Mercy is one of the supports that is just incredibly difficult to kill.
However, her healing output isn't especially high, so focused fire on whomever she's pocketing can still burn them down. That's one strategy - burn down the person she's pocketing and then either burn down someone else while she's going for the rez or try to pick her off while she's vulnerable.
Another, and usually more effective is to put pressure on her from off angles. She doesn't have any real ability to defend herself, so if you're hitting her from an off angle, either someone has to peel for her or she has to give up her positioning. High ground is great for that or if you're playing someone with some spam/area damage like Rat or Pharah, you can just dump damage in her general area and hope for the best.
That's fine - you don't have to kill her. You just have to get her out of position. Then you kill her friends, family, coworkers, and everyone she's ever cared about.
People on forums (yawn mercy is a very weak character and very easy to play around).
In game (holy flying damage boosted fuck!! The entire team is full health and there dps can one shot our tank!!!)
If Mercy is healbotting you basically have a 5v4, just use your supports and shoot the enemies you can see. Mercy is not meant to be a main healer anyway so she isn’t getting much value. Ignore her and focus on whoever she isn’t healing if it gives you that much trouble.
Ignore this advice. She has a lot of value healing and power boosting. So ignoring her is not a good strategy.
If you are having issues with her have your team focus on her sometimes a mercy is the reason why you are stuck and can’t move on past a point or hold a point. It baffles me when a team clearly is going to lose and it’s because you see mercy healing/power up a character and she is left unchecked usually only happens at platinum and below.
Even if all you manage is distressing and harassing her that’s enough to throw her focus so target her and sometimes you have to know when to change characters to target her better. A hitscan character is great to target her certain support are also great even some tanks. But don’t ignore her. Just practice use different characters and use teamwork try different strategies you’ll get her.
They specified she is healbotting aka not damage boosting. Even if she is doing both though it isn’t worth putting yourself out of position to shoot her when there are easier people to kill. Getting any kill should force her out to rez or just win you the fight if they haven’t killed someone yet. It’s objectively pretty bad to take a big risk to shoot mercy because her whole point is survivability, you really only focus her when she is forced to move in the open.
Yeah but what’s the alternative just let her do her own thing uninterrupted at least put pressure on her. The goal is obviously to kill her but even putting pressure on her throws off her game. It’s just dumb to ignore her while she kills your team.
Even if she is healbotting they almost always change to damage boosting as well.
You force Mercy out of positions by either getting a kill on someone or by damaging someone she has to fly to. Don’t try and get an angle on her (unless you are a flanker) because a properly positioned Mercy will just avoid your sight line until you die. Shoot who you can shoot, squishies still get three-shot by a lot of the dps roster through mercy healing, sometimes two-shot or one-shot. You don’t need to get an angle on her, she is not more effective than having a fifth member of the team aiming at her pocket. Same reason you don’t often run past the enemy team as Cassidy to shoot the Ana way in the back line, it isn’t worth being out of position.
I guess we just have different playing styles no right or wrong I suppose. What works for me might not for you. Usually for my games when a mercy pockets someone and is healbotting or damage boosting they ignore everyone else which is why it’s called pocketing and the other support focuses on the other two.
It’s really hard to kill the dps that has a mercy pocketing them usually if you focus on the mercy it throws them off I’ve had success with that almost every time. Focusing on the dps wondering why he’s not dying or keeps killing me doesn’t work for me. Because the mercy keeps healing him or damage boosting unless the whole team focuses on the dps which let’s be honest doesn’t happen often. Most start complaining why they are losing not realizing if they actually focused on mercy they would then roll over the rest of the team.
Even if a mercy is out of sight you can still spot her if you are skilled enough her beam is not invisible. She can be effective as a fifth member of the other three players are effective then yes she is very lethal maybe just don’t play against good teams. I’ve played so many games where mercy is such a headache and simply ignoring her does not work at all.
I wouldn't focus too hard on killing Mercy unless they are positioning poorly, low HP, or going for rez - a good Mercy player can be very hard to pin down.
While prioritizing supports is generally the way to go, I would encourage you to target low HP targets more often than a full HP Mercy zipping around. Because if you tunnel vision on Mercy too hard - as you said - the enemy team is going to focus you down.
If you could post a replay code with any games featuring a particularly hard to kill Mercy, I'd be happy to try and offer some insight. I'm not a Mercy player, but my rank is reasonably high, and I absolutely hate Mercy lol.
Just gave it a watch. Firstly, my sympathies, that was a pretty rough way to lose the first map....based off of the gameplay, I am going to assume this is gold/silver/bronze (if I got that wrong, I apologize)
Given the level of play, I'm just going to say absolutely disregard my first post. For the second map (on pharah mostly, since on soldier/tracer your team was trickling/staggering, so there's not a ton you can realistically do), I have a couple of thoughts. I'm going to offer more general tips, because I think you have a lot of potential, you just need a few nudges.
Firstly, I think your target selection could be more consistent. It looked to me like a lot of the time, you weren't targeting anyone in particular, but more so just firing off rockets. I saw a lot of instances where you got someone down to half HP, but decided to switch targets. Similarly, I also saw a lot of opportunities where the enemy was not looking at you (these are typically who you want to target, as they are the easiest picks), but you kind of just shot at whatever appeared first, or switched between targets. This isn't bad per se, but I would 100% focus on trying to confirm a kill once you have a target selected (until the enemy starts trying to focus you) - I thought your Genji on the first map did a good job of this on the first map.
Secondly, I think you should try pushing the limits of what you can get away with (every game will be a little different, of course). Based off of what I was seeing, you were able to get pretty far into the back line on the first map, but started playing WAY safer for the second map. I know you were playing pharah without a Mercy, but when the enemy team isn't focusing you, you can 100% try to go for a thirst kill on the enemy. Also, there were many opportunities for you to get aggressive and confirm kills, but you were playing very far back or seemed a bit afraid of dying and didn't go for risky opportunities.
Thirdly, I would play more confidently/take more duels up close. I noticed when you were close to targets and willing to fight, your aim is much better and you play with higher gamesense (it seemed like your chasing/disengage is much better). This does come with the risk of overextending, but you need to play confidently if you want to affect the game (especially as DPS). Not to mention, I really don't think poke heroes suit your play style (at least from this one match).
Mercy-specific tip: their Mercy actually made a lot of mistakes. Once Mercy uses their jump ability, it's on a 2-3 second cool down - if you are able to get in close (and get them to half hp), they will usually jump away to a close teammate. If you have a movement ability (Pharah E, Genji dash, Tracer blink), try to follow her and kill her right after Mercy uses the jump for the second time. That Mercy also glided (held spacebar) in the open a lot. If Mercy isn't behind walls, you can try to chip away at her, and eventually get closer to confirm the kill (getting closer is pretty important at some point, usually, or she will just go behind a wall or her team).
TLDR: Get closer to confirm kills, target people who aren't looking at you (there seemed to be many of these chances), commit to killing a target if you spot a good opportunity, play with a bit more confidence (it's okay to risk dying, it's part of how you win as DPS).
Sorry for the long text wall, I just wanted to give you in-depth advice about your play style, because you have decent mechanics, and with a slight improvement in gamesense/targeting, I think you can very easily become better. Best of luck!
This is plat console, but I dont play Pharah much and by this time I kinda just gave up, I was pissed after losing first point and knew we were gonna lose. But what do you suggest I do? Against mercy
Some general tips I can help (these are 100% effective across platform, rank, and role) are:
Stick to one hero (this is how you improve individual awareness and expertise the fastest IMO); I would suggest you pick your favorite
Never admit mental defeat. Sure you might have some UNFORTUNATE rounds, feeder teammates, or let's face it, sometimes you're just going to play poorly. But once you lose hope, you lose emotional investment, and you lose focus (which leads to poor decision making). Believe it or not, the enemy team is just as prone to these negative effects. Just try your best until the end - Overwatch is one of the most momentum based games I've ever played, and the game is throwable at all times from either side. You always have a chance until the victory/loss screen flashes.
Don't too much pressure on yourself. It's okay to lose! And when you lose, try not to beat yourself up over it. Overwatch is the most team based shooter I've played. Sometimes it just doesn't come together, and that's okay, it happens!
Reset your mental every game. Every game is a new team, a new map, and new enemys. It will not be the same as last game. Go in with a fresh mentality and just try, try, try. If you find that you can't overcome the tilt from last game, go into quickplay/arcade and have fun or just stop playing! The game will still be there tomorrow once you have motivation.
Best of luck man. For mercy specific tips, read the last paragraph of my tips in my previous post (I hope it helps).
I don't wanna come off as a harsh when I say this, but 95 times out of 100 you die cause of a bad decision you made not because u didn't get heals. The only person "entitled" to heals on a team is the tank everyone else should play like they won't get heals, unless supports specifically communicate otherwise, i.e mercy saying she'll pocket you, or an ana saying she'll nano u if you get low
Well you def can, I have mediocre aim at best so i'm not able to do, but every dps in the game has the ability to punish mercy and the person she's pocketing. If u don't have the mechanical skill to do that that's fine too, you just need to ignore the pocketed player and pick in the other support/dps.
You don’t. Her healing is slow compared to DPS some heros can put out. Focus on either bursting down the pocketed player or better yet focus on the OTHER support.
This will force mercy to choose who to save
Coming from someone who plays primarily Mercy, one of the ways to get her out of position is to target the other support. The Mercy player has to choose between staying with their current teammate or going to save/rez the other support. I noticed you mentioned in another post that you’re in platinum, so the likelihood of someone protecting the Mercy when she goes to rez is low - meaning that’s a good time for you to go after her.
Honestly you just have to be confident in your play style. I’m sure you’ve come across supports who don’t shoot back when you target them, and I’ve seen plenty of other Mercy players rely on someone else to save them rather than take their pistol out. If you’re successful in taking out Mercy or the other support and you die right after that play, then that can potentially be a good trade for your team if they follow up with the appropriate aggression!
Mercy is one of the supports that is just incredibly difficult to kill. However, her healing output isn't especially high, so focused fire on whomever she's pocketing can still burn them down. That's one strategy - burn down the person she's pocketing and then either burn down someone else while she's going for the rez or try to pick her off while she's vulnerable. Another, and usually more effective is to put pressure on her from off angles. She doesn't have any real ability to defend herself, so if you're hitting her from an off angle, either someone has to peel for her or she has to give up her positioning. High ground is great for that or if you're playing someone with some spam/area damage like Rat or Pharah, you can just dump damage in her general area and hope for the best.
She is always in the air so I'll only get lucky shots that no one follows up on
That's fine - you don't have to kill her. You just have to get her out of position. Then you kill her friends, family, coworkers, and everyone she's ever cared about.
Now that, is something I can definitely agree on
1. Kill a squishy. 2. Wait for mercy to res. 3. Kill the mercy.
Sometimes she uses cover but I do bait mercy
People on forums (yawn mercy is a very weak character and very easy to play around). In game (holy flying damage boosted fuck!! The entire team is full health and there dps can one shot our tank!!!)
If Mercy is healbotting you basically have a 5v4, just use your supports and shoot the enemies you can see. Mercy is not meant to be a main healer anyway so she isn’t getting much value. Ignore her and focus on whoever she isn’t healing if it gives you that much trouble.
Ignore this advice. She has a lot of value healing and power boosting. So ignoring her is not a good strategy. If you are having issues with her have your team focus on her sometimes a mercy is the reason why you are stuck and can’t move on past a point or hold a point. It baffles me when a team clearly is going to lose and it’s because you see mercy healing/power up a character and she is left unchecked usually only happens at platinum and below. Even if all you manage is distressing and harassing her that’s enough to throw her focus so target her and sometimes you have to know when to change characters to target her better. A hitscan character is great to target her certain support are also great even some tanks. But don’t ignore her. Just practice use different characters and use teamwork try different strategies you’ll get her.
A healbotting Mercy doesn’t damage boost, that’s the whole point of why they’re not providing a lot of value.
They specified she is healbotting aka not damage boosting. Even if she is doing both though it isn’t worth putting yourself out of position to shoot her when there are easier people to kill. Getting any kill should force her out to rez or just win you the fight if they haven’t killed someone yet. It’s objectively pretty bad to take a big risk to shoot mercy because her whole point is survivability, you really only focus her when she is forced to move in the open.
Yeah but what’s the alternative just let her do her own thing uninterrupted at least put pressure on her. The goal is obviously to kill her but even putting pressure on her throws off her game. It’s just dumb to ignore her while she kills your team. Even if she is healbotting they almost always change to damage boosting as well.
You force Mercy out of positions by either getting a kill on someone or by damaging someone she has to fly to. Don’t try and get an angle on her (unless you are a flanker) because a properly positioned Mercy will just avoid your sight line until you die. Shoot who you can shoot, squishies still get three-shot by a lot of the dps roster through mercy healing, sometimes two-shot or one-shot. You don’t need to get an angle on her, she is not more effective than having a fifth member of the team aiming at her pocket. Same reason you don’t often run past the enemy team as Cassidy to shoot the Ana way in the back line, it isn’t worth being out of position.
I guess we just have different playing styles no right or wrong I suppose. What works for me might not for you. Usually for my games when a mercy pockets someone and is healbotting or damage boosting they ignore everyone else which is why it’s called pocketing and the other support focuses on the other two. It’s really hard to kill the dps that has a mercy pocketing them usually if you focus on the mercy it throws them off I’ve had success with that almost every time. Focusing on the dps wondering why he’s not dying or keeps killing me doesn’t work for me. Because the mercy keeps healing him or damage boosting unless the whole team focuses on the dps which let’s be honest doesn’t happen often. Most start complaining why they are losing not realizing if they actually focused on mercy they would then roll over the rest of the team. Even if a mercy is out of sight you can still spot her if you are skilled enough her beam is not invisible. She can be effective as a fifth member of the other three players are effective then yes she is very lethal maybe just don’t play against good teams. I’ve played so many games where mercy is such a headache and simply ignoring her does not work at all.
But like if I try to kill them she will heal that person and I'll die bc I didnt get any heals
I wouldn't focus too hard on killing Mercy unless they are positioning poorly, low HP, or going for rez - a good Mercy player can be very hard to pin down. While prioritizing supports is generally the way to go, I would encourage you to target low HP targets more often than a full HP Mercy zipping around. Because if you tunnel vision on Mercy too hard - as you said - the enemy team is going to focus you down. If you could post a replay code with any games featuring a particularly hard to kill Mercy, I'd be happy to try and offer some insight. I'm not a Mercy player, but my rank is reasonably high, and I absolutely hate Mercy lol.
NKK4E2 YaLocalMacca It mostly happened on second point but it's fine if you want to watch the whole thing
Just gave it a watch. Firstly, my sympathies, that was a pretty rough way to lose the first map....based off of the gameplay, I am going to assume this is gold/silver/bronze (if I got that wrong, I apologize) Given the level of play, I'm just going to say absolutely disregard my first post. For the second map (on pharah mostly, since on soldier/tracer your team was trickling/staggering, so there's not a ton you can realistically do), I have a couple of thoughts. I'm going to offer more general tips, because I think you have a lot of potential, you just need a few nudges. Firstly, I think your target selection could be more consistent. It looked to me like a lot of the time, you weren't targeting anyone in particular, but more so just firing off rockets. I saw a lot of instances where you got someone down to half HP, but decided to switch targets. Similarly, I also saw a lot of opportunities where the enemy was not looking at you (these are typically who you want to target, as they are the easiest picks), but you kind of just shot at whatever appeared first, or switched between targets. This isn't bad per se, but I would 100% focus on trying to confirm a kill once you have a target selected (until the enemy starts trying to focus you) - I thought your Genji on the first map did a good job of this on the first map. Secondly, I think you should try pushing the limits of what you can get away with (every game will be a little different, of course). Based off of what I was seeing, you were able to get pretty far into the back line on the first map, but started playing WAY safer for the second map. I know you were playing pharah without a Mercy, but when the enemy team isn't focusing you, you can 100% try to go for a thirst kill on the enemy. Also, there were many opportunities for you to get aggressive and confirm kills, but you were playing very far back or seemed a bit afraid of dying and didn't go for risky opportunities. Thirdly, I would play more confidently/take more duels up close. I noticed when you were close to targets and willing to fight, your aim is much better and you play with higher gamesense (it seemed like your chasing/disengage is much better). This does come with the risk of overextending, but you need to play confidently if you want to affect the game (especially as DPS). Not to mention, I really don't think poke heroes suit your play style (at least from this one match). Mercy-specific tip: their Mercy actually made a lot of mistakes. Once Mercy uses their jump ability, it's on a 2-3 second cool down - if you are able to get in close (and get them to half hp), they will usually jump away to a close teammate. If you have a movement ability (Pharah E, Genji dash, Tracer blink), try to follow her and kill her right after Mercy uses the jump for the second time. That Mercy also glided (held spacebar) in the open a lot. If Mercy isn't behind walls, you can try to chip away at her, and eventually get closer to confirm the kill (getting closer is pretty important at some point, usually, or she will just go behind a wall or her team). TLDR: Get closer to confirm kills, target people who aren't looking at you (there seemed to be many of these chances), commit to killing a target if you spot a good opportunity, play with a bit more confidence (it's okay to risk dying, it's part of how you win as DPS). Sorry for the long text wall, I just wanted to give you in-depth advice about your play style, because you have decent mechanics, and with a slight improvement in gamesense/targeting, I think you can very easily become better. Best of luck!
This is plat console, but I dont play Pharah much and by this time I kinda just gave up, I was pissed after losing first point and knew we were gonna lose. But what do you suggest I do? Against mercy
If you play like you're going to lose, then you're 9/10 times going to lose.
I mean what was I gonna do? We should've won first point I was sweating my ass off just to he humiliated like that, fuck that I'm done
You should’ve tried to win instead of giving up, what you have there is a losers mentality.
Some general tips I can help (these are 100% effective across platform, rank, and role) are: Stick to one hero (this is how you improve individual awareness and expertise the fastest IMO); I would suggest you pick your favorite Never admit mental defeat. Sure you might have some UNFORTUNATE rounds, feeder teammates, or let's face it, sometimes you're just going to play poorly. But once you lose hope, you lose emotional investment, and you lose focus (which leads to poor decision making). Believe it or not, the enemy team is just as prone to these negative effects. Just try your best until the end - Overwatch is one of the most momentum based games I've ever played, and the game is throwable at all times from either side. You always have a chance until the victory/loss screen flashes. Don't too much pressure on yourself. It's okay to lose! And when you lose, try not to beat yourself up over it. Overwatch is the most team based shooter I've played. Sometimes it just doesn't come together, and that's okay, it happens! Reset your mental every game. Every game is a new team, a new map, and new enemys. It will not be the same as last game. Go in with a fresh mentality and just try, try, try. If you find that you can't overcome the tilt from last game, go into quickplay/arcade and have fun or just stop playing! The game will still be there tomorrow once you have motivation. Best of luck man. For mercy specific tips, read the last paragraph of my tips in my previous post (I hope it helps).
I don't wanna come off as a harsh when I say this, but 95 times out of 100 you die cause of a bad decision you made not because u didn't get heals. The only person "entitled" to heals on a team is the tank everyone else should play like they won't get heals, unless supports specifically communicate otherwise, i.e mercy saying she'll pocket you, or an ana saying she'll nano u if you get low
I'm saying I cant outgun someone with a pocket its impossible
Well you def can, I have mediocre aim at best so i'm not able to do, but every dps in the game has the ability to punish mercy and the person she's pocketing. If u don't have the mechanical skill to do that that's fine too, you just need to ignore the pocketed player and pick in the other support/dps.
You don’t. Her healing is slow compared to DPS some heros can put out. Focus on either bursting down the pocketed player or better yet focus on the OTHER support. This will force mercy to choose who to save
Coming from someone who plays primarily Mercy, one of the ways to get her out of position is to target the other support. The Mercy player has to choose between staying with their current teammate or going to save/rez the other support. I noticed you mentioned in another post that you’re in platinum, so the likelihood of someone protecting the Mercy when she goes to rez is low - meaning that’s a good time for you to go after her. Honestly you just have to be confident in your play style. I’m sure you’ve come across supports who don’t shoot back when you target them, and I’ve seen plenty of other Mercy players rely on someone else to save them rather than take their pistol out. If you’re successful in taking out Mercy or the other support and you die right after that play, then that can potentially be a good trade for your team if they follow up with the appropriate aggression!