Mercy Abilities and Strategy

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Mercy (Angela Ziegler) Guide Overview
  • 2. Mercy's Strengths
  • 3. Mercy's Weaknesses
  • 4. Mercy Synergies
  • 5. Mercy Counters
  • 6. Mercy Is Strong Against
  • 7. Mercy TL;DR Tips
  • 8. Reading Further for Mercy
  • 9. Changelog
• ×Abilities and Strategy
  • 1. Mercy TL;DR Tips
  • 2. Mercy's Abilities
    • 2.1. Regeneration
    • 2.2. Angelic Descent
    • 2.3. Caduceus Staff
    • 2.4. Caduceus Blaster
    • 2.5. Guardian Angel
    • 2.6. Resurrect
    • 2.7. Valkyrie
• +Playstyle
  • 1. Mercy Playstyle Introduction
  • 2. Mercy's Positioning
  • 3. Mercy's Damage Boost vs Healing
  • 4. When to Use Mercy's Resurrect
  • 5. When Mercy Should Fight or Flee
  • 6. How Mercy Should Use Valkyrie
  • 7. When to Use Valkyrie
• +Synergies and Matchups
  • 1. Mercy Synergies
    • 1.1. Pharah & Mercy
    • 1.2. Zenyatta & Mercy
    • 1.3. D.Va & Mercy
  • 2. Mercy Counters
    • 2.1. McCree & Mercy
    • 2.2. Hanzo & Mercy
    • 2.3. Roadhog & Mercy
  • 3. Mercy Is Strong Against
    • 3.1. Winston & Mercy
    • 3.2. Doomfist & Mercy
• +Maps
  • 1. Best Maps for Mercy
    • 1.1. Mercy on Numbani
    • 1.2. Mercy on Watchpoint: Gibraltar
  • 2. Worst Map for Mercy
    • 2.1. Mercy on Volskaya Industries

On this page, you will find a detailed overview of the abilities that Mercy has access to. We also explain how to best use these abilities.

The other pages of our Mercy guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

• Mercy should primarily heal allies with Caduceus Staff, but she should damage boost allies when given the chance (especially during ally ultimates).
• If an ally dies within enemy territory, Mercy should wait until an ally is about to respawn to use Guardian Angel to Resurrect them. If she waits long enough, enemies may leave the body and give Mercy the opportunity to Resurrect.
• Mercy can slingshot herself to various areas of the map by jumping just before she reaches her Guardian Angel target. Use this to quickly reach allies around corners or to get away from enemy damage.
• Valkyrie can be used to hunt an enemy healer or other opponent, but her main priority should be assisting her team.
• Sometimes Mercy should stop what she is doing and wait for Regeneration to heal her before attempting to heal her team.
• Mercy should sit around corners out of enemies' line of sight when using Caduceus Staff. The reach of the staff can allow Mercy heal or boost allies without having to expose herself.

Mercy's passive is Regeneration. Regeneration automatically restores Mercy's health over time as long as she can avoid taking damage for a full second. Once Regeneration starts its healing, it will restore Mercy's health at a rate of 20 hit points per second. If Mercy is missing 100 hit points, it will take a full six seconds (one second to start Regeneration, five seconds to restore her damage) for her passive to restore all of her health. If Mercy is low, it can be advantageous for her to steer clear of engagements until she can restore some of her health. Thanks to the reach of Caduceus Staff, Mercy can stay out of combat while healing her allies by standing behind walls or sitting on high ground. Therefore, Mercy can aid her teammates while waiting for Regeneration to top off her health.

Although Regeneration helps Mercy in drawn out team fights, it does nothing to help her stay alive when she is attacked by an enemy flanker. In fact, as long as a player consistently damages Mercy, Regeneration is useless. Therefore, while Mercy's passive is beneficial, it is a poor self sustain ability when Mercy is taking focus fire.

Mercy's second passive ability is named Angelic Descent, and allows Mercy to fall at a slow pace. When a player is in mid-air, they can use her jump button to engage Angelic Descent and slowly fall to the ground.

Angelic Descent can be used for the following:

• Staying above the battlefield while helping allies from above;
• Traversing various distances on maps;
• Escaping enemies by jumping off the side of a map and using Angelic Descent to hover until an ally rescues Mercy through her Guardian Angel;
• Randomly enacting Angelic Descent while falling to throw off the aim of enemies.

Mercy's primary weapon is called Caduceus Staff. Although Mercy's Staff has no way to directly injure enemies, it can thwart opponents in a number of ways. Caduceus Staff has two different forms of "fire". Caduceus Staff's primary fire is a single-target healing beam. This beam restores an ally's health at a rate of 60 hit points per second.

Caduceus Staff's secondary fire is a single-target beam that increases the damage output of the targeted ally. When Mercy boosts a teammate, their overall damage will increase by 30%. Therefore, if an ability deals 100 damage normally, Mercy's Caduceus Staff will boost its impact to 130 hit points.

Caduceus Staff can instantly go from its primary fire to its secondary fire beam. Additionally, Mercy can use either beam infinitely as long as the beam traverses through open space and Mercy stays within 15 meters of her ally. Mercy can look in other directions while using her Caduceus Staff without breaking its connection, allowing her to watch out for flankers while assisting the target of her beam. If Mercy's teammate goes behind a wall or past 15 meters from Mercy's position, her beam will assist her ally for a second before the connection is broken. In fact, if the connection is put in jeopardy, but the ally comes back within Caduceus Staff's range or Mercy's line of sight, the connection will never break.

It should be noted that Caduceus Staff's damage boost does not work for Symmetra's or Torbjörn's turrets, and it also does not boost Junkrat's RIP-Tire. However, ever other damage ability is boosted.

It should also be noted that damage-boosting effects are applied to an ally's attacks when the attack deals damage. If Mercy boosts a Junkrat who places a Steel Trap, the Steel Trap will deal normal damage. However, if Mercy boosts Junkrat when an enemy steps into a Steel Trap, the damage of steel trap will be boosted. Therefore, Mercy's damage boost only works when an ability or weapon deals damage while Mercy is boosting the damage's source. As a result, Mercy's boost will increase the damage of a projectile dps character's projectile as long as Mercy is boosting the character when the projectile makes contact with an enemy. For example, if Pharah fires a rocket from her Rocket Launcher, and Mercy only damage boosts Pharah a millisecond before the rocket hits its target, the damage of the rocket will still be boosted.

Caduceus Blaster is Mercy's only damage dealing ability/weapon and comes in the form of a small pistol. This secondary weapon might be small, but Mercy can use it to deal a decent amount of damage, especially when scoring headshots. Caduceus Blaster is technically a projectile dps weapon, as the blasts travel through the air at a rate of 40 meters per second. Therefore, players will have to aim in front of enemies to land shots depending on their distance to their target. Each shot deals 20 damage, which turns into 40 damage when Mercy lands a headshot.

Other mechanics of Caduceus Blaster include:

• Pinpoint accuracy (even when using Angelic Descent)
• Is not pinpoint when using Guardian Angel (bullets drop down while flying to an ally with Guardian Angel (watch video below)
• 20 bullets per clip
• Fire rate of 5 rounds a second
• Reload time of 1.5 seconds
• If Mercy switches to Caduceus Staff when Caduceus Blaster has less than full ammo, Caduceus Blaster will automatically reload itself after 1.4 seconds

Guardian Angel is Mercy's quick mobility ability that flies her to teammates who need help. Guardian Angel is an instant cast ability that shoots Mercy towards an ally who is in her line of sight. Mercy travels at a rate of 20 meters per second when gap closing to her team, and she stops just short of the ally' position. If a hero continues to move while Mercy is in flight, she will still land at the spot just short of where the hero was when Guardian Angel was initially used.

Here are some of the mechanics of Guardian Angel

• Mercy can use Guardian Angel on dead allies.
• Mercy can stop Guardian Angel at any time by pressing the Guardian Angel keybind in mid-air.
• Mercy can slingshot over a targeted ally, or in a different direction, by jumping in mid-flight of Guardian Angel (the closer Mercy is to her Guardian Angel destination, the better her momentum is for a slingshot maneuver) (watch video below).
• Mercy must be within 30 meters of an ally to use Guardian Angel.
• If Mercy is within 5 meters of an ally, that ally cannot be targeted by Guardian Angel.
• It has a 1.5 second cooldown.
• The cooldown starts when Mercy either touches the ground, or jumps/cancels off of Guardian Angel's path but stays in the air for longer than a second
• Guardian Angel resets Mercy's jump.

Some uses of Guardian Angel include

• Escaping from enemies;
• Rushing to an ally who needs healing;
• Sling-shotting around corners to reach a different ally who needs help;
• Getting to high ground;
• Leaving the spawn room and getting back to the team quickly;
• Getting in position to Resurrect an ally;
• Staying attached to Pharah.

Resurrect is an ability that has arguably undergone more changes than any other. It has gone from an ultimate to an ability, from resurrecting whole teams, to only bringing one person back at a time. Regardless of all of its changes, it is still an excellent ability that is unique to Mercy, giving her an interesting playstyle flavor given its potency.

To use Resurrect, Mercy must be within 5 meters of her deceased ally. Once in position, Mercy will channel Resurrect for 1.75 seconds before she brings her teammate back from the dead. Therefore, Resurrect should be used when enemies are not paying attention to the body, or when an ally is picked near their allies.

Some other mechanics of Resurrect

• Mercy can move while resurrecting at 25% movement speed.
• Mercy can be interrupted while casting Resurrect by abilities like Roadhog's Chain Hook and McCree's Flashbang.
• Resurrected players are invulnerable for 2.25 seconds after Resurrect.
• Resurrected players have full health upon resurrection.
• The cooldown of Resurrect is 30 seconds.

Valkyrie is an ultimate that boosts Mercy's abilities in a number of ways, the most astonishing being Mercy's Angelic Descent. When Mercy uses Valkyrie, she can use her jump key to gain elevation as she flies through the air. Therefore, Angelic Descent becomes an Angelic Ascent during the duration of Valkyrie. Aside from Mercy's flight capabilities, Valkyrie also boosts her other abilities for its entire 15-second duration in the following ways

• Caduceus Staff has extended range for both beams, and either beam can chain to multiple allies as long as they are within reach.
• Caduceus Blaster gains extra projectile speed for its bullets (80 meters a second), and has unlimited ammo during Valkyrie.
• Guardian Angel has increased range.
• Regeneration is not affected by damage.

About our Author

Mournflakes is a flex Grandmaster Overwatch player who boasts a career high SR rating of 4433. His favorite heroes are Roadhog, Soldier: 76, and Ana. He has played Overwatch since its initial release, and has put over 700 hours into competitive play. When not writing guides, you can catch Mournflakes streaming on his Twitch channel.