This is quite the long read so To summarize: Mass Rez wasn’t an issue, the reward mechanic was and still is; Mercy Should not be Rewarded for Rez; Rez on cooldown has you bamboozled into thinking otherwise; Cooldown Rez hurts Good Mercys and Rewards bad ones.
EDIT: This is NOT a thread in support or against mass Rez. This is to discuss the validity of game design around rez and Mercy. Not Rez , mass Rez, or cooldown rez as a mechanic. If you want to discuss that I open you to my other thread… On Rez, mass Rez and cooldown rez as a mechanic
People for some reason really like shutting down Mercy players who want to point out flaws in the Mass Rez debacle. Mass Rez didn’t hurt you.
No it wasn’t OP. And it wasn’t hot garbage fire. Similarly, mass rez was not absolutely great and 10000% better than valk. Nah, valk is always going to be better than mass rez. Why? Well, You want an example of niche? Congrats, it’s not Symm nor Sombra. It was Mercy with Mass Rez. Mass rez was niche. Valk is not. But Blizzard removing mass rez, and shifting it to cooldown rez has only led to greater problems for Mercy and I believe to the game overall .
Let’s discuss.
First, let’s reiterate: *MASS REZ WAS **not** OP* .
There was never a “Mass Rez” meta. There was never a meta in which Mercy was the center of the meta. The most consistent deciding factor of a meta has in fact been Lucio. Between Lucio Ana and Lucio Zen, to now with Lucio Brig and x other healer, Lucio’s monopoly of speed makes him the actual definition of a “must pick” for most metas. This has never applied to Mercy and her heal beam and dmg boost or her ult restricted Rez mechanic.
Let’s also reiterate: *Mass Rez was not hot garbage fire* .
It was “niche.” That is, there were specific scenarios in which it was optimal. That wasn’t always, but it did have its moments to shine. And that’s because Mercy, by design, is a consistent healer. Not “burst impactful” or even utility. Getting boop kills is not possible with Mercy. Swift kills doesn’t happen since she can’t five beam snipe, or three tap from a distance. That’s not physically in her abilities. You want mercy because she is consistent. Now some argue it might be for her mobility. I argue that her mobility it’s to add to her consistency. If the enemy is running a hard dive, and you as Ana/Zen keeps getting destroyed… yeah. Mercy’s mobility will help you stay alive. But why do you need to stay alive? Because your healing output isn’t enough on these other heroes. You healing value is too inconsistent with your deaths. You need mobility to offer your team more stable healing. Mobility is for Mercy to keep her in design with consistency. But this consistency falls victim to something out of her control: burs damage. Mercy has no burst heal. She has no utility to give her team to stay alive beyond her heal beam. There is no way her 50hps (or 60) heal beam can help someone outlive genji blade, coalescence, barrage, etc. It’s just not in her kit. And it isn’t really supposed to. “Burst” anything is inherently not consistent without it being OP. Imagine if Brig had armor pack for healing only, but it was on the same cooldown as Widow shots. Yeah, the AOE is gone, but consistent “burst” anything is broken. So Mercy has to be constrained to her heal beam. This is why Mercy had rez.
Let’s look at it in another light
Consider it this way: What heroes did we have at launch for healers? (This thought process goes for Symm too but if I open the floor to Symm, my rant will never cease). Lucio, Zen and Mercy were the only healers in the game. So why was Mercy, the strongest healer with her 50hps, given rez and not Zen or Lucio? Why wasn’t Zen with his lower heal beam offered Rez? Surely he needed it more with his 30 hps orb? Lucio? He can’t even directly heal. Why not give him “Speed call” in which he reduced the spawn time to 3 for a teammate and they had a 10 second 50% speed increase from spawn? Why was Mercy selected for Rez? What was the reasoning in the design? Burst. Mercy has no burst. Her kit is capped. So her ult, isn’t for its use. (Because rez itself is already capped; I.e you can’t rez dead teammates.) But the flexibility in numbers for mercy, Was only ever seen in her rez ability.
But why would mass rez suddenly be a problem if it literally wasn’t in the year and a half she was in the game and had it? What made “hide and rez” an issue?
The Sr Exploit.
Regarding the Sr Exploit....
Now, I’m going to shut this down right now before you can say it: NO. It was not fixed.
This is the problem with taking mass rez out of the game. It made the crybabies stop seeing the problem, but the problem is still here. If Blizzard had just said, “Oh, we didn’t like mass rez anymore because Jo hates saying the actual words ‘mass rez’” I’d be fine. But saying it is because of Hide N Rez comes into so many issues that all start with the sr exploit.
How is it that there was ever a time that a Mercy with a subpar winrate could gain so much sr? Why was this a thing? Well, it was her rez numbers. Boosting those stats gave a hard boost to her sr because it’s what the system measured against other mercy players. You could do this with kills too but sr took rez significantly out of proportion. So what did they do to fix this? How did the devs answer this exploit?
They lowered the rez value in her sr calculation. But… did that really fix the issue? No. It puts a band-aid over the issue. The problem is still there.
Let’s compare this to other abilities like, say hack. This is a crucial aspect to Sombras kit. But… does sombra have a high sr gain just because she has a hack count of 31? Did she ever gain sr for a loss over a high hack count? What about McCree? Is stun the most weighted thing in his sr calculation? Does a Mccree with 10 kills but 34 stuns deserve crazy amounts of sr?
The way Mercy has her sr weighted in favor of rez is flawed. Deleting mass rez didn’t fix this. It hid it. And if you liked Valkyrie for fixing it, you’ve been fooled.
Here’s why: Mercy should not be rewarded for a rez.
#What? Are you A troll? No. I know what I said
And I meant it. Mercy should Not be rewarded for a rez.
Alright, let’s backtrack a bit and explain what I mean because wow, that sounds harsh. I’ll reiterate: Mercy should not be rewarded for a rez, she should be rewarded for keeping players up. There’s a difference. This ties to the issue of hide and rez and why it was a bad strat: Mercy’s role is to support her team and the selection of Mercy over other supports is consistency. Mercy hiding and rezzing will often go against this role and design.
So, this ties into what it means to “keeping up” a team. Sometimes, this is done via healing. But, does this mean that zen is a bad support? Of course not. Sometimes, to support your team, killing the enemy is just as good as keeping your team alive. Zen’s moderate healing is good, but his dps potential is strong and why he is a good support. So how does this compare to Mercy? Well unlike Zen, there is only healing in her kit. Or rather, only healing at that moment. If she wants to help with the murder, she sacrifices healing. She cannot deal damage and heal at the same time. So Mercy has to work very hard to balance between dmg, dmg boost, and dmging. If her hero dies, outside of ults, this is a failure on Mercy. She didn’t do her job to keep them up. Thus: Rez. Rez is the one shot chance she has to keep her ally up . The actual numbers of rez is irrelevant. Here is where we tie back to the true problem of rewarding rez:
Rewarding rez does not inherently reward good Mercys.
Now if you read nothing else in this lengthy essay, please read at least this:
Consider this: You have a God Tier Mercy. Never dies the entire game because she is just… untouchable. She also pistols, and dmgs boosts so on point that her teammates rarely die. Because of this, she never needs to rez. Rezzing for her means, running to the enemy spawn to rez tracer who was spawn camping the enemy ana. Rezzing for her means, going out into a dragon blade that is cleaning up a fight after three of her teammates already died to tac visor. It doesn’t make sense to reset this fight, so she groups up with her team instead. This mercy, is a good mercy. And never finds a need to rez and still wins.
Why is she being punished? That is, she did her job, she won, and didn’t rez so now she gets less sr than if she simply reset that fight with genji tac visor just for the sr boost? All for rez numbers?
This is the problem with rewarding rez as an independent factor. This is not like dmging or stuns or hacks. Rez is not an independent factor for mercy. Rez is showing where she struggles. This should be considered in her rewards and should be considered in conjunction with the rest of her kit.
So Bad Mercy’s should be punished:
A Mercy with 15 rezzes, 9000 healing, 6 deaths and 3 ult presses and a loss should be punished harshly compared to a mercy with 8 rezzes, 16,000 healing, 3 deaths, and 6 ult presses and a win. This Mercy survived longer, she did more healing but less rezzes. Why did she rez less? She didn’t need to rez all her teammates to find value . Sometimes, solo rezz-ing Rein will keep your team up just as well as a five man rez but even better because there isn’t the downtime of spawn. Rezzing just rein, means your soldier, zen, and rest of your team could have still been fighting. You solo rezzed, but the result of keeping your team up was still achieved. 8 rez Mercy did very well and should be rewarded appropriately. Even if 15 rez Mercy won, her play was bad and her reward should be less.
Rez itself as a flat variable should not exist. Mercy should have her entire kit balanced in her rewards because that’s the nature of her kit. Sleep dart is an independent variable because Ana doesn’t rely on dart nor interrupt healing (for long) to use it. An Ana with 16 sleep darts is a god. There’s no way around this. Mercy with 15 rezzes could literally mean she only got her ult 3 times in a game (with mass rez). The rez number itself is not relevant on it’s own. 15 rezzes could mean she had it 15 times and has 22,000 healing. That’s great. But again, you can’t tell that with rez numbers alone. Therefore it has to be a ratio. The ratio could be so many things too: Rez to healing, Time alive, deaths, deaths of teammates, ult presses, whatever you want to make more important . But not rez alone. Making rez a solo variable is what “encouraged” hide and rez. Because the value to Mercy wasn’t keeping her team up. That’s the value to a win and her team. But the Value to Mercy as an individual was maximizing rez numbers and ensuring she got those numbers by any means: i.e even sacrificing her own team and win security to do it.
The strat was never viable before to “hide and rez” because Mercy wasn’t gaining so much sr for rez itself. Whatever changes occurred internally to reward Rez was the problem. This is therefore not a matter of Mechanics, but a matter of reward. If Mercy lost 100 Sr for her 15 rezzes but mere 3 ult presses, how likely will she want to repeat such behavior? If Mercy lost 100 sr for her 20 rezzes and 5 ult pushes but 9,000 healing and 30 teammate deaths, how likely will she be “waiting” to use rez? Because now, she not only isn’t losing a little sr for a loss, but there is no way to climb up with such harsh punishments in continuing that behavior. With only a 50 sr bump for her good play, but a hard 100 sr drop for mass rez play, going for huge rez only wouldnt be viable. It’d be impossible for her wins to ever outweigh her bad behavior.
“But mass rez was removed! The problem is gone!” No; it absolutely is not. And now it’s worse.
Why? Why is this worse? “Before, she could let her whole team die in favor of sr! Now she can’t!”
Why? Why is this worse? “Before, she could let her whole team die in favor of sr! Now she can’t!”
No. now she can’t exploit her whole team in her ult. Instead, she can exploit her team in her main gameplay no matter how skilled she is .
That is, having rez before meant two things: One its main (huge rez, not actual value) value came when your team was dead. That usually was restricted to ult fights. Mercy could not sacrifice you to boost her stats in the poke n choke phase because she didn’t have rez . You can’t boost your rez stats with rez… if you don’t have rez?
Except… now she can. And oh ho ho, any mercy who has 30 seconds available to her can. And if you think this is fine, consider this:
Cooldown rez is sometimes consider “more skilled” than old rez because of the cast time and slowing restrictions. This is supposedly because now, Mercy risks dying to pull it off. However… Mercy already used to die when she used mass rez. There was a reason it was constantly buffed in her favor. Mass Rez was already risky . So cool, some people like being able to rez mid-fight. Except that was totally possible before (as long as it wasn’t before 30 seconds of the game has passed), and unlike before, Mercy now has to consider something old Mercy rez never had to: Change. What was safe in one second may not be the case in the next. And for a hero who heals over time , time is pretty important. So now how do you boost those stats? Same as before: Trash rez.
What’s a trash rez?
Trash rez is not rezzing your soldier who got popped by a god widow who walked out of Eichenwald, got a boost from mei and went over the building height to get him. You don’t want to start a fight with fewer allies. It makes sense to rez Rein mid fight if you can do it. You need your shield.
No, Trash rez is rezzing tracer after the fight was won. The fight was won, tracer is fast, you’re on defense on Temple of Anubis, and you still rezzed her. Why? To boost those sweet sweet stats. Because there isn’t even a mid-game benefit to rez. Mercy gains no ult charge, she risks herself more, she can’t heal, or dmg boost, or do dmg. So the only benefit in the marks of mercy’s who want maximum reward for rez alone: trash stats. And rezzing for trash stats doesn’t benefit your team. In fact, doing damage is more midfight rewarding than rez or even healing. If you as soldier is fighting an enemy tracer, Mercy could dmg boost/heal you, or she can take out her pistol, earn more ult charge than either healing or dmg boost would give you, and either kill tracer with you; Or you die, tracer dies, and Mercy has now her better ult charge AND the bonus benefit of boosting her rez stats.
So problem is now worse because not only is it doing the same problem as before but its shifted to main gameplay. That is: Mercy’s primary kit is hurt by trying to properly use cooldown rez. Mercy is designed for consistency. Cooldown rez has restrictions that not only hurt her gameplay mobility, but also her healing, dmg boost, and dmg abilities. The thing is, main gameplay versus ult means that her basic design as a consistent mobile healer: is hurt. You are inherently hurting her design by shifting her ult power to main play, and stripping main play to utilize that ult power.
Thus: The rez problem isn’t gone. It’s moved, you’ve made matters worse for Mercy. Because a shift in her ult niche power to her main play hurts her main value in design: Consistency. By making her less consistent, you hurt good Mercys. By making her appear more powerful than she is, you reward subpar Mercys. This move to cooldown rez didn’t fix anything. It just moved the problem, and created new ones for Mercy players and those on her team (in terms of rez). Moreover I believe this is the catalyst for more problems in the game itself but let’s discuss that in another thread.
