Editing Respawn (section)

=== 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.<ref name="GroupResPatch">[[October 10, 2023 Patch#Group respawn|October 10, 2023 Patch Notes]]</ref> Group respawn was replaced by Wave Respawn mechanic in [[Season|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]].<ref name="CactusPuppy">{{Cite web|url=https://youtu.be/ffhp0yfRPpk|title= A deep dive into how respawn waves work in Overwatch 2 |author=CactusPuppy|date=2023-11-11|accessdate=2024-07-02}}</ref>

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 {{tt|6 seconds|10s - 4s}}. As the two players are within 5 seconds, group respawn will trigger, causing both players respawn timers to be set to {{tt|8 seconds| (10s + 6s) / 2 }}.

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 {{tt|6 seconds|8s - 2s}}. 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 {{tt|7.33 seconds|(6s + 6s + 10s)/3}}. 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.