Overwatch Overwatch Mercy Guide and Overview

Since the launch of Overwatch, Mercy has been one of the headlining Supports. Although her kit has been controversial in different metas, Mercy has helped shape Overwatch into the game we know today. The unique features of her kit are the ability to resurrect a fallen ally, as well as a continual damage boost with no cooldown.

For players who take the role of supporting literally, Mercy is a great choice because she is an enabler, rather than a solo playmaker. You’ll rarely see her featured in the Play of the Game, but a good Mercy player can hard carry all the way up to the highest ranks of play.

TLDR

Play As

• Pocket the win condition. Always be on the lookout for who on your team is going for the all-in, win-or-lose play, and stay on them.
• Manage beam usage. If everyone has a lot of health, stay on Damage Boost until someone needs healing to live and attack.
• Use your movement to survive. Mercy can’t defend herself, so you have to be evasive through Guardian Angel movement. 

Play Against

• Don’t let her get off free resurrections. If her teammate dies, expect her to be looking for an opportunity to rez. Be ready to punish her.
• Bait out Guardian Angel without using your movement ability. Then chase her for the kill.
• Target Mercy . Eliminating Mercy first is more efficient than trying to kill her allies through her healing.

Strengths

High reward plays

Mercy's whole playstyle is all about managing risk and reward. Going for a rez is always risky, but the payoff of instantly having your teammates back is massive. Additionally, pocketing an ally empowers them to get away with riskier plays than usual. A Sojourn, for example, can’t survive on a deep flank by herself, but with a Mercy pocket, she could wipe the whole enemy team.

Numbers advantage

Rez effectively forces the enemy to earn one more elimination than your team every fight. A resurrection completely negates the effect of whatever abilities and resources were invested to get the kill.

High survivability

Even though Mercy doesn’t have any CC and no invincibility, she’s very difficult to kill. Guardian Angel makes her evasive and challenging to track or chase. She’s also healing herself anytime she’s healing an ally, and has the Support passive to self-heal as well.

Weaknesses

Team reliant

No matter how insane your Mercy play is, you still need your team to be securing eliminations. Mercy isn’t the kind of hero who can carry a team's poor performance. She can damage boost an ally all game, but if they're not landing meaningful damage, it doesn’t do much.

Poor self-defense

When Mercy is being attacked, she’s primarily reliant on her allies to either defend her, or be in range to use Guardian Angel to escape. If she’s ever caught out on her own, or no one is helping her, she has almost zero chance of winning a 1v1 duel.

Single target assistance

Depending on her team's 2nd Support, the single-target nature of Caduceus Staff can be a major disadvantage. If multiple members of her team need healing all at once, they’re gonna have to get in line because outside of her Ult, Mercy can only heal one at a time. Same goes for damage boost, if two teammates are making a play together, you have to pick just one to boost.

Primary Fire: Caduceus Staff (Healing)

Tips for Caduceus Staff (Healing)

• Keep allies topped off
• • Make sure you’re not sitting with heal beam on someone who is at full health while another teammate is at low health. You should be frequently changing heal targets.
• Jiggle peek corners
• • Your beam only breaks after losing LoS for over one second. This timer resets every time you regain LoS. Jiggle peeking a corner increases your uptime while simultaneously keeping Mercy safer and taking less damage.
• Heal Tanks cut off by barriers
• • A common tactic for enemy Tanks is to cut off healing to your tank with their barriers, like Sigma Shield or Winston bubble. Mercy heals through barriers, unlike many other Supports.
• Self-healing
• • No longer a unique passive, now her subrolw Medic passive. But it's worth noting as the shared healing in extremely important to Mercy's survival.
  • Stacks with healing boosts from Biotic Grenade, Valkyrie, and when healing multiple targets during Ult.

Secondary Fire: Caduceus Staff (Damage Boost)

Tips for Caduceus Staff (Damage Boost)

• Don’t be a heal bot
• • If all you’re gonna do is heal, you might as well pick a different Support who can do it better. Mercy’s most important utility is her damage boost.
• Damage boost the most lethal teammate
• • Whichever teammate is currently in position to make the biggest play should be the target of your damage boost. It doesn’t matter which hero they are using. The only thing that matters is if they are going for a big play. Typically, whoever is the most forward has the most play-making potential. You’ll need to identify from moment to moment, as your win condition is constantly changing. 
• Prioritize allies not dying
• • Although you should be looking to damage boost as much as possible, don’t forget to also keep an awareness of critical health allies.
• Jiggle peek corners
• • Same tip as healing, but even more important with damage boost. Usually, when you are damage boosting, you will be more aggressively positioned and exposed to more potential danger.
  • Your beam only breaks after losing LoS for over one second. This timer resets every time you regain LoS. Jiggle peeking a corner increases your uptime while simultaneously keeping Mercy safer and taking less damage.

[SHIFT]: Guardian Angel

Tips for Guardian Angel

• Don’t end up between an ally and an enemy
• • You don’t want to be a meat shield, so be careful not to overshoot your target when the enemy is in front of them.
  • Likewise, if the enemy is behind you, jump past your ally to once again keep them between you and the enemy.
• Manipulate movement
• • Standard Guardian Angel, crouch super jump, jump forward, backwards, in place, straight up are just a few of Mercy's movement options available every single time she’s GA. 
  • Pressing crouch after arriving at your target location causes Mercy to perform a super jump.
  • Directional input influences the distance travelled. You can jump forwards, arrive then jump backwards, etc.

[E]: Resurrect

Tips for Resurrect

• You don’t have to rez
• • Just because an ally has died doesn’t mean you have to go resurrect them. Even if they are shouting in voice chat. If the enemy team is surrounding the death location, don’t do it.
• Use cover
• • You should always look to use cover and corners when resurrecting. Mercy can activate rez, then move around a corner or ceiling during the casting, and still rez. She just can’t move too far away or the ability will get canceled.
• Call for protection
• • The best way to increase your odds of surviving Resurrect is to get protected by your Tank or healed by the other Support. Tanks can shield with their body or a barrier.

Caduceus Blaster

Tips for Caduceus Blaster

• Defend yourself
• • Occasionally, your teammates won’t defend you against an attacker. In these situations, try to Guardian Angel away to dodge, while also shooting the enemy with your Blaster.
• Automatic reload
• • Blaster reloads itself while Mercy has Staff equipped. No need to manually reload before putting away the Blaster.

Ultimate: Valkyrie

Tips for Valkyrie

• Defensive Ult
• • Used defensively, Valkyrie can heal your entire team and allow them to survive enemy attacks and ults they couldn’t otherwise. The increased move speed and stacks of self-heal are also great for keeping yourself alive.
• Offensive Ult
• • Granting your whole team 30% damage boost is the more powerful use of Valkyrie. Unless the enemy team has a strong defensive ult of their own, they shouldn’t be able to survive the extra incoming damage.
  • Look for allies to Ult combo with, and save Valkyrie for when they are ready to use their ult.
• Will your team survive?
• • It can be fun to Blaster in, especially during Valkyrie, but first take an assessment of health and threat to determine if your team can afford to not have your chain healing

(Passive): Angelic Descent

Tips for Angelic Descent

• When to float
• • Pocketing fliers
  • • Anytime you’re pocketing Pharah or Echo, you’ll need to be alternating between Guardian Angel, float, and fast fall. Mixing up your movement allows you to stay in the air with them, and also makes you harder to target.
  • After executing a Guardian Angel super jump, float in the air IF the enemy has melee or short-range heroes, or if floating puts you safely behind a ceiling. Otherwise, it’s better not to float because of the slow movement.

Minor Perks

Angelic Resurrection

• Considering how impactful Resurrect is, but also how vulnerable Mercy becomes during it, the Overhealth can be the difference between a won and lost game.

Divine Momentum

• Counter dive
• • Against teams that are running dive comps or have people constantly flanking and targeting you, the extra distance Mercy travels by bunny hopping or crouch jumping can be your only means of survival

Major Perks

Chain Boost

• Good in poke and brawl
• • First off, you need two allies to be playing near each other most of the game. Secondly, you want both of those heroes to have kits that benefit from damage boost.
  • If your team is running two ranged heroes, Chain Boost is great for increasing their pressure and threat.
  • When your team is running a brawl comp, Chain Boost makes their deathball more lethal and helps them run over the enemy more aggressively. 

Flash Heal

• Wait for your target to be below half health.
• • Never waste the 15-second cooldown on the base 50 healing. Always wait to get the triple healing on low HP allies.
• More time to damage boost
• • The burst healing cuts down the amount of time you need to spend healing a low-health ally, thus increasing the amount of time you can spend damage boosting.

Mercy's best maps have lots of space for her to move around. In tight or cramped map areas, she has difficulty evading the enemy. She never wants to be close to the enemy, so always try to find areas that allow you to keep your distance, no matter the map. Because she pairs so well with ranged DPS like Ashe and Sojourn, Mercy also works great on maps with long sight lines where these heroes are strong. 

Best Maps

• Paraiso
• Dorado
• Junkertown

Worst Maps

• Samoa
• Hanaoka
• Nepal

The best comps for Mercy tend to be poke-heavy since she can sit back and damage boost to give her allies the advantage. Other than during Valkyrie, she's limited to single-target healing, so brawly team comps have the worst team synergy.

The best Tanks are those that can survive without needing constant healing, and get benefits from short bursts of damage boost. Tanks like Sigma fit both of these, and he's a staple of poke compositions.

For DPS, burst damage and pocketing the carry are where Mercy truly shines. Pretty much whichever hitscan or ranged DPS is on her team (e.g., Sojourn, Widowmaker, Emre, Soldier: 76, Cassidy, etc.) can have a Mercy attached to them and carry the whole team.

Of course, a shoutout must be given to Pharah and Echo for the flying Mercy pocket. Unless the enemy team goes multiple counters, these duos are extremely difficult to deal with.

Generally, Mercy wants her other Support to have AoE healing to complement her single-target healing. Pretty much anyone other than Zenyatta or Illari can provide enough sustain to pair with Mercy. These can work as well, but her team needs to be playing an all out offense and winning team fights quickly.

Hitscans are good for shooting Mercy as she floats, or during Guardian Angel. Also, high mobility heroes like D.Va can easily chase her down, and kill her with burst damage.

Don’t let her get off free resurrections. If her teammate dies, expect her to be looking for an opportunity to rez. Be ready to punish her.

Bait out Guardian Angel without using your movement ability. Then chase her for the kill.

Target Mercy . Eliminating Mercy first is more efficient than trying to kill her allies through her healing.