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I've played a lot of Mercy in the past, with her being my main choice of healer when I do solo or multi-queue in competitive. I've always found her to pretty fun to play, darting around with Guardian Angel, and doing tempo resurrections to keep the tide of battle in my favour.
Playing with a good team.As a result, I've been playing the new Mercy on the PTR as well, and I've come to some conclusions given her current state. As she stands on the PTR, she is less fun to play, and less fun to play against. In a GOOD team, she has the constant ability to provide tempo resurrections, and her team will be able to protect her. She seems to be encouraging a Deathball team composition, especially if you take into consideration the pushing potential of her ultimate ability, Valkyrie. In a Deathball composition, she can heal/buff her whole team as they move forward for 20 seconds, and resurrect fallen teammates every 10 seconds. This makes her even more of a "kill this hero first" than ever before, but on a GOOD team, she'll be protected and able to do her thing.
Playing against a good team.If you're facing a good team, then this will be a nearly impossible Mercy to kill, unless you solo ult her. This is pretty much what happened to me every time. I would get solo ulted by a Pharah, a Junkrat, Hanzo, Soldier, you name it, they focused on bringing me down before anyone else. In return, when I was facing a good team, I did the same thing. Getting to that Mercy player in the back was so difficult that I felt the need to use an ultimate to break through just to hit her, and then if I missed, seeing her resurrect someone immediately, then ult and again another person, feels even worse than it ever did seeing her get a 4-5 man resurrection on live.
Playing with a bad team.If you're on a bad team with Mercy 2.0, it's so difficult to do anything. Your teammates run off, die on their own, you can't get to them to resurrect them due to the 5 yard resurrection limit, plus line of sight, or if you do, then you can't get back to safety easily either. You may not have any protection, or people to dash away to, so then you just do what you've always done, sit back around a corner and heal people. I've done more healing hiding behind cover as this Mercy than I ever have live, because I can simply do less for my team with the limitations on the E resurrection. My ultimate gives me a free resurrection, this is true, but everything is still 5 yards, and still line of sight. I still can't get to anyone without being in trouble myself, I move too slowly, so it's simply too dangerous to play aggressively. If anything, the ultimate is useful to run away from enemies, unless it's a soldier who pops his ultimate as soon as Mercy flies up, because we can't actually duck or stay very close to the ground. On top of this, when two people die together, you can't actually select which person to resurrect. It's a gamble which the server will pick, because the icons are literally on top of each other.
Issues with "E" ResurrectionOr better yet, when there's an icon floating somewhere, but no matter where you stand, on top of it, behind it, circling it, you still can't resurrect the icon with your teammates face on it? If a person died, say, inside a building, the resurrection icon has shown up outside the building, even though they actually died inside. If they were outside on a balcony, the icon may fall down even though the player died up above. This means that on occasion, if you go to resurrect that person, you may not be able to because where the icon of the person is showing isn't actually where it is, and is line of sight. So now as Mercy 2.0, you're in danger out in the open, you can't actually get the resurrection off, and your Guardian Angel is still on cooldown for another second, where you have to fly through a mild-moderate battle to get back to safety.
Is it "fun"?It's honestly really boring to play as a Mercy, it's not fun to play as her, and it's really not fun to play against. On the PTR, I've won every game I've been Mercy in, and I stopped playing it because I just got so bored. I felt like I had no impact in the game with anything I did. Sure, the tempo resurrection helped by keeping the pressure up, but so what. If I killed an extra person on the enemy team as a Zenyatta, I would've had the same effect, plus a way more impactful ultimate where not only am I invulnerable, I actually can heal through multiple enemy ultimate abilities. Why should I play as this new Mercy? What does she bring to the table that's better than the other healers?
"But she has a really high pick rate!"I've been seeing a lot of numbers thrown around on the forums where she "needed to be nerfed due to her pick rate". Friends, there are 4 healers available. Two of those healers can be classified as main healers who can survive as a solo healer in a match, and she's one of them. Of course her pick rate seems high compared to some DPS heroes, there are 15 of them!
Final thoughts.I really hope this new Mercy doesn't come out in her current state. If she does, it's very likely that many players will either avoid picking her in a pug game, or will only pick her in a Deathball composition team.
I'm guessing Blizzard will likely keep her as she is, since it seems like they're encouraging the Deathball meta with the recent buffs to the heroes, to break away from the Dive meta that's currently active. They've yet to respond to any threads referencing Mercy on the PTR forums, whether it's a "We hear your concerns" or even better "We hear your concerns and are working on some changes". All they've actually done is nerf Mercy 2.0 twice already, without responding to any active feedback. On the plus side, Zenyatta is likely going to be an active pick regardless, due to his kill potential and ultimate ability, so time to learn some Zen. Very glad I didn't buy my golden gun yet. RIP Mercy.
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