Have you considered changing the revive mechanic to remove the revived unit from the revive pool (until they die again)? You would still have access to the current design space with the wording "Revive a copy of..." but it would clearly distinguish between spells and abilities that allow duplication from the default assumption that you can't raise the dead if they're not currently dead.
I've talked to our design team about this a couple times - their goal here is to match player expectation as much as possible. Unfortunately from the playtesting we did, we found player expectation in the case of what can be revived to usually be "whatever helps me the most in this current game state", particularly when it came to reviving an anivia that is "in play" as eggnivia. I'm pretty sure it's b/c of this that the current leaning is "let cards do as much as possible"
riot_kuaggie
A+ memes aside, we hear you and we’ve changed this in an upcoming patch. Champions will have to have died in order for the rekindler to summon them
riot_kuaggie
I've talked to our design team about this a couple times - their goal here is to match player expectation as much as possible. Unfortunately from the playtesting we did, we found player expectation in the case of what can be revived to usually be "whatever helps me the most in this current game state", particularly when it came to reviving an anivia that is "in play" as eggnivia. I'm pretty sure it's b/c of this that the current leaning is "let cards do as much as possible"