Can a Winston buffed by Mercy outdamage a Mercy heal?

Question

What I've gathered from experience is that if you're playing Winston it is ultimately useless to attack a hero who's currently getting healed by Mercy if you can't focus Mercy herself. There's just not enough damage output there. My question is - is Mercy's boost, coupled with Winston's damage, enough to outweigh an enemy Mercy's heal?

Answer 1

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.