How did Blizzard kill off Mercy? I don't follow Overwatch really so I hope you don't mind me asking
to answer your question they didnt kill her in terms of, like, actual lore or anything. but in game theyve balanced her so poorly that theyve taken away everything she had that, in my opinion, made her fun to play.
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Originally, i wrote out this really long thing about the history of the overwatch meta, but ill summarize what i mean below
in season 3, ana was the best support. she worked really well with other heroes that were good at the time, while mercy was not and got left in the dust.
as a result, they gave mercy a bunch of buffs to try and help her keep up with ana. and then later they nerfed ana without bringing mercy back down with her.
in season 5, the heroes that were really good worked REALLY well with mercy. when the one of the best dps and the best support are also the best combo, theres only one place for a meta to go, tbh.
so mercy had both the highest pick rate and highest winrate, which was a problem (in my opinion her individual strength was only part of it, but i digress)
so instead of nerfing her (like removing the invincibility during her ult, making it so she could only resurrect up to, like, 3 people, or anything else) they gave her a total rework.
anyway in the beginning her rework was pretty crazy. her pick/winrate didnt go down much if at all, she just needed to be played a bit more aggressively than before.
then they nerfed her. and nerfed her again. and again. one by one, they stripped away all the things that used to make her good and fun.
im not a mercy main by any means and ill kill anyone who makes that claim, but i do have A LOT of time clocked into her. her whole deal used to be that she was defenseless on her own, and stayed back and careful until she got her ult, and then she’d leap in and could turn a team-fight around. now shes just kind of… there. and her ult makes her be there a bit better. theres none of that catharsis and satisfaction that used to make her fun. she has no real impact anymore. a good ana can win a game. what can a good mercy do now?
she can fly, and if you’re lucky she can rez. not during your ult anymore, though. theres no reason to pick her over ana or moira. not because theyre that much better (although moira is pretty fucking ridiculous lets be real) but because mercy is not only not that great, but also incredibly boring. a lot more ana mains are popping up, not because theyve suddenly realized how much they love ana, but because blizzard has taken away what made mercy the hero they loved.
you can say this is long but it was originally like 3 times longer and im very passionate about this
ohhhkay so for anyone who doesnt know, hang the fools was one of the first big mchanzo fics and i honest to god dont know if its finished or not and i dont really feel like looking
i cant really criticize the writing because it was written for fun in the authors free time but personally i dont really like it very much (lots of long, unbroken paragraphs, mediocre characterization at best, pretty stereotypical at worst,, etc)
anyway, the thing is this fic was HUGE in like, pre-junkenstein’s revenge overwatch fandom. half the mchanzo tag was htf specific fanart and im not exhaggerating. which was kind of understandable considering at the time they had no interactions to go off or or anything but the thing was it really spread this whole idea of just a bad, bad dynamic for the two
in hang the fool hanzos portrayed as the cold asshole who hates and mocks mccree for literally no given reason other than ‘hanzo thinks hes dumb’ and mccree is idiotic and lovestruck and continues to pester him, again, for really no reason and the dynamic continues even after they get together like
i honest to god dont see the romanticism in calling someone an idiot in a non joking way to like, someone you know really well (like, i call my gf dumb as a joke but i also make sure she knows im not serious)
like it all comes down to preference or whatever but the thing to me is that fic was the mother of half the damn mchanzo fandom thinking that dynamic was cute or something and always seeing it portrayed that way (which died down a lot when junkenstein came out and all their interactions were like, chill banter between friends) (which would have made more sense in canon previously since hanzo pretty much just bants with anyone who isnt genji)
and the prevalence of having hanzo call mccree a fool in every other fuckin fic to a point where i grew an intense hatred of that word
but anyway thats more or less the gist of that whole thing and i cant really fault anyone for liking that fic because at the end of the day its just fanfiction buuut that doesnt stop it from annoying me from whenever i see it because blacklist didnt pick up on it
thank you for going on an i have no mouth spam, i forgot about that story and really enjoyed seeing other peoples' artwork and takes on it!
thank you!!!!! ihnmaims has been bouncing around in my brain like an old dvd screensaver lately and i Am Not Normal About it, and im glad that you're enjoying the spam!
ive been on a kick on my art blog as well with my 'what if AM put some memories in a human body and they had a really terrible time' AU if you wanna check it out
