It wasn’t that broken. More than 3 man Rez’s were uncommon because that usually meant both teams had used ultimates and there wasn’t a lot of point of bringing people back into that. 5 man Rez’s usually meant the entire enemy team had used all of their ultimates, so that was a great time to bring people back.
Mass Rez really was countered by just saving a fat AOE ultimate for after the rez, and if you did that Mercy’s ultimate was essentially wasted.
Now, there were some problems, like a bug that caused huge spikes in SR gain based on the number of heroes Mercy revived, but that got fixed in 2 weeks. This is what sparked the whole “hide and Rez” controversy. What people conveniently ignore is that literally everyone hides if they can when a ton of ultimates are being used. What is a Lucio supposed to be doing against a Tac Visor, or a Hanzo against an Earthshatter?
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Wasn’t really fun tbh
Cheesy 1 ult counters 5
0 counterplay outside of kill mercy before even looking at anything else.
But i’d hunt down a mercy much more gladly than a brig for example.
Back then as flanker it was enough to kill mercy to get praised by the team. 
Was litteraly my only game plan at the beginning with ow… Kill Mercy!
You don’t kill her, any kill is worthless
But i can understand the frustration mercy players faced.
Like my friend was at first, lets play ow, we’ll win.
After mass rezz was removed it took a long time until he accepted it and stopped complaining.
I personally didn’t really enjoy mass rezz, but i loved the double instant rezz in valk.
You held so much gamepower… It was awesome tbf
Oh wait you’re partially right, it was in September when she officially had her rework. That’s the part I wasn’t completely sure of.
But wasn’t Pharamercy more prevalent than anything if you weren’t running dive? Or was it strictly Genji/Tracer in the PC scene at the time?
Lol yeah it’s mostly been strictly Genji Tracer on the pc scene. There was some pharmercy on specific maps but phara had a sub 1% pickrate, If i remember correct. Pharmercy hasn’t really been big on pc since like season 2-4?
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Yeah that makes sense. I know Seagull was pretty big on playing Pharah when he wasn’t on Genji. On console, Pharah was pretty much the go-to at higher ranks. I still remember all the nerf Pharah/nerf Mercy drama because of how powerful the duo supposedly was.
At the time, a few players as well as myself were discussing ways to counter her. Very bluntly, it was “just aim better”, but obviously we know that to take on a pair like that, you also need help from your team.
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it wasn’t overpowered but it was really inconsistent on ladder, where it’d get a lot more powerful the more uncoordinated everyone is due to horrible ultimate economy in lower ranks and the inability to communicate and dedicate roles to take down mercy, leaving tons of moments of “i thought you were going to do it” or “why did you grav when mercy is hiding” moments
not to mention that’s all old mercy really had beyond pocketing a pharah since tempo rez was considerably worse as an ultimate (even if you could get two or three instead of all 5) so she had probably the worst dry fight potential of any support with an inconsistent power level in ultimate-focused fights
Higher rank players would kill her and most likely win the ideally win the 6v5 that followed.
anyone that wasn’t in a game where teams were coordinated enough to do that all lived out the same nightmare. Never believe anyone who says it wasn’t that bad or tries to downplay it, the only people who enjoyed it were the people who stood in a room waiting for their team to die so they could press shift, Q, then get killed and do nothing until the next ult.
Being a release hero you can’t really be too mad at blizzard for thinking it wasn’t a bad idea. But it got so ridiculous, mercy had play of the game every single game and it would give them such validation, they were so smug over a bs play of the game and legitimately thought they were the best player that game because of it.
The attitudes people developed were insane- those who weren’t good but wanted to play and win without actually putting in the effort, the grind, would just lock mercy. It was all they’d know how to play and they’d onetrick her till the very end, I remember when seagull said not to do this because it would just be time spent not getting better, but instead imprisoning yourself to only ever be able to play that one hero. its been YEARS and they still want to go back to when they could hit a single button to validate their entire existance. But nowadays… we just have moira mains. man, it’s just not the same. Sometimes I’d offer up taking mass rez AND scatter arrow just to not have moira mains anymore- yelling at people and diving into the other team… oh well. it is what it is.
Some say those that past have not yet left this world. They still wander the forums, and legends say that if you visit the forums at 2:22 in the morning on the first morning after a new event, fire up a new thread with the title “GG we have an attack Widow”, you’ll see hundreds of replies, all saying the same thing before the thread 404’s moments later:
"bring back mass rez... it was fine"
cringe all you want that took me forever to write so it stays
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Of course this is all when the SR Gain bug was active.
For mercy players it felt great, feeling like you actually saved the game when it works. And of course there were some dps players who didn’t like it. there are always players who complain about something =p, but it was not broken. In fact, she wasn’t even top pick and she needed buffs (and she got one to her ultimate to prevent her from dying while casting it)
Why did they change it? I think the devs thought it was boring to use (Just press Q) and Mercy needed a buff so they decided to make it more fun. They wanted her to be more engaged to the fight and powerful by choosing who lives and who dies, so they turned her into Valkyrie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie
I bet they thought it was a great idea until it backfired and turned out to be very broken, and of course instead of admitting their mistake and revert her (or listen to her players) they insisted and made her what she is today.
Mass Rez was not broken. The reason I remember the devs giving for removing it was how it ended up incentivizing (some) Mercy players to let their team die in order to get the biggest possible Rez. I didn’t do that, and didn’t see it much—but as a scrub-tier player who doesn’t have access to internal data, I accept that it was happening enough to warrant intervention. And while that behavior, to whatever extent it was happening, was a problem, the ability itself wasn’t busted, didn’t turn Mercy into a must-pick, and could not even reliably crank out 5-man Rezzes (let alone 5-mans that accomplished anything).
I miss the strategy and the dynamic impact of Mass Rez, but I get why it was changed, even if I personally wasn’t part of the problem.
However, I did find it bitterly ironic that, when Mercy was reworked after much howling about hide-n-Rez, and her biggest critics rejoicing over her much more reasonable reworked abilities, that now she actually was busted.
I also found it bitterly ironic when, after she had been bludgeoned with the nerf bat enough times to no longer be busted, the streamer complaints began to coalesce around the impact of ults: “press Q to win”.
I couldn’t help but think, “GEE, IF ONLY THERE WAS A COUNTER THAT COULD PUNISH THOUGHTLESS ULT-STACKING”. Almost like Mass Rez actually provided a meaningful check and balance in the game’s ult economy or something!
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it was perfect and i want it back. and it wasnt broken at all, just watch gameplays
And some people managed to squander that free respawn by getting themselves killed immediately just like they do now.
I got plenty of rezzes that went to the birds because teammates decided “well that got me killed once- surely it won’t happen again”.
Alternatively plenty of my “mass” rezzes got undone by the other team having good sense and not blowing all their ults at once.
It was far from perfect, but it was a much more notable ultimate and wouldn’t have been impossible to balance.
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I’m sorry, are we talking about Mercy, or Genji and his dragonblade? Or Widowmaker and her one-hit-kill primary fire? Or any other hero that has the ability to swing the match with a single button press - aka literally all of them?
Sneering at Mercy and her players for wanting to have levels of agency and impact comparable to literally any other hero in the game is one heck of a double-standard.
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It wasn’t really that op until it got the invulnerability buffs, then everything went downhill. Near release midow and mccree we’re super crazy, lots of heroes were busted in some way so when people say it wasn’t broken they just mean it was normal at the time. The wack era so to say.
It was quite annoying to have your epic ult that single handedly won the team fight just get negated instantly.
Mercy: “Heroes never die!”
Junkrat: “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!”
Mercy: “Nevermind…”
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She was a niche pick. She was picked primarily on 2CP maps. She had a pretty average win rate/pick rate. It wasn’t OP, could be annoying to some players but it wasn’t OP. Even I want to say Stevo (I might be wrong) who originally called it OP said like a few months ago that it wasn’t actually OP, just annoying.
It could have used REWORKS. But not removal from the game TBH…
What made it “OP”.
even though i was a mercy main during that time, she really wasn’t good. ana was almost always better than mercy as a main healer, which mercy was before her rework and nerfs D: people only really started complaining when her rez got buffed to have invulnerability. i think if they just reverted it, they wouldn’t have needed to rework her in the first place