I just started playing Overwatch (played a few games during open beta, but wasn't able to play much). I'm enjoying Mercy, but who (in a group situation) should be getting the damage buff? Additionally, when my team splits up, who should I follow to support?
Who should I be damage buffing as Mercy
overwatch
Related Solutions
In actuality, Winston's Tesla Cannon out damages a mercy heal without the boost. Let's look at the facts:
- Tesla Cannon deals 60-65 DPS
- Mercy's Caduceus heals 50 HPPS (hp per second)
- Mercy Caduceus boosts 30% extra damage
- Tesla Cannon deals 78-85 DPS when boosted
This means, in terms of outdamaging a healing Mercy, you are beating her:
- by about 10-15 DPS, without a boost
- by about 28 - 35 DPS with boost.
However, Tesla Cannon doesn't have infinite ammo, and has a reload time of 1.5 seconds. Which means that's roughly 75 extra hp that's getting filled on the enemy as you reload, and it takes 5 seconds to fully expend ammo. Which means that, 5 seconds x 10 - 15 DPS = net loss of 50-75, which is then promptly healed back up while you reload. So at this point, while you can outdamage the Mercy while she heals, it is instantly negated as soon as you spend time to reload.
Thus, the damage boost is enough to outdamage the other opponent as a Mercy heals them. However, note that it is still a moderate kill time of about 5-6 seconds, even with a boost, as:
- 50 HPS, for a total of 325 hp healed for 6.5 seconds
- 6.5 seconds is the full time for a Winston to expend his ammo, then reload completely, ready to fire again
- 390 - 425 DPS under boost for 5 seconds, then 1.5 seconds of reload downtime.
Which means that on average, assuming a perfect scenario:
Over a period of 6.5 seconds you only outdamage the mercy by about 65 - 100 damage, while under the effects of a boost.
Which means that, in your case of fighting against a reaper (250 hp), that it would still take you at least 3 cycles of the 6.5 second cycle noted above to fully outdamage the heal provided by the Mercy, and that's still a roughly 19.5 second kill. A very long TTK.
As Blueraja mentions below, this really only applies to pure health and health/shield heroes, like Reaper, Tracer, and Soldier 76, which means that against armored heroes you're not going to be able to out DPS them regardless if a boost is active or not.
According to Jeff Kaplan,
We match based on skill, ping and group size.
So, level shouldn't matter. To further break down what each of those categories are, this post here describes what the matchmaking system looks for when trying to balance teams.
"Skill" in this context refers to two things: your win rate and your MMR. Your win rate is calculated by taking the number of games you've won and dividing that by the total number of games you've played. Your MMR is an invisible number that goes up when you win and down when you lose and is supposed to represent how good you are at the game. Your MMR has to start somewhere, and while your account is new it will fluctuate wildly with each game played as the system is trying to figure out what number best represents your skill based on your average. As you continue to play games, the system becomes more confident in your MMR and the fluctuating decreases. A good matchmaking system will pair up players with similar confident MMR scores, in theory creating even games every time.
"Ping" is a number, measured in milliseconds (0.001 of a second), that represents how long it takes your console to send information to the host or server and receive a response back from the server. High ping is a direct cause of things such as shots not registering, people teleporting around, getting kills by shooting thin air, and other issues that people generally associate with lag. Thus, a low-ping environment is preferable.
"Group size", in theory, should refer to pairing up premade teams of similar size against each other, mitigating the inherent advantage of premades (communication, consistent roles, confidence in the skill of your teammates, etc.) by giving that advantage to both teams. Bigger premade should = bigger advantage, thus the need for groups of similar size on each team.
Though, it should be noted, the longer you are searching for matches, the looser the constraints will become in attempt to get you into a game.
Best Answer
Who (in a group situation) should be getting the damage buff ?
Short answer: You should be damage boosting heroes whose role is to deal damage.
Longer answer:
Most offense heroes are good choices but Pharah, Soldier: 76 and McCree might be the easiest ones to follow without getting killed.
But you can consider other heroes as well.
A damage boosted Bastion is an absolute beast for instance, and if you heal him occasionally he can focus solely on firing and reloading.
Another great combo is Mercy and D.Va although you'll have to alternate between damage boosting and healing for this to be effective. Get it right and D.Va will be able to boost to enemies, take them out quickly and recover lost mech health without retreating.
Who should I follow to support?
This highly depends on the situation. If part my team's trying to push the defense back while a single player is tackling the objective and the objective is not at risk (e.g. a Payload way back while keeping the defense at spawn) then I'll support the ones charging the defense.
Whatever you do, never go support a player that will get you killed.
The healer is too important to the team to keep getting killed trying to save a player from a hopeless situation.