To summarize my essay ( because it’s quite the long read ), Rez isn’t as strong as people act; it isn’t fair on cooldown for hero design; it isn’t fair on cooldown in game design; and lastly: the game made it this way.
To start, I want to make clear that I do in fact think Rez is a strong ability overall. Having more allies in a fight is to your team’s advantage and to keep that numbers advantage is going to be strong. My issue is that only when it comes to discussing Mercy in a rework, or change do I hear that it’s “ The Most Powerful Ability in the Game ™” and thus everything in Mercy’s Kit is fair because Rez in any form is OP.
Is it tho?![:thinking:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
I don’t see why anyone thinks rez is some powerful game winner. ![:woman_shrugging:t5:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/woman_shrugging/5.png?v=6" ":woman_shrugging:t5:")
It never has been. Rez has been in Mercy’s kit since launch and she was never meta over mass rez. What made her strong was never rez, it was invulnerability and rez consistency. Not rez itself. The most powerful thing in this game isn’t rez… it’s death.
Death is More Important than Rez Ever will Be
Consider looking at it this way: Mercy now has limits on rez because it’s strong. What’s a limit placed on every other hero in the game? Death. Death in this game is limited in some form. If you’re Widow it’s your line of sight. If it’s tracer it’s your range and how much damage is done over time. Death is an ability with restrictions.
In this game, alive allies can help. But dead enemies is what determines the win. Why? The objective can be capped by one person. That’s why backcapping exists. You don’t need a team. They help . But if you are the sole survivor of a battle, you can cap. You can make progress on your own. All six of your team can be alive and off point. But one enemy alive can hold the point and contest.
So say your team and the enemy team had a giant fight. You are Mercy and after the fight you are the only one on your team left standing against 3 enemies. Right now, it’s a 1v3. Not in Mercy’s favor. But even if she does rez a teammate, it’s still a 2v3. The number of enemies still puts the fight in their favor. And this is promoted by the game itself in regards to things like Overtime mechanics. In the instance of a 2v2, your best bet isn’t to have Mercy and her rezzed ally take individual 1v1s, but to focus one target but why? Because having one enemy less is what matters.
So what if Mercy had rez on cooldown and the enemy team was also wiped? Is she useless? Does she turn and flee to her spawn to re-group?
No. She can cap. She doesn’t need to rez to cap. She just needs no enemies. But is this power to cap held by Mercy alone? No. Zen can cap. Ana can cap. Sombra, Symm, anyone can cap. Rez as a mechanic is not needed to cap. DEATH of the enemy is.
I Mean... If we Reversed Rez
I don’t think you can ever argue death isn’t more important than rez because let’s consider another thing: What is we reversed rez? If Mercy had the opposite ability of rez, that would be more powerful than rez ever was imo. Say Mercy now activates “valkyrie” to send enemy players “to Valhalla” (spawn). This would work in the exact same manner as current cooldown rez, 1.75 sec cast time. 1 meter range. 30 sec. Slowed. But it’s very clearly way more powerful. You can’t rez dead teammates anymore, but you can kill any enemy player. Every thirty seconds. Guaranteed send to spawn. It doesn’t even have to cause damage. Mercy can just cast it and send Rein to spawn. No dmg tracker, no ult charge for her in the same manner that current rez doesn’t add healing or ult charge. But it’s still way more powerful than rez.
Rez will always be Limited because it Already is
That’s because there is an inherent limit of rez. You can’t rez alive teammates. This is why as a basic ability, it’s weird to have. Putting more limits on a mechanic that already has limits is why it can feel “bad” to some Mercy players and irrelevant to some others. Because no other ability is like this, and why it was niche as an ult in higher tiers. Rez is often used to address mistakes. Either positioning mistakes or healing mistakes etc. But mistakes of such nature are fewer in higher ranks so the need for rez isn’t there for said purpose. Rez as an ult was not to undo huge team wipes because in higher play, huge team wipes are fewer. This is why Mercy wasn’t very good in higher play: The inherent value and restrictions of rez doesn’t equate to the value of enabling death. Instead, Rez was used because Mercy has healing limits. “Tempo Rez” is to get those teammates that she couldn’t keep up. Sometimes not her fault via ults, but sometimes it was because she isn’t Ana/ Lucio with more utility to offer her team. Her utility came only in her ult. Why? Again, you cannot rez teammates that are alive.
Which brings me to why cooldown rez is flawed in Mercy’s current iteration but also why I have changed my Stance of what is “fine” in design. I used to think it was balanced with 60hps base kit Mercy.
Cooldown Rez Is Bad Design For a Consistent, Mobile Healer
This is not the case with her 50 hps because of the dmg to teammates she cannot make up after 2 seconds pass. With a cast time, unlike other abilities, Mercy has something no other hero has to consider in their kits: change. What was safe may not hold over the course of her using a basic ability. With 50hps that’s not in her favor for her role. McCree doesn’t have an animation to light his flashbang and consider how rein could squish him before he uses it. He just uses it. Ana doesn’t throw grenade out and suffer through 2 seconds of being 75% slower. Only Mercy. Again, Rez is powerful. It can undo a pick. And in the context of “enemy players” if you are on the opposite side of rez, it put another enemy against you. But the limits placed on rez are not the same as the limits placed on any other basic ability in the game. And Grenade is not given a limit of effect, it’s not slowing Ana down to use it, and yet it can hard counter 3 other support ults on a shorter cooldown than rez. So rez already has inherent limits, but the game added more limits. This is out of the design of any other hero in the game. The only one with similar limits and coincidently is also trash tier is and always has been: Symm.
I don’t wanna rant about Symm.
So for me make it “balanced” at 50 hps, Mercy needs to have it instant. That would be balanced for Mercy and design for a mobile hero. Because by slowing her down, you are going against her role of mobility. With her low healing, you force her to risk her role as a healer in order to use a basic ability. So in design with her role, instant rez is needed.
But that leads to the issue we saw with invulnerability Mass rez : exploits. If Mercy is able to do this instantly every 30 seconds, your dps could go in, get killed and mercy instantly rezzes them. This was the issue with Tempo Rez Moth Mercy. It’s not that Rez is powerful from the ally perspective. It’s that consistent enemies is powerful. Mercy is putting in constant numbers against the enemy team. So this ability with a charging rein, or an overly aggressive tracer needing to pulse bomb zen or bastion…this becomes less “play” and more “reckless strat”
But unlike before where rez was an ult and so rezzing was a risk because you may not have it back in time for the ult fight, this ability is now used consent and frequently regardless of the skill of the Mercy.
So the power has to be capped to be fair. But by having it capped… it isn’t. But let’s explore further. Blizzard didn’t invent the Rez Mechanic. They aren’t the first company to have it in an FPS. So why is this an issue at all?
Mercy's Monopoly Makes Rez Seem Stronger
For me, the problem is that Mercy has a complete monopoly of it. No one else in the game can rez. As an ult, this monopoly was limited, and difficult to use. She had to earn it which meant there was inherent time needed to get it (no instant reversing that god Widow pick at the start of a game), and a need for Mercy to improve if she wanted it available to her more often. So a bad Mercy isn’t going to have it as frequently as a good Mercy.
As a cooldown, the nature of her being the sole provider of rez makes the need for it to be so restricted in normal play. Because her power over said ability is no longer restricted by the limits of the player. The limit now, is time. And in a pvp game, thirty second consistency is very short.
But say if nano could… Revive the player for 250 or whatever also (nano bots resuscitate the body or whatever) or symm had tp still , this wouldn’t be an issue because the rez mechanic is being contested somewhere. The issue with rez in Overwatch is that Mercy having a monopoly over it makes it stronger. Conceptually, this should inherently limit it to her ult.
Again, my point here is that the idea of “rez” is overplayed in it’s power. But the game also catered itself to make it more powerful than needed by limiting Rez with Mercy and moving said power out of her ult. Because no, Mass rez was never OP.
In fact, let’s reverse Mass Rez. Moreover, let’s put Mass Rez before invulnerability when it was trash tier. “To Valhalla” as an ult is now an instant AOE that automatically sends enemy players in the AOE to spawn. They have about 1.5 seconds of turning to shadow, and then BAM back to spawn.
Which Mercy is more powerful? Rez? Or Valhalla? Which would be more “unfun” to play against?
Thus: Rez ain’t that great. Mercy’s monopoly over it, the game’s treatment of it and the design around it is what makes it look better than it is.
Edit: I broke down some sections to summaries for it to be a bit easier to read since I posted this on my phone
![:joy:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")