I am a GM mercy (solo q only) and happy to review mercy VODs

[fallow knoll]

Send them below with any questions you might have, and I can give you tips! :)

[quiet blade]

CPQABR 1900 mercy vod on havana id say it was a pretty tough game for me and i felt like i did not always go for the best options during fights and some tunnel vision on things. would be glad to have any tips and things i should practice more.

[fallow knoll]

OK so you are on Havana. Mercy is a great pick on Havana! Havana has long sight lines (especially on points 1 and 3) so hit scan (heroes like widow, ashe, cassidy, soldier) are especially strong and mercy complements them well. There's usually a lot of "picks" from far away on maps like Havana and Junkertown so rez is also strong since it's less risky and you can get more of them off.

At the start of the game on defense, try to dmg boost a hero that can hit the enemy out of spawn. Good heroes for this are rein (firestrike), junkrat (trap + bomb, grenades), echo (stickies), pharah (rockets), soldier (rocket), etc. The benefit of dmg boosting right away is that your target and you both get ult charge, so you're actually creating ult charge (more than the enemy gets from healing the dmg).

You are frequently healing pharah when she is full hp. I recommend trying to use dmg boost/right click as the "default" beam setting and only switch to healing when they are missing HP. I think this helps with this issue because it reframes how you should be using mercy (dmg boost as a priority, healing when necessary). It's tricky because normally left click is a hero's default weapon but for mercy you usually want to think of dmg boost as default. I probably spend more time healing than dmg boosting, but this is a good mentality to get into to maximize DMG boost opportunities (and ult charge creation). I'm not saying rebind your left and right clicks, just try to dmg boost first and switch to healing if they need heals after.

This is a really risky rez for a few reasons. The main reason is that you are rezing in a spot that is completely exposed to the 4 people on the enemy team. You might be able to get away with this in this SR but the higher SR you climb, you will get punished for this almost instantly. In this case, you also died. Also, your team is down 2 people and cassidy (who you are rezzing) is in a bad spot, where even if you do get the rez off, he will just die again since their team will swarm him and your team cannot prevent that. I recommend not going for a rez where it is risky or you might just trade your life for the person unless they have a game changing ult or your team is down both tanks (and the rezzed tank can survive the rez). Since you died, your team is now going to miss out on your heals and dmg boost for the next 20 seconds, which is the cost of dying during your rez.

[fallow knoll]

here you are valking and your orisa dies. You'll need to watch this back to understand what I mean, but I recommend you instantly go for the rez on this orisa and use your valk mobility to hide behind this terrain. You can get away with this because your DVA is ulting and they're concerned about the ult right now. If they try to stop you, they actually will die to DVA bomb, so you can get in the habit of using other people's ults as "protection" for rezzing. I do this a lot with hanzo dragon (e.g., rez inside his dragon so they can't see me really and can't melee me), zen ult, bap window (scares them away), dva bomb, shatter, etc.

Make sure to pocket your dva when she gets back into mech! She is really vulnerable and just investing a second of your beam into ensuring she gets back into her mech is good "ROI" (return on investment) of your time. Zarya doesn't kill her here but usually they will and then DVA is dead.

Try to stay with your DPS hitscan as much as possible. Especially on this 3rd point of Havana, you want to pocket your DPS hitscan on this high ground so they can keep applying pressure. This spot is really strong because it commands the enemy team's attention and you want to enable your DPS to threaten the enemy team. I think maybe cassidy came back after dying but try to always think in your head about who is the best person to pocket, especially when your team is NOT in crisis. here everything is pretty calm and neutral so you don't need to be emergency healing the tanks. Cassidy is a better pocket than genji, and similar to DVA remeching, you want to pocket him during his ult so that he can survive it and you can even get a lot of DMG boost when he shoots, which can make his ult even more deadly (he doesn't have to charge as long for it to kill). It's ana's job to heal the tanks, not mercy, so I would recommend when possible staying with DPS. Your main targets to heal are your 2 dps and your other support. I know ana will probably fall behind on heals and you will have to help heal tanks but this is just a general framework which is good to follow.

I recommend pocketing genji blade when possible. This is maybe an iffy situation here bc he is kind of inting, but it can really help with his survivability and his dmg output to have your beam on him as well as ana's nano. It also draws aggro away from him onto you sometimes which can help make it easier for him to get his blade off (which is what your team really needs to happen, it's OK if you die enabling that to happen usually).

This is a great rez onto rein here! Nice positioning behind the wall. I would recommend when you rez, spam "Fall back!" or "I need help!" so that your team realizes you are rezzing and doesn't int like your pharah does here. After you start rezzing, she just runs into line of fire without your beam which is not good and can sometimes be prevented by spamming those pings. Of course, the better thing to do is to say in voice chat, "I'm rezzing, no heals." or "I'm rezzing, don't go in yet, wait for rein."

As a general tip, try to look around more instead of just staring straight ahead. A huge perk of playing mercy is that you get to have 360 degree vision 24/7, whereas basically every other hero in the game has to look forward to output dmg/heals. Here is an example where you didn't notice your pharah came back alive and gave up and started dpsing, but you could flown to your pharah.

Great positioning here. You're blocking the vision of the enemy. On mercy, you almost NEVER want to see the enemy if possible. If you can see the enemy, you're in a bad position. Only tip here is that I think you beam your tanks way too much so try to pocket symmetra or baptiste here so they can threaten high ground more and generate some ult charge. Baptiste and zenyatta (and sometimes ana) can actually be really good dmg boost targets. Also back to what I said earlier, you're healing Orisa at full hp so try to default to dmg boost.

Here again you are a little bit too concerned with your orisa taking damage and should actually be enabling your pharah. Your pharah is doing so much dmg in the backline and although she doesn't die, in higher Sr she will be actually taking dmg bc people can aim, so I would recommend you stay with your primary dmg boost target a lot more so they can play aggressively. It is bap's job to support your tanks, and I know it's hard to trust them to do that, especially in the lower SR, but you're actually hurting your chances of winning here by healing basically full hp orisa and not supporting Pharah when she is trying to make a play and win your team the fight. It's OK if Orisa dies but you want to make sure Pharah can kill their whole backline.

Just to drive this point home, here you are again not beaming your primary dmg boost target, and pharah actually dies here shortly after. I think this is actually a symptom of not looking around and using your 360 vision. After I beam someone, I often stop looking at them because overwatch gives you a UI of their HP that enables you to look away and still see their health, so I will start looking for my next beam target. I think that's maybe my #1 tip for you to try to do.

Nice dodge on Rein ult! 🙂

here again try to really focus on predicting what is going to happen next. here your genji is trying to take space and mercy's main value proposition (i.e., reason why you pick her) is to enable targets to do things that they normally can't get away with. For example, you want to pocket Genji here so he can scare the enemy away from that OP spot on high ground instead of pistoling randomly. You eventually do this, but the couple seconds delay result in him having to back off a little and give up the space. He also could've killed Soldier with dmg boost dash and melee if you were there. A better team will reclaim that space once he backs off too.

I don't have a good photo of this but there's also a fair amount of time (maybe 5-10% of your gameplay) where you are just not beaming some one and are kind of in limbo. I think most of the time maybe you are trying to look around and stop holding down your beam, but I would try to break that habit because it actually is causing you to spend the next few seconds afterwards trying to catch up on heals (since your old target was taking dmg while you were not beaming them). This is similar to my tip about beaming someone and then holding down your mouse button while looking around still to get a better idea of what is going on and who you can try to help out. There are also a couple of times where I think you might be spamming GA and cancelling it so you end up just floating mid air doing nothing (not moving towards your target). This is a good habit to try to fix too.

Go back and rewatch this fight because I think there was a lot going wrong here and this is a good example of if you had played it better, your team would've 100% won the fight. The best part of reviewing things like this is because you can 100% improve and change the game outcome. no one is perfect haha but just watch this fight over and try to avoid some of the mistakes here. Examples: not pocketing pharah while she's doing god's work, dying to their pharah in valk, flying into their team, etc.

OK I know that was a lot, but I think this is a good list of things you can actively improve on to climb SR. My top 2 tips are: 1.) stop beaming tanks so much when they aren't at risk of dying and pocket your primary dmg boost target (heroes like pharah, ashe, hanzo, cassidy, soldier), and 2.) try to look around with 360 vision!

Done

[quiet blade]

ok thanks for the help ill try and put this to work in my next comp session

was playing a little to safe with tanks i suppose

getting tunnel vision on tanks

[fallow knoll]

Yes definitely try to stay with your dps

I think you can definitely climb a lot high just by implementing a few of these tips

😄

[quiet blade]

i hope so just going to take some effort to iron out some of the issues

[fallow knoll]

Yes a lot of them go hand in hand so I think the very first thing you should do is try to use 360 vision because that'll actually help you to notice more things going on in the game

It might feel unnatural sometimes to beam someone and immediately spin around and stop looking at them but you can just use the UI of their health to "keep an eye on them" while you multitask and look for other people to potentially help

[fallow knoll]

Also to clarify I look forward like 75% of the time but it's good to kind of spin a little bit even if it's just 45 degrees to get more vision