I’d just like to point out:
They prepped the meta for Hammond’s arrival by creating a bunch of tank counters. Reaper got his vampire buff, Mei got her piercing freeze, Symmetra’s rework has made her good at shield busting, and Hanzo got his insane rework. All of this ensured that once Hammond hit the scene, there would already be a bunch of counters pre-installed.
Hammond’s Minefield would have been a hard-counter to mass rez.
Sombra (who was an extremely hard counter to mass rez, seeing as she could hack a Mercy flying in to prevent the rez) is getting dev attention to hopefully end up much more viable and reliable.
Are the devs setting the stage for the eventual return of Mass Rez? If so, we’d finally have a counter to ult spam and grav combos again.
open if that sounds like a bad idea
I highly doubt that they’d bring back mass rez exactly as it was. It was technically balanced, but it often didn’t feel fair to play against when the Mercy player abused the old rez mechanics for cheese strats. If mass rez really does get reinstated, expect it to come with several nerfs (e.g. a LoS check, cast time, personal invulnerability removed)
If you love Valkyrie and don’t want to see it go, I don’t think you’d have to worry about it disappearing from mercy’s kit. Mercy would need a new E after all, and a toned-down Valkyrie would be much easier to balance as a cooldown ability than resurrect ever was. Valkyrie and mass rez can coexist in mercy’s kit. Heck, as a cooldown ability you’d be able to use valk much more often! That sounds fun, right?