Respawning is a mechanic in Overwatch 2, which allows players to automatically come back to life without intervention of other players briefly after being eliminated by the enemy team, environment or by special game mechanics in custom games. A player may also respawn by the use of Mercy's 
Resurrect ability, which revives the player at the location of their death.
Respawn timer
When a player is eliminated, they will initiate a 12 second respawn timer, which upon ending causes the hero to automatically respawn in their team's spawn room. Wave Respawn can decrease this timer when active. During overtime, the heroes' respawn timers are increased and Wave Respawn is disabled.
Following game modes alter the default respawn time:
- In Push game mode, the team's respawn time is increased by an additional 2 seconds, while their forward spawn is active. Additionally, when a checkpoint is captured, any dead players on the defending team will respawn after 3 seconds.
- In Clash game mode, the respawn time of the defending team gets reduced by 2 seconds on the final point for each segment captured by the enemy team.
- In Capture the Flag and CTF Blitz they will initiate a 13 second or 5 second respawn timer.
Wave Respawn
Wave Respawn is a feature introduced in Season 12[1]. It replaces Group Respawn, while also being implemented into competitive game modes and extending the default respawn timer to 12 seconds. It functions in the following way:
- A new Wave is started when the first hero on a team dies.
- Any hero that dies within 6 seconds of the wave in 5v5 game modes or within 3 seconds in 6v6 game modes joins that wave.
- A hero joining that wave will respawn at the same time as the hero that started the wave. This means that respawn times can be as long as 12 seconds if the heroes died at the same time, or as short as 6 seconds if they died at the end of that wave.
- If a hero starts a wave and nobody joins that wave when the respawn timer reaches the threshold, the respawn timer is subtracted by 2, and they respawn in 10 seconds.
- Wave Respawn is disabled while Overtime is active.
- Wave Respawn is disabled in Escort and Hybrid while the payload is near the end of the track.
Spawn rooms
- Main article: Spawn Room
Upon respawning, the players will spawn in spawn rooms. Spawn room locations and when you unlock another spawn, change throughout the game, one example of this is on the push maps where a forward spawn can be earned by pushing halfway to the opposing side's checkpoint.
Respawning in Deathmatch
On any Deathmatch mode, the respawn timer can be skipped at the 3 second mark by pressing Jump. Additionally, since there is no single spawn area, players will respawn at one of the pre-determined locations on the map. The locations are not fully random, but are specific spots on the map, and depend on the other players' current position.
History
Attacker advantage timer
Attacker advantage timer was a mechanic in Overwatch that increased the respawn timers of the defending team when attackers outnumber defenders on an objective in Assault, Escort and Hybrid maps. It has been removed in Overwatch 2.[2]
While this timer was above 10 seconds, the defenders' respawn time started gradually increasing, up to a maximum of 5.0 seconds increase at ~33 seconds. If the advantage was not maintained on the objective, the timer would start ticking in reverse instead. This delay also stacked with the overtime delay of 3 seconds, resulting in a maximum possible respawn time of 18 seconds.[3]
Group respawn
Group respawn was a mechanic in non-competitive game modes, causing players who are eliminated close to each other to respawn together. This results in some players having either a slightly longer or shorter queue than the standard 10 seconds. The purpose of group respawn is to reduce snowballing that happens due to uncoordinated teams being unable to group up by themselves.[4] Group respawn was replaced by Wave Respawn mechanic in Season 12.
Group respawn is checked and applied immediately whenever a player is eliminated. If the eliminated player's respawn timer is within 5 seconds of the previous eliminated player, group respawn will trigger, causing the respawn timers of all affected players to be averaged out. Group respawn does not happen if the match is in Overtime.[5]
For example, players A and B die within 4 seconds of each other. When player B is eliminated, player A's death timer is currently at 6 seconds. As the two players are within 5 seconds, group respawn will trigger, causing both players respawn timers to be set to 8 seconds.
Group respawn can trigger in succession, meaning that it can also affect a previous respawn group. Continuing from the previous example, assume player C is eliminated 2 seconds after player B. When C is eliminated, the remaining respawn timers of A and B are at 6 seconds. This is within 5 seconds of C's respawn timer (10 seconds), so a group respawn will trigger again and all three players have their respawn timer set to 7.33 seconds. In this example, although player A and C were more than 5 seconds apart by themselves, the group respawn between A and B brought A into the range of group respawn of C, causing all three to spawn together.
References
- ↑ 2024-08-16. Director’s Take: Competitive Updates for Season 12. Gavin Winter, Blizzard Entertainment, accessed on 2024-08-16
- ↑ CloverFour (2023-09-09). TIME MECHANICS in Overwatch 2.
- ↑ 2018-09-04. How OVERTIME & RESPAWN MECHANICS work in Overwatcch. KarQ.
- ↑ October 10, 2023 Patch Notes
- ↑ CactusPuppy (2023-11-11). A deep dive into how respawn waves work in Overwatch 2. Retrieved on July 2, 2024.
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