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Zarya Point of Advice #4 - Don’t Touch My Wife (Part 2: Electric Boopaloo)

(THAT WAS SO BAD IM SORRY LOL)

In part 1, we went over Zarya and Mercy’s beautiful, symbiotic relationship, mostly from the point of view of a tired and mistreated Mercy, and learned all the benefits of a Zarya playstyle that prioritizes protecting her that I call the ‘don’t touch my wife’ strategy. 

Fun fact: That strategy inspired the game mode that made the title of my strat into an accidental meme - it’s not only a game mode, but a way of training a team to protect their Mercy and they don’t even realize it.

The strategy itself is self-explanatory - touch my wife, and Mother Russia touches you. (With a molten death ray.) 

Mercy isn’t your pocket healer; you’re Mercy’s pocket tank. Always have a barrier for your wife, because she will be shot at quite a lot, and practice leap-frogging with her in fights - have Mercy body-block for you as charge bait then jump in front as quickly as possible.

A good Mercy is slippery enough to the enemy to multitask like this, and if she can’t, practice makes perfect because this is a valuable play style that turns both Zarya and Mercy into an unstoppable dynamic duo when played well. It’s really awesome to pull off and I couldn’t even begin to describe the badassery of 60+% average energy for the entire game.

So, remember when I said their marriage is open? That was me being extremely dramatic and self-indulgent and I apologize.

....

So anyway they have an open marriage, meaning this playstyle of prioritizing one teammate’s life works well with a lot of heroes and allows your team to function smoothly as they trust you with the important job of keeping that one teammate alive. It’s a really important role that takes hours of practice. I’m serious, you’re not gonna pick this up overnight. 

Though theoretically you could pocket-tank anyone for interesting results, certain heroes benefit a lot more from such dedicated life preservation. (Remember, this means taking hits for your teammates and sometimes even dying in their place if Mercy is around to resurrect you.) Hero-wise, this is something to do with anyone from Mercy to Roadhog, offering each of the wives Zarya protects (and yes, they’re all wives) advantages that sometimes even surprises your wife. Prepare for Mercys to cry over how protected they feel, Lucios to freak out on mic about how they thought they were about to die, and overall a lot of ‘nice barriers’ comments.

One last side-note about this topic: I mentioned “prioritizing” a hero with barriers. This doesn’t mean to exclusively bubble your wife. However, the ratio of wife:everyone else should be on the 70/30 or 80/20 side. Consider the teammate doing the best to benefit the team, the teammate dying the most, healers, and other tanks on your team before you worry about the DPS - A lot of DPS heroes don’t need to rely fully on healers because some of them can heal themselves and move about quickly. Watch for teammates who could use some help as usual.

And real quick, a tl;dr of the Don’t Touch My Wife strat for Zarya and Mercy:

1. Don’t let anyone touch your wife. 2. Take unusual positions or paths on the map to give her a spot to fly to away from the chaos. 3. Practice bubble dancing(jump in front and bubble yourself, then have Mercy jump in front of you again, bubble her, and jump back in front to attack and let her get away) with your wife without getting her killed in the process. 4. Take hits for your wife even if you don’t have barriers(don’t worry, you can handle it), and if her ultimate is ready, take deaths for her if necessary so she can stay with the team. 5. If Mercy dies, try to get in her line of sight when she respawns so she can get back as quickly as possible. In general, try to watch her deaths and back off toward spawn if she does die.

When you get this play style down, though, she won’t be dying much if ever, and neither will you.

And that’s all for part 4! Good luck!

Saturn and I play this strategy out almost all the time in quickplay. I’ll find you guys a good vid and update this. For now, have this one where she plays Lucio (and had no idea she was in danger when I saved her).

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Ship Month 2.0: Electric Boopaloo

Hello, my loves and doves! It’s been a while, but I’m back in the swing of things! And of course you all know that I wouldn’t miss out on my own project, heh heh!

So once again, it’s time for Ship Month, but this time around, I’ll be uploading a one-shot fic for couples I’ve selected for each day of this month.

Hope you all enjoy!