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"Why Does Everyone Hate Mercy?" [Overwatch exploration of support stigma/misogyny]

Giolon

Member
Most of these is from people who tunnelvision chase one guy and scream for healing from across the map.


Meanwhile...
Y3PMwsC.png

As a Cata raid healer, I can confirm this reality, lol

DPS: "Why didn't you heal me!?"
Me: "Because I was healing the tank and you're standing in fire you idiot."
 

Data West

coaches in the WNBA
no one likes rez. in a game with stuns, freezes, slows, and other annoyances, rez is still the worst. there's no real counterplay to it and its beyond stupid how quickly she gets it and can pop it off.

like complain about genji blades all you want but at least genji has to hit you unlike mercy hitting a 5 rez from spawn
 
Mercy probably annoys people, because she denys them the kills they've "earned" by jumping in and saving that dying teammate/target, at the last second. Those lucky saves can make it feel like the heavens themselves, are against me. Raah! :mad:
Being a beautiful female, is a big part of what I like about her.
 
no one likes rez. in a game with stuns, freezes, slows, and other annoyances, rez is still the worst. there's no real counterplay to it and its beyond stupid how quickly she gets it and can pop it off.

like complain about genji blades all you want but at least genji has to hit you unlike mercy hitting a 5 rez from spawn

No way to make them drop rez is fucking stupid. Why this game doesn't make you drop ult when you die is beyond me.

It discourages hero switching and just makes the stupid ult abilities 20X more stupid.
 
Competitive killed this game for me.

I don't give a fuck if you hate Mercy. She's the only healer with a rez. There's a good reason to pick her.
 

qko

Member
As someone who plays casually, I mostly play as Mercy because:

A) I suck at shooters, I like games where there is a Healer/Medic class because at least it gives me the option to feel useful. I'm not going to invest the time some of the Pro/semi-pro players put in because it's not a genre I'm going to invest that time into, period.
B) She handles better than other healers.
C) The pistol comes in handy to take away some health and a serves as a distraction so that when I die, a teammate can finish the kill.
 

Angry Fork

Member
No way to make them drop rez is fucking stupid. Why this game doesn't make you drop ult when you die is beyond me.

It discourages hero switching and just makes the stupid ult abilities 20X more stupid.

In TF2 if you die as a medic you lose your uber/kritz charge percentage (the equivalent of ult in overwatch). I was surprised this wasn't the case in overwatch. It makes the game easier and less frustrating but it's also kinda lame from a competitive standpoint.
 
Seriously I just watched that video of pathetic people freaking out about Mercy players. Why? Is this fun for people to get so stressed about a game?

Eugh.
 

Alucrid

Banned
It's pretty rampant at the moment. Most Mercy mains don't even talk in voice chat, because the abuse is so common. Resurrect needs communication to coordinate around, so you get Mercies pulling off random Rez's whenever they can (or even worse, dying without using it at all), because they're not talking to their team. It leads to a lot of frustration for everyone.

Mercy hate montage

The most popular player in Overwatch has a video on his YouTube channel named "I Hate Mercy So Much". And he's not joking.

http://imgur.com/jxgEJCp.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

90% of the time when communication happens about a rez it's "die on point i have rez"
 

Strakt

Member
Bc shes a brain dead hero who hides until everyone dies and presses q... Oh and the new invuln buff.. gj blizzard.. now we have players who were 2k climbing to 4k+ due to bad balancing and a bad matchmaking system
 

LordKasual

Banned
1) Mercy is hands down the easiest support character i've ever played

2) Nobody hates Mercy, except for the morons who think she's bad

3) What we actually hate is "Pharmercy", because it's fucking cheap as hell
 

Acidote

Member
Mercy's resurrection and D.Va's matrix defense are two of the most anti-fun mechanics in the game. I'd completely substitute the former and retool the later.

So fuck Mercy. Fuck 2CP. Fuck the king.
 

Defuser

Member
Gender isn't reason why Mercy is hated. You could change her to a him and people will hate the same.

Her only role is to beam heal and rez which is why alot of people play her to climb in comp because it's easy to play her but then they will become 1 trick Mercies and being 1 trick is bad. If you are a Mercy main and another teammate is also a Mercy main then your team is good as fucked because you can't play other characters well.

And due to the buffs Blizzard gave to Mercy, Rez is even more OP and frustrating.

Supports in overwatch isn't hated. If someone hating supports that means that someone isn't doing a good job keeping him/herself alive and being reckless which is why we got the genji "I need healing" memes.
 

IKizzLE

Member
I can't stand Mercy for the simple fact that she doesn't even play the game. Mercy's spend most of their time hiding, waiting for the big resurrects and whether they win or loss, gain massive amounts of SR or lose very little.

The fact that a ton of women play this character has no effect on my hate for the character. The fact that people are paying for Mercy pockets to boost their SR is a testament to how abusive the SR system is as well as how little mechanical skill is actually needed to be successful. Only thing worst than Mercy is Defense Matrix, but that is a whole another story for another day.

She is the definition of a low risk, high reward character.
 

Sianos

Member
I think Mercy, suppports in general, and the game as a whole would be more interesting if she/they had a scaling heal mechanic - commonly called "crit heals" - like TF2's Medic class does. Rebalancing health so that heroes have less raw health but can be overhealed beyond their maximum to different degrees depending on the hero. Abilities could then be introduced to speed up the recovery time for maximum healing rate or slow down the overheal decay time.

The weakness of chip damage in Overwatch along with everyone's favorite rectangle holding man makes slow sieging a point feel like a slog of waiting until you get the big ultimates all charged up and ready to blow. But even that feels less engaging than the uber mindgames and choice of different mediguns for different situations that TF2 had. Being able to reset crit heal cycles while still staying topped off is an interesting way for skilled players to pressure a team and would spice up the flow of Overwatch teamfights.

I feel like healing was handled very well in TF2 and that the Medic was both usable in the hands of an inexperienced player in lower skilled games and a masterful tempo setter in the hands of an experienced one.
 

Dragner

Member
I think the thing with Mercy mains is that people that only play mercy cant play really another thing if that role is taken, then dragging down the teams. Ana mains for example can play snipers and Lucio is a pretty mobile support so it helps n playing another mobile heroes. Mercy just doesnt require aim, or positioning, or anything really. Just knowing the map and hiding from danger...theres not much going for it...

It doesnt mean the character doesnt require skill...is just that her kit is super simple and wont benefit you for learning anything else.
 

ekim

Member
I just hate Widow. The game would be indefinitely better without her. It's the most easy char to cheat with, she attracts people to the game that think aim is the most important part of it and she is pretty useless most of the time.
 
Every Mercy main that I spoke to about this lack of skill laughed about it, since anyone who has actually played the role for a significant amount of time knows how demanding it is. Playing support requires a high amount of game sense (knowing where enemies are), a continual tally of team and enemy ult usage, risk assessment in split seconds, as well as crisis prioritization. She is the antithesis of everything we think about first-person shooters mechanically and, therefore, earns a lion's share of derision because of it.

Related/Unrelated: I fucking hate people who argue that low-skill classes are actually super-duper-skillful because of "game sense." No, these classes only require the same game sense as skill classes without any of the same mechanical skills. Sorry.

People argued this with the Heavy in TF2 and now they're arguing it with Mercy. Please stop.
 
I think this article would have done better for itself to explore innate cause-and-effect of the stereotypes involving women and competitive gaming rather than try to defend the skill level of a character who, by all means, requires far less skill than any other character in the game including the other supports.
 
Mercy is the one reason I even played the game as long as I did. Loved the character. Never got any real hate for it either. Just normal idiots blaming the healer.
 
You get a bunch of one trick players that can't play anything else. If they don't play Mercy they are fucking useless because they are at a level they don't belong.

Prime example from one of my games:

 
I haven't played OW in a couple of months, however there were a couple of reasons why Mercy was disliked.

The main one was that Mercy mains, frequently those who had been boosted by their friends, infested the higher leagues. This wouldn't be a problem except when you would end up with 2 or 3 support mains on a single team. As Mercy mechanics transfer poorly to DPS or tank roles, this usually ended up with a loss as one person couldn't pull their weight without their main. Cue arguments over characters, etc.

The other aspect was Rez. 2CP was unbearable for the attackers because of Mercy players hiding in spawn with Rez and just casually strolling out to ult when her team got wiped. On some maps, you could even Rez from inside the spawn - although they may have patched this.

Edit: But really, the problem isn't Mercy - it's how Blizzard's ranking system favours one trick players.
 
I hate Mercy because she always fucking revives the enemy team after we accidentally blow our load with all ultimates at the same time, and as I rarely play a character that makes it easy to chase her down.

"Hammer down!"
"Fire at will!"
"Justice rains from above"
...
"GERMAN!"

Like fucking clockwork
 

mollipen

Member
mollipen joined the game

You insult Mercy, you may as well be insulting me personally!


If you are a Mercy main and another teammate is also a Mercy main then your team is good as fucked because you can't play other characters well.

I'm a hardcore Mercy main, and I can play Zenyatta, D.Va, Symmetra, and Soldier:76 pretty decently, and Mei, Junkrat, and Sombra good enough to not be a drag on the team (with general skill knowledge then for every other character). As well, of all of the characters I play, Mercy is one of my bigger sources of stress, because I'm having to mentally track (and, when it makes sense, fight) the enemy team AND my five other teammates, all of whom I'm directly responsible for caring for.
 
I had an amazing game as Mercy and I got three messages thanking me for doing such an amazing job. My GF played afterward had a great game as well and she got 4-5 messages asking if she wanted to join a group/clan and thanking her. I know women on Overwatch get treated poorly but because of Mercy playing? I'd like to see some more instances on the matter.
 

Alucrid

Banned
You insult Mercy, you may as well be insulting me personally!




I'm a hardcore Mercy main, and I can play Zenyatta, D.Va, Symmetra, and Soldier:76 pretty decently, and Mei, Junkrat, and Sombra good enough to not be a drag on the team. As well, playing all of those characters, Mercy is one of my bigger sources of stress, because I'm having to mentally track (and, when it makes sense, fight) the enemy team AND my five other teammates, all of whom I'm directly responsible for caring for.

how is that any different from what every other support, well really every other player in the game, has to do?
 

kirblar

Member
The skill floor and ceiling for Mercy is drastically lower than other characters. Mercy mains ends up making up a disproportionate amount of top level players because of this and it causes real issues because the skills you need to play Mercy at a competent level are drastically lower than every other character in the game, and only one person can use her at a time.
 
Huh?

Mercy is one of the best and most useful characters in the game. This animosity toward her is new to me. She's one of my favorites.

She punishes bad teams and throws games against good teams barring when she is pocketing her girlfriend. It's hard to see the issues with her below Diamond ranks because she is good there.

Easy to hate Mercy until she's not on your team. Then how you feeling?

I guess I feel like we can run a dive comp?
 

mollipen

Member
how is that any different from what every other support, well really every other player in the game, has to do?

I didn't say it was different from every other support (other than maybe Lucio), but I'd definitely argue that it's different that those in attack/damage roles.
 

leng jai

Member
I don't understand this. Every time I play Zen in comp someone will ask me to switch to Mercy if we don't already have one.
 

marcod

Member
Yeah, it seems like the hate is mainly towards Mercy one-tricks. If Blizzard would reduce the effectiveness of res this would probably start to be less of a problem since the other supports would become more attractive to play. It's at the point where if the other team has a Mercy then yours needs one too to balance out the enemy team's almost inevitable res. Then Mercy mains are encouraged to continue being Mercy mains because of how necessary she can be and the problem gets worse.
 
If you are playing Mercy and are on the opposing team, then I will do my best to hunt you down cause I don't want an enemy rez.

Unless you do the "Hello there!" and wave at me. Then I'll reply with "Yo!" and leave you alone for a bit.
 
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