The most common grievances about Mercy are:
- Her lack of burst healing;
- Her ability to pocket;
- Her Resurrect ability being quite boring and annoying;
- Her Guardian Angel being clunky & buggy;
- Her Ultimate feeling a bit underwhelming;
I tried to rectify all of these grievances in my rework.
Guardian Angel
- Reverted to it’s season 1 & 2 versions. (Cooldown back to 1.5 seconds and removed the backwards slingshot penalty)
Explanation: Guardian Angel is Mercy’s only way to show skill. By restricting it with a huge cooldown after doing any complex movements, the skill expression of Mercy players is restricted.
To compensate this buff, I would reduce Mercy’s health to 175 HP, making her more susceptible to high bursts of damage and punishing her for making mistakes.
Caduceus Overload (NEW E Ability, replacing Resurrect)
Mercy’s Caduceus Staff overloads, providing increased healing and cleansing the beam-targeted ally of most negative status effects. While I don’t know the exact healing numbers, I’d imagine this ability having a cooldown of around 10 seconds.
Explanation: Resurrect has always been one of Mercy’s most controversial abilities and, with the switch to 5v5, it has become increasingly redundant and even more frustrating. Replacing it with a form of burst healing and cleanse on a cooldown would alleviate these issues. I know that the cleanse part is controversial, especially for you Ana mains, but let’s just give it a try.
Mercy’s Passive Ability
- Mercy’s passive is reverted to her former Regeneration passive.
Valkyrie (Ultimate Ability)
- Mercy’s healing is increased from 60 to 67.5 HP/s during her Ultimate.
- Mercy’s damage boost is increased from 25 to 30% during her Ultimate.
- While in her Ultimate, Mercy can press the Q button again to Resurrect one ally, cancelling her Valkyrie Ultimate prematurely, but resetting her Guardian Angel cooldown.
- Note: it takes 1.75 seconds to Resurrect someone. If Mercy’s Ultimate runs out while resurrecting, the ability gets interrupted)
Explanation: Valkyrie has always felt quite bland. By buffing the healing & damage boost numbers, we can make it have a bigger impact. The decision to introduce Resurrect back into Mercy’s ultimate allows Mercy to keep her signature ability, while also making Valkyrie have a higher impact. If Mercy resurrects someone or gets interrupted while doing so, her Ultimate ends prematurely. This not only gives Mercy a choice, but also makes Resurrection riskier.
We also need far less impactful debuffs, the reason cleanse abilities are picked so often now is because Ana is so oppresive, as soon as she’s nerfed Kiriko and Zarya will get picked less, Kiriko will probably stay meta though just because her suzu is so strong
I do hate Kiriko’s suzu, shouldn’t have invulnerability and cleanse, should be one or the other, but that’s a whole other discussion