For 11 days in closed beta, Mercy’s Mass Rez was nerfed;
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While channeling her ultimate, if Mercy was killed, Rez didn’t work.
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Her teammate wouldn’t be brought back to life and she didn’t get a full ult refund (only partial, depending how quickly she was killed after pressing Q, all refunds operates like this back then).
This patch only lasted for 11 days because Blizzard received overwhelming feedback from Mercy players in closed beta at the time saying it was a step in the wrong direction.
It was reverted the very next patch.
That patch was a learning experience for Blizzard on how to handle Mercy, and it was the catalyst for Mercy’s buffs post-launch leading up to Rez invulnerability.
Post launch, Blizzard issued the following improvements to Mercy’s Mass Rez;
- Mercy can now move while casting Rez.
- Resurrected teammates could move 2.25 seconds after Mercy casted Rez (reduced from 3 seconds).
- Mercy’s self-healing triggered 1 second after taking damage, instead of 3 seconds, buffing her survivability so she could (hopefully) stay alive a little longer in order to succeed on Rez.
- Mercy received complete invulnerability from everything except environmental pitfalls while casting Rez.
Post-Valkyrie, Blizzard has flipped their stance on something that clearly didn’t fit with Mercy player’s expectations.
Objectively speaking, Single Rez’s current state is almost identical to that Closed Beta nerf;
- The nerf to her movespeed (75% speed reduction) while casting Single Rez is functionally a removal of the first QOL adjustment to Rez.
- Mercy has a period of time where she’s vulnerable while Rezzing.
- Rez is not refunded, and now that it’s a 30 second cooldown ability
These are near identical. The only differences between Single Rez and Mass Rez, is obviously in the name… single vs. multiple.
So why is Blizzard ignoring Mercy players’ feedback?
- As someone who participated in the first-ever quarantine thread for Widowmaker almost 2 years ago, I guarantee they stopped reading feedback. They can’t possibly read all of the posts about Mercy, it has grown too large to parse all of the feedback, right now it’s just garbage collection.
Regardless of if they’re reading feedback, it doesn’t make sense for them to go back to using balancing decisions that were previously ruled out by Closed Beta participants’ feedback…
Keep in mind, “pure balance” is not the end goal for balancing. Medium maximization leads to unsatisfactory results. Almost invariably so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsC8io4w1sY
Let’s look closer at the whole situation involving Mass Rez.
- All of Mercy’s worth was determined by her teammates demanding she save for 5 player Rezzes. And then subsequently flaming her when she was unable to do so, because it was rare and difficult.
- Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; 5 player Rezzes were rare, lucky, and extremely risky.
- Tempo Rezzing (reviving only 2 or 3 teammates, and constantly using your Rez wherever possible instead of saving it) was much safer and more practical (as evidenced by the fact that Single Rez w/ Rez Token ended up being way more broken…)
- Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; 5 player Rezzes were rare, lucky, and extremely risky.
Hiding, and saying “die on point”, was literally the only way you could properly achieve a 5 player Rez because otherwise teammates would be too far away from Mercy to get revived.
This “negative playstyle” exists only because of Mercy’s teammates, yet somehow in virtually every single Mercy-related thread, non-Mercy players are deflecting this back onto Mercy, saying it’s detrimental because Mercy has to stop healing and hide.
She wouldn’t have to hide, if players didn’t demand, and place so much worth in, 5 player Rez.
If players could have actually seen value in Tempo Rezzing instead of 5 player Rez, and get value of each Rez used, then this rework would have never happened.
The widespread hate of 5 player Rez was generated from a stupidly absurd demand from non-Mercy players that she get a 5 player Rez in every match.
It’s physically impossible to get a 5 player Rez in every match, in legitimate matches.
Single Rez (and Rez Token) which resulted in a higher overall Rez count per game, has proven to be way more “unbalanced” than Mass Rez ever was.
Rez was meant for Tempo Rezzing. Single Rez now achieves that, but with really poor execution that literally nullifies all of the post-launch buffs/QOL improvements to aid Mercy in her usage of Mass Rez.
Which begs the question, why are those still in the game?
I’d like to personally drop my two cents here; as a flex player (with a DPS preference no less) who had to bite the bullet too many times to count…
I played Mercy in the bulk of Season 3-5 and I feel like Valkyrie and the rebalances of Single Rez, have been a complete and utter failure, specifically because of the underlined section above.
Mercy may be “balanced” currently, but that balance was achieved by going back to Closed Beta – using the same direction that Mercy players were against in that 11 day patch cycle for Closed Beta.
It’s pretty clear that all of the Mercy changes exist, not because Mercy players begged for them, but because Blizzard had to buff her in order for her player to meet the demands of teammates (non-Mercy players).
There was a constant external pressure from non-Mercy players for her to always get 5-player Rezzes, and then backlash from those same exact players being upset for getting exactly what they wanted.
And now this apparently final change that makes her feel like trudging through mud, is also because of non-Mercy players demands.
Instead of a middle ground compromise, instead of reducing Mass Rez’s impact by doing any number of the following Mercy feedback suggestions;
- spawning Mass Rezzed teammates with low health
- reducing the number of Mass Rezzed teammates
- forcing a line of sight check on Mass Rez so she can’t hide and get the full effect of Mass Rez
- “Spin and Rez” making Mercy have to manually GA to each individual teammate to revive them, on a timer
Instead of any of those, we’re stuck with clunkiness from Closed Beta that was clearly never meant to leave Closed Beta, with a now (if they leave it like this) unrecoverable drop in revived teammates per match… coupled with an afterthought of enhanced healing/damage on a 15 second timer.
And that’s a damn shame, really.