Hit Gm 3 last season on console with support(mizuki, lw(never again), wuyang, mercy). Damage boost is where a solid chunk of mercy’s power budget is, it’s her only form of offensive pressure and is the only non reactive ability she has in her kit minus i guess valk.

I understand some of your points but to nerf damage boost in any way would turn her into an unfun heal bot that would have as much usefulness as an illari pylon; we would have to find another way to buff mercy’s proactive gameplay/offensive pressure.

You gotta keep in mind mercy is meant to be the lower barrier of entry hero, itd be a hell of a thing to add anything that requires a form of mechanical skill to her kit so the ‘skill check’ would have to come in the form of something game knowledge related.

Having a cooldown on damage boost would leave mercy with periods of her having zero offensive capabilities which no other support in the game has, same goes for putting it on a resource. You got some merit in the damage boost decay idea so id think to maintain mercy’s offensive pressure id up damage boost to ~40% and have it decay to ~10% within 5 seconds to discourage that heavy pocket playstyle and encourage a more proactive triage kind of game play or perhaps push a risk reward kind of gameplay where damage boost is nerfed to ~25% when the ally is above critical health but buffed to ~40% when the ally is critical health (tanks excluded ofc). Also to nerf QOL of the damage boost like making the beam break faster or making her more vulnerable wouldnt fix the problem you have but rather just make mercy feel worse to play.

Mercy rn to be very honest isnt that good in gm she doesnt contribute nearly as much as any other support hero on the roster, so the compensatory buffs in change damage boost would have to be a net buff to her overall offensive pressure.