Despite repeated nerfs to her since being reworked, Mercy remains a viable healer at nearly all levels of the competitive ladder, largely thanks to her Resurrect ability. On a 30 second cooldown, Resurrect can swing the momentum of a teamfight in a way comparable to an Ultimate. However, despite the ability’s simple concept, there are many nuances that one should know. Below are two of the concepts that all Mercy players should be familiar with.

Risk vs. Reward

In Overwatch, you are forced to make thousands of little decisions during a game that determine whether you win or lose. Almost all of these decisions, whether you realize it or not, are guided by a quick analysis of risk versus reward, and Mercy’s resurrection is no exception. In the span of a few seconds or less, you need to be able to determine if performing a resurrection is worth the risk it brings. In some instances, this decision might be a no-brainer, but others are not so clear. The following are a couple of things that one should always keep in mind when thinking of the risk versus reward of any given resurrection.

One simple, yet commonly overlooked, aspect of Resurrect is the fact that you cannot be healing your team for the 1.75 seconds it takes to perform a resurrection. And, in compositions where Mercy is the main source of healing, not being able to heal your team for 1.75 seconds can have detrimental consequences. I cannot count how many times where I stop healing to resurrect someone and have one to three team members die in that space of 1.75 seconds. Although I was able to get the Resurrect off, there was actually a net loss of value due to the fact that more team members died. In order to avoid this situation, you need to have a good feel for the tempo in a team fight. There are certainly slower times in a fight when you can afford to stop healing and Resurrect. With practice, knowing when these times are can become second nature and should be for a high-level Mercy player in order to prevent unnecessary deaths.

Another prevalent risk for resurrections is having to peek enemy DPS sightlines to get to your fallen teammate. In order to make the proper decision, one must first be aware of where the enemy’s sightlines are. Therefore, keeping track of where the biggest threats to you are should become common practice. Once you know where these threats can kill you from, it makes it much easier to use alternate routes to get to a dead teammate and resurrect them.

In addition, choosing whether or not to peek a sightline depends on what rank you play at. For example, Widowmaker is among the greatest threats to a Mercy flying across the battlefield to resurrect someone. However, in ranks Platinum and below, flying through a Widowmaker sightline typically can be gotten away with due to their inability to land consistent headshots. In Diamond, this becomes a much riskier proposition, but can still usually be pulled off. In Master and above, it would almost never be recommended to peek a Widowmaker sightline because they will more often than not one-shot you. Generally speaking, if you have a decent doubt that you will be killed by peeking a sightline, do not go for the resurrection. Thinking of risk versus reward, it is almost always more worth it for you to be alive and healing your team than going for a risky Resurrect, dying and putting your team at a further disadvantage in the fight.

What to Do While Resurrecting:

Although while in the resurrection animation Mercy has her movement speed cut by 75%, there are still many things you can do during the 1.75 seconds it takes to Resurrect. First and foremost is to keep yourself alive, which can be accomplished in various ways despite the severe movement speed reduction. If you’re forced to perform a resurrection in the middle of a teamfight with no cover (which is not a recommended idea in the first place), among the best things you can do is to spin quickly in every direction. The goal of this strategy is to move Mercy’s hitbox as much as possible, hoping that it does just enough to cause a shot to miss. Although there is little chance that this will affect a body shot aimed at you, it can make it particularly frustrating to land a deadly headshot. At the lower ranks of the competitive ladder, spinning in such a manner will make it nearly impossible for someone to headshot you. However, if you are playing in Diamond and above, you will likely not see as much success out of this strategy.

During a resurrection that you know the angle where a potential threat will come from, you can do something even more effective than spinning erratically. Facing the opposite direction of the threat with your character model looking at the floor will make your head hitbox much smaller, potentially saving your life. In addition to making your head hitbox smaller, this technique also changes the level at which your head will be at, further complicating a shot from your opponents who are accustomed to Mercy’s head being at a consistent level.

In an ideal game, you will never have to resort to these two relatively drastic strategies when resurrecting because you will never attempt a resurrection where your life is in danger. Therefore, if you are not in danger while resurrecting, you should use the time to look at other places on the screen, searching for information on the enemy and relaying it to your team. One of the worst things you can do, and as tends to happen at lower ranks, is stare at the space on the screen where you are resurrecting your teammate. By doing this, you are accomplishing nothing during the 1.75 seconds it takes to resurrect. As a support, you want to maximize your actions per minute, which is something that can be accomplished even while resurrecting.

In addition to gathering information on the enemy team while resurrecting, you can also take the time to plan your next move. Perhaps you feel you will be in danger immediately after completing the resurrection, in which case you should have an exit strategy (i.e. look for a teammate to fly to for safety). If there is nowhere to fly to, then it is essential that you relay this information to your teammates and ask them to get a line of sight on you so you can fly to them. In most situations, Mercy is the most important hero on the battlefield and thus you should be doing everything in your power to keep yourself alive.

Resurrection Timing: Early

Out of all abilities in the game, not counting ultimates, Resurrection has the longest cooldown timer at 30 seconds. Therefore the times at which you use the ability to become a crucial skill in and of itself. Generally speaking, there are two main times where getting off a resurrection can grant the most value, right after death and near the end of the death timer.

Resurrecting immediately after death can work particularly well at the lower ranks of the competitive ladder. The idea behind this timing is to catch the enemy off guard. Once someone kills a hero, they move on to look for their next target, meaning that they shift their attention away from the spot where your ally had just died. You can then take advantage of this by quickly flying in and resurrecting your teammate. However, the higher you get up in the competitive ranks, the more difficult it becomes to perform a resurrection at this time. In many cases, if the enemy team is aware of your team having a Mercy, they will camp your teammates' dead bodies. That is, they will either send someone to stand by the body until they respawn, dissuading a Mercy from flying in to Resurrect, or they will have a damage character maintain line of sight on the body to kill the Mercy if she tries to Resurrect. In both cases, it is highly recommended to not attempt a resurrection.

Another reason resurrecting immediately after death proves valuable is if the death happens before a team fight even starts. Particularly when playing against enemy snipers (Widowmaker, Hanzo, Ashe), a teamfight will begin after one of your teammates has been picked off from afar, thus prompting the enemy to engage. The resulting 5v6 fight will likely not result in your favor, however, you can negate this advantage of your enemy with Mercy’s resurrection. If you can get off the resurrection before the enemy has the chance to engage, you can then take the teamfight at full strength, greatly increasing your chances of winning.

If you Resurrect before a fight starts, this also gives you the opportunity to potentially get another Resurrect near the end of or at the end of the next teamfight. This becomes particularly useful in cases where your team is at a respawn disadvantage, such as when defending on two capture point maps. Your team could have won the last teamfight, but if the last person on your team to die fell late and is slow to get back from spawn, the enemy team could quickly regroup and re-engage while you are down a person. However, you could use your resurrection on the last person to die in the fight to prevent this scenario from happening.

Resurrection Timing: Late

Resurrecting near the end of your teammate’s death timer can also provide great value and is also made possible for very much the same reasons you can resurrect right after someone dies. In the seven seconds it takes for a teammate to respawn, a lot can happen in a game of Overwatch. Unless the enemy is intentionally camping a dead body, they will likely have moved on from the position where your teammate fell, making it possible for you to resurrect.

Sometimes these resurrections have among the greatest impacts, especially onto a damage character, because they usually occur in the mid-late phases of a teamfight after the enemy has already burned many of their cooldowns and likely is not at full health. The last thing an enemy will expect at the end of a team fight is a full-health damage hero with all his cooldowns being pocketed by a Mercy. This element of surprise combined with the already weakened state the enemy typically is in at the end a team fight can work strongly in your favor, turning a lost fight into a winning one.

However, unlike resurrecting shortly after a teammate’s death, there are more stipulations attached to resurrecting late in the death timer, particularly if you are resurrecting into a losing fight. Sometimes it is more useful for you to escape without having used resurrection rather than stay and resurrect a teammate into a fight that was already lost. Doing so will only delay the time it takes for your team to group up because they will now have to wait for both you and the person you resurrected to die and respawn.

Especially when there is little time left in a game, you must be able to identify whether or not it is worth it to Resurrect a teammate into a losing fight. As a general rule of thumb, any teamfights that are most likely lost that occur with 30-60 seconds left in the game, it is not worth it to resurrect a teammate. Rather, you should call for your team to do a hard reset and regroup for one final push. Continuing to fight at that point will only waste precious seconds you need to regroup.

However, if there are less than 30 seconds left in the game and a teammate dies during a teamfight, you do not have enough time to regroup and thus, if it is appropriate, going for a resurrection is recommended. Although, in this situation, keeping yourself alive is much more important than bringing a teammate back into a fight for the reasons described in the Risk vs. Reward section of the article.

Who to Resurrect?

One final tip on resurrections centers around explaining which heroes are most valuable to resurrect when. As with most things in Overwatch, the answer to this question is situational, but there are a few generalizations that can be made about it which apply to most situations.

As a broad answer, you will always want to resurrect the person who will have the greatest impact on the given situation facing your team. When trying to stall a point, prioritize resurrecting tanks or damage characters with shifty movement abilities (Tracer, Genji, Sombra). In some scenarios, you might want to resurrect a support to stall the point longer, such as when your Zenyatta has Transcendence or your Lucio has Sound Barrier. However, in most cases, tanks will be your best bet to stall a point longer due to their high health pools and damage mitigating abilities.

When in the middle of a team fight, you will want to prioritize resurrecting damage characters, particularly ones that are popping off. In some cases, you might even think about saving your resurrection for a damage hero, even if there is another member of your team that is dead and in a position to resurrect. In a vacuum, damage characters have the greatest impact on team fights given their specific task to kill the enemy. Therefore, keeping them alive and bringing them back to life should be a high priority for Mercy players.

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