Today I would like to discuss my favorite hero in Overwatch, Mercy. Currently, she is my most played at 20 hours, tailed by Lucio with 13. While I was initially skeptical about playing support, I soon realized just how unbelievably critical a good Mercy can be, and how hard you can carry games. Even if your teammates aren’t godlike, as long as you keep your team alive, you'll win (probably). Let’s get into it.

Abilities

- Guardian Angel (lshift)

Mercy’s Lshift is Guardian Angel. It allows her to fly to a targeted ally within a large radius, as long as they are in vision. You can cancel your trajectory mid-flight by pressing Lshift again, and you always fly to the spot your ally was when you CAST the spell.

This ability is one of the most important if you want to stay alive in a fight. If a Winston leaps onto you, or a Reaper is teleporting nearby, you can just flutter over to an ally and avoid their damage. Obviously, it also lets you get to allies that need rescuing. Keep in mind that flying straight into an ally might be dangerous. I oftentimes cancel my flight regardless of my situation so I avoid the risk of being hit by AOE damage, or a sniper predicting my flight path.

On that note, you should always be in movement on Mercy. Jumping around and running in random directions, even in a small area, will often save your life. Snipers might miss a headshot and enemies will be less precise when aiming for such an unpredictable target. It will often save your life to be constantly mobile.

If your team is coordinated, try to have a few of them in your line of sight at all times, so you always have an escape route. If it isn’t, then position yourself accordingly.

- Caduceus Staff / Heal (lclick)

The Heal mode for Mercy’s Caduceus staff is her bread and butter. With a 50hp/s heal it is the most powerful single target healing tool in the game. There isn’t much to say about this ability, as it is very straightforward. One thing you should try to practice until it becomes a reflex is target prioritization. As a support, most of your attention will be focused on your team and thus, you should be aware of who is good and who is bad.

Additionally, you should be aware of which member is the most important in different situations. For example, I would rather keep a Reaper alive in a close quarter fight in Lijiang’s Night Market than I would a Hanzo. Learn to prioritize your healing, and you are already halfway to victory. Oftentimes, you can ignore a tank with half HP for a few seconds while you top off your damage dealers, simply because half their HP is still more than the health pools of a lot of offense characters.

- Caduceus Staff / Damage boost (rclick)

Mercy’s damage boost is as important as her heal. When activated, it gives your targeted ally a 30% damage increase. This only applies to one ally at a time, but multiplies all their damage dealt. Some exceptions include Torbjorn’s turrets, Symettra’s turrets and Junkrat’s Riptire.

The most important thing about this ability is learning when to use it. Since you cannot heal and damage boost at the same time, you have to know when to do each. While it might seem obvious to some that you should heal when someone nearby is not max health, it isn’t that simple. You’ll oftentimes find yourself damage boosting someone when a nearby ally is lower HP, or even when they are.

In Overwatch, you’ll have windows of opportunity where you’ll need to maximize someone's damage. Most of the time, this is when they ult. There are few cases where it is a bad idea to damage boost/heal an ulting Pharah even though your tank is low HP. After all, you can always resurrect them if they end up dying while your enemies will (hopefully) stay dead.

- Pistol

With a 20 base damage and 40 damage headshot, the "Caduceus Pistol" is actually quite a heavy hitter for those with good enough aim. Being flanked and harassed is a common problem for supports and while Lucio has a far easier time surviving, Mercy can hold her own. A few headshots and a melee attack on a Tracer are all that it takes to kill her. You might even take them by surprise with your damage.

Don’t underestimate it and don’t hesitate to shoot back when attacked or cornered, you might win. Of course, your pistol should be a last resort. If possible, try to have your teammates cope with flankers while you keep healing and buffing them.

- Passive / Heal

The heal part of Mercy’s passive isn’t really mentioned in any official measure, but it deserves a footnote of its own. If she hasn’t taken damage for 3 seconds, Mercy will begin to heal for 25hp/s until she is full health, or takes damage. Very useful for long extended sieges as long as you can avoid one shot abilities.

- Passive / Wings

Pressing spacebar in the air will slow Mercy in her fall. This is very useful to have a better view of the map and your team, as well as delay any threat from ground based targets, as they won’t be able to reach you. Keep in mind though that you are a sitting duck for snipers or heroes such as Soldier 76 when in this position.

Use it wisely, as it can be a very strong positioning tool.

- Ultimate ability: Resurrect (Q)

Perhaps one of the most game-changing abilities in the game, Resurrect is an ability that can save your team from the brink of defeat. As its name implies, it will revive all dead allies in a 15 meter area around you. This area is a circle and not affected by terrain or levels, so as long as they are in this circle, you can Ulti them no matter what.

Your ultimate ability recharges extremely fast, as you should be spending most of your time healing or buffing people. Buffing a Bastion during an enemy push will give you a large portion of your ultimate. The same goes for healing large targets such as Roadhog, which can give you up to 40% of your ult.

This means that while you should use it wisely, and not waste it, you can often use it on one person. For example, if your tank dies in a defense situation, you can rez him and you’ll probably have your ult back the next time you fight.

There isn’t much to say about it as it is pretty straightforward, except that you should use it intelligently, but not too sparingly. Don’t wait for the perfect ulti, chances are you could have used it three times by the time you get it.

Settings

There is a Quality of Life change you can do in the Mercy-specific options in game. Turn off ‘Guardian Angel prefers beam target’ so that you can Lshift to anyone, instead of automatically being flown towards the person you are healing. This will obviously allow you to have increased mobility while still outputting healing on the targets you need.

So now that we’ve reviewed all her abilities, where does Mercy fit in a game? Well, first and foremost, she is one of the strongest supports in the game. You can always play Mercy in a team and probably be useful, however there are some things to keep in mind.

Mercy is very team reliant, far more than her healing counterpart Lucio. Where he doesn’t really need to be protected and can handle himself, Mercy will often struggle against enemies in 1v1 unless you have excellent aim and don’t need to be healing/buffing. This means that if your team is not protecting you in anyway and all you’re doing is dying over and over, you should consider switching. You can switch to Lucio, or just a non-support hero.

In disorganized teams when you are not in a premade you’ll probably have a harder time in Attack, since your team will often spread out and do their own thing, leaving you exposed and unable to heal your teammates. That would probably be a good time to switch.

Synergies

While Mercy generally works with most champions, there are obviously some with which she fits in better. Oftentimes because she can either complement their burst or turn them into a dangerously powerful frontliners. Sometimes it’s also because they’re just very good at protecting her and letting her do her thing.

Roadhog

It’s always nice to have a Roadhog on your side when you play Mercy. On one hand, you can make his burst absolutely insane with your buff. As long as he can aim (and even that isn’t really required!) he will instantly kill a non-tank with a Mercy helping.

Roadhog is also your ultimate charging machine. Healing him is pretty much a free Ultimate and turns him into a nigh-unkillable frontliner, especially if he can use his own heal intelligently.

Another good thing about Roadhog is that if he keeps an eye on you, you’ll probably not have to fear flankers too much. One good hook will take out that pesky Tracer who’s always distracting you.

Image courtesy of splashbrush on deviantart

Pharah

This is a pretty popular matchup for Mercy. The main idea is for Pharah to take off into the air and let Mercy follow her up so she can be safe from all ground-based threats. The glaring weakness of this duo is snipers, as a good Widowmaker will one-shot Mercy while she is floating above the battlefield.

Nonetheless, even if you can’t always take off, buffing Pharah’s rockets means they can one-shot a tracer and just dish out massive damage. Your heal can also keep Pharah alive throughout her ult, as if it often tragically cut short because of its immobile nature. (If the enemy doesn’t focus her, buff her for even more crazy damage.)

Soldier: 76

This might be less popular, but I believe it’s even more efficient than Pharah/Mercy. Contrary to the aforementioned comp, Soldier is actually capable of taking care of his Mercy as well. Biotic Field (E) can keep her alive and focused on healing you when she might be taking some poke.

Another good thing is that Soldier has a far easier time hitting people than Pharah does, and buffing his Plasma Rifle gives him a surprisingly big damage boost. Of course, taking care of Soldier while he pops his Tactical Visor can also send the enemy to an early grave.

The main strength of Soldier/Mercy is his ability to keep her alive while dishing out excellent damage.

Lucio

Lucio and Mercy is quite different from the three I just mentioned. Mostly because neither is going to be specifically taking care of the other to make it work. They simply work well together as a support duo that can really take care of their team in their own special ways.

Having a Lucio by your side means you don’t need to focus on the chip damage your allies might be taking and you can give your undivided attention to those who are taking massive burst. At other times, it means you can keep buffing that Bastion and help him tear through the opposition without having to stop to heal people every few seconds.

Their ults also work very well together if you want to engage an enemy point. You practically give your teammates 3 lives. First a huge Lucio Sound Barrier to run into the enemy point, then a good Resurrect if your team does end up falling.

It doesn’t hurt that Lucio will passively keep you alive as well.

Bastion (& Reinhardt)

Bastion has the highest damage per second of the game along with Tracer. Contrary to her though, he doesn’t suffer all that much when shooting thing at longer range. Add a Mercy into the mix and Bastion can become an immortal killing-machine against an unprepared enemy. By alternating heal and buff you can hold a point against a team almost indefinitely, as long as they don’t decide to counterpick you.

If they do, add a Reinhardt to the comp and suddenly they’re faced with a very difficult situation. With Mercy in the backline, Reinhardt at the front and Bastion killing things in the middle, it can be incredibly frustrating for the enemy to deal with, especially since you’ll probably have Resurrect on a very short cooldown. (Bastion will deal so much damage that it should be up very often.)

Obviously, the better you and your enemies get, the easier they will be able to counter this tactic, but I believe it will always be legitimate. Be prepared to adapt your strategy though, you never know what the enemy might try.

Weak Against

In a one on one matchup, Mercy will probably lose against almost any character who is being played by someone capable of aiming correctly. In this section I won’t be talking about that, but more of what can seriously affect her impact on the game.

Reaper/Tracer/Genji:

As all three fill about the same role there isn’t much point in making three separate sections to repeat the same thing. Simply put, Mercy has a very hard time dealing with flankers. While all three fit this role a little differently, in the end they will continually harass her and stop her from helping her allies.

If they are determined, they might even spawn camp Mercy and keep her from ever returning to the fight. (That’s your cue to change heroes.)

The more organized a team gets, the less effective flankers will be since your allies will begin to help you. However, never underestimate their power. Always be ready to fly away to an ally and stay mobile. Sitting in one spot is asking for them to run up to you and burst you down.

Winston:

There isn’t much you can do when Winston decides to put you on his hitlist. If he dives in on you and starts shooting, your only way of surviving is very hasty help from your teammates or flying away. If he used his leap to engage on you, he won’t be able to follow up for a short while and you should be safe.

For this reason, it’s super important to always have a few allies within jumping distance and in your vision. Sometimes even jumping a few meters can save your life.

To conclude, let's take a look at the main tenets of a good Mercy.

- Stay mobile: If you don't, you're an easy target for snipers, Pharahs, flankers... The list goes on. Just stay on the move, jump around and never make yourself an easy target because the enemy WILL be aiming for you.

- Stay with the team: If you don't, you're useless. If you can't stay with the team because everyone is off doing their own thing, then you should change heroes. Dying repeatedly or running around alone will not help.

- Stay focused: In the heat of a battle, it's easy to lose track of what's going on. Stay focused on healing and buffing for as long as you can. If your allies live, then you're doing your job. Keep an eye (and ear) out for enemy ults and be ready to resurrect fallen allies.

Good luck, fellow healers.

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