10 REAL Tips For Playing Mercy

(inspired by the recent "10 Tips For Being A Mercy Main" post)

1. Nobody on your team is or should be responsible for protecting you, full-stop. Completely purge this idea out of your mind, and learn where and when you need to be to stay alive so that you can do the protecting.

2. Doing single-rezzes can sometimes be an effective tactical decision -- Getting rid of your ult fast means it charges to full again sooner, and, oftentimes the enemy will try to push in after a single pick (because there's less of you and it's easier to kill individual enemies when less of them exist), so it can be a good way to go back to 6 teammates alive without having to give the enemy an inch.

3. By default you should be holding down RMB (damage) on teammates. This indicates your continued presence and who you're prioritizing as well.

4. While damage-boosting a teammate, instead of taking your finger off damage boost, just keep it held and also hold LMB (healing), and heal up any damage your damage-boosted target takes -- even if it's just 3 or 4 damage. Teammates are more confident when their health is full.

5. HYPER ADVANCED E-SPORTS ONLY: Even while healing a low health target, if they do high damage with large but predictably-timed gaps in between shots (Roadhog, Pharah, Reinhardt), you very quickly switch to damage boost but only while they're attacking. Using Roadhog as an example: The time between initiating his shot vs. it colliding, is only about 1/4 of a second (or less), and if you master this technique and get in sync, you can effectively achieve the effects of healing and damage-boosting at the same time.

6. You don't have to float down slowly the entire time you're following Pharah in the air. It's better to LSHIFT to her, float for a sec, then fall faster for a bit, but not too far, so you can LSHIFT again. Makes you a much harder target.

7. Damage boost doesn't affect Torbjorn's turret. Remember -- you can easily know what it does affect by the markers on your crosshair.

8. Tell your self-healing teammates at the start of the match that they should still probably be using those self-healing abilities just as much as normal -- For instance, Roadhog actually using his self-heal instead of just always expecting you to heal him, means you can focus on players who can't do that.

9. Oh, right, and her gun is surprisingly good. It shouldn't, however, just be a disasterous/big event that triggers your use of it -- If there's an enemy in front of you at 50 or so health, just shoot em' up. If you're confident in your ability to land shots in a situation, it's sometimes more helpful to finish off an enemy in 1.2 seconds than it is healing an extra 34 health.

10. If and when the time is right, you should consider the above point for Reinhardt barrier's as well. If everyone around you is full, you might as well unload on it.