Let's Revisit the Absurdity of "Hide and Rez"

[Fruitslayer-21286]

I had the same problem with a pill bottle once but then i realized it was just a side effect of some other medication i had taken. If it doesn’t go away, i suggest to consult a Mercy main.

[Equinox-22541]

Just like how we were never going to get CTF, or Deathmatch.

Neither of which were terrible things that were removed from the game, as opposed to mass res.

[Nibelung-1264]

BTW, today mark the day that OG Mercy was officially in the game for less time than Valk Mercy.

We are all old school now.

[Titanium-1686]

Here’s another hard to swallow pill:

It is impossible to know your assertion to be a fact. Therefore, it is purely speculation. Thus, your hard-to-swallow pill isn’t a pill that needs to be swallowed.

[Effervescent-11737]

Yay titanium back with another thread!

“Hide and Rez” was not Mercy going:
“I have Rez, go die now!!!”

“Hide and Rez” was:
“The enemy is using ults/doing unhealable damage. If you’re going to die, do it on point”

The fact that people seriously believe as soon as mercy had mass Rez, she’d tell you to die is absurd. Where’s the logic in it? Why would your team throw there bodies at the enemy, give the enemy free ult charge, and then have Mercy come and Rez them back?

[Deatheye-2344]

The biggest problem wasn’t even mass rez, it was the tempo rez, that’s why Mercy was still OP when Valk reset the rez CD.

Back in the days the problem was the tempo rez, your team killed 1-2 enemies but 2-3 members of your team died, Mercy flies in and tempo rez now it’s a 6vs4 gg.

[Fruitslayer-21286]

hard to swallow pill

can we just stop saying that?

it’s offensively redundant to those of us for whom all pills as hard to swallow, it’s like telling a kid ‘oh that’s a scary needle’

[Effervescent-11737]

The reason Valkyrie became so OP wasnt just tempo rezzes, but the fact the devs have her such an easy way to do it. Mass Rez was a one time Rez that heavily relied on good timing and risk vs reward that could put the Mercy in danger.

Valkyrie completely took away risk AND you could still do 3 rezzes(4 if timed right). You were given flight, constant regen and way more mobility AND healing.

[Titanium-1686]

It was common enough for me to run into it in 6/10 matches.

Your experience does not match the broad reality of the situation.

And it was common enough for it to be featured in a lot of videos from the time.

There are also a lot of videos of D.Va getting a pentakill with her ultimate. That doesn’t mean that a pentakill with Self-Destruct is a remotely common occurrence.

Given that the team could be healed equal ammonts of health during each match due to no change in the combat, the roles, meta, etc.

Considering that we’re dealing with global averages, these factors are held constant.

If she hides for a total of 20 seconds during a match, that equals 20 seconds of potential healing loss.
So on average that would likely be less than 10 seconds without healing.

If a teamfight is occurring, you’re going to be healing for a lot more than 10 seconds worth of healing over a 20 second period, but I’ll humor this.

10 seconds of her low healing wouldn’t really show up much on the average healing output.

That’s 600 healing lost from pre-rework, which should show up in the healing averages… but we’re already 200-400 healing short post-rework.

Furthermore, if someone is going to use “hide and rez” once in a match, they’re almost certainly going to use it again, which means that they will be losing way more than 600 healing/match compared to the player that didn’t use the aforementioned tactic.

Can’t be used to compare numbers over time due to the way it records said data.
The user base changes a lot during this time frame.

Except, it can. It is quite effective for said purpose, even.

And… a change in the playerbase/tactics/playstyle is exactly what we’re looking for here, remember?

[Titanium-1686]

I never said people aren’t allowed to discuss it.

But when I see a 2,511 word, 14,811 characters pointless essay I feel obligated to help them understand that they’re wasting time of their life they could’ve spent playing.

And yet, here you are, assuming something that was never said (twice; once from the developers, once from myself), so you can insert something that is only semi-relevant to the discussion.

I’m illustrating the reality of the situation. You are assuming the motivation behind me showing that reality.

[sral94-2751]

Your experience

Do you have any proof?

There are also a lot of videos of D.Va getting a pentakill with her ultimate. That doesn’t mean that a pentakill with Self-Destruct is a remotely common occurrence.

There are also lots of videos showing d.va not getting kills with it.

these factors are held constant.

Nope, they are not held constant over time.
Especially not when we look at buffs and changes in the meta.

That’s 600 healing lost from pre-rework, which should show up in the healing averages

600 health, only in the games where the mercy hid.
In other matches she would not hide, and would heal.
So on average that doesn’t change much at all.

we’re already 200-400 healing short post-rework.

This fits with half of the mercy players doing the hide and rez…

someone is going to use “hide and rez” once in a match, they’re almost certainly going to use it again

This is dependent on the lenght of a match, how often she gets her ult, etc.

change in the playerbase/tactics/playstyle is exactly what we’re looking for here, remember?

No. You are only looking for a change in healing.

[Sideway8-1309]

Your experience does not match the broad reality of the situation.

“YOUR anecdotal evidence isn’t as good as MY anecdotal evidence…”

I always found it was more, you focus the Mercy first like you were supposed to and then finish off the rest of the team JUST IN TIME for Mercy to come swooping backing in from spawn to rez everyone (bonus points if she did it through a wall.)

Mercy mains wanting maz rez always ignore this point though as it doesn’t have anything to do with “hiding and rezzing” but at my level it would happen in nearly every game there was a Mercy.

I’m glad it’s gone and never coming back.

[Goldlantern-1543]

Just because a bad argument against mass rez was made doesn’t mean that invalidating that argument validates mass rez as an ability. I’m very much against the ability every returning, but I’d rather people didn’t use irrelevant stats to keep it gone. The concept and the way it was used were what I had problems with, not overall healing output.

As far as Valk goes, it’s really not just a healing ability. You can’t really quantify the impact of the ability because of how versatile it is. You can heal, damage boost, use it for mobility, get kills with it, and mix and match those and everything in between as necessary. It’s not meant to be able to heal through burst damage (there are already other support ults that do that) or really do anything more than give your team a fifteen-second edge, which is oftentimes much more useful than a huge amount of healing for a short time. It’s much more engaging and, to me, much more fun. I’ll admit that Valkyrie is an odd fit with the rest of Mercy’s kit, but I still love the flexibility of it. I don’t want to be relegated to heal/rez bot, as comfortable as that might be for some. I play a very active quarterback-style Mercy and I like the ability to determine the flow of the fight. Valk helps me do that. The fun part is subjective. I understand why some don’t enjoy the ability, but that doesn’t make it any less engaging. I love it.

[Titanium-1686]

Are we going to talk about how effective “hide and rez” was as a strategy? That wasn’t the point of the OP, but I’ll be happy to supply a counterargument that’s 6 months old yet still dead-on.

@Titanium-1686

Moving onto “Hide and rez” …

“We think it’s wrong to tell a main-healing character to go off and hide somewhere and stop healing for some period of time.”

But it is fine for a main-damage character to go off and hide somewhere and stop dealing damage for some period of time, like many heroes currently do in preparation for an ultimate?

In actuality, you are right; just not for the reason you think you are. You are correct because hiding was maladaptive for the team’s chance of victory, and therefore was a bad way to play her. Allow me to explain this in an even more elaborate manner than my past few megaposts.

The success of a mass-Resurrection (4+ revived players) depended upon several factors:

• The Mercy’s ability to survive and execute the ability in the first place (the obvious one).
• The number of players alive on each team after the Resurrection.
• The number of available ultimates held by each team after the Resurrection (but primarily the enemy team).
• The shock value of Resurrect against the enemy (by far the most important factor for the post-rez fight).

The last factor is more important than the other two post-rez factors because it determines what other factors need to advantage the Mercy in order to have a good chance at a successful Resurrection. As the enemy team is given time to reorganize and fire their first attacks at the newly Resurrected team, they would already have a positioning advantage and the first shot… that is, if the team was expecting the Resurrection.

If the enemy team is expecting the Resurrection, they will have the post-rez advantages of the first shot and additional positioning time. Of course, this is a very bad situation to be in for the newly revived team, requiring some very strong advantages of their own to compensate and have a chance at winning the fight. In this case, they would need both the numbers advantage and the ultimate ability advantage.

If the enemy team isn’t expecting the Resurrection, then the Mercy could probably get by with either the numbers advantage or the ultimate advantage and still have a chance at winning, as the enemy team might not capitalize on their positioning and first shot opportunities as well as they should due to the shock value of Resurrect.

How does “Hide and rez” fit into all of this, you might ask? Hiding before the fight removes the possibility of having enough of those advantages against the enemy team in the post-rez fight, and therefore any chance of a victorious post-rez fight against any team of similar skill.

Hiding leaves the initial fight to a 5v6, the missing hero on the Mercy’s team being the main healer and primary source of sustain. Obviously, this is a huge advantage for the team of 6 in the first fight, allowing them to steamroll over Mercy’s team with likely zero casualties, and ultimate expenditures used only to counter any of the opposition’s ultimates. On top of this, the team of 6 also now collectively has 2000-3000 more ultimate charge from killing 5 players in addition to any healing dealt over the duration of that fight. Thus, it hands the ultimate ability advantage to the team opposing the Mercy.

The opposing team, assuming they are paying even the slightest attention to what is happening around them, would notice that the enemy is crumbling very easily for a supposed 6v6, raising suspicions as to whether or not the fight really is a 6v6, quickly leading to the realization that the enemy Mercy is missing from the fight. From this, only one conclusion could logically be drawn; she’s waiting to use Resurrect. There goes the ultimate’s shock value.

At this point, even if the team of 6 somehow managed to sustain 2 casualties in the initial fight, it won’t matter. If both teams entered the fight with the same number of ultimates, the team that does not have the hiding Mercy has at least two more ultimates than the other team (2000+ ultimate charge, Mercy’s team used Resurrect). One or two offensive ultimates is the absolute maximum a team needs to wipe a freshly-revived team when they are expecting the Resurrection, resulting in the revived team staring down the barrel of a gun they have no chance of avoiding.

In contrast, a Mercy who stays with her team keeps the fight at a 6v6, granting her team more sustain and forcing the enemy to expend ultimates to overpower them. Once the ultimates started firing, the mercy would distance themselves from the fight, evade, or take cover, laying down pistol fire or amplifying damage rather than attempting to heal those for whom healing would be useless. As a result, the enemy was less likely to realize that Mercy has Resurrect (the enemy was comparatively difficult to kill, removing the prompt to think about why they were crumbling easily in the first place), Mercy’s team was more likely to pick off a few enemies, and Mercy has successfully baited more ultimates from the enemy team. As a result, her team has more advantages and fewer disadvantages in the post-rez fight.

The only cost to staying with the team was an increased chance of being picked off before being able to revive the team, which just follows the same risk choice explained in the Resurrect section; if taking more controllable risks now helps to mitigate the high risk later, then taking those smaller risks now is safer than not in the long run.

Consequently, reviving a team after hiding typically resulted in a second wipe, while staying with the team until it was unsafe to do so was more likely to yield favorable results. That is why it was “wrong to tell a main-healing character to go off and hide somewhere” . It was a bad tactic, as it usually backfired.

Rather than letting the issue resolve itself by fixing the SR exploit that ultimately led to the tactic’s rise in the first place, the developers decided to remove Resurrect as an ultimate entirely. They changed the thing that wasn’t the problem, and ended up pissing off the playerbase.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, I’ve used this example many times before, but removing Resurrect as an ultimate because some players abandoned their team leading to a second wipe is equivalent to removing Rocket Barrage as an ultimate because Pharah players too often blew themselves up with it. There’s no need to intervene; the tactic will die out on its own, so long as the ranking system isn’t feeding it.

[Titanium-1686]

Let’s not.

Too late.

[Titanium-1686]

So we should not discuss things because people who flip out at the mention of Mercy may find it?

If someone hates Mercy players more for discussing mass rez, they wouldve hated Mercy players regardless.

I’m also not a fan of telling others, as long as theyre not trolling or being bigoted, that they shouldnt discuss certian topics.

This.

I don’t care (and actually embrace the fact) that some people will only experience a bad case of the Backfire Effect upon reading my posts. That doesn’t stop me from making my posts.

[Equinox-22541]

I know it to be a fact that a lot of people hated mass res and thought it was bad for the game.
I know it to be a fact that the devs feel the same way. Source
And as far as I know they have never reverted any changes on live thus the probability leaning in the favor of a no go fo mercy reverto. Evero.

[MerlinBrando-11655]

They think if they write enough essays they can change the reality of the situation and the facts of the past that put us where we are today. The intent of this thread/essay was to blatantly lie and present the posters feelings as fact.

[Titanium-1686]

I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that there’d be less healing done during the time of hide and rez because, while Mercy wasn’t healing while hiding, there was more healing to do after she resurrected people that reworked Mercy wouldn’t have the opportunity to do.

If Mercy’s healing the team rather than hiding, she’d be getting all of that healing that would have taken place after the Resurrect in addition to the healing she’s already doing.

If I heal Reinhardt through a fight, I’ve dealt quite a bit of healing.
If I let Reinhardt die and then I revive him, that’s 500 healing that didn’t do. That 500 is removed from my healing bank and replaced by a 1 in my revives bank.

[Titanium-1686]

The rework did not fail and it was not pointless, since it effectively canned Mass Rez.

Since it effectively canned a strategy that was already so rare that it may as well have not existed?

Mass Rez isnt going to come back.

Can I have some evidence for this assertion?

You’re presenting speculation as fact.

No one even cares about it anymore

This, my friend, is factually incorrect.