Why Mercy Is A Problem (For Everyone)

Summary

Spilo discusses the complex relationship between Overwatch players and the hero Mercy, highlighting both the love and the controversy surrounding her. Mercy is both cherished and hated for her unique ability set, which includes healing and damage-boosting capabilities, as well as her highly mobile playstyle. However, issues like the current meta resulting in her being frequently banned, the simplicity of her kit, and the lack of transferable skills for players are central points of discussion. Multiple experts join Spilo in an open conversation about potential reworks that could balance Mercy's utility and improve the game experience for both Mercy players and their opponents.

Highlights

• Mercy stands as the most controversial Overwatch hero due to her duality in love and hate ❤️‍🔥.
• Many players are unhappy with Mercy's current simplicity and want more skill expression in her kit 🎮.
• Discussions around potential Mercy reworks focus on adding risk and skill to her abilities 🔧.
• Mercy's current meta issues include frequent bans due to her being low-skill and her pocket playstyle 👎.
• A balance is needed to make Mercy enjoyable for both those who play her and those who face her 🕹️.

Key Takeaways

• Mercy is the most controversial hero in Overwatch, loved and hated by many 😅.
• Her current kit's simplicity and lack of skill transferability are issues 😬.
• Spilo and guests discuss rework options to make Mercy more dynamic ⚙️.
• Risks and rewards need to be reintroduced to Mercy's gameplay 🔄.
• There's a community split between current love and needed changes for Mercy 💔.

Overview

Spilo dives into the debate surrounding Mercy, a central figure in Overwatch's history for her divisive abilities and playstyle. Mercy, with her healing, damage boosts, and mobility, is adored by many but also criticized for her simplicity and perceived low skill ceiling. This duality has sparked passionate discussions among the community and developers alike.

Throughout the session, Spilo and several Overwatch experts explore what makes Mercy both beloved and problematic. They discuss how her kit, while accessible, lacks depth and transferable skills, making it less appealing at higher competitive levels. The challenge is to find a rework that satisfies both her devoted players and those who are frustrated by her current iteration.

The conversation culminates in a call for a nuanced rework that emphasizes risk and skill while maintaining Mercy's core appeal. This potential rework envisions a Mercy who is more engaging to play and face, ultimately aiming to improve the Overwatch experience for everyone involved.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Most Hated Hero in Overwatch History The chapter explores the question of who is the most hated hero in Overwatch history. It suggests that while heroes like Road Hawk, Sombra, and Widowmaker may come to mind, the most controversial hero by far is Mercy. The discussion touches on the deep divide within the community regarding Mercy, who is both loved and hated by players. This is framed in the context of the game's evolution, including the introduction of hero bands, which prevent some players from using their main heroes competitively. The narrative questions whether these developments are highlighting ongoing challenges for Mercy and her players.
• 00:30 - 01:00: State of Mercy in Overwatch The chapter discusses the contentious status of the character Mercy in the game Overwatch. It acknowledges that players who use Mercy (referred to as Mercy 'mains') are dissatisfied with her current state. The chapter aims to explore common ground among different groups — those who dislike Mercy, those who love her, players who frequently choose her, and those who wish to avoid seeing her in the game altogether. This is part of a series resembling a 'town hall' meeting, where various experts and enthusiasts express their views on controversial characters in Overwatch. The goal is to identify a path forward for Mercy's development by finding mutual understanding among differing opinions. The discussion indicates that common ground might be more achievable than expected.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Community Opinions on Mercy This chapter discusses community opinions on the character Mercy, highlighting both positive and negative feedback. A significant amount of feedback was received from the r/Mymans community, which was not entirely covered in the discussion. The chapter calls for suggestions on potential changes needed for Mercy to avoid frequent bans and encourages ongoing conversation.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Mercy's Controversial Abilities The chapter discusses the current state of the character Mercy from a game, focusing on her abilities and how they are perceived by the community. It highlights that both fans and critics of Mercy agree that her current abilities are underwhelming and have been so for a while. Specifically, it mentions her 'Resurrect' ability as being controversial even among those who play as Mercy. Furthermore, her 'AFK pocket' ability is also mentioned as a point of contention.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Mercy's Low Skill Floor Problem Mercy's low skill floor leads to controversy within the gaming community, especially at all ranks. The community has mixed feelings about Mercy's gameplay style and utility. The pocket play style is particularly disliked. Her lack of offensive output is questioned, which used to be a significant part of her identity. Despite these issues, she is intentionally limited in capabilities due to her potential to be highly toxic and easily abused.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Mercy's Lack of Transferable Skills Mercy is facing bans across the community due to her lack of transferable skills. She's categorized as a low skill floor character that doesn't transition well to other skills or roles. There is a trend, almost an epidemic among players, of moving away from her character.
• 03:00 - 03:30: The Role of Utility and Risk for Mercy The chapter discusses the concept of 'Utility and Risk' in the context of gaming, focusing on characters like Reinhardt in strategic video games. Reinhardt is described as a character with a low skill floor, meaning he is easy to start with, but his potential grows with more advanced play, unlike characters like Winston. The argument is made that characters with a low skill floor can be problematic because they do not scale well as players reach higher levels, eventually becoming less viable. The text also references other games, suggesting that Reinhardt's issue is not unique, but it emphasizes that implementing changes akin to those in other games is not necessarily required.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Overwatch Community's Biases and Opinions The chapter discusses the controversial opinions and biases within the Overwatch community, particularly focusing on a character named Mercy. It explores how Mercy is perceived as having a low skill floor but not scaling well, leading to her frequent bans. The discussion highlights the issue with Mercy not teaching transferable gaming skills, implying that avoiding uniqueness in play styles is not necessary.
• 04:00 - 04:30: Mercy Rework Ideas and Concepts This chapter explores various ideas and concepts for reworking the character Mercy. It compares her play style with unique characters like Wrecking Ball and Lucio, emphasizing the distinct mechanics they possess. Despite Mercy's unique abilities, there is a mechanical demand involving positional choices, projectile management, and cooldown cycling. The text discusses how some skills are transferable across different characters, even though high-level Mercy players might face challenges unique to her mechanics. Overall, it delves into the nuanced demands placed on players when controlling Mercy and the potential for rework ideas.
• 04:30 - 05:00: The Importance of Risk in Gameplay The chapter discusses the role and importance of risk in gameplay, particularly in the context of the game 'Overwatch.' It compares the skills required for playing different characters, highlighting how some characters demand more mechanical skills and positional awareness than others, using the example of Mercy, a character perceived to require less positional cooldown management skills than others. Despite her unique demands, high-level gameplay across various characters still necessitates a broad range of general skills.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Suggestions for Mercy's Gameplay Improvement This chapter discusses how the character Mercy from Overwatch can be a very swingy character due to her kit design. It addresses the challenges of 'one-tricking' Mercy, where a player primarily focuses on mastering just this character. The transcript highlights the issues with Mercy being especially effective in 'poke' situations, which involve long-range engagements, but ineffective in 'dive' scenarios, where rapid close-range engagement is needed. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the larger issues Mercy players face compared to other characters, like how having two Mercy players on the same team creates more problems than having any two DPS (Damage Per Second) characters together. It also touches on the aspect of skill transferability with Mercy compared to other characters like Venture.
• 05:30 - 06:00: Community Feedback on Mercy's Current State The chapter discusses the unique skill set required to play Mercy, a character in a game, and the frustration players feel when forced to switch to other characters like Moira or Lucio. It highlights a niche issue where Mercy’s skills don’t transfer easily to others, leading to dissatisfaction and negativity. The chapter stresses the importance of maintaining uniqueness in characters rather than homogenizing them to have similar capabilities such as shooting and aiming. It indicates a willingness to be sensitive to such opinions.
• 06:00 - 06:30: Diverse Opinions from Mercy Main Community This chapter delves into various perspectives from the Mercy Main community regarding the role and mechanics of the character Mercy in gameplay. The discussion emphasizes the need for Mercy to provide unique value without relying solely on specific mechanics. It acknowledges diverse opinions and reasonable concerns, highlighting the nuanced nature of the debate. Opinions on Valkyrie's gameplay being 'boring' and having a 'low direct impact' are shared, along with commentary on the ease of movement and the importance of transferable skills. The chapter hints at future discussions centered on movement and potential rework ideas.
• 06:30 - 07:00: Mercy's Need for a Soft Rework The discussion includes suggestions for reworking the character Mercy to improve skill nuance, focusing on movement and the mechanics of her abilities. The idea of turning her res ability into a projectile is considered, making it blockable by shields and introducing timing challenges to create more strategic depth. The speaker emphasizes maintaining the core concept of her resurrection ability while adding complexity to its execution.
• 07:00 - 07:30: Mercy's Gameplay Element Suggestions The chapter focuses on suggested gameplay changes for the character Mercy. Several ideas are thrown out for consideration without defending their viability. Suggestions include slightly boosting Mercy's ultimate ability for a few seconds and increasing her bullet speed while decreasing clip size. These changes aim to make her pistol more situationally useful, as her current setup is often seen as impractical. There is also a mention of changing her damage boost ability to something else that might be more engaging.
• 07:30 - 08:00: Mercy's Support Role and Community Perception The chapter discusses the challenges faced by players using the character Mercy in a support role. It highlights that her damage boost ability is not very versatile or effective in dynamic situations, as it is often used with damage healers positioned in safer spots. The text suggests that Mercy's damage boost is less useful compared to other abilities like movement speed, cooldown reduction, or reload. To optimize her role, players need to be more strategic and selective about who they decide to boost, potentially using alternative strategies instead.
• 08:00 - 08:30: Mercy's Role in High-Rank Gameplay The chapter discusses various strategies and changes to Mercy's gameplay to make her more viable in high-rank Overwatch gameplay. It suggests implementing a resource meter to prevent infinite pocketing, where the healing beam's effectiveness decays on singular targets. There is also a discussion on applying overhealth with the damage boost, using an angelic boost with an extended movement range, and incorporating a small heal over time to slow down the decay rate. The goal is to make her abilities more balanced and effective in competitive environments.
• 08:30 - 09:00: Mercy vs Other Heroes' Playstyles The chapter explores the unique playstyle of Mercy compared to other heroes. It includes a discussion on Mercy's abilities such as her staff for melee and a unique cooldown ability to throw out a “soul” that she can slingshot off of, even if there is nobody else present. The chapter touches on interactions with other heroes, mentioning Genji and its popularity within the game context, making a humorous note about a jump-scare experience and a music-related comment.
• 09:00 - 09:30: Mechanics vs. Strategy in Overwatch Heroes The chapter titled 'Mechanics vs. Strategy in Overwatch Heroes' explores different aspects of the hero Mercy, particularly focusing on her current iteration and the community's interaction with her. It highlights proposed changes to her abilities, such as shifting damage boost to a partial speed boost, and discusses the dynamics and strategies involved in utilizing these abilities effectively.
• 09:30 - 10:00: Community's Mercy Gameplay Ideal In this chapter, the focus is on the gameplay mechanics related to 'overheal' in the context of a game, likely involving community members or a multiplayer environment. The discussion revolves around how players can heal others to provide them with temporary 'overhealth', which decays or disappears if they switch to damaging actions, speed boosting, or other gameplay mechanics. The conversation is light-hearted, with a sense of humor about personal quirks like hair, indicating a community-centered and interactive discussion. Strategies and decisions about when to heal and when to damage are explored, highlighting the rewards of strategic pivoting in gameplay.
• 10:00 - 10:30: Mercy's Historical Influence on Overwatch This chapter discusses Mercy's role in the game of Overwatch, particularly focusing on her movement capabilities on the battlefield. The conversation touches upon the mechanics of overhealth, comparing it to past mechanics like Brigitta's overpacking. It emphasizes the balance required to prevent Mercy from becoming overpowered, such as losing overhealth when damage boosting, to avoid enabling a problematic playstyle. Additionally, the chapter mentions various speculative abilities like flash heal and offensive capabilities, as the speaker reflects on the evolution of gameplay elements.
• 10:30 - 11:00: Mercy's Hero Fantasy vs. Gameplay Reality In this chapter, the focus is on Mercy's hero identity within the game, exploring ideas for her to have unique offensive or dueling abilities that align with her current visual identity. The discussion suggests concepts like 'explosive souls', which could be an interesting but challenging addition as it might cost her the ability to resurrect. The chapter emphasizes the need to balance any changes to ensure they fit within the game's mechanics.
• 11:00 - 11:30: Mercy's Ideal Design and Future The chapter discusses the concept of repositioning abilities, focusing on a theoretical design for a character named Mercy. The proposed ability involves dropping a temporary 'soul' that lasts 3-4 seconds. The player can fly to this 'soul' and potentially bounce off it, allowing for strategic movement options. The speaker emphasizes the emotional responses of some community members, who are described as being negatively biased towards Mercy and her players, suggesting that these individuals might not want a successful rework of the character.
• 11:30 - 12:00: Concluding Thoughts on Mercy's Evolution The chapter discusses the evolution of the character Mercy from a game, expressing a view that some players are resistant to changes that might improve her. This resistance is not necessarily based on sexism but possibly due to frustration from past experiences with the character. The speaker acknowledges these feelings but suggests that change should not be impeded simply because of personal biases.

Why Mercy Is A Problem (For Everyone) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 If I were to ask you what is the most hated hero in Overwatch history, I think the answer might be kind of tricky. Road Hawk, Sombra, Widowmaker? I'm not sure. But if you were to ask me who the most controversial hero is, by every metric both loved as much as she is hated, the answer is easy and it's Mercy. With a community that's been around for 9 years since the game's release and now with the inclusion of hero bands into the game, there's been a lot of people that play the game consistently not able to play the game in competitive mode. And so the question is, is this a good thing? Is this finally bringing to light Mercy's plight, Mercy's difficulty for so many years? And something that may
• 00:30 - 01:00 not be fully understood is that Mercy players, Mercy means themselves, are not happy with her state. So surely there must be some common ground between people that hate Mercy, people that love Mercy, people that play Mercy regularly, and people that just don't ever want to see her in your game. Today we're going to be round two of our quote unquote town hall series where we take a look at a controversial hero in Overwatch's history and talk with multiple experts on the subject, people that both hate and love the hero and see if we can find some common ground that may be able to give us some direction with what the character needs moving forward. And surprisingly here, I think the people
• 01:00 - 01:30 that both hate and love Mercy are on the same page here. Big shout out to everybody that was involved in this, including r/Mymans, who gave not only some very insightful and thoughtful feedback, but gave me so much feedback that I wasn't even able to go through all of it on stream. Let me know what you guys think in the comments and fingers crossed for Mercy's future. Let's have a conversation about what does Mercy need changed so that this character doesn't get banned quite so often. And I also want to highlight something here that while this is
• 01:30 - 02:00 painful for Mercy mains right now, this is something that should have been happened been happening a long time ago and I think that this is something that is something that both Mercy haters and Mercy fans will agree on. But one thing that I think Mercy players can can agree on is that her current iteration is very lackluster and has been for quite some time. Resurrect is a very at best a controversial ability even within the Mercy community. Her AFK pocket is at best a very controversial opinion within
• 02:00 - 02:30 the community for all ranks, leaning way more towards negative. In other words, Mercy maids generally are very controversial on res. Most them don't like the pocket play style, which is the most hated play style for Mercy. A lot of them have mixed feelings about her lack of utility. And there's even been some questions about her lack of offensive output, which back in the day that was really part of her identity, and you'd have been, you know, shot at dawn if you said otherwise. But the problem is is that she's basically being purposefully gimped because she is so incredibly toxic and abusable when she
• 02:30 - 03:00 isn't weak. So she's being banned everywhere. Uh and from what I've been hearing and what I've been seeing and obviously we don't have hard numbers in this just yet, but it is a bit of an endemic or epidemic rather uh within the community. And so we're going to kind of talk about this a little bit. The problem with Mercy is that she is a low skill floor character that does not translate very well. Number one, in other words, there are lots of other low skill floor characters. You guys ready
• 03:00 - 03:30 for a really nasty one? Reinhardt is a low skill floor character, but his skill ceiling continues to grow. Is it something that's Winston? No. But low skill floor characters are problematic when they don't scale well because they fall off much harder later on. So then you have a character that just isn't viable at all in high ranks. Not just situational, but just not viable at all. Now, I know all what other games do in other games. Yes, I understand that. But it doesn't necess it's not a necessity
• 03:30 - 04:00 for you to have a low skill floor character that doesn't scale well. The other thing as well, and this one is going to be my most controversial opinion, I think today, but I think it's an important one because even if I don't agree with it, which I do, but even if you don't agree with it, it is a problem and it is why she's uh she's being banned. I almost said why she's being murdered. I don't know where my brain was going with that. It's be because Mercy does not teach transferable skills. You don't need to avoid unique play styles. Let me give you guys a good
• 04:00 - 04:30 example. Venture. Okay. Wrecking Ball, Lucio, very unique play styles, unique mechanics, projectile speeds, positional choices, uh lots of unique things that they do, but there is some mechanical demand, even if it is unique. There are some a lot of positional decisions. There are unique mechanics to the character, of course, but then there's also some coolown management and cycling, right? But those things are transferable. If you have a highle Mercy player, that Mercy player may not have
• 04:30 - 05:00 as many positional cooldown management or mechanical skills in comparison to those supports. Now, I'm not saying Mercy doesn't require position. Again, we're going to avoid hyperbole today. Obviously, high level Mercy demands a lot, any high level. But compared to other even unique heroes, she just doesn't. a high level venture, high level wrecking ball, high level fill in the blank. They're going to have more experience with general skills. The reason why this is bad is not that I'm
• 05:00 - 05:30 necessarily against one tricking, but it means that Mercy can be a very swingy character. Not just in her kit design. In other words, Mercyy's really good and maybe poke situations, very bad in dive. That's a separate issue. But a Mercy player banned out or unable or two Mercy mates in the same team is disproportionately more a problem than any DPS combo in the entire game. A venture one trick with venture band is more likely to have transferable skills
• 05:30 - 06:00 to other things within the damage cast than a Mercy player forced to play Moira or Kurico or Lucio or Anna. And that's the problem here. So you have an issue here where Mercy's niche is so unique in such an untransferable skill way that you create problems where that's where a lot of the hate comes from. I'm not saying that we should have homogenized. Everything's the same. Everything has to shoot. Everything has to aim. Everything is murder, murder, murder. And we're going to try to, I think, kind of be sensitive to that opinion here today,
• 06:00 - 06:30 you know, and create ways for Mercy to provide value that don't necessarily require mechanics or require unique mechanics. Part of this debate is pointing out the reasonable concerns as well, right? There is nuance here and so we have to find out. So Valkyrie, boring to play. A lot of this is more opinionated here. So this is just these some of these are more my opinion at the time. Low direct impact in the battlefield. Very little transferable skill. Movement has gotten easier. Um I'm sure we'll talk a great deal about movement today. Um so the rework we
• 06:30 - 07:00 talked about reversion of movement to encourage skill nuance. always a fan of movement, especially if that movement is uh skillful. So, I don't really have a problem with that. Um, we talked about res being a projectile, an ultimate that doesn't cancel G, can be blocked by shield. That was me cooking, trying to keep resurrect into the game. Um, res is a pre-buff that lasts for two to three seconds, but expires. So, the timing of a res is being utilized on a target that then can expire if you get the timing of it wrong. Uh,
• 07:00 - 07:30 ultimate, boost ability slightly for three to five seconds. We're just going to kind of again I don't I'm not going to sit here and defend every single one of these whether these are good or bad. These are just spitball ideas we're going to throw out there. Speed of her bullets increased clip is much smaller. Maybe damage increase longer reload discourage using it often but allowing it to be situationally useful. Whereas her pistol right now is the almost so situational that it's it's kind of silly to even see it as an interesting part of her kit. Um change damage boost to something that is a little bit more
• 07:30 - 08:00 unique or dynamic. So, the problem with damage boost is that especially with how difficult and unrewarding it is to move with Mercy right now, it's more used on damage healers that are holding safer angles. It is not broadly as useful as things like movement speed or cooldown reduction or reload or clip or anything else that you would do. Um, so you can kind of have to utilize your alt fire, we'll just call it, instead of your damage boost to be more thoughtful about who you're using it for. maybe different
• 08:00 - 08:30 compositions that Mercy otherwise wouldn't be good at. Now it actually makes a little bit more sense. Um, we've also talked about resource meter uh just so that you're not infinitely pocketing something. Healing beam decay decays on singular targets um maybe from a higher healing to a lower healing with an internal cooldown. We've talked about even damage boost applying overhealth. Um angelic boost a cool down for extended movement range small heal over time. Does it heal more to slow decay rate? Uh was there anything else in here? Uh I think that's mostly it. weird
• 08:30 - 09:00 ideas. Uh staff, using your staff for melee. Um uh you can G in the error. So you can throw a soul out on a cool down that allows you to G to somebody that's not even there. So you can throw out a body basically to slingshot off of. So you actually actually throw out something to g to that's not an actual person. Um and then I guess a more current iteration. Oh my hair jump scare. [Music] Um wait, why is this the most replayed? Is it because it's Genji? Um uh wait,
• 09:00 - 09:30 what is my mouth doing? Um okay. And then Mercy here. This is more kind of like the current iteration of Mercy. Not quite so pie in the sky. Most replayed as Mercy. That's crazy. Um there's the community right there. Um what was the Mercy one? Uh where we at? Shifting damage boost to partial speed boost. Less damage boost. Again, more dynamics with how you can use things. Um, a Gavin
• 09:30 - 10:00 actually made fun of my hair. I love that. Thank you so much. I guess it wasn't technically making fun, but one of us, one of us decaying overheal, but disappears. So, another one was like you damage who's a target to give them overhealth, but it decays. Um, oh no, you can Oh, frick. What was it, chat? I think you can. No, no, no. can heal somebody to overhealth, but if you pivot to damage boost or speed or whatever else, the overhealth disappears. So you it actually rewards you for moving
• 10:00 - 10:30 around the battlefield utilizing your movement to give everybody a little bit of overhealth, right? Like it's kind of like overpacking with Brigitta back in the day. But it mean you can't keep permanent overhealth on somebody that you're damage boosting because then that would be broken. That's enabling the pocket play style. So if you damage boost, they lose their overhealth. Something along those lines. Um, flash heal. We talked about slow as bad. I believe that has been addressed. Um, some sort of wing or staff attack thing. This is where I talk about like more offensive pressure as I'm about to punch the screen, but maybe something that is
• 10:30 - 11:00 unique to Mercy's hero identity. Um, something that isn't just pull out the gun and shoot, but something that allows her some offensive or dueling pressure. Something that is unique to her and to her current visual identity. Um, explosive souls. Unironically, that would cost you your resurrect, but unironically I obviously you'd have to tune the damage, but it it's interesting. It's weird, and I think that's something that may be worth conversing about. Um, we already talked
• 11:00 - 11:30 about this one already, basically dropping a soul for repositioning on cooldown, not permanent. So, a soul that only has like 3 or 4 seconds. You throw it, you can fly to it, and bounce off of it if you want to. And I'm going to go ahead and say this right now. I'm just like, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. Look, look me in the eyes, okay? Some of you guys in chat, I'm not going to say the misogyny word, okay? But some of you guys in chat are so bitter and angry and hate Mercy and Mercy players so much. You don't want a rework to succeed. You don't want a rework to succeed. You want Mercy to
• 11:30 - 12:00 stay miserable and awful. She doesn't deserve a rework. She doesn't deserve love. Every change, whether it's a mechanic or a new utility or making the character stronger or whatever, you don't want that. You want her to suck and you want her to suck forever. I'm not saying it's sexism at all. I'm just saying that you've been burned so many times by this annoying, frustrating to play with and against hero that you just want her to fail. And I'm not even blaming you for that. I get it. I understand it. It's personal. But don't This is also the future YouTube video, right? Don't sit here and rain on
• 12:00 - 12:30 people's parade trying to fix a problem with solutions that maybe you haven't fully thought out or that maybe you don't fully agree with or maybe you don't fully understand because it is these people play the game too. And as long as we're being productive in admitting the weaknesses and problems of the character, your opinion is just an opinion. And so don't go, "Oh, Mercy doesn't Oh, now can you imagine how cancer, you know, the bronze Mercy man's exploding souls?" Shut up. Shut up. We're trying to fix the problem. Some of you don't want this to succeed. Some of you don't care if Mercy is forever bad. You just prefer to complain about the
• 12:30 - 13:00 one in 20 games where we have a Mercy man. Oh, and you can type angrily about to your friends. That's okay. I understand. You're frustrated. You deserve to be frustrated. She's been a plague. I think if you honestly had to pick Overwatch's most visibly problematic character in history, it's easily been Mercy. Maybe Road Hog's up close, but it's it's Mercy. It's definitely Mercy. I mean, if you go back to Overwatch League season 1, all the pro players, what's your most hated hero? Everyone said Mercy. And this is the pros 2007 freaking team. So, yeah,
• 13:00 - 13:30 Sombra for different reasons. So, I understand. But the, you know, fixing a problem is experimentation. It's trying new things. It's being sensitive to both sides of things. So, it's in your best interest that these conversations are having are being had. Yeah. I mean, again, in terms of Sombra versus Mercy, let's put it this way. Most controversial. I think Sombra is just hated and there aren't enough Somains for people to really care. So, certainly the most controversial cuz again, we talked about it earlier. The popularity versus hateability. Like, we it is at the top. You know what I'm saying? So,
• 13:30 - 14:00 these are just some of the ideas that have spitball. I have not spent enough near enough time brainstorming Mercy because frankly when I'm doing perk fixes or hero reworks, Mercy might near be the top, but she's still one of many many many many many many many heroes that we were thinking and trying to figure out. Um, and so today we're going to try to kind of expand our thoughts here. And why I'm doing this, I think it's helpful as a community to kind of I don't know to have open conversation and
• 14:00 - 14:30 honest conversations. I walked away from the somber conversation understanding the somber mains more and I hope that they it was vice versa. Uh it's also personal satisfaction because it's just satisfying to feel like oh yeah I feel like we kind of maybe not know for sure what needs to be done but have some good ideas and this is just stuff that I enjoy talking about. You know what I'm saying? So let's start with Ralph here. Again if you guys all know Ralph is an Overwatch coach like myself and amateur game critic. Uh, and he has very
• 14:30 - 15:00 different opinions than mine on most things, which is why I really respect his opinion because he comes in from different perspectives. Um, he's done a lot of critiques on 6v6. He's a big 6v6 guy. Uh, done some stuff on Marvel Rivals and a lot of other stuff. And I believe he's even done a bunch of reworks of individual characters as well. Okay, so this is Ralph. What you see is the vision of Mercy as a hero. Keep in mind, this vision can be different from how the developers may currently see her. Let me zoom in just a wee wee. Okay, Mercy should be a hero
• 15:00 - 15:30 with the highest decision density in the game. In other words, multiple different things you could be doing at any point in time. Which one makes the most sense? Her beam priority and color should be a constant shifting miniame, and she should have to actively juggle them for maximum value. The decision between damage boost and healing should be roughly equal weighted in terms of value. She should also require a constant understanding of the playfield in order to optimize these beam priority choices by making calculated risk decisions on GA usage. That's a current problem with uh Mercy right now is that
• 15:30 - 16:00 a lot of her movement is wasted because you were not rewarded or encouraged to move. Uh this was actually I was in the vocal minority of people don't hate me chat. I don't think moving her to 250 HP was smart. I think that or 225, I'm sorry, because it actively punished you for actively taking risks. I think there were other things that they could have done to nerf Mercy's output. Um, but I think actually making her more fragile was the wrong direction with the
• 16:00 - 16:30 mobility that she has. In order to skirt as close to line as possible and the movement should be in depth enough that this process feels mechanically rewarding. What do you like about Mercy's design? I can't think of anything about her kit that is currently in its best historical state. Yuch. Uh, what do you like about Mercy's current design skill to value curve? Okay, spicy. I told you guys Ralph is going to not going to agree with necessarily uh common opinions. He just doesn't care. So, I I think that's very respectful whether you agree or not. Mercy cannot be fixed until her movement skill curve
• 16:30 - 17:00 is addressed. When Overwatch 2 launched, they gutted all planning, prediction, mechanical skill, timing, and anything else interesting about her movement by allowing her to instantly zip in the opposite direction by looking that way and by automating the super jump. So, basically, they simplified. Now, I I'm going to be honest with you. There are going to be a couple of you Mercy mans out there that are way smarter than I am and probably Ralph at how this movement is actually executed. So, uh there this is going to be done with an asterisk uh of how the movement is done. And I'm
• 17:00 - 17:30 sure that there are far smarter people about me, but we're just going to read it and take it as it is. Uh Overwatch 2 Mercy has a skewed survivability curve where low and mid-rank players just don't even bother shooting her anymore. Yeah, situationally true. The other thing is that because of how she often is rewarded with positioning, she is rarely even visible all the time. Very fair. Either you're a projectile character that can't shoot her at all or you're a hit scan character that just can't see her. And therefore, she has a skewed value curve where more power cannot be given to her at lower and mid-ranks since she has so much of her
• 17:30 - 18:00 budget into survivability. It's true. A lot of her value is her survivability and lower ranks. She's currently as boring and unactive to play against as Lifew Weaver. And obviously, Chad, as we've seen, Life Weaver over time has become more damage and more utility focused and less healing, which I think has evolved the character in a much more interesting way. I think they could go further on that. I've already had a couple of videos and posts about what I think they could do with Life continually. Um, but we'll keep going. Go back and look at some old Overwatch one clips. The difference in mechanical and game sense demand for her movement
• 18:00 - 18:30 is insane. On the surface, Mercy just looks like she's received buffs. And as the comments are proof, movement is the part that people like about her kit. So, her entire kit being gutted to make way for the lowest skill floor entry to the hero possible isn't something anybody talks about because people are just happy that there's more movement. Okay, the truth is the level survivability was always in the kit, but just previously required higher skill to access. Super jump was harder to do back in the day. A lot of the movement with Mercy was harder to do. I am not the person to ask if the current iteration of Mercy
• 18:30 - 19:00 movement is good or if the old iteration or what the optimal iteration I'm going to be hopefully letting Skiest kind of run with that later today, but it is true that her movement is more accessible today has probably a lower scaling ceiling than it has at times past and is such accessibility that it's either it just it's not meaningful. And I the reason I also bring that up is because I do want to highlight that again a lot of this is due to the fact that Mercy doesn't move very often already as it
• 19:00 - 19:30 is. Aside from this uh her skill value expression from her healing has been reduced massively by the larger health pools and it genuinely matters less than ever what target you're healing. Um so Ralph is also very anti-season 9. We won't get into that today but we'll keep going. Long story short, the ability to output aggressive pressure with her healing has been effectively removed from the game. The pressure that you can put out by increasing poke DPS up time with healing beam has been decreased because the DPS passive and higher health pools massively increase the time required to heal these players to an acceptable level before re- peaking. Uh
• 19:30 - 20:00 so you're basically maybe stuck on healing a target for a little bit longer. Mercy pocketed ash proof this he had 80% up time. Now they have around 60% up time. This is a lot of aggressive healing pressure. Um sources I I would I I would like for him to elaborate on this one a little bit more but we'll keep going. Um, essentially what this means is it just means when you take poke, it might take you longer to get that target back to full again, which is it's a tricky thing because I don't think the concept that people that take damage should be immediately back to full is necessarily a decision that the
• 20:00 - 20:30 developers will agree with because I think it is a conscious choice. The pressure you could put out by extending the tank's pressure cycle by healing them at the right moment has been lowered massively. When tanks have a higher percentage of the resources into innate health, raw healing numbers, even if they keep them on armor, matters less for extending the cycles. In other words, it's harder to keep up a tank because as the tank health pools grow bigger, more of their survivability comes through just the raw chunk of HP and less to do with the healing sustain.
• 20:30 - 21:00 Again, that is a specific and deliberate design choice by the Overwatch 2 developers to not encourage raw sustain. Raw sustain is not by definition brainless. It can be very brain full, but it does punish supports that rely more on that situational healing for their output of value. For example, a lot of the utility that we see right now from a lot of support heroes, whether it's Kyico or Anna or whatever, fill in the blank here. Um, even Juno is not
• 21:00 - 21:30 through raw healing, but a lot of utility. Overwatch is much more utility focused. antinate speed ring suzu damage output raw sustain just doesn't matter as much as it used to anymore and a lot of that is due to the higher health pools a Reinhardt with an on Mercy pocket previously would be able to put out significantly more pressure than without the Mercy now they don't put out much more pressure at all and I think the idea that he's trying to get out of here is that because the Reinhardt has a larger health pool you're basically demanded to yellow beam
• 21:30 - 22:00 a tank that you don't really have the opportunity to do anything but Um the pressure achievable from both these healing modes has been replaced by much stronger bias on damage boost which has always been again why utility focused which has always been the thing considered the most annoying in her kit. So this kind of gets to the crux of the issue right where in a 6v6 postseason 9 or pre-season 9 Overwatch healing mattered more in a postseason 9 5v5 utility and damage matters more. And as
• 22:00 - 22:30 it stands, Mercy does not have utility apart from damage boost. Resurrect is an exception, of course, but that has also been the part of utility that has fallen off the most in Overwatch 2. And damage boost and pocketing a DPS that is more static, that doesn't demand movement, as Real says, is generally the most controversial part of her kit, both outside the Mercy community, but also inside the Mercy community. From my knowledge, from my understanding, I think resurrect, healing, movement, flight, valk, those are more controversial. Um, more a lot of people
• 22:30 - 23:00 like them more. Uh, but the pocket AFK damage boost play style is not something that, to my understanding, Mercy players enjoy. And as somebody that used to play a solid amount of Mercy early on in her career, I would say anywhere like 50 to 100 hours, I think. I might be just making that up, but I I I got forced into Mercy for a long time. And I realized I like healing more than I like damage boosting. Uh, cuz it's just it sounds better. It requires more movement. It's just more fun to heal with Mercy and it's just not necessarily better and that's the problem. It's way more satisfying to heal with Mercy. Uh the decision when playing
• 23:00 - 23:30 Mercy nowadays is to sustain with healing providing very little value at all and basically being AFK or being able to damage boost and actually do something proactive, but you don't actually choose whether you have to sustain a match. The play style isn't active at all. And the decision of beam juggling is simply being made up for you most of the time. In other words, does this person need healing? Okay. No damage boost. That's basically it. It's a very linear decision a lot of the time. Um again, I'm not necessarily saying I agree with all this, but this is Ralph. He is going to state his opinion clearly. Uh and and it's worth
• 23:30 - 24:00 considering. Um uh previously you could feasibly do an unranked gym with damage boost unbound. Now there's no chance of that ever happening. Skill expression and extra value achievable from that skill expression have been extracted from the kit at almost all levels. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about the movement type, but my workshop code is re enabled. Charging Valk and so on. Okay, I'm gonna turn on the light here. One second, chat. And that was Ralph. Thoughts? So, with the absence of a debate partner right now, what do you guys think so far? Mercy mains,
• 24:00 - 24:30 non-mercy mains, chat, YouTube, Twitch, we'll take a few minutes and then maybe we'll get to Neandra's notes. What do you guys think? Crucially, there's no real clear solution here, and I don't think you necessarily need to propose a solution. And I think if you can accurately describe the root of the issue, uh, a skilled developer team should have some concepts or some ideas. Awkward actually tried an immersy unranked GM and he failed. Yes, I was aware of that. That's crazy. U, you know, disliking damage boost seems unusual to me. Um, to my knowledge, it
• 24:30 - 25:00 is very commonly disliked. Uh, rework the character provides some utility. Love you. Love you. Drive safe, please. I get a thunderstorm. Yeah, I saw. Thank you. Uh yeah, I think that some form of utility is really important for Mercy. That is I think maybe the crux of the issue. Some form of utility that will encourage you to utilize her movement feels like maybe the crux of the issue. you get lost in how much
• 25:00 - 25:30 healing, how much damage boost, do we like Valk, do we like res, but I think the crux of the issue is what utility can we give Mercy, whether that's damage or anything else, movement speed or overhealth that will encourage her to move. Maybe that is the root of the issue. Um, am I using an AI voice in this stream? Yes, this is an AI voice. The utility and damage opportunity cost has always been the reason why I hated playing with Mercy's. It's why the choice to ban is so easy. Every other
• 25:30 - 26:00 option feels like you have another puzzle piece. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't read through all the comments. I haven't read through any of the comments yet. I'm going to try to get through some of them. Uh actually a large portion of them in a little bit, but not right now. So, I think there's some questions about making her movement more skillful and more a higher ceiling for that movement. And I would agree with you, but I think the key thing has to be it doesn't matter how good you make her movement if there's no reason to utilize that movement. And I'm being a little
• 26:00 - 26:30 bit hyperbolic here. Um, but it really is there is less chance to there's less motivation to move. Right. Question though, Ralph and I have scrambled to give think of any utility that doesn't destroy her hero identity. Um, yeah. I mean, I understand it. It is tricky, but I think we have a back. Like, here's the other thing, too. I think Mercy I would describe as more of a pacifist in some way. Maybe her hero of fantasy. Maybe I'm I'm not a wizard
• 26:30 - 27:00 when it comes to this stuff, even though I love this game. Uh, but it doesn't mean that she can't pack a punch when she needs to. And I also don't think that we always have to look at utility through just a raw damage lens either. The reason that it's frustrating to play versus Mercy as it's has been described is that she doesn't really have very often a motivation to put herself in risk. I think okay, this is this is going to be a maybe an uncomfortable truth here. Okay. Uh I hate I think this is really important to talk about for most people
• 27:00 - 27:30 most players a maybe this is universally true. I don't necessarily know but from in my experience working with all people casual and non-casual fun is associated with risk. You cannot have an engaging competitive experience without risk. It's just not possible. Uh even very casual games need risk, fear of
• 27:30 - 28:00 failure to to succeed. even non- mechanically demanding characters. So, there will be some that say, "Oh, Mercy, you know, we shouldn't be forced into an aggressive play style." Again, what do you mean by aggressive? That's a conversation. Doesn't necessarily mean doing damage. But I I think the core of the problem is Mercy has to be reintroduced to the value of risk. If there is no tangible
• 28:00 - 28:30 measurable risk for Mercy, the character will not only be frustrating to play versus, be frustrating to play as and continue to not appeal to a lot of people. I think that last point is okay, but I I if you don't have risk, that's the least interesting part of mercy. You must be encouraged and forced to take risks as mercy and then be rewarded for those risks. It's just a general truth of whenever we compete at something. It's like people
• 28:30 - 29:00 enjoy risk. People enjoy making a calculated decision. Especially if you can mitigate those risks with good decisions, good positioning, good mechanics with your movement. I think as a Mercy, a lot of Mercy players have talked about I think the reason why a lot of them love resurrect is not because it's resurrect necessarily, but because it's the most risky aspect of her kit. It's thrilling to get a difficult res off, especially when you do it mechanically well. When you utilize your bounce or your float or you do it quickly behind, like that's
• 29:00 - 29:30 exhilarating because it's the only thing that generally consistently demands risk. So, Mercy players want risk cuz that's just human nature. So, we need both a motivation to take risk and then we need Mercy to be able to survive that risk. You get what I'm saying? So that these are we're looking for more like spiritual changes here. Soul changes maybe would be the more apt description. So we're looking for number one utility
• 29:30 - 30:00 that demands movement. Actually number one is going to be something that encourages and motivates and rewards risk. And number two probably parrying parrying following off of that is utility that encourages movement because that is probably where that risk would most comfortably come from. And then maybe number three, rewarding her ski ceiling of movement or expression through that play style. And notice that we haven't said damage, said debuff or anti-heal, overhealth. It could be a lot
• 30:00 - 30:30 of things. It doesn't have to even be traditionally mechanical things because the funny thing about Mercy, as we said, the lack of transferable skills, hey Archus, is positioning for risk, risk management, cooldown management that will likely come as a result from that. and just generally moving and forcing even though there's no immediate mechanical transferable skills immediately. That's more like every other support hero in the game. Immediately right there, think about it from a Bragita standpoint. Brigita is basically nothing but risk management or
• 30:30 - 31:00 positioning balance. Lucio, right? Heck, even Moira, right? Moira has her own can of worms, but like a lot of it is kind of like how what can I how far can I push this, you know? So there you go. And keep doing so while if we'd like to keeping true to the simplicity of the for your team is the limited nature of damage boosts. Yes, it is not a good utility by itself friendly team. anyone can take advantage of. Yes, I I agree. Universality of
• 31:00 - 31:30 damage boost is hit or miss because even if it is technically universal, maybe it is too high value in situations that don't demand risk. Like what what came first here, the chicken or the egg? Is it the lack of survivability or movement uh capability that prevents Mercy from using her damage boost aggressively? Or is damage boost being used passively just too good? Maybe it's both. You see, that's the reason why Mercy is really good at pocketing damage is on Poke
• 31:30 - 32:00 characters is because not only is it consistently good, but it means that Mercy never ever ever has to flex her muscles. Mercy means atrophy. Quite literally. Actually, quite not literally, but it just felt good in my head saying that. So, quite [Laughter] literally. I don't know. I don't know where we're going with this. Um, literally. Manosphere. Remember, we got we got to construct our own manosphere, guys. That's on our checklist for today. We got to continue to develop the manosphere. Uh Neandra, if you guys don't know Neandra, one of
• 32:00 - 32:30 the OGs of Overwatch. Um been around for forever. Is a good way and Mercy Wizard. Uh thank you for the subscription. Beimo, congratulations on your 6 months badge. Also has some really thoughtful videos on Mercy Rework stuff as well, which we will uh I encourage you guys to check out here. Let me zoom zoomi zooi zooi in here and read Neandra's message here. All right, here we go. Uh, making sure I'm not
• 32:30 - 33:00 doing anything crazy here. Okay. What do you see as the vision of Mercy as a hero? I like when Mercy is mobile. We're going to see consistent theme here. Volan, thank you for the sub. I want to use that mobility to get a good view of the battlefield so I can make decisions based on the current moment. What do you dislike about Mercy's current design? Um, hang on a second. I actually need to make sure. Did I miss it earlier? No. Okay, this is it. What do you dislike about or like about Mercy's current design? I know
• 33:00 - 33:30 it's controversial, but I really like damage boost. You got to keep in mind a lot of the mid-leing players and more casual Mercy mains don't use it that much or very effectively, meaning at least somewhat, it's a way to tell the difference in skill level between Mercy players. Looking off your allies, making plays, and flicking your beam onto them feels great. So, this is kind of goes into what Ralph is talking about. Situational damage boost feels really good. That being said, I also don't want to be naive. I know that oftentimes the most effective strategy is to just blue beam your soldier and occasionally help other people. So, do you notice the difference in how damage boost is being utilized here? Neander likes damage
• 33:30 - 34:00 boost as a situational uh triage, right, of who needs it and quickly changing, but how it's often used is more of a one decision and you run it down, you stick with it. Do you understand what I'm saying? So it it we can be honest and say that damage boost is one of the more utilities that feels harder to justify being shared globally, but we can also not be silly and say that damage boost is an unredeeeemable thing as its own. Maybe damage boost needs decay. Maybe
• 34:00 - 34:30 there needs to be a cap. Maybe the right there's lots of ways that we could continue to tweak with that. We'll move on. Too many too many Discord notifications. Welcome to my life. Legitimately, I when I took a week off for Christmas, I came back and I had to answer over a 100red messages. Um, I also think there's a difference between a damage boost focused play style and a pocket one, and that the former is definitely more enjoyable. Okay. I remember ages back I did a little response to some of your Mercy ideas. I know you discussed the idea of replacing image boost, which is a tough one because it's generally what Mercy does instead of providing damage. So, you need something that has really high
• 34:30 - 35:00 uptime. I did appreciate your idea about having multiple beams to choose from from like attack speed or movement speed or whatever since since that would retain a decent level of decision-making, which is a big thing I want from Mercy. Um, one thing that's very mildly frustrating with Mercy is that she gets less ult charge or perk points from damage boost than she does from healing. Didn't know that. Good to know. Which means I've had games where I'm behind an enemy Mercy that's heal botting, even though I believe my B management has taken more thought. Admittedly, you got to be careful here because if your team can't hit any shots, might fall behind. But I'd like some rebalancing here regardless. I
• 35:00 - 35:30 think I also know that damage boosts in 5v5 are just generally a delicate thing. I remember in the early days of Overwatch 2 when Zenyatta was really oppressive, people would be like Discord or was unhealthy compared to Mercy's damage boost because of X and Y. And then when Mercy was a problem, people were like mercy damage boost and healthy compared to because of X and Y. That's a classic community problem. Uh if you guys are ever active in our/competitive Overwatch, the competitive Overwatch subreddit, I love those guys. I'm not trying to throw everybody under the bus here, but they go through cycles of hating one character and say, you know, hyper like making up these dramatic things and then they move on and then,
• 35:30 - 36:00 oh, that character is not that bad. This is the new, you know, Satan. And they and they rinse and repeat. And that's just the comm that's just communities as a whole. That's just a very small example of it. And my example is to prove that even competitive communities are very vulnerable to heavy biases that cycle visibility, recency bias, right? Um, also resurrect. I could really go either way on the biggest reason. I'm not completely in favor of just scrapping it is because one, super jump presses are really fun. Even though I'll happily admit the range can feel terrible sometimes. And two, it's one of the only ways to counter one shots like
• 36:00 - 36:30 Widow head shot. Fair, right? We've talked about it. Um, mousing for the sub. Finally, from Neandra, everything considered though, I do wonder if the developers would even want to change Mercy. Now, we talked about this, right? There's a large percentage of people that like Mercy. Woo! But the problem is the large percentage that don't. And so have bands force their hand or are mercy players going to find a different game mode or maybe just a different game. Maybe this is obvious or dumb, but I quite firmly believe that support is the most popular role by a decent margin,
• 36:30 - 37:00 surpassing DPS even. Oo, hot take, but could be correct. I don't know if Gavin is here, but I do know support players are a large percentage of players within Overwatch at least. Um, and I don't think that's it depends on rank. Okay. and also the biggest spender in terms of cosmetics, which I don't mean in like a derogatory way. Um, I think that that is certainly backed up by the skins that are
• 37:00 - 37:30 released. I mean, just look at the percentage of Kico and Juno and Mercy skins, and that's just three of them, and you pretty much have your decision made for you. Today is not the day where we'll delve maybe into the uh demographics of what that means, but it doesn't really matter. Mercy players buy skans. In a way, the devs should be proud that they've managed to make a role that feels super varied in terms of play style and feel really, really good. Too good, some may say. Although, I do suspect that there may be some congestion issues around Plat Diamond and 6v6 Open Q where there's just an
• 37:30 - 38:00 insanely high number of polar players only and so on. So, you know, we won't go down the rabbit hole there. Thank you very much to Neandra for that. That was very insightful. And you can kind of see some of the issues that we talked about, we kind of hinted at kind of raising their head, which was consistency of that demand for utility, not necessarily, in Neander's opinion, damage boost in a vacuum, but damage boost in its implementation, which is more static. And then obviously how that trickles down to how perks are being utilized and and even beyond
• 38:00 - 38:30 that. Then there's the question about should they even change Mercy? Would that kill the cash cowl? But is it already happening? Uh what can we do that encourage people to keep playing but don't destroy like we we have to we have to be balanced here right star green thank you for the sub like we we can afford to be more patient and thoughtful about the implementation of these things here because I think one of the the misconceptions about hero design is that
• 38:30 - 39:00 it's done in giant leaps. Uh, I think it is very possible and we've seen many examples of hero design happening in small steps. So, very quietly, Lifew Weaver has been one of those characters who has significantly improved the quality of playing versus and with since his release, right? Still annoying to play with, but I would significantly prefer Life Weaver playing with and against them now than ever before. Same thing goes with, you ready
• 39:00 - 39:30 for this one? Malga. He's still obnoxious and there's certain little aspect as aspects aspects of his kit that drive me nuts, but he's way better than he used to be and not just because he's weaker. Uh, another hot take maybe here, but Far rework. Far can still be frustrating to play versus, but at least she doesn't hover in the sky infinitely and she has more counterplay and more maps, so she's more flexible. And so for me, I'm less concerned about what's going to solve Mercy, if anything will ever solve Mercy, right? I'm more
• 39:30 - 40:00 concerned about like what would be a logical, safe, strategic one step in the right direction. That's what I want to see. And I think everybody that plays with or against Mercy probably wants to see the same thing, too. Yeah, you could technically per perfectly hover with far, but you got to get my point. So, number one, how can we introduce risk? How can we introduce risk? Number two, Hakum by introducing risk is that going to be through encouraging utility that
• 40:00 - 40:30 demands movement. Those are kind of my points so far. Let's read our/ Mercy mains. We got about 30 minutes before Yele jumps on here and gives us an earful of what he freaking hates about Mercy. And I I want to highlight something today, guys. This may not be the most effective content piece ever because if you haven't noticed already, you're noticing the same points coming up again and again and again. So, we're going to come
• 40:30 - 41:00 up with some new ideas and some new conversations. You have points. Yes. But it's not going to be as diverse as you think. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That means that everybody's mostly on the same page here. Whether you hate or love Mercy, you guys noticing that already? It's got to keep going here. haven't read these comments. Let's see what we got here. Kind Replacement says, "Move it, move it, move it." People just don't seem to understand how fun her movement can be. It's what makes her so unique. While every other movement related characters are independent, the fact that Mercy's requires her teammates is what makes it
• 41:00 - 41:30 fun and satisfying in a way, I will interject here. And the fact that it's constantly changing, you can't memorize rotations. It it it's a lifetime battlefield that you were adapting to. The fact that Mercy requires teammates is what makes it fun and satisfying. Using her GA to survive by moving from one to another is incredibly fun. And the thing I believe I and the most other Mercy mains would miss the most if it were changed. I remember back in season 3 with the GA nerf how absolutely devastated we were because it really is a big part of her kit. I personally don't like the pocket play style. I
• 41:30 - 42:00 don't think Mercy should be a character who just stays on a DPS the whole game. I think she should have more chances and reasons to utilize G so that she could help the whole team. Also, the most fun I've had with her is using the krypuscular krypuscular crep krypuscular circle power stadium. Just having the opportunity to pull out the Glock while still fully supporting the team feels amazing. Next to ults like Juno, Kurico, even Ediari who can leave for pilot and go explode the whole team. Mercy's ult is just awful. I'm not saying that r/My main speaks for the entirety of the Mercy
• 42:00 - 42:30 main community, but do you see what I'm saying? I've not read this these comments. And here we go. Fully agree with everything. This is an awesome take. yada yada yada yada. Okay, good stuff. So, in this iteration, there is a cry for more movement demand, less pocket, and maybe even some offensive output. Now, there isn't necessarily a solution about how to utilize that utility, how to reward
• 42:30 - 43:00 movement, but again, we don't need to. We don't have I mean, I I'm going to love to theory craft and think of some ideas. Maybe we've already done some of those, but it could be a reasonable complaint that really gets to the core of the problem. And I think this does that very well. All right. Ideally, I'd like the developer team to stop being so afraid of the movement as their kit. Enable play styles outside of pocket and kids can poke. I might stop by to listen to you yap if I get the chance. Thank you, spooky action. Well, here we go. Um, I hate the hard pocket play
• 43:00 - 43:30 style. I much prefer team based supporting and bopping around where I'm needed, but it's hard to deny how useful the enabling of a cracked DPS is. Beam juggling in Overwatch one was peak for me. is even better with her current movement. I just want to be a zippy triage unit. I do not want to stand behind cover pocketing sojurnn. Yes, this um uh I like threads of fate and stadium that lingers her beam on a previous target. Adds a tiny bit of multi-healing boosting capability that she lacks without feeling. So there's your utility right there. So she's rewarded for moving because you can actually increase
• 43:30 - 44:00 your healing per second if you move around frequently. Um hey, Swinky Tiger, nice. That's right. I didn't even recognize that. Does it punish mobility and hopping on from person to person which the most of us have fun doing. Um yeah, and there's definitely a theory here where stadium is them experimenting with things more wildly and that's kind of like globally here, but yeah. Uh that's a tough one. I'd like to see more buffs or heal boost for new target that doesn't feel like perfect solution. Maybe an AoE tied to a SOP. I'm not entirely sure. Okay. Uh yeah, we'll look at some of the more controversial ones, too. I don't
• 44:00 - 44:30 want to just look at the popular ones. We might look outside the box, too. But I will say that, you know, ultimately our goal is to try to get to a cross-section of the Mercy community. Even if it's not uh representative of the majority, it is. We do want a this is okay. This is a popularity contest to an extent. As long as the popularity contest agrees with what an objective, obviously I'm perfectly objective, guys, no biases here, opinion comes from, that's the best of both
• 44:30 - 45:00 worlds. something that makes the Mercy players happy, the vast majority, and something that from a more analytical standpoint makes sense, right? I'm not saying my opinion is free from bias. That's the joke. But I guess my point being is that like if it's also popular, that's great. We only really have problems when things that are loved are also hated about Mercy's Kit. And I I don't think that's as much of the case is kind of my point here.
• 45:00 - 45:30 Like just because a lot of people think something doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong. It might be right. They might be right. They might be on to something here. All right, we got Swinky Tiger's posture. My stream isn't always objectively correct. Well, I'm I'm I'm faking humility. Obviously, you guys know I'm always correct. Like everything. Favorite content creators. I'm a flex support and to be honest, I mean Anna Moore now, but I did start in Mercy and I still love her. I've been here for years. Uh okay. things we love about Mercy. Mobility. Almost every
• 45:30 - 46:00 dedicated Mercy loves Mercy for her movement. Her movement is her skill expression, her fun factor, and what sets her apart from others in the support cast. I'm going to go ahead and say something here, chat, that if if you think about it, it's true. Um, mo we we've said this a few weeks ago, but I'm going to bring it up now because it's pertinent. Mobility is the most positioning is the most underrated fun thing in Overwatch and probably game a lot of games in just in general. If you love Spider-Man and Marvel Rivals, you
• 46:00 - 46:30 love positioning. If you love Genji, if you love Lucu, and if you love Wrecking Ball, you love positioning. If you love Mercy, you love positioning. Now, kiss. No, I'm my point being is that like literally the same reason why Mercy mains love Mercy is why Genji players love Genji. Now, the shooting of the shurikens, that's where they differentiate, but it is the positioning. It is the positioning aspect that is very satisfying. Freya as well. Yes, exactly. That is not There's nothing different than liking
• 46:30 - 47:00 Genji versus Mercy's movement position. It's it's kind of the same thing. You know, now how it's actually executed again, that's where they differ, but this is good. This is normal. This is we've we've seen this again and again with Overwatch where people love these type of heroes. I just say Rooster. Thank you, Moonkey. Uh damage boost and enaming plays. Yes, it's a touchy topic. Damage boosting existing means natural break points and balancing around the possibility of them being 30% better. But pushing an off angle with your soldier, boosting a triple beam symmetra, or flying to your far to help
• 47:00 - 47:30 her secure a kill is truly so fun in court of Mercy's identity. In the sub, we're basically all the competition get the high damage boost beam on top of but notice this here. Pushing boosting a situational triple beam symmetra, not just a symmetra, but a triple beam symmetra or flying to a far to help secure a kill. So, two of these involve movement or actually let's say one of these involves movement, one of these is a situation and one of these is both.
• 47:30 - 48:00 You notice the consistent theme here. Even when it is damage boost, as Neander was saying, it's the situational damage boost that feels so incredibly good. I remember way back in early Overwatch one, there were Mercy guides out there and one of the very commonly said Mercy tips, which was good, was to damage boost your Reinhardt during Fire Strike. This was back in the day when healing tanks was more important. Uh, the healing percentage mattered more on a Reinhardt's health pool. There was less AFK pocketing on DPS. And finding those
• 48:00 - 48:30 moments to damage boost your R when that fire strike hit was legitimately good to pay attention to. That's just changed back in the old days. So things were mixed on. Resurrect. This checks with my experience as well. Sure, the adrenaline of going for risky res. Ha ha. What did we say about risk? It's glorious, but this is the
• 48:30 - 49:00 longest cooldown in the game and the average Mercy gets it four per 10 minutes. And most of those are probably not even risky. We know it's fresh to play against. Some of us would like a shorter but less impactful cool down to replace it, but preferably something that still involves risk. Valkyrie. I personally love Valkyrie because I love high mobility, but many here would like Valkyrie placed with an ultimate that can actually save your team and or consistently turn team fights. So, for context, from a coach's perspective, like Mr. Gray, notebook, boring. Um, Valkyrie is an it's an ultimate.
• 49:00 - 49:30 It's not a super strong ultimate, but it's fine. Valkyrie's value mostly comes through just the raw sustain, triage, movement, beam, but it is not a very exciting ultimate. It's decent, mostly because of the little boost that it gives in so many different ways over a long period of time. It's 15 freaking seconds, I believe. I mean, that's just insane. But it is not a very exciting ultimate. And it doesn't really provide you anything that you otherwise wouldn't do outside of actually
• 49:30 - 50:00 pocketing people that go in aggressively. But the reason that you can do that is because of the beam length and not necessarily by there's it doesn't do anything more outside of like a little bit more healing. Uh giving a little bit of overhealing that only sticks for a short period could be cool or some kind of triage healing. Uh, whoops. I clicked the button and it's gone. Okay. Um, boomer moment. Um, healing. I see a lot of people here want Mercy just have higher healing beam. I personally do not and think she should always have relatively low healing because there's
• 50:00 - 50:30 no downtime. Now, remember, higher healing may or may not encourage Mercy to move around a little bit more, open up different targets she otherwise wouldn't bother supporting based off of Ral's comment, but that probably is not something that will ever be implemented in the game. So, I think the developers probably agree with you, Tiger. Oh, slash. Yes, thank you for the sub, prankster. Um, I hate sustain meta. I've seen others say that higher healing is a boring solution and they want more coolins interaction like flash heal. Uh, flash heal is great and fun perk and so on. Yes, things we don't like. Relying
• 50:30 - 51:00 on others to perform to succeed. I've said it a million times that an amazing Mercy can make a good team great, but you can't make a bad team good. Many of us are like Mercy have some kind of independent playmaking that doesn't rely on your teammates to perform. This is a really interesting conversation because it's actually way more complicated than people appreciate and I think it's in interesting to talk about. So number one, you are not stuck in a rank due to your teammates as Mercy because Mercy will amplify even a
• 51:00 - 51:30 bad team to greater success. Okay. However, number two, if your team is truly outclassed, incompetent, or in a situation where there isn't a solution that they're finding, whether it's a bad map, bad heroes, whatever, Mercy correctly does not have individual potential to make the unbelievable happen. Let me give you
• 51:30 - 52:00 guys an example. you have a tank, a team that's going like Roadhog ED or Sigma ED or Zary and they're sitting on the point watch point and you're dying over and over again. You do not have you can help them do the bad thing as best as you possibly can and do it better than any support. But on Anna, on Zen, on Lucio sometimes even maybe not Lucio as much on those there are theoretically you could hit a five orb or a Nate or a shot or sleep and just kill one or two people
• 52:00 - 52:30 by yourself. It's possible. It's possible. It's not likely, but it's possible. And while a lot of us educational esoteric snots like myself will go, well, you'll never do it, you know, so it doesn't matter. You're not held back by your team. You know, you're I mean, a gold Mercy Mane is a gold Mercy, right? She doesn't deserve plat necessarily. However, the potential of that being possible with the hero that you're playing is what keeps people engaged.
• 52:30 - 53:00 We know that for a fact. It's a psychological fact. People only disengage when they perceive a situation as unsolvable. You understand? And because Mercy's value ceiling, hits a wall that she can't just there isn't a way to amplify a completely inep team to a level that's theoretically going to win the game single-handedly like there is with those supports. That's just
• 53:00 - 53:30 makes people frustrated. Now, I see a lot of people that say, you know, if you want to climb fast, you should just pick a carry character. That is actively bad advice. It is bad advice because it implies that a Baptiste contributes more than a Mercy does. That is not true. What it does mean is it means that in the worstc case scenario, Baptist has a higher potential output of value than Mercy does. Mercy is more in between.
• 53:30 - 54:00 Less opportunity to throw the fight, less opportunity to carry the fight. Baptist has a lot more potential to throw the fight, but a lot more potential to carry the fight. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Mercy's in the gray, Baps in the black and the white. And most heroes in Overwatch are pretty black and white with their value output. The people that say you should just swap to the people that say you should just
• 54:00 - 54:30 swap to Baptist to carry low ranks are the people that have watched unranked GMs and watched top 500 players climb out of, you know, bronze like this by just murdering everybody. But that's just not a representative of 99. It's not a representative of anybody in bronze that actually belongs in bronze. It to get to that point to where you can mechanically carry fights is takes ages and the skill gap goes accordingly. Now, all that being said, I know some of you
• 54:30 - 55:00 are like, "Well, then Spylo, how come awkward didn't get to Grandmaster with Mercy? How come there are like very few Mercy players in Grandmaster?" That is a third point here in that Mercy just isn't a very strong character right now, period. uh where even if you do squeeze every ounce of value out of her, she's just not very strong right now uh at the highest level. She's just not good. Does that mean that you shouldn't play her in gold? No. Plat? No. Diamond?
• 55:00 - 55:30 Probably not. Masters, you should probably start thinking about it. She just isn't good. So, you can squeeze every ounce of value out of her, but she has a value ceiling that is lower than basically every support right now. Let me give you guys an example. Moira, not a very strong support, but there are significantly more, to my knowledge, more moiraes in top 500 than there are mercy mains. In fact, I've coached two or three top 500 Moy remains in top 500. Uh, one of them turned out to be a
• 55:30 - 56:00 DPS only Moyer main that got like three of his accounts banned and ended up having some pretty profane account names. Uh, some of you guys in top five may know who I'm talking about. I'm not going to repeat. Um, but this guy was in top 100, top 50 consistently with Moyer of Flink only. Um, Mercy just doesn't have that ability to val squeeze the value up. Yeah. No, not not not that not that person. Yeah, it's still on Spyro, too. You can still find it. Um, but my point being is that Mercy
• 56:00 - 56:30 right now just it's not that Mercy doesn't have carry potential because of her kit doesn't provide that. In theory, you could change nothing about Mercy's damage output but boost her healing, boost her damage boost, boost her res, boost her Valkyrie, uh, Valkyrie, and she could she could absolutely carry carry, but she still would have that. Um, yes, Satan, that's the person with variations of that name.
• 56:30 - 57:00 Um, and I think you're more likely to find her to be a relatively weak character partly because she doesn't have that ceiling of output because if you get to the highest level of play, even if a character is hard, they will find every slice of the pie that you can squeeze value out of, they'll do it. Positioning, minmax, they'll do it. Coolown management, they'll do it. Mercy
• 57:00 - 57:30 mechanics. See, the funny thing is is as many of you guys may not know this, but back in 200 um 17, 18, 19, there were occasionally briefly Mercy Ma uh mains, I say, Mercy metas or at least map metas at the highest level of play, Overwatch League contenders. There were briefly moments where Mercy would be viable for a map. Far um different situations, right? Uh, and I'm not just talking about like moth meta, uh, although that was also true, but just outside of that, even there
• 57:30 - 58:00 were legitimately really good Mercy players. This is when Mercy was had a lot more output of value. You could tell, these are professionals. You could tell you could tell who played Mercy, who didn't. And it it mattered, too. It mattered. Absolutely. I had the luxury of coaching Dre once. You guys may be familiar with Dedro. Um, and I don't know if he we may have had a brief Mercy meta. Um, Trijo was insane on Mercy. Insane, insane support player. In fact, I think one of the most underrated support players in the history of
• 58:00 - 58:30 professional Overwatch. And it's he got screwed over by some external situations with both Uprising and Paris. We won't delve into it, but Dre was nuts. Phenomenal Mercy player and just a good support player period. And my guy, that guy could aim, too. Um, so you know, you just but those moments were few and far between, right? Like where you were allowed and encouraged to show off what you could do. So, uh, okay. Well, we can keep
• 58:30 - 59:00 going here. The easy spectator mode allegations. I I find Mercy to be dynamic, engaging, and often stressful. Comparatively, Anna is just about landing your shots, cool downs, and always being in a safe position with a good angle. Um, I think that's a simplistic way of looking at it, but I'm sure that the opposite is true as well, where we all have simplistic views of Mercy and and I I think honor requires more rotations than people think. But fair points. Mercy required me to be watching every ally cool down to boost and flying around like a maniac while not dying to make it all happen. Now, do you guys see the vision
• 59:00 - 59:30 here? Whether this is good, whether this is necessary, you guys see it, though. Even you non-mercy players can see it, right? It's there. There's potential there. Um, but I wouldn't mind more skill expression or kit. Low skill floor is fine, but higher skill ceiling would be great. I mean, we that's like one of the first things we said today. No, the new perks added give more dimensions to her kit as did Sam. I love it. More things to do and more ways to interact with the match. Um, a relevant side note.
• 59:30 - 60:00 Um, it's relevant. We would also appreciate people would be a little bit nicer. I've never met a kinder, more welcoming community than this one. Despite the Mercy Mafia allegations that crazy Tik Tok mercy or mean one your games doesn't represent all of us. Most of us flux to what's needed. Most of us doing our best. Now I I I am very I'm very I I tease a lot. I'm always making fun of support players. Um but there there's nothing wrong with Mercy players, man. Like that this community is targeted more so than they probably
• 60:00 - 60:30 deserve. Um, I have done many I'm not saying that there isn't a vocal minority here that probably spoils the pot here, but I have done Yeah, J3. I have done many critiques of Mercy. Many. I've personally have never had to deal with a Mercy Mafia. Never. Let me test something really quick here. Uh, I wish somebody would drop a tactical nuke on the on Mercy. So, I do
• 60:30 - 61:00 I do think a lot of it's perception, but um and okay, I'm going to say it like there is a certain percentage of people that are going to be, you know, sexist about it. Obviously, that goes without saying. Again, it's the vocal minority that are probably sexist and it's the vocal minority that is going to be the Mercy Mafia. I think what it is though is people will take that and say, "Oh, that's the Mercy community." That's not the Mercy community. When you have however million freaking Mercy players, maybe not that many, there's of course
• 61:00 - 61:30 going to be a subset. The reason that people don't talk about Wrecking Ball, toxic Wrecking Ball, mains, is because it's like this much compared to the Mercy community. This much. You know what I'm saying? What's more interesting is how many Okay, I'm not going to do this. I was gonna say what would be more industry is conjecturing which smaller percentage of mains are toxic despite being a smaller percentage but I'm not gonna say
• 61:30 - 62:00 anything about that. I will tastefully keep my silence. Uh okay. Yeah. I mean let's keep going. Uh we got another 10 minutes here before Yetel shows up. Thanks for reading Tiger. Excellently written post. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this up. I I apologize to any Mercy mains right now that end this post put their heart and soul into a post that I may or may not get to. Um, that
• 62:00 - 62:30 sucks. I hope it was worth the satisfaction of you putting your time and your thoughts into this. Hope that writing it just was reward and of itself. And I hope that I don't miss any crucial ideas here. It's just one of those quantity things. So, thank you guys so much. Um, what did I miss? Uh, somebody says Spylo 4A and then it cuts out. Ah. [Music] Ah. Oh, for IO from Dota 2. I
• 62:30 - 63:00 don't idea though. We're not I honestly today I'm not as completely interested in providing strict solutions. Um, as much as I'd love to do that, I think we have some ideas already floating around that maybe you guys have sniffed up just a wee bit. But I I think the concept here is that there are this would be more like hey Blizzard there are so many ideas and solutions already out there whether in this freaking thread in my videos in Neander's videos stadium aspects and I'm
• 63:00 - 63:30 sure Blizzard's aware of that. But it is I guess this is more just as much for the community as it is for throw running it up the flag pole. You know, IO has an even worse pocket problem. All right. Mercy's viability completely depends on the skill of your DPS. This has been an issue for pretty much ever. Obviously, hyperbol here. Hyperbole. Gosh. Um, not really, but also more so than Yeah. any other support or DPS. Yeah,
• 63:30 - 64:00 true. Remember we talked about the gray? Mercy's the gray. We need more black and white. You need more risk. You need more opportunity to throw the game. Like, like, see, that's the thing, guys. Like, you have to be okay with just throwing the game. Shut up. You just like, I'm sorry. You just have to I'm not saying that we need to go to Doomfist level, especially TPS Doomfist level, right? Uh, Kawa Feast or Famine, right? I think that's
• 64:00 - 64:30 the opposite extreme. But you can't have a character that is just kind of inoffensive. That's just not good enough because it's not only not a great game design, but it's also not very in interesting for the person playing the character. You know, it's a balance. It's tricky. You know, I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do. Uh if your deepest are underperforming, Mercy becomes a throw pick, right? And when a hero is over I
• 64:30 - 65:00 wouldn't say that she becomes a throw pick but a lot of your utility becomes a lot less interesting. And when a hero is overperforming where she takes the blame because of the damage boost she needs a soft rework. So it's ironic here that because she doesn't have enough specific autonomy with the black and white here then occasionally I guess she does fall into the black or white where like a large part of her utility just doesn't matter as much. So, she ends up with the same exact problem of fee or famine despite not really having a feast or famine kit by her personal
• 65:00 - 65:30 expression. Man, it's tricky, isn't it? I love playing Mercy and she is fun, but she needs her own identity beyond pocketing DPS, even if that means losing some of her abilities that we love to use. Um, I mean, if anything, I think more is more here. I think you guys would probably agree with with Mercy. Um, I think more is more with this. I mean, she needs more. I mean, Mercy needs some cool down management. You know what I'm saying? Mercy needs some some movement and some text and some stuff. A cool down that isn't used every
• 65:30 - 66:00 what two and a half minutes. They said four of per 10. You know what I'm saying? Even her weapon isn't particularly useful because of how slow the projectile speed is. What do you see the vision of Mercy as a hero? For me personally, Mercy as a hero's main focus is to stay alive to peel and support a team. I quite like the triage support idea the devs have interpreter in my opinion are failing to deliver on it. Notice that a lot of people are very obsessed with staying alive with Mercy and at the same time movement her her movement her ability to
• 66:00 - 66:30 peel for herself by being almost untouchable in the heat of battle by using myself as bait to allow my team to make plays. I quite enjoy risky reses as well. Again you noticing risk here. Risk risk risk. So I had a session not too long ago with a gold life weaver player on console and I've coached this guy from bronze. used to be a bronze console life weaver, now he's gold, way more proactive. Um, you know, doing some stuff. And we had this discussion about taking little baby angles with life weaver, not like, you know, flanking, but like little baby angles. And the
• 66:30 - 67:00 reason why that's important to do with life when you're not playing versus hard dive is because if you're playing like a poke mirror, you have 275 HP, you have life grip, you have pedal, you have dash, you have a perk that gives you permanent 10 healing per second. And basically none of it's useful in these sniper poke matchups. So what do you do? He's playing Circuit Royale. He's got playing versus Bastion Ash. You know, how do you do? Well, you got to present
• 67:00 - 67:30 yourself as bait. You got to go, hey, look at me, right? You gota block you gota take the high ground and poke him from here, you know, pedal yourself up and then dash out, right? You you you're built to absorb pressure. You got you got the beef. Life Weaver is a gigachad, right? He's got he's 200 he's got a ton of survivability. So if that survivability isn't being pressed through dive, then that utility is wasted. And so you have to force the value of your utility. You
• 67:30 - 68:00 see this sometimes with Baptiste um and poke mirrors too. Whereas if you don't really have a tank to pocket like you're playing BP with wrecking ball, you need to be using your forcing your cooldowns on yourself. And so Mercy's kind of in a similar situation. What do you do when you're playing poke, mercy, whatever, and you're not rewarded for situational damage boost, and you're not really rewarded for movement? Your survivability, your bait, your ability to use yourself to move around quickly, and your speed, it doesn't matter anymore. And that feels so
• 68:00 - 68:30 unsatisfying, right? So, this is fun. Passive beta mercy mains, right, guys? All those betas love the risk. They love the heat of the battle and making plays, right? So this is why our perception I don't think of the average Mercy man is correct at all. You know what I'm saying? It's the same kind of analogy I
• 68:30 - 69:00 said with Genji and Mercy players. They love the same things about their character. you know, um I'm not saying that for every Mercy main, but certainly these ones, they want they want risk. Give them blood, you know, let them to move. Heat of the battle. It's what makes games like Overwatch fun. You know, what do you not like about Mercy's current design, how team reliant she is, you know, we're seeing some of the same stuff over and over and over again. Um,
• 69:00 - 69:30 and again, I I told you guys this is a content idea that isn't, you know, optimized for engagement and new creative spicy takes and people throwing desks. It my point is that we're kind of all on the same page here. All right. So, uh, is Yeetle, you around? I know's been doing his uh, Freya grind. Is he in a rank game, y'all?
• 69:30 - 70:00 [Music] Yet's waiting for you. Okay. All right. Let me let me give him a call here then. So, if you guys don't know, um, Yetel is ex Contenders player, longtime streamer, phenomenal ball player back in the day. Um, now a big
• 70:00 - 70:30 streamer and somebody I really respect, not just with his knowledge of the game. He's played a million different characters to Grandmaster, but he's very well spoken and very reasonable. I didn't want somebody that hates Mercy just for the sake of hating Mercy. I wanted somebody that could kind of frame their arguments well and fairly. And I think Eidle is that guy. So, Eidle [Music] Yo, how are you? How are you doing, man? Let me ask you a really quick question. Would you rather have five grapes? All
• 70:30 - 71:00 right, these grapes are like the kind of grapes that you usually throw away, right? They're they're at that point where they're get bruised up and all that or you eat a banana 2 days past how you like your banana. So, it's like that banana's going kind of bad, too. It's like really soft. See, I'm I'm such a coward here because I like I don't like like super brown bananas, even though they technically are sweeter. You know what I'm saying? So, I like like I don't love bananas, period. So, it' just be like a neutral banana. But two days pass means that it's like kind of browning,
• 71:00 - 71:30 but it's still safe. You get what I'm saying? It's still safe, though. Now, if you were if you were a big brown banana fan, you'd be in trouble is what I'm saying. But I'm I'm I'm a super basic dude, so I'll take it. I think grapes are just like they're like little nuclear bombs. You never know what you're going to get and it's never good. I love grapes until I don't and I'm like, "Oh." And you never could tell. Like you It's Yeah. I like them when they're really sour, you know? Like sometimes the little tiny ones are like super sour out of nowhere. I like those. Those are pretty good. Yeah. It's too bad. Grapes have like such potential to be like an A tier fruit, but they just
• 71:30 - 72:00 they always just kick you right in the pants when you least expect it. So yeah, definitely mix. All right, Mercy. We've already been yapping for a little bit here. We've kind of framed everything nicely. uh word on the street is is that not only do you not like Mercy, you don't like playing with or against Mercy and and you've been banning her pretty frequently, which doesn't exactly put you in the minority here. Um I respect your ability, not just your opinion, but your ability to kind of communicate ideas and and we've already had a pretty good consensus of why most people
• 72:00 - 72:30 dislike Mercy, but why do you dislike Mercy? What what about her just drives you nuts? I I think it's very similar to like why people don't like playing Mercy. But the main thing is that I don't like the kind of gameplay she enables with like other DPS, right? Like I don't want to play if I'm playing no matter what role I'm playing, I don't want to play against Far Mercy, Echo Mercy, Souljourn Mercy, Widow Mercy, whatever it be. I don't like that 2v1 scenario that goes on whenever there's a Mercy in another DPS. I think for you
• 72:30 - 73:00 question for you is when you say that though you do realize that it's a 2v one, right? Like you're not expected to win a 2v1. Like would you prefer a zenyatta far instead of a pharmacy? If so, why? Like what what what changes about the dynamic here? I I think it's the idea that you could still win the duel and then not win the duel. You know what I mean? Like you get the kill from across the map, she gets resed or they get resed, whatever the hero is. I see. I think that's what makes it really annoying as well as just like I you know
• 73:00 - 73:30 I don't know if it still does it but like does damage boost still um push certain heroes past like a threshold like this far like two tap with a damage boost I don't know I honestly don't know yeah she she does yeah I mean it definitely changes some thresholds for sure for sure do you think it could also be that the type of character that is being damage boost frustrates you as well like you immediately Sojurnn Ekko Far like immediately come to mind especially Sojurnn as of recently historically is it just a hero preference for you as well? I I don't
• 73:30 - 74:00 mind far or eko when they they don't have a Mercy like I think it's fine cuz it it seems like it's a lot more reasonable to take the duel. Like if they just have a Zenorb, you could still just like double dink them or whatever it be. Um and then they won't get resed. But like the Souljorn scenario, I I I do just hate Souljorn. Oh, so occasionally hero, but more often just what the Mercy allows them to do and then even forgiving their mistakes afterwards. Do
• 74:00 - 74:30 you play with Mercy much? What is the experience of like playing with a Mercy globally and specifically also playing with a Mercy pocket? Um I I've definitely had some games with Mercy. It kind of depends on what I'm playing. Like I don't like having to have a Mercy either. So I'm definitely the person that just doesn't like Mercy in my games period for various different reasons. Sure. Sure. So talk to me about this. I don't like for I don't like playing DPS and having a Mercy pocket because then it makes it so that if I
• 74:30 - 75:00 take a flank and I do nothing on that flank, that's two heroes that are doing nothing on the flank. So it's more responsibility, more pressure. Yeah, a little bit more. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Do you think it's more psychological or is it actually just change the strategy to something that you're not used to? I I definitely do think it changes the strategy because I can like draw resources on the flank and it's good if I make it out or whatever, but like if me and Mercy are there and we're not actually getting kills, it's like all right, well, we're we're kind of trolling. So, we're both trolling.
• 75:00 - 75:30 Screws screws your math off where normally I I have something called the Kevster principle. If you're one person pulling two people's resources, you just live. But when you're two people with a Mercy, it's you need a elimination or at least two people's resources. Otherwise, you're throwing the fight. Yeah, that might change how you CDs or how you position. Okay. Uh, how about when you're not being pocketed? Do you ever feel like any frustration or break points maybe playing tank with a Mercy or playing a flanker DPS? I know this you might have to kind of think
• 75:30 - 76:00 back a little bit here. Maybe pull something out. If not, it's fine. Yeah. No, if I'm playing like tank or some kind of flanker, I mean, I just don't interact with my Mercy at all for the most part, except I mean, if she heals me a little bit or if I get resed. But I think they pushed her healing to a point where it's like it's kind of all right to have a Mercy to heal me. Okay. Um not the best. I I'd still like if if I have a Mercy, I'm thinking, okay, this Mercy and whatever DPS she's going to pocket got to go do some [ __ ] elsewhere and I got to like kind of play around that like I got to not soak up all the heals
• 76:00 - 76:30 and etc. We were talking earlier about black and whites and the kind of extremes of gameplay and how you can have a Mercy player that doesn't really have the carry potential, but also it's harder to throw with Mercy. And yet, we also kind of realized at the same time that Mercy, if she is playing that pocket play style, is an amplifier of either somebody that's popping off or somebody that's fumbling the bag. You're kind of describing it as a DPS player. you're not appreciating the pressure and
• 76:30 - 77:00 the necessity to do so much, right? But then when I asked you as somebody that's not being pocketed, you're kind of describing Mercy is almost not even it's not even she's not even there or she doesn't even impact you at all. In fact, you're calculating how do I play basically down a support? So, it's two opposite extremes. Would you agree with that? Yeah, that sounds about right. Do you normally like factor in your supports when not when you're not playing with Mercy? like with Zen, Anna, Bap, Lucio, Juno, any of these heroes. Do you think about them when you're
• 77:00 - 77:30 playing with them as a tank or a DPS that's not being pocketed? If I'm playing tank, I I definitely will be a little bit more conscious if we have like Zen Brig heals or like any small amount of heals or like of course the the support matchups like if they have anti, we we have cleanse, whatever it be. So, I I'll think about that and I'll also think about how I'm going to play around my support alts like Katsune is going to be a fight win if I'm on Zarya, for example. Sure. Um, but I guess with like I don't I don't think about Mercy's Valk because I
• 77:30 - 78:00 don't see it as like all right, this is going to be the alt that's gonna win us the fight. Um, again, is it just cuz it doesn't change your decision-m that much? Is that why? Um, yeah. Yeah, kind of. It doesn't. Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. And then when you have a Mercy not pocketing you, the only decision that it changes is that I just can't do very much. Okay, sounds about right. What do you feel about res? How do you feel about res? I think res is fine. The only thing that bothers me about res is she reses
• 78:00 - 78:30 within line of sight, but then she breaks line of sight. I think that annoying. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Just being able to break line of sight on the res cuz then it's like if I'm if I killed someone from across the map, that res is impossible to deny unless I'm like some super hypers speed hero. I'm not going to be able to do anything about it. And I think that's kind of annoying. Sure. It's like, well, that didn't take any effort from the Mercy. Just, you know, just res. Just press E. What do you think about her beam healing output,
• 78:30 - 79:00 damage boost output? Are those things that you think are balancable? I don't know how much thought you've put into this. I'm not asking you to come up with rework solutions here, but just give me your emotional first cut response to both of those things. So, I think healing beam is fine. I mean, I I don't really have a problem with it. It's the damage boost that I have a problem with. And I feel like that that scenario where I explained like uh one versus two the like the pharmacy for example. I feel like taking that interaction and not necessarily winning the duel but pulling resources from those two would feel a
• 79:00 - 79:30 lot better if damage boost was a cool down. If it's like I'm taking a duel. Oh, I see she just blue beam the uh the far. The far does like a like a nano effect or something. Right. Sure. Now I just leave and I got that whatever second cool down out. That 10 12 second cool down. There we go. Oh, I got my I got my uh what do you call it? Uh my advantage in this. Sure. I did something in that interaction rather than I just got forced out and now they're just going to walk on my team. Whatever it be. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes total sense on a scale of uh Genji
• 79:30 - 80:00 like early season 9 ball Genji Tracer meta for you to season 8 Malgo meta. How horrible is it to have Mercy meta at the higher levels for your personal taste? Like are you talking about like overall Mercy metas or you talking overall Mercy Mercy? Overall Mercy Metas I don't remember them ever being that bad to be honest. I mean I know that it's probably a hot take cuz I feel like Yeah, I
• 80:00 - 80:30 don't maybe cuz I played ball most of the time around those time period she was meta. I don't remember them ever being too bad except for Mercy Souljorn. I I hated that, but I don't know if that was like a true meta or just a ladder meta. Sure. But but I guess that's my point here. Whether it's a true meta or latter meta, ladder meta is true meta for the vast majority of players, right? So maybe not in GM, but what was your impression of the Mercy Sojurnn? Yeah, I hate that. I hated that. I mean, it just amplifies my already hatred for uh one
• 80:30 - 81:00 shots in the game. That's on a scale of one to Mala though. That's that's the question. Every every mount is every met is hated, right? So again, this is like my I know this isn't going to be for everyone, but my per personally I think it's like a 10. It's like the worst of the worst. I just don't I got to think against one shots. I think they're the worst thing in the game. I think Widow one shots I think even though Hanzo's not played as much. Hanzo one shots and then Soldier just like that on crack. So it's like uh I hate this. It's the worst version of Overwatch for me. Okay. Okay. That that
• 81:00 - 81:30 that's absolutely fair. Um, are there any questions in my Twitch chat for utel? I don't if you have anything else to get off your chest here. I mean, if there's ain't nothing else to say. We don't need anything else to say, but I'm going to see if there's any other questions here. Anything about Mercy that you wanted to get off your chest or discuss or ideas or principles or apologetics or like what what what comes to mind if anything? I I think that what they should do with Mercy is they should somehow keep her
• 81:30 - 82:00 kit sameish, but introduce something that like makes her skill ceiling way higher. Cuz I think a big issue a lot of people have is there's just at least from the majority of the player perspective, she's not a very skillful hero. And I wouldn't want to play Mercy because I also don't deem her as very skillful. Movement's not enough to me. I think she needs more for me. Like I think if a majority of the players think, "Yeah, I kind of want to play Mercy or Mercy would be really fun to play here," then I think that would change the perception on how frequently she's getting banned. Cuz I think right
• 82:00 - 82:30 now it's like no skill and just enables [ __ ] Sure. Sure. So you're you're actually okay with Mercy as like an entry- level character, but just give her something more skill expressive as she moves up the ladder. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's actually a pretty pretty common popular opinion, I would say. Um, I think it's the best win-win. Like, if you want to make Mercy players happy as well as the general player base, it's it's the best thing you could do, I think. Sure. Sure. Uh, what sauce do you use to mix your tuna? YouTube chat wants
• 82:30 - 83:00 to know. Oh, I I don't like that. It's our YouTube channel. I let you guys down. You come with Well, hey, we have to return the favor of goofy questions. So, yeah. All right. You tomato sauce. Okay, there you go, chat. All right, I appreciate it. Good luck with your fre climb. How goes it? Oh. Oh, it's rough, man. She's hard, isn't she? She's freaking hard. Where are you at? Masters three. I'm in Masters three, I think. Actually, I might have just got demoted to Masters 4. She's tough. The buffs didn't help. The buffs are huge. I think those buffs are big, but I don't know. I
• 83:00 - 83:30 I can't The problem with the buff wasn't was like they increase the frequency of that burst action, but the fact that you have to use your dash to get your bolt reset does throw off your aim and makes it kind of inconsistent. It's good that that's there. Otherwise, it'd be way too easy of a oneshot combo, but it is not near as easy as people think it is. But that's maybe also the ultimate, man. Like, wow. There are certain situations when you just it just doesn't do anything. So, um yeah. Hey, maybe we got to come back for a for a Freya talk soon. Maybe, maybe, maybe. All right,
• 83:30 - 84:00 man. Have a good rest of your stream. Appreciate your time, brother. Take it easy, dude. You too. Peace. All right. Well, that was short and sweet. Doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. More of the same. Yo, hi. Give me one sec. I need to make it so they can also hear you on my end. Okay, that's fine. Freaking hate this Mercy skin, man. How do you Which one? The freaking I don't know. What's the one with like the the Satan one? Not not the devil one, but like she's like the evil one. Like look at my stream. What is that one called? Oh, do do you mean uh is it her
• 84:00 - 84:30 mythic or No. Yeah, I think it's the mythic. Oh, it's vengeance. That's vengeance. Is it good or I don't like it? I don't like it. You don't like it? Really? No, I don't like it. It's Why don't you like it? She's like I don't know. It's like it's like techno or technological. I don't know. I think like she looks better when she's like mythical or like massive and stuff. I don't know. I can't really describe it. I have perfect taste though, so I refuse to elaborate. No, I I mean it is like a very different skin for her. I kind of think that it's cool because of that cuz it's like such
• 84:30 - 85:00 a different like we would ever see for her. That's true. That's true. That's true. I can admit that. Okay. So, I sent you the the recap here. We already had Neander's opinions. We've gone through r/MCM mains which was excellent. Uh we had Yeetle uh gripe and complain. Um and now we have complain. Oh no. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you know the guy just cries constantly. And now we're going to have your opinion on things. And I think the consistent the consensus and the consistent theme you've seen so far is
• 85:00 - 85:30 that most folks kind of agree touch on similar points. So we'll start with like you know the first question I sent to you here. um which was what do you see as the vision for Mercy? Even if it's not necessarily shared obviously with the Blizzard community or the Blizzard development team, I've always thought that like the hero vision for Mercy in general or like the hero fantasy cuz I know like Blizzard and specifically for Overwatch, they like the idea of this hero fantasy. Like
• 85:30 - 86:00 every hero has a fantasy in this game that like tailor to their gameplay and like really like builds into who they are as a character. Yes. And I think for Mercy a big part of that is her movement. And I I know like this is like a long long ways in the past um now, but triage was something that encouraged Mercy players to have more of that movement and be like more active between their teams depending on like who you
• 86:00 - 86:30 were helping, right? So by triage, just for those in chat that don't know, that was the higher heal on critical health targets basically. Yeah. It gave you 50% more healing on allies that were under uh half HP. The big problem with that was when it got to Valkyrie and then it was like 90 HP per second sometimes and like that was too much obviously, but it did encourage this main idea that Mercy is this like hero that moves between
• 86:30 - 87:00 different heroes and like you really utilize her flight. I feel like that is a big part of her character and I feel like if you talk to any Mercy player, they're mostly okay with you getting rid of anything else as long as you like keep her movement. Sure. Can I chime in really fast here as well? Cuz obviously I've coached a lot of heroes and I coach all the support heroes top level and that's actually despite common misconception that is not something that other most other support heroes do. Lucu doesn't rotate move around as much as
• 87:00 - 87:30 people think at the highest level and Kyiko doesn't either as well. She does some especially with the new like shuffle perk but having her being basically rotating moving around constantly would be actually really unique compared to other supports in terms of how she would be played. Yeah. No, I I agree. There is like Okay, I when I first started playing Overwatch, I did play a bit of Lucio. don't think I was very good at it. Still, I'm not good at that hero,
• 87:30 - 88:00 but like his movement like it's so different from Mercy's. And so people have asked me in the past, they're like, "Oh, well, if you like movement, like why don't you play Lucio?" And I'm like, "It's just so different." Like it's it's so entirely different. Yeah. Um Yeah. What about the movement is different? What app what about the movement appeals to you? Cuz we we use the term movement pretty pretty largely. Obviously, you touched on the difference between Lucio and Mercy. um dare I say including Overwatch one and Overwatch 2 movement. What aspects about both do you like or
• 88:00 - 88:30 dislike? And what do you think the larger portion of the Mercy community likes about her movement and or dislikes about her movement? I think the main thing that they dislike about her movement right now is that it has two cool downs. And by that I mean if you just use guardian angel itself uh you'll get a 1.5 second cool down. Right. Mhm. But if you crouch or jump at any point in time it adds another 1 second onto it which makes it a total
• 88:30 - 89:00 2.5 seconds. Yeah. A full 1 second. So it's half a second. Nope. Nope. If it was half a second I would be so happy. You have no idea. Oh. So you're saying just a raw GA is 1.5. But using any tech, which is the, you know, the the the space directional change or super jump is going to add an extra second. So that's 67% more cool down. Uh, which is significant. Wow. Okay. It used to be 100%. It used to be 1.5 seconds and 1.5 seconds for a total of 3 seconds. Until
• 89:00 - 89:30 very recently, did they like change that one? Interesting. Interesting. Okay, that's crazy. Even then, it doesn't feel that great. I would honestly like to see either it go down to like like obviously we used to have a one total cooldown that was just the 1.5. I'd honestly like to see it go to just be back to a flat cool down with like a 1.8 seconds or 2 seconds as like a medium compromise kind of thing rather than having these like
• 89:30 - 90:00 two separate cool downs. Well, the question that I'm sorry to interrupt, but why do you think is there a specific reason that you could see why they punish you for using tech? Is it that you could spam tech too often or is that is that I wonder if that's a deliberate design choice? Um, I feel like it was a deliberate design choice only because there was like So, when Overwatch 2 first dropped, you were able to have a lot of influence over stalling with Mercy's uh like the way that her
• 90:00 - 90:30 movement is much more threedimensional in Overwatch 2. Yeah. Uh, you can utilize that to your benefit to stall a lot more. And I think that was a little bit too powerful in players minds. So, I do think people were like, "Oh, we're having a hard time hitting her." Like, it's, you know, does she have the self passive, too? Like the ability to heal herself as a percentage of the healing that she does to other targets. She does. When Overwatch 2 first came out, she had that passive as well as her
• 90:30 - 91:00 normal passive. I can't remember what it was called anymore, but her normal passive uh was basically just like she got more healing uh in general just for like being Mercy cuz she doesn't have the ability to like self-heal herself. But the devs eventually thought that it was like kind of boring, I think, having both of her passives just be like, "Oh, you heal yourself." So, they introduced sympathetic recovery, which is like when you're healing people who are missing HP, you also get healing off of them.
• 91:00 - 91:30 Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how much of that like stalling problem was due to both of those. Not just the movement, but also the ability to selfheal while she's stalling. Right. So I I Yeah, I definitely think that it was like that that kind of combination. Okay. So that part that part of movement feels really bad, which you're very specific about the cooldowns itself. So in terms of the tech itself, the super jump, the space, the just the GA way it flows overall. Okay. Beyond that, or are there additional concerns? Uh, I would say
• 91:30 - 92:00 that there are some concerns regarding like collision. Uh, because in Overwatch one, I feel like collision wasn't as like particular, but in Overwatch 2, for some reason, Mercy's Guardian Angel tends to get caught on like almost everything. It's like kind of atrocious. Uh, if you collide with an enemy or you collide with the slightest little bit of terrain, you lose all of your momentum. Okay. Okay. And it's not just about the momentum is what often that's what
• 92:00 - 92:30 empowers things like your super jump or your slingshot. Correct. So if you lose your momentum it kills what happens afterwards as well. Okay. Uh or it like incurs the cool down and then you're just kind of like a sitting duck which is even worse especially if you've like already jumped then it's a 2.5 second cool down and you're like you're dead. Yeah that makes total sense. What about Mercy's movement do you like? Like what is largely liked by the community? It sounds like a lot of, forgive the laziness of the term, but it feels like almost like ADHD rapid
• 92:30 - 93:00 repositioning depending on who needs it at any point in time. Basically constantly moving around putting out small fires everywhere. That seems to be from reading other Mercy mains posts kind of like the hero fantasy if everything worked out perfectly. Would you agree? Yeah, I I would definitely agree. like Mercy ideally is someone that is being able to like help other people and being able to like be around the battlefield a lot. And I I actually think um triage heal or not triage heal
• 93:00 - 93:30 but uh flash heal, sorry. Yes. Uh triage on the brain. Splash shield is actually really good um in terms of forcing you to be more active because it makes you like like okay they changed it recently where if your ally I don't know if they put it in the patch notes yet. It was missing from the patch notes, but now it's on a se Yeah, now it's on a separate cool down from resurrection. And if you use it if an
• 93:30 - 94:00 ally is above half health, it's 50 HP. But if you use it when an ally is below health, it's 150 HP. So yeah, it basically becomes where that it encourages you like if your tank is critical or something like that to really quickly get into into like a position to like help them for a second and then go back to your DPS or go back to your support or like like you could really do that for anyone, but I find that it's actually quite substantial on
• 94:00 - 94:30 tanks and like just being able to sometimes help your second support out like that before going back to like what you were doing beforehand. Interesting. Interesting. One of the two things that we were really looking at here kind of building our pillars of what we want from Mercy from like a like a fundamental standpoint without getting into the details of movement and so on. Uh was number one risk like we want to reintroduce risk as the normal gameplay loop of Mercy because it is satisfying for most people that play video games to
• 94:30 - 95:00 have some sort of risk and reward. Yeah. um kind of we how that would extrapolate into Mercy would be more movement less pocket play style. But then the kind of the way to do that is we say we don't like pocket play style. Okay. So then what's the solution? We kind of found a vague framework of how can we interpret her utility in a way that is you're rewarded for risk. And you discussed how with flash heal that burst heal gives you a lot of motivation to move around and find value out of it when it's necessary. Yeah, but Neander was talking
• 95:00 - 95:30 a lot about how damage boost isn't in a vacuum a riskless ability. It just is in its current iteration, which means that it never expires, right? But we've talked about damage boost reworking, how that works. We've talked about, you and I have talked about movement speed, attack speed. Um, we've talked about over health. We've talked about a lot. We've talked about a lot of things potentially. Yeah. Yeah. But basically all revolving around like how can we reintroduce risk into the gameplay loop which means we introduce movement,
• 95:30 - 96:00 right? So what do you think? What are your thoughts on on risk and and and how you could incorporate more of that triage mindset with or without healing? Oh man. Okay. So this this actually lowkey might end up being like sort of controversial. I was kind of thinking about it earlier. That's okay. And I'm like, you know what? I actually wish that flash heal was like a standard ability for Mercy. I feel like Mercy right now is missing something that
• 96:00 - 96:30 keeps her active other than her movement. You want to encourage her to move, but there's no reason for her to move a lot of the time. If she's just like damage boosting, a DPS behind a wall, there's no reward. There's no like incentive for going for risks. Like it's so much easier to just play back and just help them and whatever. But when you add flash heal into the mix, it ends up being this thing where it's like, okay, is your support critical? Maybe you can like really quickly leave your DPS to go help them or help your tank or
• 96:30 - 97:00 if like your support's busy with something and you like don't notice someone like or like they don't notice someone like you can actually step in and be like, "Okay, I can go for this risk. Sometimes it's worth it. I can help very briefly and then I can go back to what I was doing." So, that is one way uh I feel like with her current kit, if you didn't want to change too much, it's something that promotes promotes a lot of activity within her kit. And I think that's something that she's really
• 97:00 - 97:30 missing. Yeah, I I I understand that completely. Like now the the the the dynamic pills in me wants me to go, okay, I'm okay with that as long as flash heal also had like an offensive boost to the Mercy. So that you would sometimes use flash shield on a target that's full health to allow you to reposition faster or or something along those lines. So there's like the problem with flash shield only being flash shield is that there's really only one way to use the cool down. You're correct that it forces you to move around a lot but it doesn't necessarily change. There
• 97:30 - 98:00 aren't multiple ways to use the cooldown. It just kind of becomes a glorified life grip in that aspect. So I would say like what if we put flashy on a separate cool down which by the way 100% agree with giving her an actual ability would be great. also talking about totally missing that. Yeah. And it's also like there's your transferable skill right there. Practicing more coolown management. Something that Mercy sorely like lacks, right? Um but then okay, so flash heal, but then Mercy for 2 seconds after flash heal uh gains, I don't know, 25 30% movement speed and selfheal herself. So maybe you have to
• 98:00 - 98:30 decide, do I want to enable this target in the same decision making loop that an Anna has to use with how she's using her cool down or or Kirao if she suses herself now that her team suffers. I think something similar with flash shield would be would be interesting as well. Um, yeah, I think we're definitely on the same page. I think we're definitely on the same page in that regard. I think I think Okay, I do like the idea of a movement speed. Uh, some kind of little reward being like, oh, hey, uh, we encouraged you to like move out of position to do this thing and you
• 98:30 - 99:00 did that thing, so you get like a little reward for it. Sure. Uh, to like help you get out. Uh, as much as I like that and I think that would be very nice, I'm sure that people would not be happy with it and they would uh say that it's it's too much or it's too hard to hit her. So, alternatively, I feel like maybe since you would end up taking flash heal off of the major perk, you could have a major perk that then maybe is something Guardian Angel related because we all like really really want something for
• 99:00 - 99:30 Guardian Angel. And yeah, there's that minor perk that increases the distance, but it's like like that does come in handy. It's the one that I pick more often over um Angelic Recovery or now Angelic Resurrection. Um Sure. Sure. But at the same time, it just it doesn't feel like that is the thing for Guardian Angel that people really want. Yeah, I get that. I will say one thing, and maybe this is going to be my hot take, is that I think that the people that complain about Mercy's movement are probably more thinking about Valkyrie,
• 99:30 - 100:00 where she does feel nonkillable with her speed and her self- regeneration. Um, but that movement speed in of itself, if she is forced to move in open space, which inherently has risks, I don't care if people complain to be honest with you. No, you know what? I think you should be rewarded for that. And I think you're you're being too cautious with it to be honest. like you know I' I've been burned many many many many many times before for expressing like a opinion without like giving drawbacks on that. So it's something that I'm very cautious
• 100:00 - 100:30 about whenever I talk about so that's probably that coming out the community can be definitely nasty about it but I think that like from like a casual standpoint we're either used to looking at a Mercy that is unhitable and unkillable in Valkyrie or that I literally don't see at all. And so, you know, I I think that there are some fair criticisms of that execution, but honestly, no. I think if if you were moving in a skillful and riskrewarding way, you shouldn't have to apologize for that. I think at all, to be honest with you. Um, no, I agree. I think the question would be, you know, how can we
• 100:30 - 101:00 get Mercy players to move like that? And one criticism I did hear from uh a source that I respect, Coach Ralph, is he talks about how he feels that maybe the floor of some of Mercy's movement can be almost a little too easy. Now, I'm not the expert in that regard. You are. I'm not sure if you have any thoughts on that. Um, is the floor ceiling of what Mercy can do with movement, not whether you're rewarded for it, but what you could theoretically do. Is there enough complexity there? Um, I actually, you know, this is interesting
• 101:00 - 101:30 because it it kind of reminds me about uh the conversation that people had when Super Jump went from this thing that you could do by like being able to press two buttons at the same time compared to uh what it is now. And like we went through a lot of iterations of um Guardian Angel to get to what we had at the Overwatch like to launch. Mhm. And a a lot of people the basis of that conversation was, "Oh, they took away her skill expression. Now anybody can do it." But
• 101:30 - 102:00 honestly, I don't think that ever hinged on being able to press two buttons at once. I think it's not how you do it, but what you do with it that's more important. Do you think the ceiling is still there? That's the real question. Like Yeah. No, I I think there's still a ceiling. Um, especially like I feel like you could look at a Mercy that is um like high ranked I guess or lower ranked and I feel like you could definitely see significant differences in their
• 102:00 - 102:30 gameplay through how they use her movement, right? And I've had a lot of people that come to my stream as well and say that like they think Mercy is like her movement's really hard for them. like I I operate under the basis of different people are able to play different heroes at like um different rates I guess like for me I find uh like people are going to say this hero is easy I find Bap hard he doesn't work with me I don't like I can't do it but
• 102:30 - 103:00 there are so many other people who are amazing at bap or there's people who are like fantastic at Doomfist but then there's people like me can't use him worth like a stick in the ground. So, it's like I feel like at the end of the day like the skill ceiling or like skill and stuff like that kind of comes down to the individual player who is like picking it up. I do think that there is a very big difference between someone that really knows her movement in and out and someone that just plays the
• 103:00 - 103:30 character sometimes or is just like starting to pick her up. Yeah, makes sense. What What are your thoughts on direct output of damage pressure? Because this is a really controversial one and I find myself more on the fence of I would like her to have some offensive damage utility, but maybe not in the traditional sense of like whipping out the pistol, although that probably should be more viable, but like you know utilizing her wings and some sort of offensive animation on a coolown or the staff whip as we see that one all the time, right? Um even some some
• 103:30 - 104:00 discussions about utilizing that goofy uh Junkenstein's Revenge blowing up souls, right? Uh that one was fun. I can't lie, that was broken, busted, but still fun. So, basically off of a scale of balance, we'll ignore balance for right now cuz you can always tune numbers till the cows come home. But where do you stand on that? Um, well, okay. So, I think because damage boost exists, that is sort of her offensive pressure. The one biggest drawback to Mercy is like if she pulls
• 104:00 - 104:30 out her pistol, that's all she's doing and she's not able to contribute to her team otherwise. And in a lot of situations that's really terrible. So I I feel like the benefits of Mercy being able to like utilize your movement and not have to like aim specifically and not have having to do like certain other things is that uh like the sacrifice um for being able to do things or not do things is like you don't have that offensive capability yourself. you have
• 104:30 - 105:00 to like bank on your teammates as you are like assisting them if does that make sense? Yes, it does. It does. It's an amplification but you don't have We talked about this earlier where it's like you can amplify certain things but you don't have that ceiling of if everybody is doing things wrong, you can't apply direct pressure yourself at all. Um yeah, exactly. I feel like that's one of the trade-offs for her being able to be so mobile and be like
• 105:00 - 105:30 who she is. Sure. Sure. Sure. So, I think that there's that feeling of helplessness that probably, you know, plagues a lot of Mercy players, which, you know, is, you know, we don't want to get into like, you know, you can climb out of goal playing Mercy. Like, I think that's definitely true, but at a certain point, at least knowing that there's something that I could have obviously done better to assist my team is that's not always present with Mercy in compared to other supports. Yeah. because it's it's not like, oh, if I had just like aimed better here or if I had just like used this thing
• 105:30 - 106:00 differently. It's sort of just like, okay, well, I tried to manage my teammates as best as I could, but because my offensive capabilities um either weren't being utilized correctly or I wasn't like managing them right. Yes. Then obviously you sort of feel like, okay, well, well, what can you do? Yep. Twitch chat, one of my viewers, Exoplit, says, "Amplify, but not agency." And I think that's a good way of putting it. I think it is unique for Mercy to be an amplifier of other people's efforts. And I don't think that every character needs to be quite the
• 106:00 - 106:30 Zenyatta archetype by any means. And I think like that's also kind of when we asked what type of offensive pressure, that's an important question. Does it have to be pistol? Could we really pull the hero fantasy into some creative new ways? I think the answer is yes. But I do think that there is a a sliding skill and and maybe too far to the opposite extreme isn't great. Yeah, I mean it it would be really nice to have some sort of offensive capability that is not tied to her
• 106:30 - 107:00 pistol and you know in in current Overwatch that is being able to you know um enhance other people but it it doesn't really leave a lot for yourself which yeah it's like one of the sacrifices playing Mercy is like if if you know that you're like feeling helpless you got to like use your movement to hope for the best and kind of like dart in and out of those like situations. And I think I I think because Mercy's moving so much, uh it
• 107:00 - 107:30 it's also a little bit hard to give her um some kind of offensive, if that makes sense. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I think it's important that I got something in my chat that also says, "Hero fantasy stops so much progress for characters." And and I think this is important for not you or your community, but a certain percentage of really every community have a certain way that they view a character. And regardless of whether that's quote unquote healthy for the the the player base as a whole, they marry to it and then blame hero fantasy. So I
• 107:30 - 108:00 see a lot of people are like, "Oh, Mercy should be a low skill silling character, you know, Mercy should have this, should have this because she's always had it, you know, and I see the same arguments from freaking Roadhog players, you know. It's like sometimes you got to be a little bit more creative with your hero fantasy and think outside the box. And so I I think I'm not by any means Mercy pulls out a Glock necessarily or pulls out the machine gun and says, "Say alone, my little friend." You know, asking Mercy's new ultimate, you know, but I do think that we could Okay, maybe
• 108:00 - 108:30 maybe that would actually be cool. But certainly we can look at Mercy and go, "Okay, there are things that Mercy canonically or whatever would do that we don't see right now or could do that she's doing right now, but could do better." You know what I'm saying? That's kind of example, there's uh some people talk about this, but in that Do you remember that one cinematic uh for Storm Rising where she like comes in and I think she saves Genji and she like uh blinds people with her wings or something like that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 108:30 - 109:00 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I I mean like there there are things that Mercy can do in her kit that we obviously haven't seen or aren't in the game that you know we've seen in other places. I just can't. So I feel like the Sorry, the Punisher. Judge jury execution. Just mercy. Sorry. I'm continue. I'm continue that that please April Fool's next patch. Oh my days. Okay. But yes, there's lots of ways that they haven't really there
• 109:00 - 109:30 there's that they could have spread their wings maybe a little more. Yeah. And I I I definitely agree with that. Um what what was Sorry, my brain No, trust me. You and me both. We were talking about offensive utility. I kind of we think we explored that one. So I guess to finish up here, any last requests, thoughts, maybe ideas? I feel like we're at a point in time now where like we between you and me and Yandra and the community as a whole, there are so many I think relatively
• 109:30 - 110:00 interesting ideas floating out there. I don't think we're at a lack of ideas right now. What maybe lacked was motivation. Um I think herobands have forced potentially Blizzard's hand with this because now we have a very large percentage of players like yourself that can't play their character. Uh, and so now we're kind of being forced to reckon with Mercy's awkward position as a low skill floor and low skill ceiling character that just can't function at the rank that you want to play it. Right. That's why you play Juno now. That's why you've been playing stadium.
• 110:00 - 110:30 Um, yeah. I mean, I've been playing like a lot of people don't know this, but Juno is actually my most played hero since she came out. Like that that no other hero has ever done that. And that's partially just because of the way that people react to like having a Mercy on her team or like whether it's consciously or not. People don't play or try as hard when they see Emergency because they're like, "Oh, we just lose." Or they have like this
• 110:30 - 111:00 really defeist attitude about it. Yeah, I understand. I mean, I I I agree completely and I think it's a real thing because I feel it. you know, I'm playing tank, I get a Mercy player, and I'm like, well, I guess one of my DPS is gonna I hope they carry. You get what I'm saying? So, it's like and that and that's a relatively inoffensive reaction, not to mention some of the sexist Dell that is at the other end of the spectrum, right? So, it's like it is a can of worms for all parties involved. And I and as difficult as the Hero Band situation has been for for you guys, I I
• 111:00 - 111:30 I am thankful that it has maybe maybe I'm being a little bit too optimistic here, but has forced potentially Blizzard's hand. Like, okay, we need to we need to deal with this finally cuz you have been suffering for years. Not literally suffering, but like you're a highle player. You're a competitor and you want to play freaking Mercy and I'm not rewarded for moving. This sucks. What What the heck, you know? Yeah. No, I I have definitely expressed my grievances. uh throughout um how Mercy has sort of been treated and you know
• 111:30 - 112:00 the devs always said, "Oh, we're looking at Mercy. We're going to do this. We're going to do that." And then they kind of never did any of that. And you know, it's it's so interesting because they keep trying to give her these abilities that sort of encourage her to heal in this triage sort of way. And it's it's it's funny because when triage was a thing, Blizzard was like or the devs were like, "We set out to do this thing. We did it. It works. It's great. Minus how it is in Valkyrie. It's a little too
• 112:00 - 112:30 strong in Valkyrie. And instead of actually continuing on and iterating into it, they just scrapped it completely. Like they even had a whole victory pose for triage. Like it was a style that I'm pretty sure they really like were going to go with for Mercy, but then what? It's slightly too strong. So we're not even going to like just tune it down in Valkyrie and see how that is. were just going to get rid of it. Like it it really seemed like this was something that they were like confident
• 112:30 - 113:00 in putting into Mercy's kit. It's something that they set out to do. They did it and then they just got rid of it for no reason. Yeah. And and I think like this is where I'll be a little bit more cynical here and hope I don't come across as insulting to the development team, which I think has legitimately done a phenomenal job in the last couple years. But do not get me wrong, but there are I've been having this conversation I feel like more recently. There are a couple of heroes that they just I don't think that the development team does as good of a job with. I don't know if there's as clear of a vision. I think Mercy falls in that category. I
• 113:00 - 113:30 think um Symmetra, I think May, and I think Doomfist even are characters that sometimes I just don't feel like there's a very clear vision of what they want to have done with them. And sometimes when changes happen, they're often the wrong changes. Um which you know, it's just tricky. You know, it's like obviously that comes from my own bias and your own bias and we all have our things that we like. But I do agree with you that at the very least it can be confusing. You get mixed signals I think is the most frustrating part. It's it's confusing, it's frustrating, it's exhausting. Like
• 113:30 - 114:00 I it's it's widely agreed that no one wants a Mercy on their team because they think she's useless and they don't want her on the enemy team because if they have a good DPS then she's just it feels a little bit like gambling really. It's gambling. Yeah. I I think that I I agree with saying that the devs normally do a really great job cuz I I've seen it with all these other heroes. they're doing a fantastic job and then it just feels
• 114:00 - 114:30 like Mercy gets left in the dust or forgotten about constantly over and over again despite being such a gripe within the community. I think that hero fantasy has really like been lost over these past iterations of her and it's just really really disappointing. Yeah, understandable. Understandable. I mean it it's easy for me cuz a lot of what I enjoy about the game stays intact and if anything continues to grow. Uh, but for somebody that is a Mercy Mane, it it is it can be dark times indeed, especially
• 114:30 - 115:00 right now. So, are you enjoying stadium? I assume the answer is yes, cuz that's seems to be a highlight. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I've still been playing regular comp and whatnot and cuz I I do really enjoy Flash Heal. Sometimes when I'm in stadium actually, I'm like, "Wow, I I wish I had Flash Heal." Um, like I'm like, "Wow, this guy's crit." And I'm like, "Damn, if only I had Flash Heal." Uhhuh. frick. Yeah, like flash shield just feels like such a thing that should be part of her kit. It feels very
• 115:00 - 115:30 natural for her and it also alleviates that feeling of, you know, when you were saying like when you get on tank, you're like, "Oh, there's a Mercy." Like, you know, that disappointment you feel. It's the flexibility. It's the flexibility. Yeah. Yeah. That's I think it gives her more of an option than just like, "Okay, pocket your DPS." And then your reward kind of is like, "Okay, well this person you were able to help them stay alive and then you can go back to doing what you were doing." But like Yep. Yeah. I I don't know. I just I really like the gameplay loot that they added in with
• 115:30 - 116:00 that. I think it's it's very good for her. I I really do. I But yeah, stad stadium's been fun, too. Uh I like that there is something that extends her beam range on that because honestly, I would rather have for example uh her minor perk. I would rather have an extended beam range than like an extended guardian angel range most of the time. Yeah, I remember when we were talking about like the perk preferences that you would had. There's there's like a lot of different ideas and it it'll be interesting to see if they go more into like more base kit changes or more perk
• 116:00 - 116:30 changes. I I would prefer I'm sure as you would a little bit of both. Yeah, I I would definitely prefer seeing Flash move to her base kit and then seeing a new perk come in that's major for her. Uh I I wanted to ask since just we're talking a little bit about perks. Uh what what's been the consensus um so far today? Have you guys talked about the overhealth on res? What's been the consensus on that? We actually haven't. Um, my little opinion of it is that now you you can get the overhalth
• 116:30 - 117:00 even if you cancel res, which I'm sure you're aware of, which is not great, but I I have less of an issue with it than I thought I would because it rewards you for getting a successful res, which opens up the situations that you could get a successful res and it feels like there's more, again, we talked about that risk word, right? Um, so I think overall it either has not been discussed. The people have talked with it. It seems that it's like, yeah, okay. Makes res more viable in more situations that otherwise it wouldn't be, but I it's not exactly like a lifecher.
• 117:00 - 117:30 Yeah, I feel like like I took it a few times at the beginning and obviously like I am someone who goes for reses that I believe are safe. Uh it's not often that I go for a res that I don't think I'm going to be able to get or I'll like pop Valkyrie for it if I really need it. Yeah. So, it's like it doesn't really fit with my play style personally. And so, I've kind of been interested to hear like what other people have thought about it because I
• 117:30 - 118:00 do think like there have been a few times where I'm like, "Oh, okay. Well, it would have been useful here had I taken it." But a lot of the time it's like yes, you're rewarded for doing the risky thing and I think it's a good thing in theory. Uh like it it's a good perk in theory, but in practice I feel like it doesn't get the same kind of use that the other perk does, which was Angelic uh Recovery's problem as well and why I think they swapped that out.
• 118:00 - 118:30 Right. Well, it really comes down to opportunity cost with perks, right? It's not so much what it does, but what you're not choosing because you chose that instead. So, and I think in general, a lot of the conversation today was maybe even more outside of the box in terms of like, okay, can we just abandon this entirely and go in a different direction? Not necessarily rez, but like I think there are so many things when it comes to ideas with Mercy, which is great, but um I don't even think we talked as much about iterating on Mercy right now, but thinking outside the box entirely. Um,
• 118:30 - 119:00 but yeah. Well, Sketia, any last words? I I'm going to frame that exactly as it sounds. Any last words? Oh, man. Um, I honestly just hope that from some of this discussion that the devs are able to sort of get a better idea about what people want hero fantasy to be, what they like about Mercy, and just kind of try to get her back on that path. She's
• 119:00 - 119:30 She's been really frustrating for the community and for Mercy players in general. I don't want to see like like personally I have always enjoyed the way that her staff works. The way that you can just like beam people and be able to look around and be able to focus on other things. Like I've I've something that I like to equate Mercy with is kind of like playing chess. It's like you can see all your pieces and you can see all the enemy pieces and you can kind of like try to encourage them to move in certain ways by doing certain things
• 119:30 - 120:00 whether that's helping them uh via like damage boost or healing or whatever you know. So I I think that that is one aspect of her gameplay that is like where strategy kind of comes in and I know that a lot of people are like oh mercy maid should have to aim. I think that is where skill should come in. I don't agree with that sentiment just because I think that there are so many other things that you could do with her kit that would maybe encourage skill in different ways rather than touching that. Yeah, I think the problem is also like transferable skills. So like if I
• 120:00 - 120:30 was to be play devil's advocate there, it's such that there really isn't any other character in the game even including something that Ryan that requires so little mechanical skill at least in terms of the aiming. But that's okay. Maybe if she actually had more other soft skills like cooldown management or rapid positioning awareness stuff that as it is right now isn't as demanding. She used to have, right? So So it's like you used to have that through her guardian angel. Maybe your your aim sucks, but at least now when you play your Mercy's band and you
• 120:30 - 121:00 got to play Moira or Brig or Anna, yeah, your mechanics might suck, but you have a much better feeling of how cool down management works and dynamic rotations and so on. So that you could bring some of those soft skills to the table right now. I think when the some of the complaints about Mercy with lack of transferable skills come to play, it just feels that there's so many skills that she doesn't have that other heroes have. And I think that's the major concern. I think the biggest thing when it comes to her having transferable skills or at least for me when cuz you
• 121:00 - 121:30 know I I back in Overwatch one like I did play Anna I did play Moisom like you know when Mercy was picked or whatever or I couldn't play her like I was able to play other heroes but the things that Mercy helped me with specifically was like general positioning knowing like where my team stands where I should stand where my other support stands knowing like game sense being able to like see the battlefield from this kind of like I know we don't like to use the word spectator but I I would say like
• 121:30 - 122:00 observer because you are observing and you are making like strategic uh your mind kind of thing when you're forced to reposition. We talked about earlier like the ADHD rotational stuff like that is a very important skill for support players even if you're playing a hero like Zen actually it's actually very important and that's something that Mercy should teach but probably doesn't. You get what I'm saying? Well, it it used to be it used to be it used to be like rotations and it used to be well it it still is um like game sense and
• 122:00 - 122:30 positioning and stuff, but yeah, the the rotation stuff not as much unfortunately after uh cuz the more that you add on to her cool down like having the 2.5 second total, the less a Mercy player wants to use it unless they really really have to. Right. That makes sense. That makes total sense. Yeah, I think that's the real crime with the the pocket play style is it's really what takes away what makes Mercy unique and also what makes Mercy fun for the person playing her. Yeah. So, but and there's no like
• 122:30 - 123:00 encouragement to do the thing that does make Mercy fun. All right, I got one more hot take for you. Got one more hot take for you. I I think nerfing Nury to 225 was a terrible mistake. I I kind of agree with that. I I wouldn't um necessarily want to agree with that. Like you'd never find me saying that on Twitter. Um but yeah, I'm telling you, I I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I understand that like okay if she has self,
• 123:00 - 123:30 but like you need you need to be rewarded from you need to be encouraged for moving around. Like let's nerf her damage boost or whatever else, but like there has to be some sort of a reward and you just like they just chopped off 25 HP. I'm like all right, well I'm sitting behind a wall now. Yeah, the 2.5 second cool down plus the decreased health to 225. Like the combination of those things really make you not want to have to move unless a you're in Valkyrie or B you really have to aka you're using flash heal and you need to go like help someone else, right? Yes. Yes. Like
• 123:30 - 124:00 there's there's no more of that encouragement to do those things. And I think that's something that's like very very sorely missing. I think that's what a lot of this just boils down to is like where's where's the encouragement to promote this hero fantasy like it's been so lost by the wayside. Yeah, I 100% agree. 100% agree. All right, Scarie, once again, any final final words. Um I don't know. Just please please do
• 124:00 - 124:30 something to her that really encourages hero fantasy. I miss I miss playing Mercy and being like, "Oh yeah, like Guardian Angel's so fun. I'm moving around the battlefield. Like I'm, you know, I miss that. I freaking miss it. I just I I I see what the devs are doing for other heroes." And I just really want them to do that for Mercy. It's You know, I know a lot of people make that joke like, "Oh man, Mercyy's just
• 124:30 - 125:00 here for the cosmetics, like selling cosmetics." And like sometimes, I can't lie, it's getting to feel that way. Yeah, it does kind of feel like that way at times, but I I don't I think that that will only last so long before people are going to be like, "Well, I want to play this hero and it's going to be fun or I'm not going to play anymore." Yeah. I mean, I I genuinely think I know we don't see statistics, but I genuinely think with the amount of people that I've heard say like, "Oh, yeah. I don't really play Mercy that much anymore. I don't get to you."
• 125:00 - 125:30 I do think um like the population of Mercy players has most certainly dropped off since like last year. And is that not concerning? Like I'm sure the amount of people playing Mercy is less than it used to be. And for such a popular hero that like everyone always loves to play like I assume that numbers has got to have dropped. And isn't that concerning? Yeah. I mean, as I was saying earlier, even if you aren't a Mercy player, like improving this
• 125:30 - 126:00 character's quote unquote health is in your best interests, you know. Yeah. So that you're not crying and screaming and kicking your feet in the air because you got Mercy on your team, right? So, or because you have to play against a super monster powered up DPS, right? Like Yep. Yep. Yep. 100%. Skiy, I appreciate your time, mate. Good luck with the rest of your stream and your stadium grind. We will uh we will have to see what happens in the next few months. Fingers crossed. Of course. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate being able to talk about her. You know, I love being able to talk about her and hopefully advocate for,
• 126:00 - 126:30 you know, some interesting changes that are good for Mercy and also for the community hopefully. Surely. So, we're going to buff damage boost to 45% and cut her HP to 200. That's the strat. Exactly. That's what we're going to do. Y I can't wait. Cheers. See you. All right. That was Skiest. Appreciate her time as always. Skiest is a real one. Get to hang out and uh she's she's a good egg. So, it's nice to have her on. And I guess chat, that kind of wraps it up here. I mean,
• 126:30 - 127:00 we we had we checked all the boxes here. Felt relatively efficient, straight to the point. Not uh not as much fluff as even I expected, and I didn't expect much fluff. So, yeah, that is all. [Music] [Music]