I don't wanna come off as one of those "LERN 2 PLAY, N00B!" jerks like what's-his-name's 8 year old nephew from the Beastcast emails, but...is there ANY reason you'd play an ultra-aggressive Mercy?

Cause I got into a game, we had good team composition and someone was Mercy as our support and...right off the bat, dude pulls out the pistol and CHARGES forward...and if they were trolling, it was SUBTLE, cause they did SOME occasional healing, but largely...I mean I was playing Soldier 76 and this dude was running past me at the enemy. Is there some kind of high-level play with Mercy that this duder was attempting? (He did NOT succeed if so), or is this a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he was playing for the first time.

Is this really worth getting upset and making a thread about?

I mean, if you are in a pickle you can quickly fly over to any nearby teammates, and you do get some health regeneration, and that pistol can take down enemies when all the shots connect....... but yeah, an aggressive Mercy sounds dumb, even just powering up another player's shots would do more than her pistol alone.

If I sound upset, it's more because I'm BAFFLED. I made the thread because I'm GENUINELY curious if there's a way to play a super-aggro Mercy effectively.

A primarily aggressive mercy is silly, but her offence is also pretty fun and her pistol is relatively powerful. I've had game where I've healed for 95% of the time and still gotten half a dozen kills.

Probably just trying to figure out if it works at all.

Probably just experimenting or doesn't care. People will do this kind of thing a lot. I have a friend who always likes to play characters in ways they weren't intended to be in mobas for fun. Not surprised if the same kind of people do that thing in a class based shooter as well. Regardless, I would say not its not worth it if you want to be as good as you can be. If you're being aggro as mercy you might as well be aggro as pretty much any other damage character. Having the ability to sometimes heal as mercy while you run around gunning people down with her pistol isn't worth just giving up running around with a better character for damage. Not saying it can't work. I'm sure it certainly could in the right hands. But those right hands would be better off behind a more efficient character for what they're doing is all.

I had a game where our team was 5 Junkrats and I was playing as Mercy. One Junkrat drops out, another dude joins picks Pharah and then proceeds to start flipping his shit because I was running around healing all the Junkrats and not sticking to him because he was the ranged character. So for the rest of the match I would find him, emote in front of him and then run out and die, because fuck him.

Her pistol actually hurts. Each shot does 20 damage so if you're good at landing hits with it you will fuck people up. I would not endorse an aggresive Mercy but if you want to try go for it!

As a low level players (I can play Reaper, Reinhart and Lucio semi-decently), I wouldn't be surprised if a Mercy did badly in a game. Her offensive gun is actually kinda awesome if you can hit headshots regularily. It's way better than no-mech D-Va. From my experience, it's like a single Tracer gun without full auto fire. It's just most low/mid level Mercy's forget to use it, the ones who remember it forget to heal properly. High level Mercy is super rare, one who can actually do both supportive offense and healing defense.

You may have been playing against a little kid for all you know. Maybe it was his first game or something. You never know.

@mezza: I have ZERO experience with MOBAs, or even class-shooters, so perhaps this was a silly question.

True, but I've actually seen it a few times, so I thought there MIGHT be something to it.

As a Mercy main, yes there is a way to play aggressive Mercy, but it should mostly be reserved for self-defense. Like another poster said, Mercy's gun does a ton of damage, and it's very accurate if you can lead your shots and aim for the head. You can take down turrets, Reinhardts and even ulting Genjis under the right circumstances.

The reason why you do this is linked to the first thing you learn in a team-based competitive game like Overwatch: your teammates are idiots. As Mercy, you possess an ultimate that can easily turn the tide of battle in your favor, effectively eliminating a team wipe and negate damage-dealing ults. Knowing all of this, your team consistently ignores you and leaves you to fend for yourself while they go double Genji/Tracer and Widow to top it all off. Also, the people who commit themselves to trash comps like these are rarely great at them or, surprise, working as a team, so any extra DPS should be welcomed.

Mercy's learn to fend for themselves or get put in the ground. Also, much like a Recon Bastion, less skilled players don't really know what to do with an aggro Mercy. Sometimes you can get the jump on them because your damage patterns haven't been internalized yet.

Free Mercy team tip: if you have to die, die together. A mass resurrection shouldn't be left to chance. Die near your buds and you'll find death to be less permanent.

Played a match with some friends, and three of us played Mercy, and we formed a healing triangle and bum rushed the first objective as soon as the doors opened. I believe we played on Hollywood, and we actually ended up taking the first point with just us healing eachother without pulling our pistols out. Of course it didn't last long after that, but it was fun seeing the reaction of the other time.

I am very much playing devil's advocate here but it's possible they just misunderstood the character. Everyone else starts with a gun as their primary so maybe they thought it only made sense to run around with the pistol at all times like everyone else. Overwatch is very popular so there are many people playing who may not have tried a team-based shooters before.

That being said, playing mercy as an offense hero is a waste. Any other hero would be more effective at offence than her and forcing that character into an offensive role robs your team of a healer.

Nah its not a silly question. Only way to change the meta in competitive games like this is to question and challenge the way people think things should be. You're not too far off from an important question about Mercy. I think its good to question how much one should heal, damage, and damage boost. Especially in unusual team compositions. Something I wonder about a lot is what Mercy can do to be more valuable in a two support comp with a coordinated team. If Lucio is covering the group in heals, perhaps her role isn't as straight forward as just heal everyone all the time. Maybe a composition exists out there that can get value form a Mercy focused on damage boosting and covering the flanks with her pistol. If it exists, the first person to find it is going to be the one who questions the way we Mercy players do things now.

I've been playing as an aggressive Mercy the last couple of nights and it's really fun. The pistol is actually very deadly if used properly. I often am not using it properly, though.

I think I have about 2 hours total played with Mercy and have a grand total of 0 kills with her.

you should yell PLAY YOR CLASSS as loudly in your mic as possible so it clips and distorts and deafens both teams. make sure to work up some spittle and doritos particles flying from your mouth as you do so for optimum effect.

make jeff proud :')

There absolutely is a time and place for Mercys pistol, but most of us won't be good enough at playing her to do it effectively. Top tier stuff. Also it's never going to work in pug games because nobody ever cares about defending their mercy.

In my humble experience, as an average player in pug games, you're better off playing Lucio.

Every. Single. Time.

I got worse. I played with a torb that never placed a turret and would just charge with his pistol. We were playing defense and he got shot in seconds after the attacking team's doors open because he was waiting just in front if em. Suffice to say we didn't win or even put a good opposition.

Whatever, there's no real penalty for losing. At worst you can interpret your win/lose ratio from your statistics. It just made the game dull because the attacking team destroyed us but, oh well, it's bound to happen in multiplayer games.

Some have pointed out correctly that Mercy's gun isn't that bad. However, Mercy's survivability is very poor, so I don't think there's really a case to be made for that strategy.

I think there is a very good reason people don't do this. The pistol is for emergencies or can be used very situationally to put out a LITTLE damage, otherwise Mercy should be healing or damage boosting. If you want to try being a flanking aggro Mercy then I wish you all the luck, but you'll probably be doing your team more harm than good.

I find it funny when people play their class in a different way. Even if it always fails.

My Attack-Symmetra never really worked out but sometimes, I just do it for shit and giggles

As someone that got resurrected by Mercy, only to be killed off 5 seconds later, I want to publicly apologize in the name of all those people still learning the ropes... hope you learn not to take it so seriously.

I've played a ton of Mercy and realized relatively early on that knowing when to use her Pistol is key to playing a truly good Mercy.

I average 10+ eliminations wih her per game now and that seems like an a-okay number.

There's plenty of opportunities to use the gun:

• in self defense
• finding yourself behind a low health character like Zenyatta for the quick kill
• behind a Reinhardt when there's no healing/boosting to be done
• in a situation were an enemy flanks your team and no one but you notices (here you want to either kill the enemy, distract him or make other people notice him...this is obviously only a thing for non mic games) etc.

You should never use it for more than a few seconds/a short burst of damage, so an actual Aggro Mercy should be out of the question.

Important Tipp: Change her weapon switch to alt-fire (on controllers), since its way faster and (the only very situationaly useful) slow falling can just be used with the jump button.

If we're going to use this logic then we might as well shut down this whole website right now.

Competitively, not really. If he wants to practice and learn the capabilities of the weapon, and it's just a quick match, then whatever. In competitive people should play their class, and picking Mercy as an assault is either trolling or stupid.

I mean, if someone picked Mercy and killed a shitload of people then that would be impressive. But you're still giving both yourself, and your team, a stupid handicap for no reason.

I have a 10 year old and when I let him play games like Overwatch I'll say in a nice dad-like way that he should play his class. His response is that I should let him play how he wants. He's a good kid, so I let him.

I switch to Mercy's pistol when I see opponents a few ticks away from death and not paying attention, but that's about it. You'd be amazed how many players charge a full health Mercy when they're down to about 20% health just because bad players react to healers like a bull to the color red. Admittedly, I haven't played her as much lately because sometime last week I started to play more Symmetra on defense and have been doing much better with her. I don't think a lot of players get Symmetra. I'm amazed how many times I see someone blow an ult just to take me out. It's not like I'm healing anyone.

My favorite alternative tactic is getting players to chase me as Lucio. Boy howdy, some players will futilely chase you around half the map trying to get that kill even while they're about to lose a capture point.

I have occasionally played pistol Mercy in Quick Play when my team can't coordinate anything and it's clear we are going to lose. I had a Hanamura game where no one could get on the point at all due to a Torbjorn turret and I ended up destroying it 5 times... as Mercy. She has no damage falloff on her pistol so it's surprising good for killing far off targets, but in a real game it's only situationally useful in emergencies or for killing weakened enemies.

The person with the highest elimination count so far in game is a Mercy with 183 eliminations.

Where did you see that? I was looking at masteroverwatch the other day and I highest I found was 140-something and it wasn't a Mercy.

@sweep: Having the righteous fury of Sweep on my side!? I AM INVINCIBLE!

@sessh: This is what I mean: this person was DASHING ahead of my Soldier 76, pistol blazing. I understand there are PLENTY of time when the pistol can be useful, but this seemed INSANE.

@hermes: I'm still learning plenty too, but choosing a character filed under "Support" and playing her like an "Offense" feels a bit beyond "learning the ropes." There are the AI/training modes if you're THAT in the woods.

As it turns out, battle Mercy is not a bad way to build your ult.

@whatshisface: Shooting people with the pistol to build ultimate IS faster than damage boosting a character that isn't getting a lot of hits, of course assuming that your entire team is at full health.