Ana ought to get some buffs

General Discussion
1

Would be nice to see some small tweaks to Ana… her lvl 1 quest talent is basically useless. I had close to 300 stacks on ARAM with that talent and it barely self-heals anything.

Change the level 1 talent to buff her Q instead of it buffing Shrike self-heal.
This would reward her AA stacking with increased healing on her Q.

Or maybe make her AA’s reduce the delay between shots of her Q or something.

Better yet remove the cooldown on her shrike mode switch so that u can instantly switch between long range and close range.

Doesn’t have to be all at once, could be one of them. Just want her to feel more smooth when playing her. Too clunky atm…
I mean I’m saying out loud “Come’on, Come’on Come’on, hurry up hurry up” between every shot of Q… cuz there’s a delay between shots. Just feels too awkward.

2

The problem isn’t the level 1, but her trait, it’s a very conflicting design.

So Ana is… A ranged healer VERY ranged.

Who has essentially an extremely powerful kit by design, her range can shift strats a lot because she’s very much in a very safe distance.

Her AA and trait are completely irrelevant and do nothing worthy in the long run. The sustain is like a joke of confliction, you are suppose to be VULNERABLE when doved, so the sustain makes no sense, also you literally avoid the same amount of damage better and more effectively by being far away.

Overall, her trait should be dumped, it’s not great and causes a lot of issues in her design, the only thing holding it is the mind numbing agent plus overdose which is also an effect that can be done from range.

This is like the only reason other than Q suffers from hard punishing effective healing per second when you miss, which is fair but could be a little bit more forgiving.

Fix those and she will be ok.

3 Likes
3

We have to look back at her history for this one. Prior to shrike, the only form of self sustain was her grenades. Her grenades are so loaded with utility, not only for aoe healing and healing buffs, but also the kill securing of anti-heal. Being forced to use grenade on herself felt like a massive waste of its potential.

The introduction of an additional form of self sustain was very welcome. Shrike is weak yes, but as you said, her survivability mainly comes from her long range. Shrike just slowly tops herself up from any incidental damage she may receive.

Applying the poison is certainly high skill with very little reward, but on a positive note im glad that it’s weak.

Hear me out…

Ana has a high skill floor. She’s very hard to play. A player who is new to her can miss so many skill shots that her healing output suffers considerably. The fact that shrike is so weak means that new players can literally ignore that activity and focus purely on what’s important, landing healing darts.

As you become more and more comfortable with ana you can begin to weave in more offensive stuff. This contributes to the high skill ceiling.

Compare this to a hero like Tyrande who MUST be aggressive or else suffer considerable loss in healing output as a result. I would hate to enforce that kind of restriction on top of all the other things ana needs to do.

I highly recommend you stay as far away as you can from playing Uther. Ana is crazy spam in comparison.

1 Like
4

yeah, i agree

5

No, there’s legitimate nothing worth whole to be in range of AA as Ana, as Tyrande you can self heal, mark someone, harsh moonlight, stun them directly if they jump on you and starfall and even shadowstalk to dodge an effectively potential engage.

Ana has only a grenade and some sustain and her entire kit effectively doesn’t interact with herself outside of level 1, only components that makes her more team reliant, she’s not suppose to be literally in range of someone, this “once you get good at her” is nonsense at her case.

Her trait is fundamentally flawed and doesn’t do anything worth while outside of mind numbing, the reason her 1 is bad because being out of range very much gives the same sustain value of… Not getting damaged to begin with.

2 Likes
6

The talent is to help her with self-healing. Unlike most healers, she is very bad at doing that.

Except being far away you deal 0 damage from auto attacking. Yes she is not an auto attack hero like Raynor, but any damage is better than no damage. This applies to Morales who is also an extremely weak auto attack hero, you still get some additional value from attacking even if not much.

Her auto attacks are not to be under estimated. Reaching 5 stacks is 200 level 0 damage worth of DoT on the target that cannot really be shaken off once applied. Aim down sights also pushes her attack range to 8.125 which is considerably longer than most auto attack heroes so she is reasonably safe to auto attack. As healer she might be a high priority target, but Sleep Dart neutralises dives quite effectively if it lands so she has fairly reasonable defence against dives.

Where her AA really starts to shine is with the level 7 talent Mind-Numbing Agent. -50% spell power just for reaching 5 stacks on a target. Auto attack their main DPS caster and there goes 50% of their damage. Auto attack their healer and there goes 50% of their healing. Due to how the mechanic works she just needs to tap someone with auto attack every 5 seconds to keep the debuff active so it is possible to get 2 to 3 enemies afflicted by it at which stage the enemy team is at an extreme disadvantage and is certain to lose any engagement unless they can peel and let the debuff expire.

And then at level 20 there is Dynamic Optics. This turns her auto attack well into back line ranged. It also increases her rate of fire by a silly amount. At this stage inflicting 5 doses is trivial and Ana can easily shut down key spell casting players with the -50% debuff. With Vampiric Rounds at this stage her self healing can be in the hundreds of health per second, pretty much cancelling out most sustain damage thrown at her.

1 Like
7

Interesting reading through the posts…
I think Ana is effectively a healer for micro-intensive bronze players.

Most of my spectacular matches with her are when - due to lack of stutter stepping, and / or very beefy sized teammates - I have a very high (90-95%) hit rating with Q, even double. She is like Li Li with permanent Jugs. I love when my team just commits while minimizing stutter. (She is not alone, good Whitemane and Anduin players can squeeze out crazy sustain, too.)

I guess the same applies some way to AA. Allowing her to stack, making it safer, and then stacking further. My own win rate is a solid 0% with that approach but Fan has entertaining examples.

High rank players reduce her hit rating and of course will dive her. On the upside it’s something the team can count on (endless Illidan / Ana trades), even use her as a bait.

Thing is, I’m not sure I’d want to trade.
I’m worried about neutralization. Yes, the talent is trash, but I like that I can play a Q monster. Yes, 4/10 this season but overall still happy.

Just like Malfurion the other way around, he could use that 20 talent baseline to restore WoW-like Regrowth like good old times, at the expense of, umm, yea, remove Moonfire. I mean, back to 2015 version, thank you very much.

I would probably take a change to Ana where her AA is purely healing. The damage is quite irrelevant as is, the heal only really stacks up when taking a merc camp slowly, so yea.

2 Likes
8

The poison that needs time to set up and puts Ana in a dangerous position to be destroyed is something to be underestimate it?

Ana is played from range because she’s extremely vulnerable outside of this.

So yes, her AA poison and trait mechanic are fundamentally flawed and prep time for a rather underwhelming DPS that needs… couple of seconds to be in effect isn’t worth the long while. This basically circulates to Lunara’s poison, just because it goes big over 9 seconds doesn’t mean targets are going to die fast.

You are an advocating an entire sustain build without considering that most people are nuking others so quickly that this sustain is literally as effective against poor quality matches.

9

Ana is one of those characters where it’s clear characters are not balanced around ARAM. She’s great in objective fights and keeping 1/2 people alive (such as the three man bot meta of Towers of Doom) but is really hard in ARAM. Balance wise I really wouldn’t want her to be much more numerically strong healing/damage wise (since her utility is great) but I could see some HP buffs and a buff to Eye of Horus (this ult is so bad)

10

Her Q CD is already the fastest aside from Whitemane. It’s just not healing enough in today’s meta. The problem as in most things in the game balance wise, power creep left her behind over time. There’s way more CC, everyone’s AOE generally got better, which means more people require more AOE healing, and hers did not improve, while other healers who lack AOE generally did. Characters also move 10% faster. Her heal output in general is just bad unless you’re always piercing which isn’t realistic.

An easy fix would be to just buff her Q to at least bring her in line with the one thing she should be good at, which is healing. That would alleviate the issue where it just feels like her Qs aren’t coming in fast enough. That would be a simple change that is realistic in maintenance mode. Though I’m really surprised they haven’t touched her after the LiLi, Nova, Medivh changes.

But what Sami says is kind of true, her trait is just a weird part of her kit, and would ideally require a deeper rework. For me, it’s not so much the shrike though, that can just be a bonus to get some self heals. With some changes, a more aggressive playstyle could work though, and it has in the past in different metas.

My issue is more aim down sights, which has a movement speed penalty that caps your skill ceiling. Not only does it make lining up shots harder, but it’s extremely prohibitive for falling back, because then your allies just run behind you which is a disaster for her heal output and leaves you vulnerable. This basically means you have to almost always have forward momentum which means you by default just are so much better than the other team for Ana to do well.

That being said they can buff shrike/vampiric a little.

Think some changes:
-Buff Q slightly
-Make her heal 10% wider to slightly decrease her skill floor.
-Reduce aim down sight CD, and have a stacking buff on Q to reduce its movement speed penalty.
-Allow aim down sight to increase AA range by .5.
-Change vampiric to make stacking quest dings after 5 doses on combination of any target. Add questing tiers, so if you complete X amount of stacks, you get .5 range bonus and 25% range on Q and E without having to be in aim down sights.
-16 TIER:

  1. Remove Speed Serum, bake the functionality into Anti Healer (but still requiring Q after grenade).
  2. Change Smelling Salts to an active on a medium CD that gives you a separate grenade CD clears stuns and gives armor if cleared, but ALSO gives you 25% run speed for 2 seconds. If you get stunned during this duration you also get 50% armor.
    -Her 20’s could also be a bit more varied.

She actually performs slightly better in ARAM because of the nature of the map where it’s just one direction where your allies are on one side and enemies are on the other which sort of just naturally aligns to the advantages of her pierce healing. But because she’s weak overall, she’s still one of the worse performing healers.

2 Likes
11

Only time I’ve ever had success with her in ARAM was playing as second healer, unscoped majority of the time (until 20), nade build, where I basically played like a budget Lunara

Def not my thing, glad someone with expertise chipped in.

12

She is already more back line than the auto attack DPS. Again, more range than Raynor or Hanzo… Yes enemies will try to focus her, but trying and actually managing to are two different things. And she can always sleep 1 of them if they do.

For the above mentioned reasons, such as -50% spell power on enemy heroes, she is a very strong pick in ARAM multi healer comps. Once she gets the improved auto attack range at level 20 she can really become oppressive and turn the game in her favour.

13

Nope, they have the same AA range, but Hanzo’s abilities are much longer than that. Which is also part of the reason why she’s sort of lost her luster over time. Baseline 6.5 range just isn’t special anymore along with the addition of a lot of artillery mages. It used to be the case the diver would have to go REALLY deep to get to you, and with a competent tank, or a well placed dart, you could survive long enough until your allies got a kill.

The risk just generally isn’t worth the reward unless you’re just fighting a lot of frontline that don’t have dive. But with a few changes, that balance can shift, so I disagree that it’s completely contradicting to her toolkit. Back in the day, I’d certainly agree that the best Anas would be more aggressive. In today’s meta, it’s just more a liability.

14

You say that like it’s super common. Currently the only characters with 6.5 attack range or greater are Ana, Nova, Raynor, Tassadar, Zagara, Hanzo, Erik, and Chromie. Of that list, only Tass, Hanzo, and Chromie have been added since Ana came out, and at the time of Ana’s release Sgt. Hammer also had 6.5 range while out of siege. Most of those aren’t exactly AA divers, either.

15

It’s a lot more common to get hit now at 6.5 range today than it was many years ago, that’s just the reality. It’s not just the AA range, it’s the increased amount of artillery abilities too. And on that list, you forgot Zul’Jin and Fenix. Tassadar (as well as his damage which gave his abilities more range too) and Zagara were also changed after Ana was released.

Add heroes like Junkrat that are really annoying to dodge grenades while slowed from aim down sights or Mephisto that jumps right on top of you. The power creep is real. That extra 1 range just doesn’t get as much mileage as it used to. Remember that Ana also lost range on her quested heal, people move faster, there’s a ton more CC, and she moves slower if she’s in aim down sights. It all adds up.

None of those are really divers. That is its own special category that is also annoying to Ana.

16

Funny thing about Fenix, his Repeater Cannon range is only 5. Phase Bomb is 6.25, but Repeater Cannon is his main damage tool.

Tracer got a range nerf. Her range is 5 on the dot. She can take a talent to up it to the normal 5.5.

17

The Phase Bomb does decent damage and is used plenty too. It’s not his main tool, but it is just another thing to add to the list of it’s harder now than it was back then. That’s not even counting the teleporting in, slow, and then yes, the repeater cannons. It’s a lot easier to watch a Valla try to vault in and Q you than it is a Fenix’s huge teleport range.

Oh, you’re right, that’s why she got a health increase. I knew her range changed and just assumed she was buffed, which she sort of was in a holistic manner, but not that specific stat.

18

Above I mentioned ana was longer range than most heroes. This was based on the assumption that Aim Down Sights added +2 range. It used to in older versions when it was a level 4 talent. But now that it is an innate ability it just increases the range of her abilities and not her attack range. As such I can see being dived as more of a problem now.

That said, nothing has changed at level 20. Ana can still get +4 range from Aim Down Sights putting her as one of the longest attack range heroes. In this context she is a late bloomer. At level 7 she can still be very effective at countering shorter range mages by knocking out 50% of their damage after a few seconds of the fight. Apply that to 2 critical casters during a team fight and the enemy team will effectively be 1 person down.

19

Y’all pretend that there’s a huge advantage from 1 - 3 range gap between two heroes is kinda crazy, what is the cost? Half a second to get hit by… 50 damage? Against auto attackers?

???

She has a baseline slow to do this, she’s not running away I promise.

1 Like
20

There’s a reason that talent was almost never picked and ended up being deleted so that it could be reworked to her trait. You’re theory crafting to win an argument that was never even really true even when it was live.

AA works well when you can stutter step, or in hammer’s case, a bunch of defensive tools and an escape when things go wrong. When you have movement speed reduction, that just makes it very limiting. That’s also kind of why the current aim down sights is so clunky. As a mechanic, I actually think these kind of tradeoffs are interesting design wise, but if other heroes don’t have to deal with these kind of limitations, it’s just something that makes her comparatively worse.

The reason dynamic optics works is the range is so HUGE AND you get speed increase. You can just use mind numbing on everyone and when you have vampiric stacked and on enough targets, you end up just tanking everything and doing a lot of damage. It can be effective, but not really in the fantasy of an Ana in my opinion. The long range part, yes, but the stationary self healing tanky gatling poison gun, not so much.