Blizzard, you can't balance mercy's rez as a cooldown

General Discussion
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I think that it’s safe to say that mercy with rez on a cooldown can’t be tweaked to make her balanced and a great pick at the same time. The reason why is because giving a hero that can result in man advantages with an ability on a cooldown without even earning it is just op. This ability is so op that many other parts of mercy’s kit had to be nerfed. If you would want to balance this ability, either make this ability need ult charge to obtain or put mercy’s resurrect as an ultimate with a few tweaks.

One way of balancing rez is to look at the ideas posted for mercy that have been ignored for a pretty long time and some of them have ideas with the potential to make her more balanced, fun and a better pick. Some ideas for mercy that people have posted on the forums about could be tested on ptr to see if people enjoy the change or not. If you still think that mercy’s fine the way she is currently well some mercy mains have mained other heroes and the main reason was due to mercy requiring so many nerfs that she couldn’t even keep up with the pace of the game and as a result you could most of the time get more value as other supports rather than mercy. Recently, many people I’ve had in my games hate the idea of having a mercy on their team due to other supports having, I even had one of my friends hate playing with me because of the fact that I one-trick mercy.

Another way of balancing rez is to bring back mass rez, even though it was an ultimate disliked by many, it’s similar to a zen transcendence in a way, the difference is that zen saves them and the enemy team can’t kill things easily there, mercy’s rez is similar to trans except that it would create the illusion that they had already won the fight, but mercy brings back her allies back from the dead and you have a chance at killing their enemy mercy. Both of these ults have counter play such as killing the mercy first or having another team wipe after the ult (similar with zen such as you may try to force out trans, kill zen or use ults after trans).

Rez should be an earned ability or even taken out of the game because mercy’s rez having a cooldown is the reason as to why she’s been getting many nerfs. But I know that Blizzard wants to keep Mercy’s rez in the game so I think that your best option is to either test out the ideas other people have provided and try them out on ptr, or bring back mass rez without invulnerability, with a line of sight, and cast time. If these aren’t ideas that you’d like to do then take out rez because I don’t think that many people would mind if it was in the game or not. All I want at the end of the day is for mercy to be a good enough support to keep up with the value that other supports bring and also that she becomes more fun.

Thank you for reading this.

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I agree. Rez on a cooldown to me seems to be a really tacked-on idea. It’s time for them to make it an earned ability, brought back as Mass Rez, and further tweaked from there. It’s time bring Mercy back to where she was engaging, impactful, and rewarding to play. Quite simply, it’s time for a Rework / for a Revert + The tweaks. :blush:

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
#ReworkMercy :blue_heart:

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Except it is balanced right now. The stats prove it beyond any doubt.

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The post you made with the stats isnt really accurate. You viewing this very one dimentionaly. Mercy might have higher stats than ana in terms of healing sure, but are we forgetting that omnic meta posted a graph showing how damage boost usage has dropped by a giant 24%? Thats a huge loss of utility right there because she is struggling to keep people alive in the first place to even consider damage boost. This has its negative effects as well. If you wanna heal, why pick Mercy? Ana has a bio nade and CC as well as an amazing ultimate. Only drawback is she has to aim on her teamates’ giant hitboxes. Moira is better as well cause if you want raw heals she just straight up beats Mercy in every way.

Just glancing at numbers really doesnt show you the full picture.

Mercy needs 60hps back and resurrect to be restricted behind ult, be made her ult or be replaced with an ability that compliments the rest of her kit.

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^ This post is beautiful. It took stripping her healing, ult and as collateral damage, her boost to keep rez on E. Rez on E is unhealthy.

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It’s balanced currently. But I think Mercy needs to go back to the bonus Rez instant cast super speedy Mercy. That was a fun iteration that would’ve been fine so long as the other supports got buffs. Just needed a reduction in the length of the ultimate because it caused too much of a stall. So reducing it to 10 or 12 seconds would be a good amount of active time.

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I’d rather have resurrect on a resource meter like Torbjorn did for his armor packets before his rework.

I’m not a fan of mass resurrect coming back. I believe they can balance single-resurrect as an ability. They just need to change how the ability comes off of cooldown or is used

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I think EeveeA once asked a dev about this but the answer was something along the lines of “No it would be too complicated for Mercy”

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  • Reducing CD after being knocked out of range
    *Making Resurrection cancel-able by pressing E

Dont worry, people will kill you for a dumb rez even with these changes as you have to commit 1.75s of denying heals and being slowed down

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They did say that.

But I’m also sure that Ashe pushed a lot of boundaries in terms of in-game mechanics.

She can shoot her own dynamite to inflict more damage and DoT, while she has an ultimate that will auto-aim for her and is its own in-game entity.

I think they are capable of it.

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It can be a balanced ability and it IS a balanced ability. Resurrect is not going to see any healthier of an iteration, aside from potential tweaks to keep it relevant and controlled. It isn’t OP, that’s for sure. If it were, I imagine we’d have significantly less people claiming the ability is useless and that you can never use it because of its ingrained risks.

This cannot and will not happen. If any change goes onto PTR, a majority of people will expect that change to go to live. If it doesn’t go to live, then the people who liked these changes would riot and lose faith in Overwatch. If it does go to live, then the people who didn’t like those changes feel wronged. PTR is not a playground where any old idea that any old user suggests can just be implemented and tested, and furthermore, I can roughly guarantee you that Blizzard does try most of the ideas people suggest, at least the ideas that aren’t ridiculously complicated. It isn’t like Blizzard is sitting on their hands thinking, “Wow, there’s literally nothing we can do about Mercy, ever.”

Yeah that’s just the meta. That does not mean Mercy’s kit is inherently flawed and needs any severe reworking, it just means other supports like Ana and Brigitte have traditionally seen better results in this metascape, and that’s more complex than just “Mercy is too weak” or “her kit isn’t working.” It has a lot more to do with every other aspect in the game, like what other heroes are relevant, and thus who compliments those heroes the best + who works the best going against those heroes. In a clustered meta like the one we’re currently in, higher HPS is wanted a lot more than the slower utility of Resurrect. This doesn’t mean Resurrect is bad, it just means that in the metascape, it isn’t as useful.

I’m sorry your friend is willing to be so dramatic about hero choice but the honest truth is that Mercy isn’t a bad hero, she’s very playable and she can be used very successfully. Unless you’re playing at some of the higher ranks, you really won’t notice a difference between Mercy and other supports, so long as you’re forming a comp wisely of course. Anyone yelling at you differently is very likely a bad player, a slave to the meta that can’t comprehend other heroes being used more effectively in some situations than others.

This is not happening. Mass Res was and always would be unhealthy for the game’s flow, and if you think Resurrect on E is a burden to the rest of Mercy’s kit, then you definitely don’t want her weighed down by the potential of reversing entire team fights with the press of a button.

Transcendence is proactive, requiring Zen to be in the middle of the fight and with a keen eye to determine when to pop his ultimate, with inherent counters such as being unable to stop burst-damage kills, and the ult being largely negated by anti-heals. Mass Resurrect, regardless of implementation, cleans up mistakes your team made after the enemy team already capitalized on said mistakes… at best, and at worst, it encourages Mercy to disengage from the game, hide far away from battles, and only use her ultimate after a team fight where the enemy has used all of their resources and can’t afford to fight a second consecutive battle.

These are not counters. Any ultimate can be countered by just killing the person first, except if that’s the only way to stop Mercy, then what happens is that Mercy becomes a prime target to focus, which means Mercy is pressured to play as safe as possible, which is to disengage from the game. And “saving ultimates” does not work in practice, what happens is that the enemy team is forced to stockpile all of their ultimates because they need to use most if not all of them to secure not one fight, but two – meanwhile, Mercy’s team during this time is also stockpiling their ultimates, so the next team fight becomes a black hole of ultimates. This is exactly what we saw all the time when Mercy had Mass Res, everyone popping their ults all at once because that’s the natural conclusion to two teams with 12 ultimates between them.

“Many nerfs” came because Resurrect was overpowered, back when it had an instant cast and multiple charges with Valkyrie. Almost all the nerfs Mercy saw post-rework were to Resurrect and some traits about Valkyrie. Mercy’s base kit didn’t see any nerfs until recently, and that was to her HPS, an attempt to balance out her healing output with heroes like Ana and Moira. It had nothing to do with Resurrect itself.

And there’s nothing in Mercy’s kit that can realistically “earn” a Res. What can she do to earn it? Heal some more? She’s already doing that all the time, so that isn’t really “earning” anything. Any attempt at making her have to “work” to get Res would either be too much work to rollout a hero who can’t consistently use an ability, or it would just even out with what we have now, a Resurrect every 30 seconds or so, with no real difference to how or when it’s used.

These would not fix any of the issues with Mass Res.

Resurrect is an iconic ability, people would absolutely lose their minds if it was taken out of the game. For many people it’s this ability that defines Mercy, it’s not going anywhere, it makes her unique to all the other healers and provides a unique dynamic to the game in general. It will not be removed.

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I dont think they meant that it would be too difficult to create. I think they meant it would make Mercy very hard for the user. She is supposed to be easy to pick up. You would have to manage both rez and ult charge.

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I personally think Valk’s design is the main issue.

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An Ultimate on a cooldown (like E-Rez) will never be balanced. It has too much power, and using it almost makes you feel worse than slowly being frozen by Mei before getting an icicle to the head.

Bad design 101 in a nutshell

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If it has too much power, then why have we not been seeing Mercy in the meta? Why do people complain that they can never use the ability if it’s so overpowered? Because everything I’ve seen in context would imply that it’s perfectly balanced, a very strong ability that is difficult to pull off. If Mercy wants to revive a player – which itself is not an ultimate tier ability, I mean, no one was solo ressing with Mass Res after all – she has to put herself at risk, she needs her team to work with her in order to pull it off. This does not scream to me that it’s so unbalanced that it just can’t work, especially when the truth is, it’s been working just fine.

I don’t know why people see Mercy out of meta and immediately cast the blame on Resurrect, as if no other part of her kit could imply that she just doesn’t have the tools to stand up to today’s meta. It certainly doesn’t mean her kit is broken and needs severe work done to it, it just means Mercy isn’t as viable of a choice compared to other heroes. Not a problem with her kit at its core, just a problem with the overall balance of the game.

I’ve always found this “it feels bad” argument to be really subjective. Because it is. I mean, I have tons of fun with Mercy and her Resurrect, I love the thrill and suspense of figuring out when I can res, when I can dash to the target, and figuring out what my escape is going to have to be, or if I need to communicate to my team to defend me. I love Resurrect on cooldown, it’s actually really fun and gives Mercy a really solid impact ability to turn the tides of a fight, so it being “unfun” is going to differ from person to person.

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This statement by itself proves that you havent played old mercy much. 2 and 3 man rezzes were far more common because they allowed you to keep the momentum of the fight going. Saying that mercy would only hide to go for those big fat rezzes is simply false.

Its not unbalanced. Its poorly designed. It freezes you for 2 seconds, has the longest cooldown in the game, the cooldown doesnt reset after death, boops or even getting out of range on your own. Its an ability that doesnt work on a character that is always speedy and flies around from teamate to teamate constantly jumping and being on the move.

Yeah the good old mercy days were she was a troll pick even with rez on ult. You had to think about all of these things and even more such as “What ults do the enemies have that i need to predict and counter?” “What does my team have to combat enemies after the rez?” “Should I rez to keep the fight going or wait for potential enemy ults to come out” just to name a few.

As much as you love it, it simply doesnt work from a character fluidity stand point. It really isnt a good choice for it to stay on E especially for long term balance purposes.

EDIT: Made a few better clarifications.

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My account is public and you can see Mercy is my second most played hero. I’ve been playing Mercy since open beta, she’s what got me into the game. I think I’ve played her enough to make some comments about her.

And I specific solo ressing. Solo. As in, one person. Not two or three. No one used Mass Res to bring back one person seriously, which is the maximum amount of people you can res with Resurrect on cooldown. So suggesting that Resurrect currently is an ultimate level ability is entirely false, when an ultimate level version of Resurrect is the capability of bringing back multiple people, from a long range, through walls, instantly, and you get invulnerability to boot.

That’s an ultimate level ability, and that wasn’t even overpowered. It was just incredibly unhealthy for many depths of reasons.

I notice you clarified in an edit that you meant old Mercy; again, I’ve been playing since open beta, during which time she was the only hero I realistically played. I think I know Mercy.

So what you’re saying is, the powerful reward of reviving a player back into a fight every 30 seconds – something we both admit is strong – comes at the risk of Mercy being temporarily immobilized, being close to her target, and then having that ability on cooldown even if it interrupted? I dunno, it just sounds to me that that’s part of being balanced, there’s equal risk and reward, a powerful utility that is balanced with flaws that allow the enemy to contest such a strength.

I don’t think having to slow down every once in awhile – not even 30 seconds because no one is ressing every 30 seconds on the dot – is a huge contradiction to her kit. In fact, it goes pretty well with her kit, because she can zoom in, res, and zoom out, but she does have to play smart and consider the situation that she’ll be pausing herself in.

I can safely say that while I did need to consider these things, it largely didn’t matter, because I could always avoid these problems AND reap maximum value from my ultimate by simply not playing the game. And if I didn’t want to do that, if I wanted to be engaged and look for tempo resses, if my team didn’t want that, they would yell at me to go hide and then blame me if I didn’t. So a lot of these considerations are pointless when I also have to consider what my team wants, which is important with an ability that’s about to take away their autonomy and force them back into a battle.

Resurrect now constantly asks me to consider all this and more. No one on my team can expect me to just res them always, they know I can’t just press Q and revive the whole team, and they know that I put myself at risk to use Resurrect. That by itself makes the ability way healthier, as well as a lot more engaging. Good Mercys get lots of resses, bad ones don’t; compare that to Mercy 1.0, where good and bad Mercys alike just had to press Q when a number on their monitor looked appealing enough.

Disagreed.

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Looks like the best option for everyone seems to be to just remove it.

No Rez? No complaints.

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1602 posts

yay lets militate to have an ultimate that can disable 6 ultimates.

1 6 0 2 posts

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Wouldn’t mass rez right now just lead to some kind of super goats comp that never dies?

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