to 10% across the 3 seconds after 2 seconds of initial use. it would reward mercy players with high game sense to boost critical abilities like dynamite, firestrike, nade, etc etc. however this also runs into issues like “default beam mode” bcuz mercy usually has a default beam and usually it’s dmg boost. you could just heal beam the entire time then flick to dmg boost, but it would ruin stuff such as timing and let’s say whenever someone has an ability across multiple times such as firestrike and u want to boost both. not only that but the "default beam mode" came from that every support had something theyre defaulting to when theres a skirmish rather a fight. for majority, its dmg. for mercy, it was dmg boost. idk something to just keep in mind now for the OLD GA, i don’t like the new one as much as the next and this is coming from a mercy main, but i don’t know if their engine and coding would allow the bug to occur in OW2. they could implement the tech by itself but idk how complicated that'd be. now for my last change im suggesting - make mercy ignore the dps passive. if we make her ignore it, itd be much more viable for her to be the guardian angel bouncing around healing everyone. that way as well, she can have the nerfed passive for 25%.

I find the “Mercy hit Q guys” argument very misinformed. I have played OW since Beta, and before Mercy had invincibility on mass Rez, her ult was consistently joked/mocked. The “Heroes never-AUGHH” joke came from the fact that Mercy would usually die before her team could move again. Rez is MEANT to be a strong ability and mainly works as an ult. You also had to build it up and use it wisely. I also find it odd how multiple DPS can hide/wait to “press Q” and get 3+ players and that is intended, but if Mercy can Rez a team with an ult she has to build, it’s unfair. You also should NOT be using every ult all at once, and even if you do, if you get everybody BUT the support, I feel like that’s on you, especially with how many flankers we have in OW now 😭 Rez on ult has always had counter balance and I think could absolutely work again as an ult.

I think a partial removal of Rez should be the direction to go with her. During her base form, she should have a new ability in place of rez (whatever that may be) on a reasonable cooldown, so she actually gets to use it. For Valk that new ability should be replaced with Rez during the ultimate, and in return reduce the duration of Valk, but also decrease the cost.

here during the livestream, your vids go hard and they are perfect to watch while eating

How do u Only have 4k?!?! Your videos are sooooo good!!!!! You deserve way more man ♡♡♡ cant wait to watch u blow up♡♡♡♡

Okay so I'm a Mercy main, I started playing her back at the start of OW1 even tho I don't play her a lot these days and the big reason for it is the fact that she was the best support for healing at the time. Even if Ana came out shortly and outdid her in healing and utility, imo Mercy was still a better pick due to her ability to quickly move and not die to flankers, which is a popular comp to this day. And I gotta be honest, I was always biased towards ultimate resurrect. I absolutely hate Valk because of its uninspired design, being only amplifying Mercy's stats rather than actually being this uniquely designed ability. Resurrect was amazing because it fit her lore as someone who saved Genji's live (and at the time Reaper's) and brought him back from the dead. It also brings the fact that at the time, Valk wasn't a very good ability, sure you can fly, but that just makes hitscans gun you down easier, the healing wasn't that good and if you want to pop an ult to save your teammates, then you're better off with Zen or Lucio. Right now, Mercy's valk is good for her team damage boost, but back when Valk was added this wasn't the case, considering it was just a worse version of Orisa's ult (Orisa dmg boost did 50%, while Mercy's did 30%). It might be cause I'm biased for resurrect, being such a unique ability. Personally I would've preferred if they reworked resurrect as an ultimate, maybe cap it at one/two resurrect but give it a faster charge time (like Tracer's pulse bomb), or just a quality of live update (give it a cast time so enemies can stun it, making 5 man rez more risky, or just add line of sight restrictions, considering she was able to resurrect everyone behind the wall, from the spawn even on certain points). Back in the old OW pro play days, it was already extremely easy to counter Mercy and pro players relied on "Tempo Rez", which was using an ultimate when two or three teammates died to keep the fight going on for longer so its not like it was OP in high rank play. Hence why the Moth Meta Mercy was so OP, they tried to make up for the fact she wasn't good in high rank. Back in the day I saw a lot of people suggesting that resurrect should be resource based similar to Torbjorn's old pack armor ability, where she'd start with 0 charges, and need to build it up by contributing to the team. But alas, I also understand that in OW2, they kinda fixed a lot of her issues by removing one tank. Her single target resurrect ability became a lot more valuable of an ability considering you have one less teammate, and her small heal output is so much better with less tanks to heal, and Valk finally has something unique with Orisa's supercharger being gone from the game. Mass rez could never work in Overwatch 2 and I don't think that's necessarily bad. But she def needs a mini rework similar to Wrecking Ball's.

gerrup the rory fella another great vid well done!

10:15 - The best form of counter play should be to kill the mercy yeah. In what world does that make it bad character design? They literally copied her kit from TF2, and in all competitive settings in that game trading your life for the enemy medic was a winning play. If there are no opportunities to do so, that's a map issue.

Love the vid Day 2

A cool aspect of the ramp up on her heal/boost idea is that it would translate to the visuals really well I could see the beam getting a stronger glow and fading over time or the opening spinning part of her staff speeding up or focusing kind of like doomfist with his empowered punch, being able to see what abilities you have ready without needing the HUD is peak design

For the 'rework' you suggested I think during Valk the Damage Reduction could be replaced with a single charge of resurrect or something.

i thought about maybe having the healing beam the same but change the damage beam to a short duration ability where you damage boost an ally for like 3 seconds or something. this can be done while still healing. that or you have to charge up the usage like moiras healing. something that makes it more strategic to use.

Good video that highlights why I fell out of love with playing this character over time. When in a state where you have to actually heal, she's genuinely really fun and engaging with having to manage her movement, keeping tabs on your entire team and using as much damage boost as possible without being a blue beam bot. When in a state that focuses on damage boost, you're stuck blue beaming your DPS 90% of the game. You're conjoined to another player being both the reason their damage thresholds are unreasonably low aswell as their 2nd life, rather than your own character. It's such a waste of a really fun and expressive kit, honestly

I'm sorry, but you really can't remove Ress from her. That's like removing Turrets from Torbjorn. It would make far more sense to make it an Ultimate again, but only Ress 1 ally and have a low cost like Tracer's bomb. The problem with Mass Ress was that it could cancel a good play from the other team (which TBH is bullshit because no one complains if a Junk/Reaper/Phara gets a 5-Man Ult, but supports aren't allowed I guess...). A tempo-Ress can be very valuable to prevent the domino effect a 4v5 has in a teamfight, so it wouldn't be such a downgrade, especially with a lower cost allowing you to have it up more frequently. In turn, Valk could become a 5-second Buff for AoE Healing/DMG.

Enjoyed this video! Would just want to say that I'd suggest lowering the volume of the background music, as I was listening to this video I found it a little bit hard at times to focus entirely on what you were saying due to the volume of it.

The fact you can use new GA mid-air and at any distance from target, those two things alone make the new GA infinitely more versatile than it ever was

Yesterday I had a Kiriko ask me to heal more. Why? Was their heal button broken? No, they just wanted to be a TikTok Kiriko DPS (Which they weren't even good at). As a hardcore Mercy main, I've been frustrated with how she is being handled, cause the devs always seem to remove or nerf her skill expression. It feels awful! With the DPS passive she is so bad too... Her kit needs something, but as to what that is I'm not sure.

In my rework i would take inspiration from the mirrorwatch event, because i really liked what they did to blue beam. It does have issues like not being useful at long ranges, but i think directly dealing damage to enemies near the damage boosted target is a lot healthier than damage boost itself. I would remove the dmg boost completely and just substitute it with that damage over time to nearby enemies. For the next change i would put Valkyrie on E, because i like how it allows for a further reach of your staff and GA, but it seems a little too simple to be an ultimate. You would obvoiusly need to re-balance it around it being on a shorter lets say 8-10 second cooldown. It would chain only upto 2 people andit would have lets say 3-4 second duration. Even though rez is a controversial part of her kit, it is also really important for her. It gives a champion who heavily relies on their teammates an ability to undo any mistake they make allowing them to also have a say in how the teamfight ends. So i would put rez back on an ultimate as it used to be, but now its still only single target. It would also have a lower cast time. Lets say around 1 second, but it would allow you to build up 2 charges of your ultimate. This is just my opinion and in the end i also dont even want the OW2 team to rework her as they dont have a clue how to design proper fun champs that arent DPS. I just fear that them reworking her would make her clunky and basically unplayable.

I'm a support flex that specializes in Mercy and I gotta say I love all the ideas presented. The best one to me is the initial boost of healing then decrease over time. I find that I'm simply unable to keep other players up anymore even with Valk heals, so that boost would be fantastic for healing a low tank who doesn't know what the words "back up" mean.

Ngl mercy on console is a nightmare for people to deal with

Ive been waiting for this one Tyy🫶

Great vid!

personally wouldn't agree with pharah relying more on mercy after her rework, she's the same type of character as Genji and such now, too risky for a mercy to pocket while you're flanking.

i hate these videos bc theyre so good and make me want to return to this game and i really dont want to 😭😭 amazing music choices, editing, and gameplay, especially those pharah shots oml 🙏😭

my changes without increasing her base healing- fix GA to not make it clunky and make it more smooth like in ow1 and reduce the cooldown time for GA cancel from 1s to 0.75 and if she touchs the ground 1s after using it then the cooldown of ga goes from 1.5 to 1, for when you accidentally mess up your ga

I do not understand the tech issue. If the super jump tech wasn't hard to get the hang of, why can't it just be an intentional feature? I don't think complexity is a good thing in every situation, especially if said complexity isn't hard to get the full value of. This is a big reason I don't like games with bunnyhopping. It's not hard. It looks kinda stupid. I could accept it if it aligns with the "spirit" of what it's featured in, but in the majority of situations I don't see the purpose, it's usually just a pointless extra step to running. Just make the movement speed a little faster to compensate. While I admit I don't play her, Mercy doesn't strike me as a mechanically complex hero, so I don't really see why mechanical skill expression needs to be a part of her kit. Her skill ceiling comes more from _how_ you use her abilities rather than whether or not you pull them off properly.

how i would rework mercy as someone who has 200+ hours on her and played her during her big rez era (and played her though most of her eras) this is gonna be a long one btw :) : 1. remove rez completely and replace it with her mirror watch version of it but instead of exploding on teammates souls it rez them for 5-10 seconds after the time up they die and their spawn time resets to the normal 10 seconds (this way rez would feel more like a one chance to do something like ult, heal teammates from dying, or shield dmg for your team, etc while still losing a teammate ). 2. up her healing so she can be on bar with the top healers in the meta but also i feel like dmg boost can still be the same but instead of it being a beam have it be a quick burst of dmg boost to your team mate that last 15 seconds with it decreasing from 25% to 10% and it would be on a cool down of 10 seconds but you can't dmg boost the same person twice in 30-60 seconds ex: say a mercy boost ashe they cannot boost ashe again for 30-60 seconds. 3. i think valk is fine just have her be a little bit more faster during it because it feels like the first 5 seconds of valk is you trying to fly up SO SLOWLY. 4. i'm gonna mention my experience from playing on console and having to deal with GA without a bar or anything to really help you grasp how to do it properly during OW1 i remember it being so hard to do for no reason like if you missed a millisecond before you would hit B/O it would make you crouch and during a team fight you would be jumped so quickly if you missed it i think in it's current state in OW2 it's fine on console but i do wish they kept the speed of it as it was in OW1 it was so smooth and fast now it feels so slow and sometimes can put you in a position that you don't want to be in if OW1 GA and OW2 GA had a baby it would be perfect. i hope y'all enjoyed reading my essay

Mercy was only broken when Valk 1.0 was dropped. Ppl just hate her and her community to justify their sexist/homophobic actions

coming from League, the way you're describing mercy giving power to others feels very similar to Yuumi which in herself is very controversial. if i was to have an idea for mercy, its to change her damage boost to a burst of shield (say 20-30 shield). this would give her a more proactive playstyle in which she can block at least some dmg that is coming in, along with the movement it would make her playstyle more in line with how the high skill mercys)

you were in my quick play game just now! i was the sombra on your team

The meter on Mercy’s GA introduced a lot of new mivement possibilities, so I actually think it raised her skill ceiling even more. I mean, low rank players tend to abuse the superjump mechanic and dying because of it anyway

i think that rez should rez at 50% hp. mercy w reverted 200 hp but decreased ga cooldown would be fun. extra bouncy. I also feel like maybe dmg boost be a recourse meter. and the way she recharges it is healing allies that are under 50% hp. i dont know its a goofy idea

I kinda like to play Mercy now with the DPS passive. Since I cant outheal a lot of damage, it gives me a more dynamic gameplay in letting the player who is being shot and cant use cover die and try to help another player even the odds. It forces me to move more, to be a better bait, it's more fun to be able to use guardian angel more and be on the fight than to be on the back boosting someone. I secretly hope they take away ress someday and bring a more fun skill, I believe that she would still be valuable since her power doesn't relies on ress since a long time.

Personally I would prefer if guardian angel gave mercy flight similar to echo from mirror watch where you get a boost in the direction you are looking at

Something I think you could do to reduce pocketing is giving heal and damage boost an ammo pool and making her reload. Because then she shouldn't just hold the beam on a player all the time

As crazy as her old rez sounds for current day, it wasn’t seen as overpowered back then, and teams often wanted someone other than Mercy. In 6v6, it was common for her to bring a few people back only for another ult/ability to wipe them again (especially 2 tanks). So unless she got a really good ult she didn’t bring as much value to the team as other healers could. Pros were even resurrecting one person to avoid staggering instead of waiting for that infamous team rez because it was more value. Now she just has that on cooldown.

My suggestion for mercy is to steal from TF2 There is a mechanic in tf2 called “crit heals” where, in essence, the longer a target has gone without taking damage, the more healing you do. This would mean mercy can pocket someone, but it isn’t as efficient in healing per second as peeling to someone who just disengaged

The problem with super jump is it feels really clunky to play against because it's so varied and "random" from the attacker's perspective. Also, mercy is really the only character in the game who has tech like that. Any other tech is niche at best, or just gets removed (Winston super jump, literally anything genji could do).

the easiest way to fix dmg boost’s issues is just let mercy deal damage herself. Remove dmg boost and give her a rifle or better weapon. Then, nerf the movement so it isnt that op for her to kill people with. it’ll also fix the issue of relying on team mates and having to pocket them with dmg boost

i've had similar ideas as to how to rework mercy bc i also think she's healthiest when bouncing around from target to target, but i went about it from the other side my idea was to make it so healing or damage boosting a target for a full second applied a 'lingering support' status that would passively give them a fraction of the staff's effects for a few seconds. for instance, healing a target for 1 second would apply a 30HPS passive heal to the target for 5 seconds, and then that target would be unable to obtain that passive again for 10 more seconds, encouraging her to bounce from ally to ally to make sure they all had this status on them as much as possible (might need to look at sympathetic recovery's interaction with the status and reduce that.) 1 second of damage boost would apply a similar status but only a 10% damage buff that importantly *would not stack with the beam*... dont want to ruin breakpoints again. GA i think is great as-is (though i similarly hate trying to hit her while she's GA-ing. maybe the cooldown could be increased but applying either of the new staff statuses would instantly reset it?) i dont love res but i think if the range was reduced and it required active LOS it wouldn't be so bad.

I didn't mind the mass rez when I started overwatch except when it made the mercy invulnerable while casting, I would see mercy going for rez and get her to 10hp and then couldn't kill and entire team would be rezd on top of me, if she didn't go invulnerable then I could have got kill off and won the game so felt bad

One thing about the dmg reduction beam is that the dmg reduction is capped on 50%, so using it on smth like orisa the dmg reduction would stay 50%, same happens with nano as welll. So a dmg reduction beam could also work, tho, you other ideas are also cool tbh

As someone who hasn't played much mercy, I liked the 'battle mercy' changes they did in this years April Fools update. My biggest issue playing against Mercy is the dmg boost making all sorts of characters hit frustrating break points. But in the April fools update they removed dmg boost and replaced it with a blaster that could be used while heal beaming, albeit at a reduced rate of fire. It really made mercy more fun for me to put out little plinks while healing team, didn't really feel op, and got rid of my biggest issue, the dmg boost beam. Also the one Mercy patch I did experience with the 'faster heal below 50% hp' was incredibly annoying. Killing the mercy flying around was already hard, but that change made it to where her healing target also was unkillable unless you had massive burst dmg. I was very glad they reverted that change.

Honestly, I think attaching the healing and damage boost increase to GA is not a bad idea with a quick reduction of benefits per second. This encourages the bouncing strat. The res (it's core to her character) I wouldn't completely eliminate it, having her secondary ability be a quick target damage reduction allows her to keep 2 characters alive, healing one enough to stay alive, dr the other, then get there to heal them.i would then convert that to a change in the secondary ability to when Valk I activated it turns into rez on a 10 sec cd (awarding maybe 2 rezes), and current healing, and dmg boost on the aoe effect in valk

i LOVE the idea of mercy's beam doing extra healing for the first few secs as it actively punishes pocketing (which most mercy mains aren't a fan of anyway) and as for dmg boost. i think my main thing is changing it to provide utility for characters who aren't dps, like while some tanks with good dmg can benefit from it, some tanks like rein and other supports benefit from dmg boost way less, i prefer the idea of a mini kitsune rush, just toned down, like the atk and reload speed could be beneficial to most supports and tanks while still being beneficial to dps, and accompanying this with some other small thing like a weaker lucio speed boost, or even a small cd reduction could make mercy's beam an impactful ability for all allies, not just dps, anywho im a fan of the other changes proposed. sincerely, an ex mercy main turned lucio due to her being poop this season 😞

Everytime he posts it makes my week lol

Every damn time! I keep forgetting you use Studiopolis as background music. Its my phone ringtone for so long now...

I applaud your use of the word deffenistrated. Very classy

The change they gave her for this year's April fools patch was my favorite. Getting rid of damage boost entirely is what I want to see, maybe give her some kind of manual damage pulse to her healing target might be cool.

Honestly Mercy is so fun with her movement. Get rid of everything and give her the old cooldown and you can do whatever you want. As long as she has healing beam and her movement. I feel rez is such a big part of her kit. I wanna keep it but I think it's such a hard to balance ability. Making it a longer rez animation or even making the person that's rezed not unkillable might help. Not too sure but I think it's such a big part to her identity.

I like mercy simply for her movement and being able to escape dps who give me a hard time on other characters. I also found it weird that they were trying to change certain parts of her kit that didn’t really need to be touched or were overbuffed or just simply implemented into her kit period. I played her since 2018 and she mainly why I’m a high rank masters to low gm player.The only thing to me that she needs to be changed on is dmg boost and her heal. She can heal 60 since this anti heal is a thing now and healing with her is a struggle and nerf dmg boost to 20% to not allow characters like Ashe or sojourn to be able to 1v5 without issue. I also hated the game changes but that’s because I can die from a genji due to the 1 sec delay after ga instead of being able to cancel it BUT THATS JUST ME 😂😂😂.Overall,the video itself I agree with and would love for you to do more videos in the future.

My biggest gripe is Blizzard saying one thing about Mercy, and then not commiting or just straight up messing it up. If they want a pocket bot, even if you hate pocketing, she should actually be focused on it, with damage beam being stronger than heal beam, and it just isn't. Nerf heal, boost damage beam, and at least then it shows commitment to what has been said. The other thing is the 'slow down'. If they want Mercy to be vulnerable while rezzing, then have that be the actual case. Why the fudge is F16 jet fighter Mercy rezzes a thing, if they want her vulnerable while rezzing? Fix it Blizzard.

What about giving her the Mirrorwatch damage beam? It would encourage her to go in and play risky. You wouldn't be dealing any damage yourself if you're up in the skybox.

mercy mains eating good with this one!! 🗣🗣

as a mercy main, i disagree with the stance on current GA- if anything , adding the tech officially in her kit was long overdue and it made her tech (for it is still tech, even if "built-in") just more consistent for it's no longer a bug, because that's what it was--a bug. OW2 mercy still have GA tech you have to learn and that can be very evident watching new mercy and mercys who've been playing the hero since OW1. Like for instance, you cannot just spam super jump, or slingshot GAs, that would put a 1 second cool down before your actual cool down for that ability (1.5 seconds) actually start up. on top of, you can still superjump rez and still fuck it up even with superjump being built in, along w/ you can still prop jump, which is a skill in of itself. To me, mercy movement is still just as fun as the first, it just now you can no longer blame the bug when you fuck up, because it's definitely you that's fuckin up now ☠️

This is just an idea. What if reduce the healing and damage boost but have them fill up a boost meter (similar to lucio ramp but needs to be filled up). The boost can then be activated and allow them to use both parts of their beam for 3 seconds or something. Idk just a thought.

As a mercy main, I agree with a lot of what you say, but disagree with some. In my opinion, the most fun playstyle is flying around like a maniac, keeping the entire team alive, exactly like you mention! Having agency to protect and keep as many people safe while dynamically dodging the opponents fire, it feels amazing. Right now, though, it feels like that's only possible during an ult, and otherwise, you're forced to pocket the rest of the time. The one thing I disagree about is the "elimination of her skill expression" with current guardian angel. Having the super jump introduced to the base kit, along with a visual indicator with the meter, and even more directions to move in, it feels liberating and gives a bit of freedom put of ult. More often than not, I use it to ping pong off a teamate to one that needs assistance but is out of range. Having it be base kit allows so many more mercys to express themselves with dodging, weaving, focusing support, and more. The most interesting thing though, is thay you don't *need* to super jump. Letting go (or repressing if you have it set to toggle) will cancel the GA, refunding more of the cooldown than a super jump as well as giving you control of how far you want to move. The best Mercys in the modern era use a fluid mix of canceled GAs and super jumps, keeping the enemy guessing. The problem, is that it doesn't refund enough of the cooldown at the moment, leading to extremely punishing opportunities if you cancel too early. Honestly, I quite like that, but I wish that vulnerability was transfered to super jump. But that's besides the point. As a mercy main, I love bouncing between teamates, keeping everyone alive. Mixing in jumps and cancels. And I think introducing it to her base kit was an amazing decision. Right now though, she feels very limiting, because the most optimal playstyle is to hide behind a wall and make sure your dps stays up. Why keep everyone alive when you can let two teamates die, but have your pocket clean up? Especially with the dps passive being on most of your teamates, so keeping everyone up with heals is less reliable than damage boost to kill the opponents. That's why I love your idea of ramping heals. Having a burst of healing to each player one at a time would counteract the dps passive and highly discurage pocketing! It's an idea I've had myself too. Damage boost, though, I don't know if giving it the same treatment would be a good idea. If this burst style is given to both beams, it might incentivise non-stop beam switching rather than using the right beam at the right time. Risk vs reward. I'm biased, but I don't enjoy damage boost at all, and would be okay seeing it go if it meant having a more impactful or utility based second ability. I'd keep guardian angel the same, but tweak numbers significantly. From an opponents standpoint, it feels like the super jump is a bit too fast, but I don't want to slow it down too much, or that would make mercy too vulnerable. I definitely believe that a canceled GA should have a much shorter cooldown, incentivising staying closer to the team while still having the option to bounce off them to other teamates. But for a rework of the third ability, I'm genuinely not too sure. I don't like a damage reduction based ability. It feels very snowbally and would might make pocketing one person more viable. Perhaps the cooldown could have a third refunded when used on a different teamate that the last? I genuinely like res a lot. It feels so nice to bring someone back, but it can definitely feel too impactful. Honestly, if res brought back a teamate at half health, I feel that would be significantly more balanced as it dissentivises the swing nature of a res in the middle of a fight, and the teamate would need support afterwards. I'd love to give it some utility beyond that, but I'm still not sure. Let me know your thoughts?

4:10 hey just wanted to let you know your description isn't quite accurate-she couldn't rez people who died by falling off the map, it was just if they died while they were over a pit, their soul wouldn't fall. but i don't blame you, i thought that was what it was at the time and it just sticks out to me becuase they worded it so poorly everyone thought that.

Personally I've always advocated for Mercy damage boost to become a Kitsune boost ever since kiriko got added. Both of them achieve very similar things in practice, increasing the dps of the target, but Kitsune does it better in two aspects. First is the hero fantasy. Mercy is designed as a pacifist, a hero that wants to meaningfully contribute without doing harm herself , that's the whole premise of her kit and imo, a fire rate increase is much better at "not dealing damage directly" than a damage boost. Not only that but it gives a much better feedback of the boost being applied, both to mercy feeling the faster tick and the pocketed target. Most importantly it allows for a better tuning while making the hero less frustrating to deal with. The problem with damage boost is that it creates instances where you just explode after having taken 20 damage because an Ashe saw you. It disproportionately benefits burst damage and make them frustrating if not impossible to deal with on your own. Buffing the rate of fire benefits every hero more or less equally and gives the player a chance to react to the pocketed dps without removing the threat. It also just allows for the ability to be stronger in effect than damage boost without being as frustrating. I also like the healing decreasing but I find this change less integral to what needs to happen to the hero and more a natural quality of life change. I also think that overwatch still need a heavy tuning of the healing mechanic even after the dps passive, I still wish healing was more something that was a faster regen out of the fight and a small change to breakpoints during the fight and not a pseudo invincibility when you are not being shot at by the two enemy dps

I wish i had a time machine so I could go back and watch myself play through these dark ages of early OW

making the healing beam ramp down kinda puts a lot more emphasis on triage healing playstyles which does kinda cut down on pocketing a bit which is nice but you should put something like a healing rate recovery thing per character like zen's discord without outright disabling heals so getting the max heal rate on a character would rely on you only healing them when necessary (e.g. healing an ashe for 3 seconds leads you to heal at a reduced rate until you stop healing them for around 5 seconds at which point you get to heal them for max healing again) maybe discouraging pocket damage boosting would be placing the damage beam on a resource that depletes it for the amount of added damage that is dealt (so maybe boosting 5 blade attacks/widow headshots would deplete the whole thing) and the beam is unusable or only boosts damage up to the resource that is available and you regen it either slowly over time or from healing, maybe healing to encourage a more proactive mercy and more specific uses of damage boost valk reducing the ramp down rate on healing is a good idea in this scenario and probably with the damage boost idea valk would just give passive damage boost resource regeneration so you can more constantly damage boost allies for the duration unless you're boosting literally everyone doing damage at the same time

I just want them to stop changing her. Just let me play the fucking character.

20:00 i would agree except in low gold to silver on console, ie. The definition of no skilled, i saw pretty much every mercy be able to perform super jump. So, the skill was always in how you utilize it than the mechanical check to perform the tech. Which means that not as much skill was lost by making it a base kit. Was it necessary? Probably not, but did it remove all the skill from the tech? Also no.

What song did you use for your outro

OW 1 release mercy was equal parts amazing and horrible because back then I remember you'd genuinely get Mercy players who would just not engage in team fights and hide if their ult was up because they could secure easy POTGs by waiting for their teams to die and then rushing in for the five man rez. The best example of this I can remember was when I was on a team that got absolutely rolled in a teamfight (because Mercy had their thumb up their ass waiting for us to lose, and I was still an inexperienced dumbass) and our mercy would pop out and rez us all, we'd then naturally slaughter the other team because we had the health and cooldown advantage only for THEIR mercy to come out of hiding to do the same thing.

every time you use sonic BGM it amazes me as a sonic fan good watch :sits: ❤