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[antitrop]

Hmm, I've never noticed any hate or harassment directed towards me when I play Mercy (my highest played character still). Is it based on performance or just being unlucky enough to end up in a specific party?

This is mostly something that happens at the highest ranks of play on PC, specifically. Controller input on consoles makes Ana's viability questionable, but that's not a concern on PC. At Master/Grandmaster/Top500, people expect you to be able to play high skill cap characters like Ana in place of Mercy, because she just has a more all-around useful kit. On top of being able to sleep dart things, deny the enemy team's healing, and turning one of her teammates into a nearly unstoppable juggernaut, she doesn't require her team to fight 5v6 while she hides around a corner.

This isn't a great season to be playing Ana (healing with her this season is much more difficult than previously, due to the prominence of D.Va's DM and Winston's bubbles, on top of her nerfs), but even then, Zenyatta is preferable to Mercy in almost all situations. Lucio and Zenyatta are the "meta" supports right now.

 

[Captainbojanglesiii]

I main Mercy and I've never gotten yelled at for bad healing. Just labeling Mercy as a support healer doesn't really explain why she gets hate when Lucios or Zenyattas also tend not to see hate in my experience. The hate is usually directed around people who fail to use her ressurect ability without dying

Now I will say I've gotten made fun of for playing Mercy ad a guy, and I have seen female Mercy players see some verbal abuse in game

 

[OriginalPoe]

Seagull just said on stream that he's changing his schedule because he can't take morning games anymore after having a mercy on his team that didn't rez a single time lol

Wait hold up...

People are scheduling when they play Overwatch because of the people they run into?!

 

[Plywood]

Mercy and support get hate? That's new to me. If anything the snipers (excluding Ana) and Genji mains get a LOT of hate. Even Torb gets more hate than support characters because a lot of people consider him a "throw" character.

The bolded is the real problem because they drag everyone down with them.

 

[benzopil]

Wait hold up...

People are scheduling when they play Overwatch because of the people they run into?!

Well I never play ranked on Saturday and Sunday because it's always a shitshow.

 

[OriginalPoe]

Well I never play ranked on Saturday and Sunday because it's always a shitshow.

Things like this are why I don't play ranked. Period.

Remember when games were fun?

 

[AESplusF]

I've experienced the exact opposite, mercy mains are celebrated and consistently steal card votes.

 

[finalflame]

What? I've never seen Mercy get hated on in any competitive match. I usually hate the enemy Mercy for being evasive and pulling off the 5-man res on her team because my team was too mentally handicapped to make sure she was dead before performing a team kill.

I've experienced the exact opposite, mercy mains are celebrated and consistently steal card votes.

Correct. Mercys with cards almost always take the vote at the end of the match. I play with a good friend who's a Mercy main and he constantly has POTG/gets celebrated during the card voting and otherwise in chat.

 

[LordKasual]

wait a second, what the fuck does people hating Mercy have to do with misogyny

people hate Widowmaker too, but they'd hate her all the same if she looked like Torb.

In fact the only characters people hate more than Widow are Genji and Hanzo


And besides, nobody actually hates Mercy. They're the most likely to get commendations at the end of the match if the make the score board.

The idea that people universally dislike Mercy is shakey at best, but the narrative that it has anything to do with her gender is something i'm just gonna call complete and total bullshit on.



Can we make a thread about Lucio though? Because I actually hate Lucio

 

[benzopil]

Things like this are why I don't play ranked. Period.

Remember when games were fun?

What?

Yes, I remember. I don't think playing with one-trick Widows on PS4 is fun. I also don't think playing with throwing Symmetras who place teleporter near the spawn and put 6 turrets on the floor around it is fun. And triple-stack who jumps off the cliff. These are the players I always meet on Sundays in evry match. Because Blizzard is a small indie studio which can't create a working report system.

Of course you can meet them on other days but for some reason almost all of them are playing too much during weekends.

What? I've never seen Mercy get hated on in any competitive match. I usually hate the enemy Mercy for being evasive and pulling off the 5-man res on her team because my team was too mentally handicapped to make sure she was dead before performing a team kill.

You make it sound so easy

 

[Nuno Pinto]

Wait hold up...

People are scheduling when they play Overwatch because of the people they run into?!

Seagull is a very popular streamer, he started streaming twice a day so the europeans could watch him live (his morning stream), but the games are terrible at that hour. The best players queue later in the day so the games are of better quality.

Well I never play ranked on Saturday and Sunday because it's always a shitshow.

And that is a very smart decision. Weekend overwatch is absolute trash.

 

[crabhammer]

Because they aren't abusing the rank system by letting their team die so they can get a bunch of 3+ rezes.

The fact that with Mercy win rate and ladder rank are inversely proportional should make it clear what the issue is. Played straight, Mercy mains are doomed to the lower ranks because of her low skill cap. The only ones that make it to the higher leagues are more or less cheating their way up.

You can get to high ranks as mercy, it just requires a shit ton of very smart positioning, communication and shot calling. Check out EeveeA on youtube or twitch to see what he does.

I see. Sounds like Blizzard just needs to fix how much they're giving out to keep people from taking advantage. I thought it was that people were saying just playing Mercy is easy SR train to GM. I think people are skewing their view of Mercy players with this though, as I imagine the people taking advantage of it are probably the minority. In master rank I've never noticed people specifically exploiting this.

I tend to agree that people are probably overblowing the problem. I also imagine people bitch at Mercy players for not using their res effectively because they THINK that they're just camping out for a phat res, when in reality a lot of dps players tunnel really hard and dont actually listen for the "protect me, genji is on me" call out. I can't res if I'm dead :B

The problem DOES exist though, and is frustrating to deal with.

 

[Gorillaz]

People hate mercy because she is one of the easiest tickets to the highest rank in overwatch and most mercy mains at that rank have no game sense whatsoever

 

[LordKasual]

Wait hold up...

People are scheduling when they play Overwatch because of the people they run into?!

when you decide to play can literally be the difference between winning and losing consistently.

 

[Chindogg]

Wait hold up...

People are scheduling when they play Overwatch because of the people they run into?!

My group of friends and I stop playing around 3am EST because that's around the time the really bad players with anime names start showing up in quickplay to ruin teams.

 

[Neptonic]

I prefer Lucio and Zenny to mercy. She always felt less versatile and fun then the TF2 medic.

 

[ghst]

come on now mate. it was exactly the same with medics in tf2, they take less mechanical skill but were essential nontheless. as a hard support you're always going to catch shit from hotheads like the poor cunt holding the map on a family holiday.

has fuck all to do with feminism and rolling gender issues into mercy's simplified character mechanics is an embarrassing reach. blizz could made the character an eight foot lumberjack and it'd be the same.

 

[Ryzaki009]

Yeah I'm a dirty mercy main so I keep myself in gold where I belong. If my rank gets too high I'll force myself to play others til it starts dropping. I'm not in the mood for whining about being a one trick pony. The only character I can even remotely play on the level I play mercy is Ana and Sym and good lord the whining I get when I pick Sym.

 

[antitrop]

Yeah I'm a dirty mercy main so I keep myself in gold where I belong. If my rank gets too high I'll force myself to play others til it starts dropping. I'm not in the mood for whining about being a one trick pony. The only character I can even remotely play on the level I play mercy is Ana and Sym and good lord the whining I get when I pick Sym.

Ya, Symmetra will always draw fire just as quickly (if not more) as Mercy, it's just that Mercy has one of the highest pick rates in the game, while Sym has one of the lowest.

People don't like playing around Symmetra either, so if she ever gets as popular as Mercy does, that will be another issue.

 

[Saint Gregory]

I tend to agree that people are probably overblowing the problem. I also imagine people bitch at Mercy players for not using their res effectively because they THINK that they're just camping out for a phat res, when in reality a lot of dps players tunnel really hard and dont actually listen for the "protect me, genji is on me" call out. I can't res if I'm dead :B

The problem DOES exist though, and is frustrating to deal with.

When I play Mercy I'm never looking for that crazy 4 or 5 player res (I think I only got the achievement for that a couple of weeks ago and I've got 30 or 40 hours of Mercy time under my belt) but it drives me insane when I'm the only healer on the team and the other players are crying about needing heals or res. Meanwhile I've got Genji/Sombra/Winston/Pharah/Tracer/Reaper up my ass the entire match making my life hell. I never get how I end up on teams that don't help Mercy when she's getting targeted. The other night I was trailing our Rein to the point on a koth map and he literally walked right past the enemy Reaper and let him blast me in the face. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother :/

 

[Ryzaki009]

When I play Mercy I'm never looking for that crazy 4 or 5 player res (I think I only got the achievement for that a couple of weeks ago and I've got 30 or 40 hours of Mercy time under my belt) but it drives me insane when I'm the only healer on the team and the other players are crying about needing heals or res. Meanwhile I've got Genji/Sombra/Winston/Pharah/Tracer/Reaper up my ass the entire match making my life hell. I never get how I end up on teams that don't help Mercy when she's getting targeted. The other night I was trailing our Rein to the point on a koth map and he literally walked right past the enemy Reaper and let him blast me in the face. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother :/

Same. I don't like using my rez on 1 person unless they're a really good tank or their ult is up (either that or they're the dps that's doing a vast majority of the damage). SO when someone who's frankly being useless screams at me to solo rez them my face is just ugh. And yes agreed so hard on having someone up your ass and those same screamers will WATCH you being attacked and then run off and attack someone else. And then wonder why they're not getting healed. I almost snapped once and just left the chat because I was so done at that point. Usually in qp at that point I'm out or switching to Sym because who has time or patience for that nonsense.

Ya, Symmetra will always draw fire just as quickly (if not more) as Mercy, it's just that Mercy has one of the highest pick rates in the game, while Sym has one of the lowest.

People don't like playing around Symmetra either, so if she ever gets as popular as Mercy does, that will be another issue.

Yeah and then you have to deal with the mouthbreathers on the opposing team too and it's just double heaping of rage.

I think she's in a good spot and Winston counters her so hard anyone complaining about her makes me roll my eyes.

 

[antitrop]

When I play Mercy I'm never looking for that crazy 4 or 5 player res (I think I only got the achievement for that a couple of weeks ago and I've got 30 or 40 hours of Mercy time under my belt) but it drives me insane when I'm the only healer on the team and the other players are crying about needing heals or res. Meanwhile I've got Genji/Sombra/Winston/Pharah/Tracer/Reaper up my ass the entire match making my life hell. I never get how I end up on teams that don't help Mercy when she's getting targeted. The other night I was trailing our Rein to the point on a koth map and he literally walked right past the enemy Reaper and let him blast me in the face. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother :/

Solo healing does suck. Sometimes it just won't work.

The supports are supposed to protect each other, DPS and Tanks can too, but they have more pressing concerns. The primary job of Lucio is to boop people off his other healer, or allow them to disengage with speed boost, or whatever. Zen can put a Harmony Orb on his co-healer and Discord their attacker. Stuff like that. Double support is life.

I'm very critical of my own play (I'm a PC Grandmaster support main that plays Ana, Lucio, Zen, and Mercy), but when I'm solo-healing I place little blame on myself for those losses.

 

[funroll-loops]

So Mercy can subvert the competitive ranking system by hitting big revives, win or lose? Seems crazy. I would've thought the only metric for raising/lowering rank would be "Did you win or lose?" full stop. Sure sometimes you have shitty teammates, but that balances out in the end. Trying to measure contributions is largely guesswork, and any benefit is usually ruined by people responding to the incentives in such a way that does not benefit the team.

Keep it simple stupid, as the saying goes.

I think it used to work like this and then Overwatch players complained that the system wasn't recognizing their skill and they changed it or something. But anyway, I agree that it should just be win/loss ratio

Even taking the nonsensical rankings system into account, if it's easier to rank up with Mercy than any other character, then shouldn't everyone at the top ranks (which are a very low percentage of players) be Mercy players? At this point the highest ranks should just be Mercy mains incapable of aiming at each other

e: It also doesn't seem broken to me at all that it's easier to climb ranks if you're duoing a support/anything team with the intention of climbing ranks instead of queuing solo

 

[Berserking Guts]

You'll always be unfairly held to a higher standard of play if you pick Mercy. People with zero team accountability will always blame the healer if things go south. If your team wins and you get a card though expect everyone to up-vote you. There's never a middle-ground when you play Mercy.

I consider myself a pretty good Mercy, but dps' like Genji who run off on their own can go fuck themselves with their heal spamming.

 

[Tieske]

They probably don't do this because Overwatch is a team game (you can't win by yourself) full of asymmetric characters who rely on different gaming skills to properly utilize, and thus basing it on just the win/loss ratio isn't going to be an effective measure of an individual player's skill.

How's that a pro-argument?

There's so many nuanced situations where performance can't be gauged (baiting defensive ults, bodyblocking as a tank, etc). And that works the other way too, where you can be rewarded for shit plays because your numbers happened to be closer to- or higher than the average

Then there's the issue where low-play heroes are easy to abuse. For example, there's quite a few people who exclusively play Sombra who've catapulted because it's easy to perform above the average (especially now that she's very relevant in the meta)

Skill rating was already iffy due to dynamic queue (no distinction between parties and solo); the effective end result of the above is that skill rating is super disproportionate and it actually encourages people not to swap heroes, supposedly the core of the videogame


As for Mercy...I'm still hoping Blizz has the balls to give her kit some interesting tools.

 

[Saint Gregory]

Solo healing does suck. Sometimes it just won't work.

The supports are supposed to protect each other, DPS and Tanks can too, but they have more pressing concerns. The primary job of Lucio is to boop people off his other healer, or allow them to disengage with speed boost, or whatever. Zen can put a Harmony Orb on his co-healer and Discord their attacker. Stuff like that. Double support is life.

I'm very critical of my own play (I'm a PC Grandmaster support main that plays Ana, Lucio, Zen, and Mercy), but when I'm solo-healing I place little blame on myself for those losses.

Since I started playing last year I've made it a point to wait until the roles on team start to fill in and then choose what I think we need to balance out the squad but lately no one seems to want to heal or tank which is incredible to me in a game where those roles are so fun to play.

 

[benzopil]

Since I started playing last year I've made it a point to wait until the roles on team start to fill in and then choose what I think we need to balance out the squad but lately no one seems to want to heal or tank which is incredible to me in a game where those roles are so fun to play.

I don't really understand why people want to play DPS heroes so badly. Especially when Zarya can outdamage them, Lucio does insane damage after his buff, Winston and DVa can literally carry teams etc.

 

[IKizzLE]

I don't really understand why people want to play DPS heroes so badly. Especially when Zarya can outdamage them, Lucio does insane damage after his buff, Winston and DVa can literally carry teams etc.

You can't be serious with this post....

 

[ZealousD]

If mysogeny is at play here it isn't because of the gender of the character herself. Ana is also a female support (old enough to be a grandma at that) and she doesn't catch any flak at all.

 

[SchrodingerC]

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.

It's amazing how many crybabies there are playing Overwatch. Reporting someone because they're not the greatest healer and leaving a 'lovely' message is just beyond petty.
Plus, all that unneeded anger is bad for your blood pressure.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

Switching can make a world of difference, but there's also data that actually suggests that one-trick players have a higher winrate. So I don't think it's really that they're playing the game the wrong way. It's just crappy when you have teammates that won't switch when they should switch.

It says in that same link that:

1. "Great, that means I should main my favorite hero and become a one trick!". While the data strongly points to the benefits of being a one-trick, it turns out that a player can't pick any hero they like and master their way to victory. The data shows that winrates greatly vary depending on heroes that players choose.

I also think the argument could be made that teams could be winning in spite of these players, or that they're a wash because most players will still switch and build the team properly when someone who mains one character comes in and decides to never switch.

If everyone followed the lead of these players and only mained one character each, team composition would break down.

 

[fredrancour]

I don't really understand why people want to play DPS heroes so badly. Especially when Zarya can outdamage them, Lucio does insane damage after his buff, Winston and DVa can literally carry teams etc.

Because people think they look cool and do cool things? People's fun is rarely determined by min-maxing

 

[Doctor Ironic]

Right. That should change if she gets retooled.

No it shouldn't. Did you miss the word "ever?" If you want to play a character that can do offensive things as a healer, play Zenyatta. Why would you take the only Mercy slot your team can have and then waste it plinking at people with your pistol?

 

[Symbiotx]

It says in that same link that:

I also think the argument could be made that teams could be winning in spite of these players, or that they're a wash because most players will still switch and build the team properly when someone who mains one character comes in and decides to never switch.

Right, I didn't say it was 100% definitive, just that it seems like enough data to say that people who one trick aren't playing the game the "wrong way".

I mean that certainly could be possible, but as someone who has played hundreds of hours of competitive, I find it highly unlikely that their team accommodated them enough for them to have a high win rate. I can't even go 2 games without a shit comp or someone throwing

 

[GreenMonkey]

I don't really understand why people want to play DPS heroes so badly. Especially when Zarya can outdamage them, Lucio does insane damage after his buff, Winston and DVa can literally carry teams etc.

I play a lot of Zarya and I often end up with gold kills and damage. I always figure if I'm outkilling McCree and Hanzo they are the wrong picks at the moment.

My buddies and I play as 4 pretty frequently on Xbox. 2 of us alternate Mercy most of the time, simply because no one wants to pick healer. Our other buddy ends playing Reinhardt or Orissa (too bad Reinhardt sucks right now, he is a murder machine with him) and our 4th is only really decent with DPS, although she played a lot of Roadhog before they nerfed him.

I prefer Zenyatta (I'm a decent hand with him) but most of the time he can't really keep up with a whole team.

 

[PedroLumpy]

I think it used to work like this and then Overwatch players complained that the system wasn't recognizing their skill and they changed it or something. But anyway, I agree that it should just be win/loss ratio

Interesting tidbit of info, I didn't know they moved from a straight W/L system, thanks!

 

[Currygan]

Never seen much Mercy hate compared to Junkrat, Hanzo or Orisa, who get almost constantly shat on from every member, enemy or teammate

 

[Symbiotx]

My buddies and I play as 4 pretty frequently on Xbox. 2 of us alternate Mercy most of the time, simply because no one wants to pick healer. Our other buddy ends playing Reinhardt or Orissa (too bad Reinhardt sucks right now, he is a murder machine with him) and our 4th is only really decent with DPS, although she played a lot of Roadhog before they nerfed him.

I prefer Zenyatta (I'm a decent hand with him) but most of the time he can't really keep up with a whole team.

I feel ya there. People check my stats and call me a Mercy main now because I have like 30 hours on her this season, but it was 90% just switching to her because no one else will heal, and so that's my go-to for solo healing. I'd much rather play Lucio or Zen. Definitely harder to keep up with the whole team with those.

 

[Soulflarz]

Hey guys back from long na-- this threads still going? eh what the hell, long car ride ahead

Interesting tidbit of info, I didn't know they moved from a straight W/L system, thanks!

It wasn't straight W/L even in s1

 

[Zen_Arcade]

Right, I didn't say it was 100% definitive, just that it seems like enough data to say that people who one trick aren't playing the game the "wrong way".

I mean that certainly could be possible, but as someone who has played hundreds of hours of competitive, I find it highly unlikely that their team accommodated them enough for them to have a high win rate. I can't even go 2 games without a shit comp or someone throwing

My point is that I still think they're playing the wrong way, but there are enough people playing the right way to compensate for the people going around only playing one character. I have a buddy who pretty much only plays 76 and Lucio. We won a lot of games together, and he was usually the one on the team with the most medals, but he definitely wouldn't have carried the team to victory if other people on the team did whatever they wanted instead of building around him.

It may be different in competitive though, I didn't play much of it. I just know that in quick play people were usually more than willing to switch characters if it would make the team more balanced.

 

[rocK`]

Everyone always blames the healer. It's a thankless job.

I hate this brain dead mentality. Sometimes it is the healers fault - people act like healing is a selfless act that can do no wrong.

 

[BigEmil]

And that is a very smart decision. Weekend overwatch is absolute trash.

Never knew this..

 

[Air Zombie Meat]

Sounds like the issue is really the game design and ranking system. Seems a bit lame to hate on a player for using a character in a way the game rewards them for.

 

[PedroLumpy]

It wasn't straight W/L even in s1

Well fuck it, nevermind that then. I'm on my phone, I'll have to check the details later.

 

[aeolustl]

To those who want her últ meter drops when she dies, doesn't it encourage Mercy player to play hide and seek even more?

I haven't played comp since season 2 on console since I don't play well, but I do feel like Blizzard should fix the SR ASAP. Mercy player should not be rewarded for hiding and rez. The main job for them is to heal and damage boost.

 

[Alex]

Sounds like the issue is really the game design and ranking system. Seems a bit lame to hate on a player for using a character in a way the game rewards them for.

It is both. The way Mercy and the other healers have changed have made the support game grow in in some sour ways.

Mercy needed help, was falling apart when Ana was dominating but what she didn't need was always on health-regen and invuln when resing. Now Mercy feels frustrating to play, frustrating to play with and frustrating to play against.

Res needs adjustment and so does parts of her base kit. Blizzard balancing, as always, has to get it completely wrong for at least 8-12 months before getting it... slightly less wrong. It is amazing to me that they somehow managed to get their fucking moronic WoW class balancing into Overwatch.

Community: "Mercy needs an E, something to give a bit more skill and to protect herself with. Kit is based too much around the res"
Blizzard: "Mercy is now invincible when using res"

Community: "Ana's grenade is a little bit much, the anti-healing effect goes a bit too far off to the side in its goal of countering Zenyatta as well"
Blizzard: "Biotic rifle nerfed"

 

[mullet2000]

I've only experienced Mercy hate when Mercy is genuinely being played poorly. (Eg hiding in hopes of getting a clutch rez instead of actually healing)

 

[finalflame]

I think Mercy will get some more small adjustments. There was a time when she was not viable, but she is super unfun to play against now because when a hiding Mercy swoops in for that full team res, there's virtually nothing that can be done.

 

[Yarbskoo]

I haven't noticed people hating Mercy, but then again I don't bother with the ranked mode.

 

[Weltall Zero]

I mean, the notion that it starts at gender is (generally) wrong. It starts at gameplay, then people latch onto the easiest way to shit on people.

That's kind of what the article implies too: right there in the title it says "support stigma / misogyny", not "misogyny / support stigma".

You know as well as anybody that going after sexist stuff is the first thing people go to when they wanna flame a girl.

That doesn't make it any less problematic, though. The "everyone flames everyone else; you just get sexist / racist comments because you're a girl / black" is older than dirt and worth about as much.

I've seen more dudes get flamed in non sexist ways for picking that character than the other way around.

Sure, but how much of that is simply because there are more dudes playing the game?