Overwatch Mercy School 103 - beginners healing guide

This is Overwatch Mercy school section 103 - Beginners healing. In this lesson you'll learn the basics of how to heal and position while healing as Mercy. There's much more to this skill than meets the eye. Being an effect healer as Mercy requires a lot of knowledge and strategy, and this guide will teach you the basics of that.

See also: Overwatch school

Below is the full dialogue from the video, if you'd prefer reading rather than watching.

Welcome back to Mercy school!
This is section 103: beginners healing!

Today we're going take a closer look at healing. There is a lot more to know about healing than meets the eye. 
First off Mercy's heal beam gives the target 50 hp every second. During her ultimate, valkyrie, this number is temporarily increased to 60hp every second and heals additional teammates if they're near the original target.

Before moving on, let's touch on self healing a little bit. Mercy has a passive called regeneration, which allows Mercy to regenerate her HP when not being damaged. This passive heals Mercy for 20 HP every second after not taking damage for one second. During Mercy's ultimate, valkyrie, this passive heal is applied constantly even when taking damage.
This passive heal allows Mercy to lay low for a few seconds and quickly return to the fight after being damaged. Using the self heal effectively is often another area that Mercy players can find room to improve on.

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Another important number is the range, Mercy can attach the heal beam onto targets that up to 15 meters away. Learning this range is extremely important for any good Mercy. Knowing how far Mercy's area of influence is can make using cover much more effective.

So now let's talk about mercy's sphere of influence. One of the primary roles of Mercy is to act as a mobile heal station that's hard to kill, highly mobile, can heal from cover. We talked about cover in the section 102, now it's time to expand upon it a little more as it relates to healing.

In a real fight Mercy is forced to make improvised decisions on who to heal and where to heal from. These choices can change on a second by second basis in a real game. It's Mercy's job to control cover points while simultaneous healing from them.
Mercy may find herself with the tanks healing from the corner at one point, and then quickly crossing to high ground to save a DPS. When making a decision like this it's important to consider if the new position is safe, how far can Mercy's healing reach from this new position, and how dangerous or practical will it be to return from this position?

In this example Mercy flies across the street to high ground to save McCree. Since her team is fighting from the corner she can actually heal effectively from this new position without having to reposition. This change in position is a good example of effectively controling Mercy's sphere of influence. She can save McCree without separating herself from her team. 
When making a change in position like this be sure to consider what heroes are on the enemy team, and whether or not it's safe to cross. When crossing through the open to heal a distant teammate beware of snipers, like Widowmaker.

Now let's move on to healing targets. What should Mercy do when two or more people are running out of health at the same time? Deciding who to heal, and in what order can make a considerable different in the outcome of the fight. In the most over-generalized method, Mercy should targets with low maximum HP first, and high HP targets second. If Roadhog is missing 150hp and Genji is also missing 150hp then consider healing the Genji first, and the Roadhog second.
In real practice however, these decisions are not quite as simple as the theory. While Genji's being healed Roadhog may take a headshot from Widowmaker and now be missing 500HP with the threat of quickly losing the rest. In situations like this consider not fully healing Genji and switching back to Roadhog. Once Roadhog feels safe and stable again return the beam to Genji, heal him to full, and then return to Roadhog to finish his healing as well.

There will also be times when not everybody is savable. One of the hardest healing decisions Mercy has to make is choosing who has to die for the team. Often when two or more targets are rapidly losing HP Mercy only has enough healing to save one of them. If she attempts to heal them evenly they may both die at the same time.
Two of the easiest ways to make this decision are likelihood of survival, and importance of the character. If seemingly either hero can be saved, there's usually an order of importance for who to save. The main tank almost always comes first. If Mercy can choose between saving Mei or saving Reinhardt, she often should pick Reinhardt.
The other factor to consider is ultimate abilities. If the fight has broken out and Reaper has his ultimate, it may be worth it to let Reinhardt die so that Reaper may live. While the main tank is important, usually a three kill death blossom can do more to save the fight than a living main tank. Both of these factors are extremely important when deciding who lives and dies as Mercy.

Finally let's stop to look at healing while in valkyrie. During valkyrie Mercy has freedom to fly high into the sky. Unless the enemy has snipers, Mercy is usually unkillable during this time. Valkyrie gives freedom of positioning to where Mercy can focus more on healing and less on surviving.

When using Valkyrie the heals branch out from the target to other nearby teammates. Also the range in which the beam can be attached is doubled, allowing Mercy to heal from much further away. Try to keep the heal beam connected to whichever teammate has the most teammates nearby. If one far away character needs healing, heal him and then quickly bring the healing back to someone in the center of the team.
With good target switching Mercy can usually average healing two or three people at a time for the duration of the ultimate, assuming the fighting lasts the full 15 seconds. As valkyrie is ending be sure to look for a good location to reset to, preferably one with a powerful sphere of influence from which to heal.

And with that, we can conclude today's lesson. Now you know more about healing, as Mercy! It's highly recommended to practice what we learned today, decision making while healing can only truly be mastered through experience.
If you enjoyed class today be sure to subscribe. Sharing the video and hitting the like button are also great ways to help out. We hope you enjoyed todays lesson! If you liked this class consider attending the other courses in this playlist.

Until next lecture, Angela Ziegler signing out!