It’s a big part of Mercy’s identity, so it can’t be completely deleted from her kit
But a lot of people don’t like the idea of rez being an ult again
The really frustrating part is that when asked, people who’d rather not have AoE rez come back (also known as Mass Rez, but that’s a misnomer since it implies a huge rez every time) will normally list past abuses of the ult that could have been fixed with the right nerfs.
The rest will describe how having a skillcheck for ult economy is somehow a bad thing, and/or insist that Overwatch should be like other FPS games where a single highly skilled person can carry their entire team (and that Mass Rez blocked people from doing that).
I think that trying out those nerfs to Q rez is the only option left for ressurect, short of removing it from Mercy’s kit entirely. Everything else has already been done, and none of it has worked out.
I am still a proponent of rez moved to ult with no cast time. Something on E that makes her feel like having a unique ability along side heal, dmg boost, aoe stuff, and rez.
I think it’s inconsistent with the design of secondary abilities. Any other secondary ability in Overwatch can be used several times during a fight to hopefully swing it in your team’s favor. They’re fun and engaging to use, and make you feel powerful.
Mercy’s E rez interrupts her flow, and it’s cooldown takes longer than some ults. It’s long cast time and movment restrictions make it generally very inadvisable to use it during a fight, instead of before or after it.
No nerf would have made the power to bring back multiple people a proper ultimate. Either the effect would be too powerful and disrupt the game’s flow, or it would be incredibly unwieldy, which is not the quality you want of an ultimate that takes away the autonomy of your teammates.
Resurrect works much better as a cooldown ability and it works currently. Mercy is a balanced hero right now and her kit is fun – subjectively obviously – if used properly. She’s certainly underpowered right now, but much of that is due to other supports getting significant buffs, and a healing nerf that I feel wasn’t entirely necessary (yet at the same time I see where Blizzard is coming from).
Resurrect is a much better ability for the devs to manage when it’s at its current limits. When functioning as an ultimate, there are just far too many problems in regards to make it work. I know lots of people on the forums and elsewhere have great ideas on how they would make it work, but breaking down many of those concepts often reveals that major flaws aren’t addressed, or it would require reworking the hero a second and more drastic time, when the hero is already currently in a place that isn’t as terrible as so many people like to make it.
Blizzard can (and probably should) buff Mercy, and perhaps continue looking at places in her kit to continue expanding. But Mass Resurrect, or any form of it, has no place in this game and the flow that makes it work.
Depending on who you ask, I think people were attracted to the “Mass” part of the nickname because it falls in line with how other games define these types of abilities, i.e Mass Cure Light Wounds.
I don’t know if secondary abilities are as cookie cutter as you are making them out to be. Sure, Mercy’s is obviously on a very lengthy cooldown, but there are other secondary abilities that you can’t realistically believe will be used more than once in a fight unless the fight goes on for way longer than it should.
We have over a dozen ults that can kill multiple people at once, or even wipe an entire team… Having a single ult that can do that in reverse is about the same power level. I’d even say it’s healthy for the game, since the threat of mass rez curbs ult-spamming behavior.
Right away I can tell you have a limited concept of what made Mass Resurrect problematic. It wasn’t that she could revive multiple people instantly – well, it sort of was, that’s just one part of the problem.
In this specific analogy to Mass Res and multi-kill ults, it’s important to know that the value of a kill is much different than the value of a resurrect, and that Resurrect as an ultimate functioned fundamentally differently than any other kind of ultimate. The sheer existence and readiness of this one ultimate completely changed the flow of any given game because now everything was about Mercy and how to eliminate her first, because if you didn’t, then all the progress you’ve made and all the resources spent to ensure a team fight victory would go to waste.
To one degree, this means spending several ultimates just to get nothing but forcing one ultimate out of the enemy team, on top of lives your team lost that can’t be recovered, on top of other abilities and positioning used to secure that victory. To another degree, it meant that if someone popped off and got a ton of kills solely on their skill alone, it could be completely undone because that one player was just terrible for not picking out Mercy first, who very likely wasn’t anywhere near the battle to begin with. All that skill, all that hype, wasted.
This isn’t even touching other problems. As long as Mercy can revive multiple people, her life will always be significantly more valuable than anyone else’s, encouraging her to stay safe and away from battles rather than being active and engaged with her team. The power of Mass Res meant battles had to be safer, so both teams would end up stockpiling all their ultimates in an extended poke battle, which in turn leads to chaotic fights where everyone blows their ultimates all at once – or discouragingly, Mercy’s enemy team tries to use ultimates wisely, but any other amount of counterplay against those ultimates means they can end up waiting even longer.
The sheer mechanic of being able to revive people is a tricky one to balance, it’s why when Resurrect first went to becoming an ability, it took several iterations for that ability alone to reach a balanced place. Multiplying this mechanic does not make it any easier, it in fact equally multiples the problems. There should not be any ability in this game that runs so backwards to what the flow of Overwatch is.
I’d say that all of that adds up to mass rez being a skillcheck for ult economy and teamplay. Having to seriously consider how you’d spend your ults (instead of just smashing Q at the first opportunity) is a good thing.
One of the dev’s original goals when they made Overwatch was to not be like the other FPS’s where a single person could carry their entire team. Mass Rez enforced that.
How many times do we say something that
we immediately realized was not the right thing to say?
How many times do we look back
on an event and think, if only I had. . .
How many times do we do something
that we wish hadn’t done?
You can’t change what has been said.
You can’t change a past event.
You can’t change what has been done.
Do you call it regret, sorrow, repentance?
Do you think about what might have been?
Do you relive an event the way it should have been?
