So I’ve been playing a fair bit of Ana lately, doing pretty good on healing averaging about 60-80K per game and hitting 100K in very good games. BUT is it just me or do most of her talents feel so not worth taking? Every game I play Ana I just take the following build:
This is a solid build, however Sharpshooter is quite risky sometimes as one single miss is enough to reset it entirely.
I would say try replacing that talent with concentrated doses, when used with piercing darts and overdose, it’s surprisingly a big heal impact especially when it removes root and slow.
Somnolent Doses @ lvl 20 is also great if you ever found yourself getting dived hard, it also has a massive synergy with Overdose, when done right she can sleep the target multiple times with mini stuns and secure kills much better.
Mind numbing is really depends on what team are you against, if let’s say you are against an AA team i would recommend blind darts @ lvl 7 as it will have a way better impact than mind numbing, the other talent that reduces all damage and slow down a single target definitely has potential as it puts frontiers and assassins trying to escape to deal less damage and move at half of the speed.
Consider Grenade Calibration if there are multile melee heroes in the game – does not matter if on your or the enemy team – or your team has multiple heroes with self sustain like Sonya, DB Varian, Malthael and so on. It is very strong especially with Contact Healing on 16 and Air Strike for cooldown reduction.
Mind Numbing is usefull if their damage runs mostly on abilities or you want to cut down their healer even more. For teams whose main damage source is basic attacks, the blind.
For enemy teams who can deal both physical and ability damage go the 50% damage reducion/snare talent. Actually i often prefer this one over the blind as it is independent of Sleeping Darts, so you can put one or two to sleep and make a second or third deal lowered damage.
Nano is sure nice, but not all teams have a good target and on large maps Eye of Horus can be a live safer.
Nice to see not everyone going blindly for the speed talent. I agree that the stun removal is hard as stuns tend to not last long, but if their team has say a Muradin/Diablo and a Kerrigan it can be worth it. Almost a mandatory pick if Diablo/Uther uses the stun heroic or they have a capable Gazlowe due to the long stuns.
SOlid pick especially if you can´t go too close to keep doses applied, but especially with Overdose and the dart build getting 6+ doses for some seconds can make Concentrated Doses worth even then. I already mentioned the merrits of the Grenade build above.
Both solid if you have a good target for Nano or picked at least one of Mind Numbing or Concentrated Doses; otherwise i´d go for Somnolent if you need a non-skillshot CC or for the Horus upgrade, the splash makes a big difference in it´s usefullnes.
As rcw mentioned grenade build can be great and I feel generally very underrated. I’ve been using it a lot lately and have put out more raw healing with that build than a piercing build.
The aoe burst healing you can get at 16 with a grenade build is intense on a fairly short cool down and the 12 seconds of increased healing it provides after the quest is done is just fantastic, the uptime on it is crazy.
Yeah, I pretty much use your build, except I generally go Horus instead of Nano Boost. If the map is small and doesn’t have many opportunities to split push like Tomb, I might forgo Horus, but I just find Horus more fun, and the level 20 upgrade is actually really good for team fights.
I’ve tried grenade build, and it is useful. I’m sure if I practiced with it more and understood the healing synergy with certain comps, it would be a good choice. However, I’m just more comfortable with the extra range on piercing, and the double sleep is really useful.
How exactly do you use Horus in a teamfight? As you root yourself in place i would always stay quite a bit back to prevent dives, but this creates a gap in healing when i try to close in again once it’s over.
Well, for team fights, you’re generally going to be using Horus about the same as you would if you didn’t have Horus. Though the range is beneficial, if you’re too far back, there’s no point, most heroes have trouble getting to a smartly positioned Ana even without Horus, there’s no need to additionally handicap yourself from being too far after all your shots are gone.
If the fight keeps drifting further and further away from you, it might be problematic, but Horus, believe it or not, actually is a healing CD, it generally tops people up long enough for a few seconds to stabilize their health, which often gives you enough time to just run back into battle and continue with regular healing.
If people are clumping, it not only heals, but also damages enemies. So it works amazingly well regardless of who is doing the clumping. And because of the splash, even if you are rooted, you can just use it pointblank on yourself even if you’re being attacked, and you’re able to take a surprising amount of hits and you suddenly have that burst self heal that you don’t normally have.
Depends on my team comp, lots of melee with self sustain I go grenade. Lots of melee low self sustain and I think I can finish dbm quickly I take dbm at 1 then your build, neither of the above being true, I go with the standard build.
lvl 1: Piercing Darts Detachable Box Magazine is a trap talent. Never take it
take grenade if your team has a lot of self sustain heroes like leoric or sonya, or if the enemy team or your team has 2 healers.
lvl 4: Overdose.
Take Air strike if you took Grenade Calibration
lvl 7: Temporary Blindness/ Mind-Numbing Agent.
depends if they have mostly AA or mages
lvl 10: Nanoboost
Never take Eye of Horus. It’s one of the worst heroics in the game.
lvl 13: Depends on what they have, if the enemy team is lacking in heavy CC/Roots/Slows than go with Speed Serum.
lvl 16: Sharp Shooter.
Take Contact healing if you went with Grenade Calibration
Concentrated Doses is a trap talent. On paper it sounds good especially if you took Overdose. But in practice the doses that you are applying are not as reliable as just shooting your Q off with Sharp Shooter. When you complete Piercing darts (hopefully before lvl 13) you should be putting yourself in the very far backline so that you can heal your team reliably without ever having to worry about getting dived on.
Lvl 20: Nano Infusion.
Side Note: if Ballistic Advantage was baseline than Eye of Horus would actually be a good pick. Everything else is a meme talent or a trap talent.
Other advice/info:
If you are unable to reliably hit your Q more than 90% of the time than Ana really isn’t for you. Same thing for if you are unable to consistently complete Piercing Darts before lvl 16.
The best time to complete is at or before lvl 13 because that is when you darts get a powerspike but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t finish it before lvl 13. But if you don’t ever complete/only complete it lvl 20+ than you should not be playing Ana.
Don’t take Detachable Box Magazine. It’s one of the worst talents in the game.
I will fight tills the ends of the earth until all Ana players stop taking Detachable Box Magazine.
Grenade build is my favorite, and is just just as good as a piercing darts build if not better. It has superior self-sustain and is better vs dive.
Level 1 talent: Grenade Calibration. The 10-hit reward is useful as anti-dive as the damage increase is per ally & enemy hero hit, meaning it can chunk a line diver in the middle of your team. The final 20-hit reward is more important to grenade build though; increased healing area and extended duration of/all sources benefiting from healing amplification. The former makes it easy to hit your entire team with the grenade and the latter increases healing to your team regardless of who/how.
Level 4 talent: Air Strike. The cdr is very nice, as you can now have 100% uptime on the healing amp, but there’s more to the talent than that. The range allows you to give a heal from very far, and it can also be used to check bosses/enemy camps (last I checked, it’s possible to check both bosses from the midland of Cursed Hollow using Air Strike). Then there’s a cool trick I’ll share: if you get your team to stand in Air Strike’s AoE it’s possible to have a regular grenade’s healing amplified by the Air Strike, giving Ana strong AoE healing.
Level 7: Almost always Debilitating Dart. It’s on only a 20 second cooldown, and gives Ana another CC tool to peel for allies or enable kills.
Level 10: I go Nanoboost if my team has an awesome mage or someone like Cho’Gall that strongly benefits from it, but Eye of Horus is not as bad as people say it is (especially paired with grenade build). It’s global healing on a 45 second cooldown, that can be amplified via Air Strike, and can also be used for kill confirmation. The level 20 gives Ana another tool vs dive thanks to the AoE, or just allows it to heal someone in the middle of a big fight.
Level 14 is a situational tier. The slow/root removal is my usual pick as both are very common, but stun removal is great vs stuff like Murky’s Octograb. Movespeed if neither is particularly great that game.
Level 16: Contact Healing. This is where the build gets to be really good, as Ana can now crank out very strong AoE healing that increases if an enemy is hit. A lone diver has an incredibly difficult time killing me once I get this talent.
Level 20: I go either heroic upgrade or the attack speed. The latter is mostly for-fun if we’re winning.
Eye of Horus is a GODLY ultimate, and I only–ONLY–take Nano Boost if I’m coordinating with someone on voice. It’s a complete and total waste otherwise, and you really need an opportunistic lockdown on your team to make it work well.
Before they destroyed Box Magazine I would’ve said it was the best level 1 (to which I debated with my support main friend about this a lot). Unfortunately, Blizzard remorselessly gutted that talent into oblivion, and it lost all purpose. Prior to that, I liked having the burst-triage, and why I like Eye of Horus so much. Horus is especially good on split objective maps, since you can assist two objectives simultaneously, and often times win both with proper play. Furthermore, your shots are instantaneous during Eye of Horus–no need to worry about your target juking, so aim well.
that’s pretty much the standard build, I think. Some things, though:
-I’ll go the blind at 7 if they have a lot of aa, or if we have a cassia.
-I almost never go smelling salts unless I absolutely have to. I never seem to see a stun when my (Q) is off cooldown, and rarely react fast enough to take advantage of it when it does happen. But debilitating darts is pointless if they don’t have slows.
-sometimes I’ll take Concentrated Doses at 16 if I took Overdose at 4. Or if we have a lot of hypermobiles and heroes who need to stutter step.
-I’ll go a (W) build if we have a lot of self-healing. It basically turns Ana into a sort-of Alexstraza. Use your (1) not for the range, but for the wind-up, so people know where the heal/buff is going to be. The cooldown is the same in either case, and what is basically a permanent 25% healing buff works well for any self-healing hero, or in a dual-support comp. Plus, refreshing it in the middle of a battle is fun, as it also debuffs whoever your allies are attacking in melee range.
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