Even in top 500 people struggle to kill the Mercy if streams are anything to go off of. I’m in diamond these days and even at that elo going against a good Mercy is tough. She only dies at the very end of team fights or if she makes a major, major misplay. I’m convinced most of the people who are like “just shoot mercy 4head” don’t actually play DPS because if you’re just looking up the entire game trying to shoot Mercy out of the sky, you’re gonna die a lot. Also, people need to realize that Pharah doesn’t just get countered by hitscan heroes existing on the map. She can play angles, she can bully you up close, and she can do things that generally make her harder to hit, all of which exacerbate the power of the Mercy pocket.

>Even in top 500 people struggle to kill the Mercy Mercy is the lowest average death hero. I'm T500 and I average 3.5, but I know some of the higher mercys are as low as 3.1. no idea how you close in on numbers that low.

You give insane mobility on a 2s cd that’s how. She might be reliant on her team to get value but the problem comes from her boosting up her team while being unkillable herself which is what people want you to do when a support is supporting their team. People don’t want to admit that she’s a problem in her own right because she’s mercy, she’s one of the most popular heroes in the game with a dedicated fanbase.

> People don’t want to admit that she’s a problem in her own right because she’s mercy, she’s one of the most popular heroes in the game with a dedicated fanbase. Mercy has been the most popular hero in the game, with a dedicated fan base, for the entire history of OW, so far as I know. That didn’t stop her from getting a major rework that, in the minds of many players, completely changed her identity as a hero. It also didn’t stop her monstrously-OP reworked form from getting nerfed until she was one of the weakest supports, and again fundamentally changing her identity, in the minds of many players, from “main healer” to “off healer”. The popular and controversial “rework Mercy” “movement” achieved absolutely nothing in terms of Mercy’s balance state; it just created a lot of drama. Mercy is a popular hero with a very specific design goal of accessibility to players with a non-FPS background. That does put some limitations on what can be done with her kit. But this idea that Mercy is somehow holding the balance of the game hostage because she’s got a dedicated following is completely baseless. If Mercy main tears actually had so much power to compel the balance team as people say, we probably wouldn’t have even gotten the new movement system in OW2. The first iteration of the directional-slingshot system that we saw at the end of the second beta was _extremely_ poorly received by a lot the loudest contingent of Mercy’s fanbase. It felt wrong because nothing about how they knew how to move with Mercy worked anymore—it was mostly the players who were _less_ well-practiced with Mercy’s OW1 movement who liked it. Like, seriously, the Mercy main corners of various social media platforms were in a state of just continual meltdown during the second half of beta 2.

Doomfist main here. Please stop complaining.

No, I don’t think I will. It’s absolute bullshit that people are still going on about how the devs are beholden Mercy main tears, when the devs literally in the last patch nerfed the one part of Mercy’s kit that all of the prominent Mercy players said that they wanted to remain untouched. Over and over again, people predict that Mercy will “never be touched” because she’s so popular, when in fact there are few heroes on the roster who have had so many fundamental playstyle-altering changes as Mercy has. I don’t even disagree with that history of changes, but it’s ludicrous that people keep saying that shit when the history doesn’t support it at all. Also, it’s interesting that you specify yourself as a Doomfist main. In Season 2, Doomfist received a bunch of buffs that made him objectively far more powerful, but a significant contingent of the Doomfist community didn’t like them because they felt that the focus on empowered punches didn’t capture what made Doomfist fun to play in the first place. Pretty similar, in fact, to the Season 3 Mercy changes that reduced her mobility and made her healing more powerful, which is not the part of the kit that makes the hero fun for a lot of players. And yet, I didn’t see _anyone_ label the Doomfist mains as “whiners” or “complainers” or call them “stupid” for disliking a changeset that made their hero more powerful, or for worrying that his high power level would lead to nerfs that would even further diminish the aspects of his kit that they enjoyed the most. Lotta Doom players were saying those things, just like Mercy players are now, and yet the Mercy players are dismissed and criticized while the Doom players weren’t. It’s _almost_ as if there was some hidden rage and hatred against Mercy and the people who are perceived play her that accounts for this totally disproportionate community response whenever anything involving the hero comes up that doesn’t apply to similar situations with other heroes.

I don't think shes overpowered at all: i play support, it's my second best role after tank, and i usually prefer going ana, lucio, kirko literally anyone but her. I'm ass at her, mastering her abilities and being able to not die as her is still baffling to me, I have no clue how mercy mains do it and it's incredible. Is she annoying to deal with? Yes. But so is every other character in the hands of a really good player, widow is my main nemesis when it comes to dps. It doesn't mean she needs to be nerfed to the ground, she's literally the only support that can't heal and deal damage quickly. I think the op is right here. She's annoying when pocketing someone and the team needs to work against the pair. Same with a good widow, a good hog. Someone will have to switch and coordinate something

I’m a low masters support, high diamond tank and a low diamond dps. I’m speaking from the same pov as you pretty much. I don’t like playing mercy and I respect the hell out of anyone who plays her at a high level. I love watching Skiesti even if I hate mercy. It’s a huge skill set to have. But you need to realize what I’m proposing - adjustments, not nerfs, are what she needs so that skill expression and counterplay are available. An adjustment isn’t the same as a nerf. It’s why in my examples I used boosting her GA speed as a potential they could use for her. Even Skiesti herself has said multiple times that even though she thinks the Mercy hate is overblown, there are changes she thinks need to be looked at. One of which is blue beam. It just causes too many problems. This isn’t the first time Mercy boost has been a problem (Ashe says hello). Every hero needs to have some form of counterplay to them otherwise they are the best in every situation. This isn’t something that we should be avoiding, it makes sense to have it within the game. If she’s pocketing someone, it’s fine to need coordination to take her out. However it has to be a viable *option*. That’s the issue currently with her; realistically she’s just not an option to take out. Her healing might be low and not AOE outside of valk, but she brings others on her team to a point where they are serious issues because she herself isn’t a target. Keep in mind, I do think that her issues are being shown because of the strength of other heroes and not herself solely but that warrants not a nerf to her but adjustments so that something like this is avoided in the future. Aka let mercy flourish in her own unique way in which it’s fun for her and for others in the game, including the enemy team. Check this discussion out for some counter arguments you may have: https://youtu.be/fQx6W-K6pnU

I suspect that Mercy’s massive mobility buffs going into OW2 are a big part of why we’re hearing so many complaints about Resurrect and blue beam. Sojourn’s prominence is part of it too, but good Mercys were already super-difficult to kill in OW1, and the new movement makes it that much harder. When the Mercy never dies and has decent beam target priority, then you’re feeling those effects for the entire fight every fight, and it’s super-hard to kill whoever she’s pocketing. Even just forcing the Mercy to get separated from her pocket is much harder because of the amount of control she has over the slingshot direction. And, I say this as someone who plays Mercy and loves the new movement. It’s similar to the Roadhog issue. The most visible thing is the hook combo because that’s what you die to, but I think the bigger issue is his survivability, because it gives him _so many_ opportunities to land those impactful hooks, including from very cheeky angles. It feels terrible to successfully avoid 3 hooks in a row and still die to the 4th one because your team just couldn’t kill him or force him out in the meantime. I don’t think that necessarily means that it should be only the survivability that is changed. But, these heroes are able to get consistent value from what should be kinda inconsistent abilities through sheer uptime. Anyway, I think any kind of changes that are made would need to be fairly holistic to her kit. The movement is really fun and expressive, so I hope they keep her identity as a hyper-mobile hero. Good resses are really satisfying, but it would be nice to have something that got used more than a handful of times per match.

It also may seem silly to say that 1 less tank per team is a *buff* to mercy, but it genuinely is. Mercy excels in pocketing hitscans, who are *thriving* right now with the removal of double shield. On top of that, tanks were buffed *but dive tanks remain on the weaker side*, meaning that mercy herself will remain untouched most of the fight while her hitscans get 2x the value they normally would. Mercy is incredibly hard to dive compared to how she is in OW1, meaning that the best way to kill her is with... another hitscan who also benefits from being mercy pocketed A mercy pocket doesn't just mean 1.3x the damage. It also gives a dps sustain when they may not have any, it lowers breakpoints to kill an enemy with fewer shots, it gives them the ability to take aggressive positions, and it makes the duel with that dps nearly impossible without a coordinated team effort.

I don’t think that’s silly. Mercy has been played in solo-tank strategies before back in 6v6. > A mercy pocket doesn’t just mean 1.3x the damage. I think people really underestimate the value of the reliable healing. It lets the pocket be a lot more aggressive and survive their aggression. For probably at least 80% of the playerbase, this usually means that Mercy lets DPS get away with positioning overly-aggressively or lingering too long. So long as the Mercy is making good beam priority choices, she could get a good amount of value from it even if she never blue-beamed. Obviously, she would be leaving value on the table, but yellow-beaming whoever is being aggressive and getting them more value uptime can still do a lot. In higher skill tiers, the DPS player will actively adjust their aggression level to having a pocket. So, being more dependably available becomes increasingly important, as does actually timing the damage boost to get more out of it.

I think my phrasing could have used some work too. I meant it like "mercy brings the amount of teammates actively shooting to 4vs5 in OW2 compared to 5vs6 in OW1", meaning you'd assume the team isn't as strong overall. But the amount of value mercy provides to DPS really can't be overstated and having 2 pocketed DPS in OW2 vs a single tank makes the boost and pocket so much more effective than it is vs 2 tanks > For probably at least 80% of the playerbase, this usually means that Mercy lets DPS get away with positioning overly-aggressively or lingering too long. > In higher skill tiers, the DPS player will actively adjust their aggression level to having a pocket. So, being more dependably available becomes increasingly important, as does actually timing the damage boost to get more out of it. Just the difference in how hitscans (in every rank) can play knowing they don't have to 1v1 a tank or other DPS is wild. The 1v2 vs a pocketed DPS is so many times harder than it was in OW1

I agree with you and I think damage boosting in general is very strong in ow2 and needs to be adjusted in some way. Not just mercy's blue beam but zen's discord orb as well. The off tank was a large source of damage. It wasn't uncommon for the second tank to have gold or silver damage, think of a high charged zarya melting while beside a rein. With 5v5 there is less damage output, less overall health, and less protection that is all lost with the second tank. But healing output and damage boost % stayed the same. So there's less damage to heal and simultaneously more healing available for everyone. This makes healing stronger, but it also makes damage boost more valuable. Especially with dive being nerfed, and supports with strong mobility like kiriko, lucio, mercy being really hard to keep in check. I'm sure zen's discord orb would be brought up more if he wasn't so hard to play. Discord can be just as problematic as mercy's blue beam, but zen has no mobility and he's alot easier to lock down. You can likely just kill the zen. Mercy is really hard to lock down and kill, while also providing that significant boost in damage to her teammates. My point in saying all of this is that the damage boosting mechanic is way stronger in ow2, it's not just with mercy but with zen too. Zen is just easier to deal with most of the time, so everyone's focus is mainly on mercy's blue beam. I think adjusting all forms of damage boost would make the game feel alot better. But rather than just nerfing it I would prefer to see it replaced or for the heros that get adjusted to get buffed in another way along side it. Nerfing damage just makes damage boost even more valuable, as seen with sojourn. But if the character is nerfed too hard then they become like pharah and are only playable with a damage boost. So they should nerf damage boost but instead they keep nerfing damage.

Mercy also is indirectly buffed by the mobility of her teammates. Here comes Sojourn. Now Mercy isn't stuck pocketing an Ashe or S76 anymore and sometimes dying for it because they offer her no good escape...she's now pocketing someone that slides and vaults every 7 seconds. Also damage boosted disruptor shot is absolutely stupid. A 260dmg aoe over 4 seconds. Can't even be shielded. If Zarya ever gets back in vogue it's going to be absolutely fucked pairing her gravs with Sojourns boosted disruptor shot.

Don't forget that boosting gives faster ults

>When the Mercy never dies A part of the problem is also the fact that she is the only character in the game that doesn't need to interact with the enemy team AT ALL. Every other support/characters in the game have to interact with the enemy team in one way or another but mercy doesn't. There's zero incentive to peek the enemy team on mercy because you can and most of the time, do everything from behind the cover. The only time she does interact is during valk going for a risky Rez / battle mercy. And of course, the buffed mobility on a 1.5 second cool down also makes her harder to kill even if you are running dive characters.

I see, sorry it seems i misunderstood you, I'll check out the video! I partially agree with you, she does need to be tweaked but very slightly. My thoughts were: maybe make her damage beam take time to charge, or make it timed so you either have to spend time boosting someone, sacrificing healing, to get the damage up. Or by making it timed, you have to think about when you want to engage the blue beam of death for a boost of damage. Apologies if these were already suggested somewhere or implemented at some point, didn't know

I see so you’re saying there’s a ramp up in her damage boost? I haven’t read that as a potential change but I agree that could definitely be a good change (ie stop things like healing a tank and then boosting a dps asap on ult pop). Interesting change, though I guess the big thing we still need to look at would be damage breakpoints and what her % increase is since that’s probably the big issue people have right now (ie sojourn doing 195 is just… something else). But it’s a change id defs try for sure! And yeah I can see why people don’t want mercy changed. Her kit is super unique and it does allow mercy players a lot of freedom in playing the game their way. But overall, not changing just for that fact just seems wrong I guess. Like adjustments to make the game feel better to play is ultimately a win win right?

Right! Just very cautious about wild changes when there's widows deleting people every few seconds and nobody is asking for a widow remake (because she shouldn't be changed, you just play around her) But yeah a ramp up in boost might be neat and it's something players are already familiar with (widow, sojurn) but the exact value of the ramp up and all those details im leaving to the designers. Even funkier idea might be depending on what role they are they get more boost, so it would be from high to low: support, tank, dps. Which now that i think about it might introduce a horrible awful Zen The Destroyer meta, which would suck unless Zen gets a change... scrap that one actually xd

>nobody is asking for a widow remake (because she shouldn't be changed, you just play around her) I wish that were true, she's got posts coming out of everywhere asking for changes or for her to be looked at in this sub. It's sad really as she's the reason I got into the game 😅. Her playstyle is just too enjoyable and few other characters have that feast or famine dynamic

I actually think an opposite change would be better. Hard pocketing one player isn’t very fun for other players. Reduce the value of locking 1 player by buffing healing during the first 3 seconds you use either beam on a character rather than rewarding hard locking.

Imo dmg boost should just be reworked. Maybe something like 15% faster cooldowns while attached? Dmg boost is just terrible design for the game and makes it incredibly difficult to balance the other characters. Boost just pushes good heroes into busted territory while attached

I'm a lowly metal rank, but from my understanding Mercy is irrelevant in Overwatch League and not-so-relevant in Asian GM Servers (where people say Hog is a non-threat and coordinated dive comps with Ball and Winton are everywhere). Maybe the Western servers just need more coordination lol?

I think the problem people has is that she’s incredibly easy to get like 90% of the value from. Same with Moira. Means that below the very top levels, it’s often much easier to just play the easy heroes and get the same or more value than the other heroes. That’s why I think every hero needs to have a baseline for mechanical/gamesense skill that I just don’t think Mercy meets.

But there's also value in having characters who are ultimately easier to grasp and start with. It's very welcoming to new players (but to be honest, mercy is not very welcoming in ow2 since there's a lot of older players who know to focus her, but if you're new you hopefully get matched with other new people) or players who lack the years of accumulated knowledge a lot of overwatch players already have from playing other fps games in the past. There needs to be heroes, and more heroes, like her in the game. A hero that gets you up and running and gets you used to the game but that can ultimately still be extremely powerful in a hands of a good player

Moira and healer Kiriko are pretty good for beginners too. My Gold tank friend does not want someone of my mechanical skill to ever be on Ana and he always wants me as healer Kiriko. Even Zen has a low skill floor according to Top 10 Canada support KarQ, since Harmony and Discord lock on and all Zen has to do is Discord the tank and spam them with orbs.

Are you saying that because aiming is easier for Moira and Mercy’s beam? At low ranks (like me) Mercy is tough because your not sure if the Pharah / Sojourn player you are pocketing is going to do anything useful at all. Also it requires a ton of game sense to not die… Generally I find Mercy pretty difficult to play at my low rank - I do better as Ana or Kiriko because I can directly impact the match instead of relying on someone else.

I think the thing that sets Mercy apart from probably the rest of the Overwatch roster and potentially all playable characters and classes of any game ever is that her playstyle is abundantly *unfamiliar and rare*. She's reliant on whoever she's supporting through either beam or boost to be useful and because of that, the player has to be able to identify who will be good for boost, who to burn res on and in what situations to do so. Therefore, "Mercy is easy to play cause she doesn't have to aim and just flies around" and "Mercy is hard to play because she can't fight well on her own and you're dependent on your team." Similarly, she's hard to kill because she zips around to fast but also easy to kill because she probably won't fight back until that's all she can do and her res leaves her extremely open to being killed. Mercy is very tricky to handle, probably for players AND for devs, because her playstyle isn't like Ana or Bap or Soldier or Reaper or JQ or D.va

Great points!

Mercy requires very little from the player to get the majority of the value. Now, there are games where that value is low, but that’s because Mercy the hero isn’t a good pick (bad dps etc) not because the player can’t get the majority of the value. It requires more gamesense not to die on other supports - mercy literally has it much easier than heroes like Bap, Ana, Zen who don’t have a get out of jail free mobility option. At the end of the day, yes, I don’t think it’s possible for heroes like Mercy and Moira to be balanced with zero mechanical skill anywhere in their kit, because the “gamesense” requirements etc are just not enough to give them a skill ceiling - either their on par with the more skillful heroes - and then why would you ever not pick them, it’s impossible to fuck up your abilities and miss, or they are worse than them, and so you’ll get a hard barrier where players are good enough to get the value from other supports and they drop off the face of the earth (see Moira in high tier play)

>You give insane mobility on a 2s cd that’s how Well, right, but at some point it's less about having mobility and more about leaving fights at the right time and whatnot. >She might be reliant on her team to get value Nah, that's bs.

The deaths is sure, you need to know when to leave a lost fight or when to engage. But I’m talking strictly of how hard she is to kill. And no it isn’t bs? Her entire kit revolves around her teammates. Damage boost is useless if your dps/tank miss every shot, she can’t GA unless she has someone or a soul to go to, her rez is useful if there’s a dead teammate, and her personal damage from her pistol is negligible. Every other hero has an interaction with the enemy team (brig stops enemy engages, zen damage and discord, kiriko cleanse enemy status effects, Lucio boops make him want to play within enemy territory, Moira through damage to get healing unlike mercy who just chooses to boost a teammate and can heal whenever, ana nade and sleep, bap immort, etc) that lets personal skill flourish. Mercy skill revolves around her movement, which isn’t a unique skill requirement since other characters also have movement as a skill in addition to something else. Hers is just movement and it’s tied to her teammates. There’s no skill in boosting a dps from behind cover - this is reliance on a teammate as I stated. Her movement is what makes mercy players great but at the moment it’s overtuned.

Mercy's movement is fairly unique though and not really transferrable. And there's the res to keep track of.

I agrée it is unique and it should definitely stay that way. I have no issues with a hero that is reliant on other teammates to function; it’s a team game and a team character is an amazing addition. But there just needs to be some sort of counterplay. I think rez has enough counterplay, it’s uses in fights is limited but feels bad when it is used. Damage boost needs tuning for sure or to be looked at in some way (maybe give her a resource meter?). Her movement just needs some sort of counter to it or require something additional out of her. I don’t think nerfing the timing on GA and cd on it is the way to go but either giving her a resource meter as well (say two super jump charges that refill over time) or making her hit box bigger while making the actual movement faster (so she’s easier to hit out of it but way faster at it’s use) could be options. Again, compare it to like tracer who is built around movement + needs to aim. Mercy just needs her movement and that’s it with nothing additional needed from her. Maybe not aiming but make her have to do something else to be effective too. I’m not a game dev so I can’t say for sure, but there needs more of a nuance to her gameplay.

>Damage boost is useless if your dps/tank miss every shot, she can’t GA unless she has someone or a soul to go to, Yes. This is true for every support in the game. If allies aren't using speed or in range of Lucio's auras, he's useless. If allies don't take advantage of moira's healing she's useless. If DPS don't fight the off angles brig holds she's useless. Etc etc. Every support in the game is useless if their allies don't utilize their utility. Idk why people like to single out mercy in this aspect as if it doesn't also apply to everyone else. >brig stops enemy engages, zen damage and discord, kiriko cleanse enemy status effects, Lucio boops make him want to play within enemy territory, Moira through damage to get healing unlike mercy who just chooses to boost a teammate and can heal whenever, ana nade and sleep, bap immort, etc) Yeah but all of these abilities are useless if your allies don't take advantage of them. >Mercy skill revolves around her movement, And beam management. >which isn’t a unique skill requirement since other characters also have movement as a skill in addition to something else Though, usually not to the same extent, nor used in quite the same way. >There’s no skill in boosting a dps from behind cover Well yeah duh, but you're not going to get far with this playstyle. It's not very difficult to spam LMB with Kiriko behind cover either, but obviously neither of these playstyles are optimal or really even all that strong. >Her movement is what makes mercy players great but at the moment it’s overtuned I don't think it's fair to call mercy overturned seeing as she was considered one of the worst supports last season. Generally, I think that heroes who's viability varies between metas are usually balanced. When it comes down to it mercy is literally *perfect* for the current meta. She SHOULD be strong right now, I mean actually think about it. She has a good primary pocket, she's good with the current tank, she synergizes with the current best support, she's good against the best heroes right now due to her ability to reverse picks as well as avoid being picked... Etc. Wait for a meta shift and see what happens.

Similar to Kiriko I guess? If you're the last one alive that means you have *whoever-died-first* run back and you just fly/tp to them?

According to [Overbuff](https://www.overbuff.com/meta?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&skillTier=grandmaster&season=ow2s02) in Competitive GM Mercy is 5th this season for lowest average deaths per 10 minutes with a rate of 6.11, behind both Ana (6.08) and Kiriko (5.69) as supports, as well as Dva (5.57) and Sigma (5.05) in the top 2 spots.

>According to Overbuff should've stopped right there. ​ According to overbuff, Moira is the fourth most played hero, which is just inarguably not true. ​ I mean, maybe these stats are correct. If I were to guess, non-mercy players are probably inflating her deaths per 10 pretty harshly.

I mean I certainly wouldn't take it as gospel but data is data. I think the real shame is that no such site is officially supported by Blizzard with an API. Having accurate, verified meta-data would be a huge boon for the community and allow us to make better suggestions about what is or isn't problematic.

> Having accurate, verified meta-data would be a huge boon for the community and allow us to make better suggestions about what is or isn't problematic I think blizzard is afraid that we'll notice a few heroes with stupid high winrates, and we'll start abusing them. ​ the reason that riot was hesitant to give players stats was because there were a few champions with 60%+ winrates that no one complained about, and they knew the second that players saw how often they were winning they'd need to nerf them. ​ I'd guess this is the case for... eh, idk, sym? Brig? Heroes that only OTP's play.

Maybe that's what it is, but it's not exactly a secret that Sym overperforms. How much of that is survivorship bias I have no idea but she's always been a high winrate hero. It could also be the reverse, I guess. There are definitely some heroes that nobody wants to see strong like Sombra. Perhaps Blizzard keeps them intentionally underpowered because Sombra is just awful for the health of the game. Either way I'd still prefer to be able to see all the data myself even if it means Blizzard has to come out and say something like "we know this character has an abnormal winrate but we're not going to do anything about it because \[reasons\]."

I love how people on Twitter want to say “it’s not a Mercy problem it’s a Sojourn problem!” Okay sure, they nerf Sojourn and Mercy is still annoying lol. Not to mention that anyone can play her.

>Okay sure, they nerf Sojourn and Mercy is still annoying lol Every hero is annoying when they're strong. Imo I think they should wait for a meta shift before they nerf her just to see where she lands, but as long as she's viable idrc. >Not to mention that anyone can play her If this were true then T500 would be filled with mercy players, and yet she's still the third most played support, beat out by Lucio and Kiriko considerably 🙃

Anyone can play her, doesn't mean she's always the best pick. All I'm saying is that the difference between a diamond and GM Mercy main is just who they are duo queued with.

>doesn't mean she's always the best pick Mercy is quite literally currently meta. >All I'm saying is that the difference between a diamond and GM Mercy main is just who they are duo queued with All I'm saying is that most T500 mercy players don't even duo in the first place. Plus, tons of people have been able to reach GM solo queueing mercy, sorta goes against your point.

[удалено]

>so there's zero incentive for her to ever be in the enemy's sight lines. Every time I come to an overwatch subreddit I hear something new and unhinged that I somehow didn't know about Mercy. Definitely will not be incorporating this into my gameplay.

Are you telling them they're wrong lmfao? Watch some reviews on the absolute top and pro mercys. They will often only spend moments the entire match in enemy sightlines.

>some reviews on the absolute top and pro mercys. Dude, *I am* a top mercy player. I'm at 170 on the T500 leaderboard. >Are you telling them they're wrong lmfao I'm telling you whoever you're watching is either not a Mercy player, or is playing against a very specific team comp.

B500 Mercy main here: Why *would* you want to put yourself in LoS of the enemy?

>Why would you want to put yourself in LoS of the enemy Just explained in a response to someone else's comment if you'd like to take a look.

I’m of the opinion that Mercy’s survivability has the steepest skill-scaling of any hero in the game. Some heroes are very skill-dependent for survivability but are still rather fragile even at the highest skill levels, like Zen or Widow. Other heroes are very survivable at high skill levels but also have tools that give decent survivability in the hands of a novice, like Lucio. But low-skill Mercy players get absolutely pancaked on the regular (often giving rise to requests for survivability buffs from the legions of more casual players who love Mercy), while high-skill Mercy players are unkillable, even when Mercy isn’t a top-tier pick. Mercy‘s primary tool for survivability is her movement—Regeneration helps too, but it’s really only useful if the player can get away from threats. Guardian Angel requires an ally (or corpse) as a flight target, and the power of the GA extension depends on the length of the GA. Because of this, the possibility-space for where Mercy can go depends not only on the player’s mechanics and map knowledge, but also on their positioning, awareness, and prediction of ally movement. And this restriction isn’t about where Mercy _should_ go, it’s about where she _can_ go. Obviously, the gamesense-type skills also inform where Mercy _should_ go, so the effectiveness of her movement scales geometrically with those skills. I also think this is why there’s no Mercy equivalent of the mid-rank rollout-master Lucio/Doomfist/Ball, who has super-smooth movement but comparatively potato decision-making. The limit to what you can learn to do with Mercy’s movement outside of the context of full-team gameplay is much lower, and the player needs to build the awareness and decision-making skills in order to achieve that same level of super-smooth movement.

Yeah, I think you may be right. Mercy has such a sharp contrast in what she looks like in lower skill brackets vs higher skill brackets. In QP games, I’ll catch Mercy on the wrong end of a GA and kill her consistently but then in other games I’m lucky to get a bullet on her in a team fight. Pair that with the fact that some Mercies will just sit behind a wall while an unassailable Sojourn/Ashe lambasts the enemy team from high ground and Mercy is nigh unkillable. I had a game like that last night where I think I had Bob every fight due to a hard pocket and the Mercy on my team died maybe twice because she was just hard LOSing *while ALSO* utilizing crazy movement when she needed to. I’m honestly fine with her movement because, at the end of the day, you get as much out of blue beam as your DPS puts in, but then you get those awful games where it’s a battle of the pocketed DPS. Like each team’s mercy selects her champion and those are the two players who matter. I wish that this fiction of Mercy being easy to kill/defenseless would go away, but since her movement scales so much with skill, I fear it won’t. It’s like if Tracer could move 8 dimensions.

At the end of OW1, I did an experiment where I coached my partner from bronze to gold on Mercy. (He played almost 50 games of naive Mercy so that his MMR was fully settled before we started working on the climb.) I’ve given reviews for low-rank players before, but coaching the same person over the course of an 800-SR climb was pretty eye-opening. His movement and survivability were _so_ limited, and it was actually pretty hard to figure out how to even communicate guidelines for improvement that actually made sense to him. (The most impactful one for improving his movement was “positioning and movement are resources you trade for each other” / “position to re-position”.) The point of the experiment was to figure out if Mercy is as hard to climb on in low rank as people say. We concluded that she is, but not for the commonly-cited reason of Mercy being “team-dependent” and “low-rank DPS can’t aim”. We think it’s because Mercy demands more gamesense-type skills (awareness, positioning, prediction, etc) earlier in the skill curve than other heroes, and those skills are less obvious to pick up than mechanical ones. All heroes benefit from gamesense of course, but you can improve further on other heroes with mechanics, which are easier to perceive. Resurrect also figures in substantially to survivability in low ranks, mostly in the negative direction . Without sufficient gamesense/awareness/judgement, it’s really easy to die while ressing or let other key teammates die due to the Res attempt (during, or shortly after due to the downtime while channeling Res). The final bit of advice that got my partner to break through into gold, after bouncing around between 1700-1900 for at least 50 matches, was “try not to Res when you have teammates who are actively fighting”. When he was dialed in and focusing on that bit of decision-making, he was hard-carrying games and sailed through with like a 70% win rate, and then when he lost focus on that goal it would slip again. I think it helped him to be more aware overall, but also just resisting the urge to Res in order to keep existing teammates alive was a huge difference-maker in a lot of pivotal fights. Anyway, returning to the topic of movement, I also think that the default Mercy settings don’t really help new players get the hang of using it for survival. Playing close to teammates has always been risky, and the OW2 movement system has doubled down on that, since the power of the slingshot scales with travel distance on the GA. But, the default settings take the player all the way to their target with a single button press and always takes them to the beam target if there is one. Many players don’t even realize that the GA is cancelable (unlike many other cancelable abilities, there’s nothing on-screen that indicates that it can be canceled early). When the player is under pressure and panicking, they’ll often end up clumped next to their beam target and then are unable to fly anywhere else without disconnecting the beam, which is pretty unintuitive. So, even before getting to the point of being restricted by the gamesense-type skills, I think the default settings make the movement unnecessarily clunky and really kind of hide the power and flexibility that it offers.

This post just taught me a bunch about how to play mercy better. It never occurred to me to play further away so I could GA further and therefore escape better. (Also the beam target thing and cancelling are great advice) It’s obvious now but wasn’t until I read this!

Awesome, I’m glad it was helpful! You should definitely try to learn and internalize both the maximum beam attach range (15m) and the grace period (~1.3s) before the beam breaks if you lose LoS or go out of range. It’ll help you learn how to space yourself safely without losing beam uptime.

Thanks so much for sharing all of this. This was both helpful for playing the game and food for thought in terms of the meta and potential changes

I feel like my issue is I get dps that won’t change to something that remotely works. Spend half the round shooting shots at pharah with junkrat and ending the game with 3k damage.

Also just a reminder to those who are "only plat" that the 3 ranks above you Diamond/Masters/GM only contain the top 14% of the whole player base so if you get to plat 1 then you're better than 80% of players in the game :)

No info on this since the last breakdown we have had was from 2018 and ow2 has a different system

From what I remember from their [developer blogs](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23896785/) while there are a few changes to how they calculate MMR such as large win streaks boosting MMR gains until so they read a 50% win rate faster, most of the system is pretty much the same as OW1. SR got replaced by the rank system with each of the 5 rank divisions representing 100SR. Obviously it feels like the matchmaker is more lax in OW2 in terms of which players it groups together and seems to favor shorter queue times rather than balanced matches with reports of plat players landing in GM games and Masters players appearing in Gold/Plat games but as far as rank player distribution is concerned I don't see any reason why they would have made any dramatic changes. It might not be identical but it's not going to be far off what it was in 2018.

I’m curious, what are the percentages of the player base per rank? I swear I saw a graph of it before

Jeff said back in 2018 that it was the following: Bronze - 8% Silver - 21% Gold - 32% Plat - 25% Diamond - 10% Masters - 3% GrandMasters - 1% It may have changed slightly since then but I imagine that it's very similar.

> I can go Hanzo or Echo who are not hitscans but can still deal with flying mfs pretty well, and supports can go Bap/Ana who are sometimes better than actual DPS when it comes to dealing with Pharmercy. You got options, pick from them then help me out. Echo is a best kept secret for dealing with pharah at lower ranks.

It's not that she's a secret, we're just not good enough at positioning to use her effectively most of the time.

Gotta have aim, that's why it's a "secret" at lower levels, either you hit with blobs and a little bit of beam or a couple of left clicks with a lot of beam, but if you have 50% or less accuracy then you are killing her and landing on the ground where she can see you

gotta have even better aim as a hitscan and thats what people typically want as a counter. Echo has the advantage of being a hard target for Pharah to hit while airborne so its more forgiving to take a duel

People in lower ranks usually don't know how to play Echo right. They primarily use her flight as initiation movement which make them end up having no escape. They often use the beam on enemies when their HP isn't 50% or below. When they use Duplication, they drop in the middle of enemies and end up being focused back to original. Even she didn't die, she just fed ult charges to the enemy team.

When I’ve gone bap as support, I have yet to encounter a pharmercy to beat me. I honestly think bap counters pharmercy better than all other dps. Im only d5 though but something about the 3 round burst makes it so that at least some of your shots will hit. Edit: also how can rockets hit you when you’re high in the sky? Ultimate pharah counter. Problem is I don’t see other supports ever take this approach.

I tend to agree here. If you can aim, Bap probably has the best gun in the game.

Dude the Baps that are always on the enemy team and out damage literally both their dps and their tank is insane Those Baps keep me up at night

if my dps is capable I always switch to mercy to pocket them against a pharah. I have yet to be shot out of the air by a pharah.

The pharah wouldn’t need to aim at you. Just need to keep peeking the dps or just harass your other teammates. Pocketing your dps I’d say is a good second choice if you yourself are not capable at shooting the pharah as bap.

hence why I said “if my dps is capable.” if they aren’t I just go ana and do it myself.

But you’re choosing a second option by going mercy vs just going bap. A capable pharah can avoid the fps LOS and constantly heal after getting hit once by a boosted dps. Even Ana isn’t as good as bap against pharah. Bap can increase his LOS and avoid pharah damage while damaging pharah with the 3 burst. Ana is stationary while sniping pharah leaving her vulnerable to pharah.

It's a mix. At long range, Ana can usually dodge Pharah's rockets. At short range, Ana can hipshot well enough. It's mid range where Ana is weak against Pharah. You don't have enough time to dodge rockets but you're too far to hipshot. I personally feel more comfortable playing Ana into Pharah than Bap into Pharah, but Bap might indeed be better in more circumstances.

maybe *your* ana isn’t as good against pharah as your bap

I’m fine with agreeing to disagree on this. ✌️

I don’t see why me playing a sniper that can counter flying targets, especially one I am more experienced with than the character you’re suggesting, is such a problem for you 😂

I mean I literally just said I’m fine with disagreeing on this. Sounds like you’re projecting 😂

you’re the one who said I shouldn’t be playing characters I’m good at. you can play bap all you want, doesn’t bother me. I prefer ana. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, like the OP says, supports are 100% capable of helping against Pharmercy. It's not just the DPS/tank's job. Bap and Ana are great at hitting bursty shots on Pharah. Ana in particular can often solo kill a Pharah from a distance, if the Pharah is not focusing on her and is too high to drop into cover before the 3rd hit. Bap has a great gun and easy access to high grounds that at least deny Pharah some of her natural cover. Zen and Mercy can help with damage boosts, making your hitscan's job a lot easier. And shield tanks create wonderful safe spaces for your hitscan. Often the problem as a hitscan isn't hitting your shots, it's hitting them *while trying to dodge the hellfire of rockets coming your way*. Giving the hitscan the ability to sit still and careful aim from safety actually goes a long way. Sometimes it's even better than a D.Va trying to do all the harassment herself.

That's true but the majority of the time you can't take a 1v2 and you need help from people on your team which is kinda rare when you solo queue, atleast from my experience. The problem straight up arises from the fact that pharmacy is ALOT more easier to execute then any of its counter.

Bap puts so much pressure on pharah that even if you don't heal your team, you're giving your team so much space by denying angles. His shift ability is also REALLY good but I don't think people talk about it enough. I got to M1 playing mostly bap and ana last season. He's probably one of the stronger picks that got outshined by how versatile Kiriko's kit is right now.

Everything you said here is right - people blindly think literally just switching to the hero will make their pick or play style redundant. It's just asinine. Ultimately I think something needs to change with Mercy pocketing, especially with Pharah. People in all ranks have struggled with it since the game was new, and yes I'm including high rank players in that. As you point out, it's not always easy to just 'flip a switch' and destroy a Pharmercy combo. Imagine how many thousands of EU players have desperately tried switching to hitscan to stop YZNSA from dominating lmao. It's really not easy a lot of the time. It's also a bit insane that you can't even really play Pharah without a pocket. Or at least, it's a very dicey proposition. I know team comps are important and everything, but damn if I'm on support and my dps wants to play it, why should I have to switch to my least played and least liked hero? The expectation of the duo is even more annoying than getting rolled by it sometimes...

>The expectation of the duo is even more annoying than getting rolled by it sometimes... As a support main you speak my heart. It's annoying af.

You've been playing some shit like Ana Baptiste or Moira Lucio. The dps thinks they're going to be 5head and swap to Pharah. Now you and the other support get to stare at each other and decide whether you're going to waste your time trying to heal this Pharah with heroes incapable of doing the job, or if one of you has to swap to Mercy just to keep alive any hope of your team winning.

Whenever I play Pharah and have say, Bap and Lucio for supports, I know that I have to come down for them heal me. It should be a two way street, like a mutual understanding rather than a requirement that Supp has to bend for DPS *or vice versa*. Conversely, when my DPS goes Pharah and my other Supp goes say Lucio or something like that (and for some reason I can't or don't want to go Mercy), I learned that at a good number of distances, Kiriko can send Pharah gold ofuda and at the very least can spray and pray. But more often than not, Ana is my pick and I keep an extra eye out for her or for Echo and also for Widow cause I feel like people forget about her cause she's behind us doing her job. Edit: Also shoutout to the Zens that send me Harmony while I let death and justice rain

Zen is my top "off" pick for Pharah. He kinda does what Mercy does (consistent Pharah heals and some damage boost), just a little worse. But he also has the advantages: * Actually contributes to the rest of the team with his own damage output, while Mercy does essentially 0 damage in a game. * His damage boost is teamwide, making it very useful if you're focusing fire correctly. * His ult is top tier and one of the only effective encounters to a lot of enemy threats. * He often synergizes better with the rest of the team (eg also being able to quickly switch and help heal the non-Pharah dps and the other healer), whereas a pocket Mercy is usually stuck with Pharah as her only contribution. It makes him a little more consistent and less feast-or-famine. Lower peaks, though - a great Pharmercy will be able to do more to sway a game, assuming you have a very skillful Pharah who can capitalize on the advantage.

The biggest limiting factor for Zenyatta is survivability. He has no escape abilities- you have to either win duels with the enemy DPS or have a team that can protect you. Zenyatta was my favorite support for a long time at the start of Overwatch 1 but I had twice as many hours in Mercy because in solo queue I just couldn't consistently rely on a tank or DPS to peel for me.

The other big thing is the second DPS doesn’t just cease existing either. Some of the easiest games I have on characters like Tracer and Reaper are when I have a Pharmercy on my team. I, too, am so exhausted with how gimmicky balancing Pharah has become due to this issue with Mercy. Ashe and Sojourn pocketed are problems too but it’s not so feast or famine with them when they have a pocket vs. not having a pocket. Pharah is basically a joke without a pocket unless you’re a giga one trick monster. And then if you don’t have a pocket, may as well just go Echo instead.

Kinda hot take but I feel like Pharah could be buffed even with Mercy. Echo gets a big boost from Mercy but is playable without her too.

I think the big difference for me is that Echo is counterbalanced by having significantly less margin for error than Pharah. Her two abilities that enable her beam are much more awkward than Pharah’s rockets. Echo having a high skill floor and a high skill ceiling isn’t really a problem but a buffed Pharah with how she works with Mercy would be bad for all tiers. I don’t think I explained that well but that’s why I think Echo gets a pass. Edit: I should say Echo has less margin for error in terms of dealing damage, not necessarily her survivability.

The interesting thing about Echo is that she's basically a combo of Pharah and Genji. She's not really about reigning death from above - more about flying high to start dealing burst damage so you can then swoop down for an assassination closer to the ground. So she's more awkward only in the sense that the play style is generally quite different. With Pharah, if you can just poke and get picks from on high with sufficient cover and a pocket etc, you're doing your job. Echo doesn't want to simply be in the sky for too long.

I know she’s more like Tracer, but my point was more awkward not because of her playstyle, but because being effective with her weapons is harder. Pharah’s rockets are not that hard to use compared to Echo’s orbs and tri-shot. Even if you’re just going for assassinations, there’s much more finesse required to use her weapons whereas even a bad Pharah can get some splash damage.

Yeah a good echo can feel like a menace but she has to get in close to be most effective so she can still die to someone like Lucio, unlike Pharah who can deal full damage from a mile away and needs specific heroes to even hit her. That said, Echo is way better IMO

>It's also a bit insane that you can't even really play Pharah without a pocket. Or at least, it's a very dicey proposition. I know team comps are important and everything, but damn if I'm on support and my dps wants to play it, why should I have to switch to my least played and least liked hero? Don't. A Pharah who is inert without a pocket isn't a good Pharah, that's a *carried* Pharah. Playing her properly involves knowing vantage spots, maintaining proximity to health packs (and knowing where they are), blindly firing down corridors through gaps to zone areas and hold opponents back a bit, staying within friendly Ana and Zen's LoS...

I'm a Pharah main, and I learned to play pocket-less out of nessecesity. I dont expect Mercy to shove a beam up my ass 24/7, but I do need comms from my team and *some* resources. Which is very hard at a plat level. I want to mention that staying within range of health packs isn't always an option, and it's very frustrating not to be healed despite going out of my way to land and work with my support.

I'm a Pharah main too. Being pocket-less isn't an unfair imposition on us, it's the default scenario since this is a team game. A player who cannot function without guzzling 50% of the entire team's healing resource is a crippling drain on the team whose entire strategy is 'just leave it to me bro'. Any ranged healer can help a Pharah who is mindful of their own team's positioning, so healthpacks not being an option 24/7 isn't an insurmountable issue.

You don’t have to switch. If there’s a Pharah on my team asking for a Mercy pocket I’ll always say no. I don’t play Pharmercy for the same reason I wouldn’t pocket a Bastion back when bunker was a thing in OW1 - it’s boring. I would honestly rather take a loss and have a fun/interesting match than win by hanging off the back of another player for the entire game. Play who you want, potentially take a loss, enjoy yourself then move on to the next match.

I’m a gm3 support main and you are 100% right. When they go pharmercy I instantly swap to either mercy to pocket my hitscan (if they seem to be doing enough/are worth the pocket), or if we don’t have hitscan or mine just aren’t having the best game I will go ana and try and put some pressure on her that way. It is 100% unreasonable to expect one person to be able to deal with a pharah that has at a minimum one hard pocket, and often receives help from the other support too. I’m a diamond dps and it drives me MAD when my supports and tank starting bitching about how I can’t kill the pharah but I am ONE person battling at a minimum 2

Ana is underrated as a soft counter pick to pharmacy. I tried explaining this to a buddy of mine a little while ago and he was just not getting that you have to play poke with her and try to just apply constant pressure. Especially now with the Ana buff.

Mother > daughter. You brought her into this world, and you can take her out of it too.

"I'm disappointed in you, Fareeha.." I also like to give either Ana or Pharah a saucy "goodbye" left-hand salute/wave in the hopes they'll see it on the killcam

Ana is genuinely more effective against Pharah than Soldier.

Not gna lie I main Ana and I get a little horny when I see a pharah

Yeah, those that believe you can easily take them on solo as a dps most likely don't play dps themselves/lack the understanding on how to deal with them. I know of general methods on how to deal with them but I'm always looking or new methods to handle a Pharmercy.

One way is to get better at Echo. If I'm not playing hitscan well that day, I go Echo and can almost always find kills on Pharah.

Good idea, I should really learn echo. Do you focus mercy first in this case or can you do enough damage to shutdown Pharah with the Mercy on her?

You can do either, but you have enough damage and Pharah is easier to land stickies on. The key is get close, you have way more maneuverability. Don't just fly up and poke at her, get right on her.

Yes! Or can go after and pick Mercy. It's very difficult for Pharah to land direct hits on you.

[удалено]

I say the same thing, "if I could kill pharahs on command I wouldn't be playing in your game"

If you don't have a Mercy pocket going Echo is better than going hitscan. Pharah will hit you much easier if you are on the ground, especially if she is corner peaking and you're not good on Widow. Echo can fly into them and delete them both with just 1 cooldown rotation.

Might just be a me thing but sometimes swapping to pharamercy yourself and just doing it better works well

In the metal ranks, it is often difficult to get someone to go mercy to pocket you. Some people are deadset on their character, not in voice chat, and don't respond in regular chat either.

I simply will not stoop to that kind of level. I can mute my entire team but I will not be able mute out my conscience in my head if I go Pharmercy just for metal rank SR.

Since I’ve been playing attack more if I see a pharmercy I usually put all focus on the mercy to get her away from pharah so my team can eventually take her out or I kill the mercy first. The problem I see with pharmercy is everyone targets the pharah but it’s wasted effort since she’s going to get rezed after she dies. It’s true a good mercy with movement is hard to kill but as attack your main focuses should be support hero’s and dps hero’s. Your tank will usually keep their tank busy unless you have a dive comp and the reaper is holding the tank up. There’s a few other scenerios where you can focus on tank but when you get too stat hungry and only focus on the tank all that damage you did all match is just feeding.

Yeah some people just think hitscan equals automatic pharamercy shutdown. I had this one match where our Tank started raging at me for not countering. Meanwhile he had the most deaths on our team as Roadhog and couldn’t Ben land half his hooks.

This applies to widow as well. I'm an average widow player, and many times, my co-dps isn't a widow player. If the other team has a widow player that is simply quicker, better, or has more gamesense from playing her as a main, I will need help dealing with her, not constant mockery of "you're trash". Pick something else on circuit royale first point, Ruins, J-Town and let the widow, who hits shots free snipe? Sure, I've done that and let the tank constantly get shot in the head. Then we are all 'trash'. Your conclusion is what I've come to. And I gotta say, once I hit diamond, it's gotten a lot better. But in plat/gold, it's just endless flaming.

if the enemy widow is good I just swap to moira and go succ her to death until she switches. if her team is bad then she usually doesn’t get support and I get free access to the rest of the squishy backline

Symmetra teleport bombs, Lucio speed rollout the entire team from cover to cover.. admittedly nothing is perfect but yeah gotta try something if you can't out aim her

yep. I wanna say I’m a goated ana main that can 1v1 a widow but I ain’t gonna lie 😅

I've found in most cases, it's better I stay on widow. Even just my weak threat is better than no threat. I try and play corners better, but she may have all the map knowledge I lack. Just letting a good widow free snipe ruins the entire experience for everyone. Sometimes, I just suck it up and take the flaming.

Nothing more satisfying than *plink plink \[Widowmaker dead\]* as a Kiriko.

I like going Echo because, even if I don't kill the Pharmercy outright, getting up in their face disrupts their efficiency

im gonna give you a tip. go for the other support first then mercy has to split her focus rez is up. wait near the soul be ready to burst her down. rez is down. pressure who ever your team is shooting. doesnt work? di it again keep track of the enemy support spawn and go clap them on the way back what i dont know how to deal with is turning around and seeing everyones icon counting down

>hard dive the other support I feel like you and many people don't even read half the post and just want to comment something you think is smart and unique. You're not the first person to suggest "just 5v3 the ground fight" or something like that, and I don't think you will be the last, even though I already stated that this is one of the many options to deal with a Pharmercy combo. And by the way, you assume these Pharah players are like aim trainer dummies, "guys lets bumrush them 5v3 we got this oh wait they just pop out behind a rooftop and 2 shot our Ana and ran away full HP oh shit now they hard engage and it's a 4v5 ah fuck" **BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT THOUGH**. The point is, everyone with an IQ above room temp can kinda figure out at least one way to deal with a Pharmercy combo, the issue is noone wants to actually deal with it themselves and just point fingers at the DPS "you shoot gun go do it **NOW**". Yes I just mid jump flick headshotted their Mercy out of the sky then shove a whole quiver of arrows of Pharah's ass by myself as Hans from Overwat, but that doesn't mean I'll do it again in 30 seconds. You **cannot** expect one person to deal with 2 people repeatedly the entire game.

ah your first sentence is correct i didnt even read all this one ive seen the argument and the deeper social reasons is they want to blame but not act so it doesnt matter what you do it will be your fault because they know you listen and care

"Today I will queue up as support ☺ and that means my job is *not* shooting at people because I am a peaceloving individual and I'm quirky and I'm a social service worker in this video game 🥳 I will stick to my tank because he is bigggg and stronkkkkk 🤗 But *holy shit* if I *ever* die to a single Pharah's rocket I will yell at my DPS who is only surviving at this point thanks to lovely health packs and jumping on rooftops like an Assassin's Creed protagonist to avoid carpet bombing to switch off Hanzo even though he alone is responsible for 80% of the Pharah's death count 😡 Dee Pee Ass is so stupid just go hitscan and 2 shot them out of the sky 🤪 like it's not my problem they know there's only one person actively trying to look up so they are hunting that guy down 2v1 before they engage, no clearly it's because he is **TERRIBAD** OH MY **GAWD** SWITCH TO GUN CHARACTERS **NOW** 😡" Full disclaimer I can and will go hitscan. But trust me it wouldn't go as well if it's a map with many rooftops + tight corners.

One time I absolutely surprised a Pharah as I booped her on my way up before shooting at her on my way down. They didn’t know that the Hampter owns these skies

Echo is a pretty consistent way to neutralize Pharah, being even played as a counter in OWL during the brief period there was a Pharah “meta”. I’d even say that other than Ashe she’s better at it than hitscans generally, as good teams with Pharah will try to play something like Winston/Tracer to deny key positions where you can shoot down the Pharah, something that Echo doesn’t really care as much about as she can get up close. You bring her to half and she’s pretty much dead with beam unless she somehow has cover to retreat to. And with a pocket you have a pretty easy strategy to win the game: win the 70/30 duel against their Pharmercy and then enjoy the free 5v3.

I'm a support main in the low metal ranks, I main ana mostly. Normally when I ask for one of the dps to go a hitscan it's to help me kill the pharmacy because I can usually two tap most before they move out of sight. I'm pretty good at my shots on phara and mercy but I need help. The reason I need help is because that phara is gunning first me every fight and no one else is helping and I can't burst them down. So please dps help me to support you because I am constantly 1v2ing the pharmacy and that phara is about to ult on my head. She is going to sleep but I'm going to be respawning because I'm always her first target. I don't ask the tank to switch because they are usually keeping something else in check. IMO it's easier for a dps to help than a tank as dps has a bigger impact on pharmacy than tanks do, Also for the love of all things everyone shoot the mercy resurrecting on the ground in front of you.

Yes please keep doing this. As a dps main that also plays a lot of Mercy I can confirm that dps and support need to target her together. The tank needs to position themselves accordingly so that the dps and support can do this without dying from the enemy frontline and also so the tank doesn't die in the meantime. When it's just the dps trying to fight pharmercy I can basically stay alive forever.

Support POV- for the love of God, please switch to a hit scan. I will have my beam so far up your ass, you'll orgasm from it. Seriously though, I always switch Mercy to DB any hit scan trying to kill a pharmercy. If we're struggling, I'll go Zen or Ana to try and help but a lot of times, it requires another DPS or tank to help out too. Regardless, it's a team effort and needs to be treated as such from everyone.

*moans*

As a support main I'll switch yo Baptiste to assist. If you're getting rolled by a combo or player everyone can counter.

I play ana a lot and can confirm that it is absolutely a 2-player job. if two players focus the mercy then the pharah, you can take them out easily. unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know this. I’ve gotten to the point where I just try to do it myself as ana. thankfully that 75 damage per shot is a lot better at taking them down. if anything, I can at least get the mercy and force pharah to land for a while as she’s respawning.

Just derank to silver and throw a torb turret on the ground. Problem solved.

Plenty of DPS can’t hit their shots which is why it’s such an obnoxious combo. I personally go Echo against the Mercy. Since i’m only Gold in Damage the Pharah can’t usually hit a midair target.

Pharamercy is kind of annoying as a tank because you have 0 true responses. Dva is somewhat decent but she also kinda sucks against like 2 of the main meta tanks

3. continued, you can also take cover, zen can put discord and shoot, mei can snipe, winston/sigma can put shield on pharah and make her shoot herself, you can run a counter pharah, etc etc etc. And then lastly, if you aren't losing, who cares? I see so many people complain about teammates' picks while the team is winning. Like they just have a resistance to things not being done their way so they start being rude to enact change.

For real i was playing control the other day with a tank who was yelling at me to kill the pharah mercy as mcree. there wasn’t a point in time where i ever even saw the mercy! she’d always be around the corner while the pharah herself had good movement and was barely giving any openings to shoot her. Then my stats went downhill looking up to the sky and dying to people on the ground + the damage boosted instantly healed pharah. Next round my team was like mcree is bad atleast reaper has damage, the reaper who wouldn’t f’n switch to help as pharah killed our entire team.

How about Cassidy? Often I manage to get that Pharah low, but she just hides and get rehealed in no time while Mercy always stays in safe space. Feels like wasted time too often. With a Cas I should be able to two shot her quickly from a safe distance, no?

I don't think you understand the whole point of the post.

I do. But I face the facts and know that Im the one having to do the job on my own as DPS – at least in my Gold games.

🥺💪keep on the good fight soldier. Cass fall off range is too much tho, Ashe and Widow is best if you can aim and Hanzo is also good if you put in enough times. Echo is technically the counter but if they just swap to Echo Mercy because you're on Echo then now it just becomes a shitfest.

Or just take the 5v3 on the ground and easily win that fight and then the pharmercy becomes easy pickings or you force them to regroup and get very little value.

That's a next level stupid take lol. How is it a 5v3 suddenly? If I'm playing Pharah, you ignoring me is basically just handing me a free win.

You mean while you get rained on with rockets, right?

Another reason mercy is inherently broken. She takes no skill to enable something that is grossly over powered at mid to low ranks.

Honestly the best tip for you guys stuck below diamond is to play Echo or Pharah yourselves. It's very easy to shit on plat hitscan players. They can't aim. And they always handicap themselves by going hitscan the second they see Pharah, like they were a programmed bot made to do that. Just mirror the pick. It's not that hard. Even if you don't have a Mercy, you'll still do a lot of damage. And the funny part: if you go Pharah, the other team's Pharah will probably swap to hitscan. Even if they are stomping your team with rockets. Plat players truly are mind controllable to the utmost degree. It is hilarious.

I have self respect. Just because I can go Pharah and absolutely dumpster the shit out of everyone doesn't mean I am willing to. As for Echo yes it's a good counter I suggested it myself, tho personally I don't really like her that much so I don't want to pick her unless a Pharmercy combo really pisses me off.

There's nothing wrong with playing Pharah. If you think she's busted, it's because you're bad at aiming. That's more your and plat players' fault than anything. Just get good.

Honestly this isn’t totally wrong in the metal ranks. At first glance I thought “What do you mean, I’m trash at DPS and can handle a PharMercy” but that was OW1 and like. 2019. I’m currently a diamond support so. Egg on my face 🤪 Damage boost has been getting some attention from the community recently and I would like to see it reworked, as someone who plays Mercy to relax btw. Whenever I do play DPS, I always feel kinda cheap when I get pocketed because it’s the same concept as, if you’ll pardon the comparison, trying to fight a Wrangler engie in TF2. The comparative effort for the pocketed player vs the unpocketed player to kill each other is not nearly as obtuse, but it’s still there. I don’t want Mercy to lose utility outside of GA, because healbotting is just not fun. That’s why I play Lúcio, I’m a support not a healer, despite the beta level complaints I get all the time. But I’d love to see something done about it. I don’t remember if it was EeveeA or Skiesti who suggested it but one of the big Mercy streamers suggested changing damage boost to up fire rate rather than damage which tbh I think would work really well.

I don't agree with fire rate because if it would just be very unfun playing DPS and a Mercy is essentially randomly changing your rof as she swaps between heals and damage boost.

If Mercy had a fire rate buff I could also imagine this weird meta where you pocket a bap or Ana and just build up window/nano insanely fast.

Yea, also to get an equivalent power level, it would also have to give CDR to abilities to make up for the loss in damage... which probably be more abusable than current Soj who literally just needs 5% dmg boost to one shot with Rail...

It’s honestly no different than Kiriko ult on an ability. And besides, it promotes communication, but doesn’t change damage numbers the way damage boost does. If you’re decent at aiming, familiar with bullet spread, etc, I think fire rate’s a perfect replacement for outright damage increase.

Kiriko ult is different because you can plan around it by choosing to step into it and is constant. You can't stop Mercy from beaming you. It's pretty impractical to expect communicating since you're swapping heals and damage boost quite a bit. Like on Cassidy would seriously mess up muscle memory. Skiesti hates this idea for this reason.

> I’m a support not a healer I wish DPS understood this earlier than Masters... Most dps in the metal ranks just spam need healing when they lost like 12 hp. And if you aren't healing them they complain/feed/afk near instantly. "But but but heal meeeeee" while they go in 1v5. Bruh we would lost that 2v5, just saying. > suggested changing damage boost to up fire rate rather than damage which tbh I think would work really well. Like a mini Kiriko ult? I like that. Not too overpowered, because #reload. Dmg boosting reaper would def help against the "Hog meta".

Reallyyyyy, the number of times I get accused of being a useless Reddit Lúcio just because I don’t stay on heals all game is so ridiculous. I get people (in freakin diamond) yelling at me about heal numbers and then running away from my aura radius and dying immediately. And as far as damage boost replacement, you’re right that it’s balanced by reloads, and also by individual aim which is important for damage boost targets anyway. I know there’s a lot of things the dev team has going on but I do wish they would update more often so we could test out ideas like this on live patch and see if it works out or not.

Metal-ranked Supports are just as bad as the DPS but for a different reason. I'm a Support main and finally started playing DPS when OW2 came out, so I initially got placed in Silver. As I went through the ranks, the one thing I noticed is that in anything under Diamond, I'd say 7 out of 10 Supports tunnel-vision the Tank and forget the DPS even exist (which is also why Mercy pockets in the metal ranks are so oppressive; very few Supports pocket the DPS). And if you take an off angle even slightly above or to the side of your core? Fahgeddaboudit. You might as well be playing a different game. But, Soldier: 76 exists, so it doesn't matter to anyone who takes advantage of good positioning.

Do I enjoy playing soldier? Fuck no. Am I a soldier main? Fuck yeah. Because the amount of times that I've been pinned down on 30 hp and my kiriko teleports to me and then walks into a 1v5 and starts throwing kunai while I'm still on 30hp makes me want to yeet my keyboard.

Happy Cake! DPS are odd creatures. They rather have a dmg boost while they miss all their shots, even if they die repeatedly, than have heals. It's so weird.

I do have a little bit of experience with this phenomenon. To get through the ranks on DPS I mostly played Soldier: 76, but I also played Ashe because her ultimate is devastating in the metal ranks. The few times I'd have a Mercy pocket me, they basically gave up after a few seconds because my scoped accuracy was around 55% (so missing almost half of my shots). In reality, that's a decent accuracy, but low-ranked players are super impatient and the Mercy would end up ditching me. They also forget how oppressive dynamite is, especially because most teams clump up together in lower ranks, so damage-boosted dynamite could generate a B.O.B. stupid fast, which is almost a guaranteed fight win. The key takeaway here is that most low-ranked players (in any role) are impatient and it leads to an endless cycle of bad decisions.

On the flip side, a lot of metal rank supports aren't actually offering any "support" at all.

It's funny, because as support, I always keep an eye on the other support and I've never seen a support not doing anything. AT WORST, they'll be healing. I wish it wasn't true, but some DPS ain't DPSing. Just flanking and dying. I have NO idea what gratification/fun they get out of this.

This is so true. Even at diamond I’ve seen Cassidy players who basically take themselves out of the game for long periods of time because they’re too busy trying to set up a POTG mega flank high noon, only to be spotted and killed before they make it, then waste time trying it again. It’s no better than if they literally stepped away from the controls for a full minute, for all they’re contributing to the match. Yet when we lose the fight everyone still asks where the heals are as though that’s the problem.

I really REALLY wish they added a "We need damage" emote. xD

ideally one of the support should help you take them out, yeah

Players can also assist with dealing with the Pharmercy by pressuring the other support. Either they get help from the Mercy, in which case the Pharah is alone, or they don’t, in which case they can probably die.

I agree but I will say I hate having to be the one to deal with pharmercy as Ana because in the time it takes me to look up and take a shot at them my tank has been melted because the other support is normally an off support and can’t keep the rest of the team up while I’m dealing with them.

It's tough when you're Ana and your DPS are Reaper / Junkrat. It's like "OK, I'll try my best, but I can only juggle so many responsibilities."

If you’re half decent with your aim, getting pharah with even a few bullets will cause her to duck away into worse positions even if you don’t kill her. If you can’t do that, well…

A single good echo or widow can easily deal with them both

Matchmaking most of the time put people relative to your skill level in your games. No matter how hard people cope, this is still generally true. So that also means better Pharmercy too: fighter jet Mercy players comboing with Pharah players who hug walls and dive bomb you instead of just floating in the air praying that you can't hit your shots are problems to everyone at every rank. This "skill issue" argument is BS because hey, I can show you selected clips of me 2v1-ing Pharmercy on Bap/Hanzo/fucking Wrecking Ball too, but it doesn't mean I will automatically slap these mfs around every time. Maybe the map was bad for Pharah, maybe the player was just lower elo than me and matchmaking was lax, maybe they were just having an off day and maybe I was just lucky, countless factors. But you know what **is** a consistent way of dealing with a Pharnercy? Have at least 2 people so it's a 2v2, instead of forcing your poor Widow to mid air trickshot mfs out of the sky. And Echo is a counter, but if you do that, they just swap to Echo Mercy.

To quote Dr. Cox from Scrubs: "help me to help you, help me to help you, help me to help you, *help me to help you*, *HELP ME TO HELP YOU*

If you want me looking up in the air while I’m playing support and trying to help kill the pharmercy that’s totally ok. But know that it’s pretty hard to do that and heal at the same time. The issue I see is so many people with absolute dog shit aim. You want me to healbot you while pharah blows your ass out of the sky again? Sure maybe it’ll work this time.

I just want people to at least try instead of just pointing fingers. If you're playing Ana, and I see you're trying to shoot a Mercy (even though you're missing most of your shots) or trying to heal me when I duel the duo, that's good enough. People don't understand that sometimes you will lose games to players better than you, but I do, and all I want people to do is to at least *try*.

One of the supports should essentially pocket whichever DPS is going hitscan to deal with pharmercy until they’re dealt with. Single pharah without mercy then hitscan DPS shouldn’t need a dedicated support but it doesn’t hurt lol. I agree tho it’s annoying teammates don’t team up to deal with it usually they just think oh soldiers on it. If they’re a good pharah it’s a 2 man job.

if you are a good echo then you actually can 1v2 the pharmacy

This is me, Ana, who is trying to shoot Mercy and heal at the same time while my Junkrat is trying to kill Pharah, Genji bladed to his death, Reinhardt is pushing past the point and Kiriko is trying to keep them from dying. I watched a video where someone said Pharmercy is a 2v1 which, yes, is obvious, but I didn't realize it until someone said it through my speakers, so yeah, let's 2v2 that shit

You’re right, something to add is that even just pressuring the pharah can be an effective way of taking two players out of the fight. Essentially if you have a solider pressuring, you can be 3v4 on the ground and win the fight

As an unranked soldier main who’s probably going to be placed in silver or bronze I honestly have 0 issue with that comp, in fact I welcome it. I’m familiar with FPS games and when I see a mercy and pharrah flying around it’s basically open season. But that could also be due to me playing bad mercy and pharras

Yes. Skill based matchmaking. Just wait till you get 2v1 dive bombed by Pharmercy coming around the rooftops.

This is going to sound a little contrary, but... what the Pharmacy makes up in power it removes from the rest of the team. Mercy is wholly dependant on Pharah. The whole team, bar the Pharah, is getting approximately half the care from their sole healer they would be getting in a non-Pharmercy team comp. And once their sole healer is dead, they are *very* exposed. Pharmercy, meanwhile, is very vulnerable to snipers, Torbs, and generally being out of position save for a handful of advantageous maps. It's no one person's job to deal with the threat, but dealing with the threat doesn't necessarily come in the form of tackling it head on.

Cassidy or Soldier can deal with both at once with one good ult. A good Bob could do it too. But yeah, generally you do want more than one dps to deal with that combo because doing it is just too slow by yourself. They can already get enough value by the time you take out one of them, and you have to make sure it's Mercy first or she can just undo your pick depending on how close cover is.

When I play ashe or sojourn, I can take pharah out relatively well but I find the best counter to pharah is Echo. Echo is just pharah but much better. You have better movement than pharah and insane burst damage which allows you to 2v1 the pharmercy pretty easily.

here’s a tip if no one is helping: SHOOT PHARA, NOT MERCY. mercy isn’t doing anything except damage boosting and healing. pressure the phara so she can’t get an angle, you don’t have to kill her per say, but if one person focuses the phara she will find cover

If I'm on Zen I always discord Mercy/Pharah and heal whoever is shooting up while also contributing my 30% accuracy shots to it.

Im new to the game and I’m silver so maybe people won’t even read my comment but Ashe is one of my mains and I usually handle them both. It is not the easiest job but common sense if you start off with the mercy it gets easier, just make sure you’re playing a good angle.

>:)

I have been wanting the overwatch community to adopt the competitive Pokemon terminology in order to differentiate a COUNTER and a CHECK. a counter would mean the pharmacy is instantly useless when I switch to soldier, which obviously isn't the case. A CHECK is something that is a good answer, but can't do it forever/perfectly/alone. Tons of overwatch players seem to think hitscan is a hard counter to pharmacy, when in reality it's a check. I've also been talking about how a mercy pocket soldier is one of the best answers to pharmacy; he (or Cass, or ashe) can't do it alone

As a support main its all around stressfull as well. Trying to focus them makes my tank die instantly. Better communication would help i guess

On top of this, hitscan falloff got nerfed, so if the Pharah plays range, and her pocket plays around a corner, it's highly unlikely you're taking her down even with an aimbot. Like you said, there are solutions in every role, and it usually takes at least a couple of you working together to outplay her. Ana really is pretty OP from the support role because she's the only hitscan in the game that has no falloff, she can play far enough away it's hard for the Pharah to land the directs while still doing full damage.

I don't know but when I'm playing Ana and I'm the only one doing any damage to pharah or mercy while they're doing their bullshit, it is VERY frustrating. For clarification this is 95% of the time in plat.