Mass Res Will Return | 10 Reasons Why

[ChibiFox-11511]

#RevertMercy

Id delete this btw. I got suspended once for this. It can be considered spam.

“Spam” HA Well. If anyone’s wondering it’s my actual opinion.

I said it once, and once is all i need.
and here it is:

#RevertMercy

Doesn’t have to be your opinion… Or even anyone else’s… But it’s mine.

[Vendamar-1771]

It actually isn’t that big of an issue. The sample size is still big enough.

How do you know that, is there a reliable source that has stated or proved that?

[DvaSlaysEU-2809]

The fact that the data didn’t change signicantly at all since the patch? Also, the fact that they have the data of every public profile. Even if more people have private profiles, the sample size would still be massive.

[DvaSlaysEU-2809]

Yeah, I’m all in for reverting Mercy. It’s just that mods don’t particularly like hashtags.

[Vendamar-1771]

The fact that the data didn’t change signicantly at all since the patch? Also, the fact that they have the data of every public profile. Even if more people have private profiles, the sample size would still be massive.

So there is no reliable source then. The fact that the data didn’t change doesn’t prove anything, it could go either way, in fact there have been many changes lately to the game, and I could argue that the data not changing shows a lack of sample size, not the other way around. As long as we don’t have a reliable source or proof of that, we don’t really know how reliable the data is, not long ago it was stated that the amount of people that used private profiles was huge, and even if that number has decreased it’s still a significant number that screws with the data.

[DvaSlaysEU-2809]

@Vendamar-1771

So there is no reliable source then. The fact that the data didn’t change doesn’t prove anything, it could go either way, in fact there have been many changes lately to the game, and I could argue that the data not changing shows a lack of sample size, not the other way around. As long as we don’t have a reliable source or proof of that, we don’t really know how reliable the data is, not long ago it was stated that the amount of people that used private profiles was huge, and even if that number has decreased it’s still a significant number that screws with the data.

It is still reliable. Like I said, they record every profile that is public. Even if more people have private profiles, the sample size would still be massive. Here, someone else explains it better:

@Agnostika-1802

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that Overbuff’s numbers are meaningless due to private profiles (or due to the fact that even before private profiles Overbuff only received statistics from a subset of the player base). This claim is false. You absolutely can make very good claims about a large data set by sampling a large piece of it at random.

Here’s an example. A very big bag is full of blue tokens and red tokens. The bag is shaken thoroughly to mix up the tokens. Then you spill 100,000 token on the floor. Of these, 60,000 are blue and 40,000 are red. The remaining tokens stay in the bag (in the Overwatch context, these are the “private” tokens). What percent of the tokens in the bag are blue?

You can’t know for sure without looking at every single token. What you can do is make claims, and then give probabilities that they’re true. The bag should contain about 60% blue tokens and 40% red tokens. If you claim that the bag has exactly 60% blue tokens, then you are probably wrong. If you claim that the bag has somewhere between 59%-61% blue tokens then you are almost surely right (with a probability that can be calculated and shown to be very very close to 100%). The more tokens you draw from the bag, the closer the percentage should be to the actual percentage in the whole bag. In math, we call this the law of large numbers.

You end up replacing a certain claim (exactly 60%) with a more nuanced one, together with a measure of how sure you are about it. This shouldn’t worry you. Your entire life is lived like this. For instance, your brain processes information from your eyes at a certain frame rate, and your eyes themselves have many missing pixels (so there are “private” pixels and “private” moments in time). Everything you see at all times is based off of probability. That’s the way almost all of human experience works.

The situation in Overwatch is almost identical, except we’re not sampling entirely at random. For instance, we’re only sampling people with public profiles. The good news is that there’s excellent reason (supported by data analysis) to believe that private profiles aren’t correlated with, say, skill at playing Roadhog. So the conclusions still hold.

So, now on to the main question that I wanted to discuss. How much should you trust Overbuff data? Like in the bag of tokens example, it really depends on how many games Overbuff records. If you drew 2 tokens out of the bag, your conclusions would be off. If you drew a trillion, they would be really good. So, how many games does Overbuff record?

We can’t know exactly without someone from Overbuff chiming in, but we can get a very good estimate. The thing that comes into play here, and will be important for the discussion later on, is a beautiful theorem called the central limit theorem. I won’t state the theorem itself, since it’s a bit too technical for a forum post, but it deals exactly with the kind of situation we have here - repeating a random event over and over again and trying to understand its averages. The central limit theorem is the source of the bell curves that you might have seen pop up in all kinds of aspects of your life.

Suppose you record N games in which Mercy was played (I told you there would be a little bit of Mercy here). Suppose that Mercy is balanced such that she should win about b% of the time (and b% is pretty close to 50% so the standard deviation for one Mercy game is close to 1/2), but that in those games she won about a%. How far apart can we reasonably expect a% and b% to be? One thing that the central limit theorem (and its companion, the Berry-Esseen theorem) says is that you should expect about 66% percent chance for a% and b% to be within about 100/2 sqrt(N)% of each other (i.e within one standard deviation).

So I looked at the time period between late June (when private profiles were introduced) and early August (when the support balance patch came in) and found several characters whose pick rates were stable (Mercy was one of them). For each day, I found out how far the win rates for that day were from the average win rate during that time period. Then I found the percentage that 66% of the results were smaller than and solved for N.

Now, this is only an estimation but the upshot of it is that Overbuff
records around 80,000 games a day. Using Blizzard’s statistics about player distribution (yes, I know that player distribution isn’t the same as the distribution of the number of games per day, but they’re close) we get about: 6,400 games in Bronze, 16,800 in silver, 25,600 in gold, 20,000 in platinum, 8,000 in diamond, 2,400 in masters, and 800 in gm every day.

Now back to the central limit theorem. Say we are trying to understand Mercy’s win rates in all ranks. Mercy’s pick rate in all ranks is currently 7.32% so she appears in 7.32% * 6 * 80,000 = 35,136 games. The central limit theorem tells us that we have about a 66% confidence that her average is within one standard deviation of the actual average. This means that we have a 66% level of confidence that the average in overbuff is at most 0.26% away from the actual average. It also gives about a 90% confidence that the average is at most 0.52% away. That’s about the level of trust we should have for a daily win rate in all ranks in Overbuff.

In diamond for instance with a pick rate of about 4%, we get a 66% chance that her daily averages are within 1.14% of the correct average and a 90% confidence that they’re within 2.28%. That’s not amazing. But, we can improve it by quite a bit. The first thing we can do is to limit the direction - we have a 84% confidence that the correct average is not MORE than 1.14% above the overbuff average for that day (in this case I don’t really care about it being less) and a 98% chance that the correct average is not more than 2.28% from the Overwatch average.

Better, but still not great. So, what do we do? We take more games. We calculate the average win rate over a whole week (if you want to be accurate, you should weight each day by the pick rate). This ends up being 7 times as many games so the accuracy improves. When you do this, you get a 84% confidence that the actual average is not more than about 0.43% from the Overbuff weekly average in diamond, and a 98% confidence that it’s not more than 0.86% more than it. And if this accuracy isn’t enough, you can average over a whole month. This will give you an 84% confidence that you’re not more than 0.2% too low, and a 98% confidence that you’re not more than 0.4% too low. Not bad. In all ranks, the monthly average has about a 84% chance of not being more than 0.048% too low, and a 98% of not being more than 0.096% too low.

In Masters and gm, you really shouldn’t be paying attention at all to daily numbers - only to weekly and monthly averages. Especially for characters with low pick rates. Mercy’s pick rate in gm is about 2%. That means it only measures about 96 Mercy games a day. That means that you only have a 66% confidence to be within 5.1% of the correct number (or a 84% chance to not be more than 5.1% too low). That’s really bad. However, if you average over a week then you are 84% confidence you’re not more than 1.9% too low, and if you average over a month then you’re 84% confident you’re not more than 0.93% too low. Similarly, in Masters if you average over a month you’re 84% confident that you’re not more than 0.53% too low. Note: you have to be careful when averaging over a month. The days with higher pick rates should count more than the days with lower pick rates because they represent more games. And if this level of confidence isn’t enough? Wait another month and average. This will divide your 84% and 98% confidence numbers by about 2.

The numbers given here are just guidelines. They’re based off of estimates and approximations. But the math behind them is very real. They’re good estimates and guidelines. There are other places to go from here that can increase the confidence levels even further. For instance, if the character you’re interested in spends more day below a certain number than above it, that increases your confidence that the number is low. Or, If the character you’re interested in spends most of their days very close to a certain number, that increases the likelihood that this number is close to the correct average.

I hope this helps people interpret data in future discussions (and not only Mercy based ones).

[Vendamar-1771]

It is still reliable. Like I said, they record every profile that is public. Even if more people have private profiles, the sample size would still be massive. Here, someone else explains it better:

No it isn’t, specially when the numbers are so close. A few thousand players could increase or decrease the percentages significantly. As long as we don’t have the complete numbers we don’t know for sure, the numbers could change drastically or nothing at all. For example, it’s like polling half the population of something, if you happen to get most of the people that support one thing, then your results will show that, when in reality, in the other half, there were a lot of people that supported the other so it balances it out, or it might not, but we don’t know because it’s incomplete data.

[DvaSlaysEU-2809]

Expecting the data to be perfect is extremely unrealistic. Sample sizes exist simply because such a thing in most practical scenarios is impossible. Since we’re clearly not going to be agreeing with each other any time soon, let’s just agree to disagree.

[Vendamar-1771]

Expecting the data to be perfect is extremely unrealistic. Sample sizes exist simply because such a thing in most practical scenarios is impossible.

Yes of course I agree with that, and it was this way even before private profiles but less so and more reliable. My argument was and still is that post private profiles, the data is even more unreliable because the sample size is way WAY smaller so it doesn’t reflect with confidence what the reality of the situation is. Whatever we get from those numbers is just a very vague approximation.

Since we’re clearly not going to be agreeing with each other any time soon, let’s just agree to disagree.

Yeah that’s fine, it usually comes down to that anyways ha!. Different people have different opinions.

[mypants-11501]

Check and balances certainly need to be put back in order, and it’s a shame that Mercy can no longer regulate it.

So you’re arguing that a single character, Mercy, should be driving overall battle strategy. Thank you for supporting why we should never bring back that ult.

[Kān-1552]

There’s a difference between the hiding that occurs with old mass resurrect and the current single one. One rewarded not being in the fight at all and simply letting the team die, which was not fun for either side.

The hide and res is a myth created by some players. Good Mercy will try to pull out a 2-3 men res in the heat of the fight to change the curse of the fight (now that is impactful). 5 Men res was really rare, but convenient if the enemy team forgot to kill Mercy in their " false team wipe" because a team wipe is a 6 men kil. Letting team die? what? as a Mercy player I neved let my team die… they need healing you know. Again, good Mercys would never do that. It’s funny how people say “let team die” when is the enemy team who kills the “entire” team but Mercy. Not being in the fight? how did Mercy at that time charged her ultimate? Hidding? I don’t think so.

and the enemy team would be upset that potentially 3-4 ults could be undone with one button push.

There’s a lot of ultimates that would undone any enemy team effort (Zen, Lucio, Brig, not mentioning agressive ultimates also like a nicely used Mei’s Blizzard).

Valkyrie is now to the point where it’s considered an “okay” ultimate. There is not nearly the same level of gameplay breaking that old resurrect has, as it does not give Mercy huge levels of speed or reset resurrect charges anymore. It’s now more on part with other support ults, allowing you to either have a pseudo Orisa ult effect or a stronger Lucio amp for your team, both of which are valuable.

Are you a Mercy player? Valkyrie is the less powerful ultimate in the game. You cannot overheal any dmg, is not game changing, not rewarding. It’s all fine it got nerfs, it needed to, but It cannot be so lackluster. Devs did a mess with Valkyrie 1.0.

The time period was significantly longer than 5 months, she maintained that state for nearly a year.

Nobody asked for that, Mercy or non Mercy player never wanted that. That’s what Blizzard did.

Mercy at the current moment is not “unimpactful,” she is only slightly subpar.

Again, are you a Mercy player? or what is your skill rating? the only places Mercy can be slightly impactful is in bronz to silver, maybe gold.

She still has significant advantages that make her worth picking, and at most needs some tweaking to her HPS.

The only reason you should be going Mercy is if you have a Pharah or Pirateship comp. Mercy is an off healer now, only 50hps like when the game was first launched. Do you know devs buff her to 60hps becasue she was too weak because of that?

Hatred is not exclusive to Mercy and never has been.

Post author never said that.

The reason it seems so conflated is because of the amount of time where Mercy was prevalent. It was nearly an entire year until Mercy finally received what many considered to be the “nail in the coffin” to Mercy, the HPS nerf. Up until that time, Mercy was widely considered the best pick for the main healer position due to how much she provided and the ease of play. I’ve not heard anyone complain about Mercy being too good since then.

It’s ok to nerf a hero because it’s overpowered. What is not right is to make a hero completely useless in every situation. You cannot go Zen-Mercy, Lucio-Mercy, Brig Mercy, that is a throw. It’s wrong because every hero should be viable in any composition.

I can’t think of a case where Blizzard has reverted a hero in Overwatch to such a drastic extent.

Doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Mass Resurrect in its old form does not have a counter. It granted Mercy invincibility, meaning that the only way to cancel it was to kill Mercy before she even had a chance to start.

Do you even played the first version of Mercy. When the game was launched, the only viable supports were Zen and Lucio, Mercy was a throw pick, do your research. Then the devs decided to buff Mercy with invunerability while ulting. That is what made Mass Ress a problem in every way. In the current state of the game it wouldn’t.

he only way to stop it is to use a stun based CC, but that’s hit or miss due how generous old mass resurrect was due to its range. Most of the time Mercy did not need to go into the center of the team fight, so the resurrect would be free. Not much counterplay.

A new Mass Res should have counter play, no invulnerability. Which is easy nowadays. Many many counters.

Not even quite sure what point you’re trying to make here.

Nobody ever said Mass Rez can’t/won’t come back.

I fail to see how resurrecting a tank or your fellow healer in a fight is not impactful. One resurrect is the difference between deterring a push a lot of the time. Since when you resurrect, you can potentially put an ult back into your economy, which is not a small gain.

There’s a lot of things happening in the heat of the fight, cc, stuns, debuffs, buffs, hacks, darts etc… Res becomes unimpactful because you are so exposed at those moments you are not alwyas allowed to rez a teammate with ult or simply your tank because it would be too risky. Not only that, as you have to stop healing in order to res, in that time other teammate is going to get killed (in a team fight), so there’s no point of ressing 1 ally. And if you die during res your team is doomed, they’re 5. Not no mention the recent nerf on HPS made res even weaker since there’s no compensation for the time you stopped healing, it’s too low. You should see this is a problem playing any kind of hero, support, dps or tank.

The difference is now you are reliant on your team more to actually let you get the resurrect off, which is good. This raises Mercy’s overall skill level by forcing team play, not unlike how Gravition or Orisa ult relies on team positioning and focus to take advantage of the ability.

What are you trying to say here? how it raises her skill level? You don’t even gain fire/ult charge.

She needs to have her base kit changed to further increase her skill floor, or have her values tweaked to fix up her current weaknesses in the current meta.

100% Agreed. Her win rate in bronz in 48%. The lowest of all supports. Buffs, tweaks, revert, whatever is needed for her. If you happen to play her, you should see this problems. If you have game sense, you should understand all the reason why she is in a very bad place.

Respect and good vibes.

[RevertMercy-1304]

So you’re arguing that a single character, Mercy, should be driving overall battle strategy. Thank you for supporting why we should never bring back that ult.

Mercy was one of the only heroes responsible in the past for regulating poor ult economy with mass res, so naturally, she would still be seen in that way. That is kind of the trade off for being a pure healer with no decent offensive abilities compared to the other supports.

Am I saying that Mercy should be “driving overall battle strategy?” Nope. I never said such a thing. Should there be heroes that check reckless usage of ults? I think so.

Mercy’s mass res had the largest impact within this sphere, but other support heroes have done it to a lesser extent as well. Transcendence, Sound Barrier, and now Nano boost, all will help soften the blow of a team wipe - but regardless, they don’t stop them completely.

If more support heroes had ults that had the ability to reverse the habit of “whatever teams using more ults at once, steamrolls a push,” I’d be all for it. Mercy is merely the best example of a hero who had the potential to actually stop the “Ultimate creep” that this current meta is suffering from, and so, that is the example I’ve used.

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~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls

[HavocS-2336]

You gave 10 reasons why you would bring it back, Blizzard has two: they hated it, and pros hated it and it’s their game.
Welcome to world competitive multiplayer game balancing.

[DvaSlaysEU-2809]

Blizzard has two: they hated it

This has yet to be confirmed.

[DracoKami-1564]

As someone who played during that period I can confirm that was not a myth. There were numerous games where I would lose because Mercy would refuse to pop resurrect and get our tanks back because they were waiting for the McCree or whatever to die. This is also notable if you watch streams from this period.

Not the same. None of these characters undo picks. If you kill a person, they stay dead, the ultimate charge you put into it wasn’t wasted. The closest thing you can call a waste is Zen using Transcendence and negating a Hanzo dragon, but even then you still have means to actually bypass it. The element of counterplay is important to note here.

I have played over 50 hours on Mercy (regretably). If you honestly think that it’s the worst ultimate in the game you have not seen McCree, or how buggy and inconsistent shatter is. The purpose of Valkyrie is not to stop all picks from happening over the course of 15 seconds, it’s to provide AoE healing or damage boost. You can use it to further support your team or provide the damage that will allow you to break a choke.

I didn’t say anyone asked for it.

Mercy is not nearly the same level that characters like Ana were for months. Nobody will call a Mercy a throw pick at any ELO because she’s middle of the road. Just because she doesn’t dominate the metagame does not make her a bad pick.

Mercy is still a main healer, she just cannot heal alone the way she used to be able to. This is a fine tradeoff considering she has benefits that most healers in the game cannot provide alone. These benefits include healing through barriers (only otherwise available to Zenyatta), healing out of LoS for a period of time (also Zenyatta, to a lesser extent Moira), healing without resources (everyone except Ana and Moira), a mobility escape option (everyone but Ana and Zenyatta), and most important, a damage boost you can use at any time. I’m aware that the devs increased and then later decreased her HPS, and I disagree with how much they reduced it by. I think it should be increased to bring her more in line with Moira.

Mercy is not completely useless, at all. I have yet to see anyone ever complain about a Mercy pick, whether its in streams I watch or in my or my friends games. She’s a reliable pick who trades efficiency for consistency. It’s closer to what Ana provided during the Moth meta, where you make a trade (in this case healing potential and anti-heal debuff) for healing consistency and resurrection.

I didn’t say Mercy was overpowered. I said the ability didn’t have a counter. The reason why Zen and Lucio was so good at the time was due to how effective rushing the enemy was at that time. Just because something is not meta does not make it not frustrating.

If you’re playing with another healer then you plenty of time to get the resurrect off. Additionally, there are plenty of times to get safe picks, for example, fellow snipers tend to die in your own backline so it is relatively easy to resurrect them as opposed to your Genji or Tracer, who tends to die out in the field. There’s also time to get resurrection when your own team does CC. It’s important that there be counterplay to most abilities in the game, or at least a drawback that comes while using it.

It raises her skill level because the Mercy can no longer fly in, get resurrect, and fly away. Mercy now has to find an opportunity, or have the team make one for her. Using your abilities in tandem is important to the core gameplay of Overwatch, whether it be Nade+Amp, Halt+Hook, etc. You don’t need to gain a resource for everything you do, otherwise snipers would gain ult charge for not standing in the middle of the teamfight.

[Kān-1552]

Oh my lord. Here, from a fellow support main:

https: //blizzardwatch. com/2018/10/03/mercy-isnt-primary-overwatch-healer-meant-thats-problem/

Done, bye .

[Naz-11562]

Numerous people have pointed out the glaring issues with that article–including the odd fixation on Moira who is arguably in a worse place than Mercy on the ladder.

[DracoKami-1564]

I am a support main pal, and I already made my statement on her HPS. You just chose to ignore it. Glad to see you can’t make your own points and have to refer to an article to dodge my arguments.

[Loba-11371]

Oh, do you have proof that backs this claim? As far as I know, such an iteration of Mercy does not exist in this current meta, so there’s no real data that shows how well she would do with Mass res in her kit with the tweaks. How would tweaking Mass rez make her worse?

I have a genuine question. But what if they do revert her, apply said fixes to Mass Rez and they do just that? Put her in F Tier? Then what is Blizzard to do? I understand the impactfulness and Engagement of Mass Rez but my curiosity lies within when does working on Mercy end? That we can leave her be for months and months at a time or a few years?

[Kān-1552]

I’m not english speaker. I read your reply. I gave you an article I thought will explain better her current state.

Respect and good vibes.