As someone who plays ana too its very difficult to aim consistantly at the slow moving big tank hitboxes that are infront of me.
Jokes aside she requires a bit more ‘technical skill’ than some support but she is rewarded much more than characters that dont. Ana is always on fire in my matches now, I want to be objective and say ‘oh she was useless for a year’ she wasnt as useless as people want to believe though. she was in a good place right before the nano buff as far as I was concerned.
This argument just sets up every healer besides Ana to be a trap. Learned Mercy or Moira because they’re more beginner friendly? Too bad. They’re garbage at even average levels of play.
If you apply this logic to design, then every game in Diamond or above becomes a mirror with no room for change because you’ve tuned heroes to always be the best because they’re “harder”. The game as a whole degenerates to “ignore all heroes but these 6, and every game is decided by who plays the mirror better”.
The idea that Overwatch is a game based around counterplay and hero swapping completely disintegrates as soon as you start balancing around skill floors instead of skill ceilings.
Again… I want to stress that I do believe that other healers should be viable but at higher levels of play Ana should be picked more often than the others. The others should still be viable but they should be more niche at those higher levels. Not as niche as Torbjorn… But niche enough to the point that Ana is still the top pick. In this scenario, yes Ana will be top pick at higher levels of play, but Moira and Mercy would be more reliable at average to lower levels and they would still be viable in certain situations at higher levels.
Moira wasnt nerfed? She was actually buffed? And she is more than viable and certain maps and especially at lower tiers?
I think he’s referring to Brig nerf? Or maybe the bug fix where she could heal through barriers that happened 100 yrs ago
All 3 ‘primary’ supports are viable.
Mercy mains. 
Here is this new revolutionary theory that you should consider checking out: Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
I’m pretty firm in my belief that Ana wasn’t bad. She just wasn’t meta.
Dive is pretty much set up to hardcounter Ana, which is how the strategy came back into prominence after the OHL originally killed it (Dive 1.0 was Double Winston/Tracer/Lucio). With the nerfing of Dive heroes and the introduction of heroes who can effectively peel Winston/Dva/Flankers off Ana, she can more than hold her own. Nano’s buff was massively over the top. She really only needed piercing shots to compete with Moira.
Now it’s fine that Ana is meta, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of warping the entire game around her. There is a pretty large gap between “Ana is a troll pick” and “Ana is literally mandatory”.
Looking at the game through the lens of your argument that heroes shouldn’t be viable past X rank because of their skill floor massively limits what Blizzard can do with the game.
Considering that mid-plat (the cut-off for Moira as you said) is basically barely at Ana’s skillfloor and Ana scales exponentially well with skill would quickly lead to a scenario where literally no healer except Ana, Lucio and Brigitte are useful, and would be especially punishing to Moira who shares the same specialization as Ana (Deathball healer), because at least Mercy would still have her Sniper/Pharah synergy.
Which again, is basically the same scenario we’re in right now. But expanding that argument to other roles would quickly lead to the game being “solved” when there’s literally only one teamcomp ever being played because every other hero is deliberately hobbled.
What SHOULD happen in regards to balance is that each hero should be balanced around the strengths and weaknesses of their toolkit, and any hero that is out of line, like Ana currently is, should be brought back to the same level as others.
The best healer should be entirely determined by the situation at hand, such as teammate synergies (grab Mercy for Pharah!), maps (tons of long sightlines on Numbani, perfect for Ana) and the enemies (Ana is being farmed by Doomfist, Moira has the defensive tools to survive), it shouldn’t just be a brainless “autolock Mercy/Moira/Ana because they’re the best regardless of the situation”. That’s not good for the game at all.
We definitely shouldn’t elevate heroes to permanent god-tier because gold/plat players can’t play around their alternatives.
12 small nerfs… TWELVE SMALL NERFS SOME OF WHICH COMPLETELY CHANGED HER CHARACTER IS NOT BUTCHERING. ARE YOU STUPID? DO YOU LIVE IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY WHERE SOMETHING LIKE TWELVE, NOT ONE, NOT TWO, NOT THREE BUT TWELVE NERFS TO A CHARACTER ISN’T BUTCHERING THEM?
And Roadhog? Are you kidding me? All he did was lose his one shot. THAT’S BUTCHERING? Don’t make me laugh sir.
THIS!!! (And 20 more characters)
I don’t mind that Ana is being played more, but the Mercy nerf was unwarranted. Instead of two great main healers, we have one. I don’t think there’s a hero in the game that cannot cripple Mercy’s healing right now.
Classic Blizzard, always nerfing someone else instead of just making everyone equal.
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In my argument I’m assuming that at mid plat the Ana player is already at about halfway to reaching the skill ceiling, while Mercy is probably about 90% of the way to her skill ceiling and Moira is probably about 75% of the way to her skill ceiling. Obviously I don’t have a clear idea of where each character is in terms of skill at specific levels so I mean what rank they are and what their skill level is probably isn’t well portrayed in my idea. Anyways… I again want to say THAT I DO WANT THEM ALL TO BE VIABLE AT HIGH LEVELS OF PLAY. When I give my scenario, I’m not saying that’s what the game currently follows, nor am I saying this is optimal. I’m saying that in my eyes, this is about what we should be going for without just completely reworking the heroes or changing the game. The hero with the highest skill ceiling should be picked the most at high levels. This doesn’t mean that Mercy and Moira become completely inviable. This means, yeah they will be picked less, but they still contribute enough to be picked in maybe a specific map or for a specific strategy or when faced with a specific comp. Not just 1 strategy or 1 map or 1 comp, but for various situations. Outside of these various situations, Ana should be picked and of course these situations wouldn’t happen very often, but often enough that Ana is still top pick and Moira and Mercy are just a bit behind in pick rates at higher levels.
What you are saying is you want them all to be equally viable which is fine, but with how each character operates now, if Mercy was as viable as Moira and Ana at high levels of play, Mercy would become the only one picked simply because she’s more consistent and doesn’t leave any chance for the player to miss a heal. To make everyone as viable as each other, you would have to rework everyone since I’m not sure how to change them the way they are now to make them all equally viable without making it seem like a waste of effort to play a hero with more mechanics than the others.
I’m an Ana main. I’ve been against the mercy rework since day one. I’ve waited for over a year after Bliz decided to trash Ana. I am still discussing mercy balance and other support balance.
Everyone is generalizing and it hurts everyone. People who hate mercy. People who hate Ana. People who are just angry. Including you and OP.
I agree… And imo… It’s just very hard to find the right balance for mercy without making her a must pick. I think before the rework she was perfectly fine. They just had to do something to the ult to make it take something other than just flying in and hitting q to change the tides completely… I’ve seen plenty of good suggestions for that and it would be nice to see them implemented.
You weren’t on the forums when there was the backlash of the devs who said;
“Ana’s not weak just a victim of the meta [Dive]”.
I’ve seen a ton of players, yes MERCY players too, calling BS on that because Hanzo we reworked because HE was a victim to the meta as well (hence the lunge) yet they can’t be bothered with Ana?
EVERYONE was screaming that Ana was trash tier.
Taking apart her new ult leaving her with free flight, chains, and infinite ammo-which would have people screaming and reporting any Mercy player who dares go BattleMercy.
They had to fix a “bug” that’s been there since launch, and had to revert her healing back to where it was at launch [ya know when they buffed it because it was too weak to handle the damage output even back then].
My dude, those are not “small nerfs”.
Roadie did get butchered yes [included that “bug fix” that was ALSO there since launch], and Mercy got surgery she never asked for.
OW team cannot balance and they stealth nerf things a “bug fixes” all the time and keep “bugs” they like because…IDFK.
What’s a high level of play?
Considering there was some pretty solid arguments over who is and who isn’t the best Mercy as high as OWL (FWIW, my vote goes to NeptuNo and Ark as the best), we can infer that even at absolute highest level of play, there’s still room for improvement on even the “easiest” heroes, like Mercy.
Is Diamond the skill ceiling for Mercy? Master? Grandmaster? I’d definitely disagree that it’s that low. I would argue that even on the easiest heroes, you’d have to be OWL tier to even come close to hitting the skill ceiling on them.
I’m not arguing that they should be equally viable, but their viability should be situational. I think the argument is that all three main healers should have to justify why they’re picked, not just “default Ana, but pick Moira into Doomfist and Mercy with a Pharah”.
I don’t think a default “best” hero in any role is healthy for the game, and inevitable forms a stale meta that revolves around 1-2 core heroes.
That would require changes to the main healers. Ana would probably have to have her Anti-Heal reduced so she doesn’t completely block Moira out of the meta and Mercy would have to undergo another rework to try and get Valkyrie and Resurrect in a healthy and satisfying area, but I definitely do not think the problem exists in the heroes skill floor, nor does Ana’s higher skill floor justify her obscene amount of strength right now.
Then evidently we’ve been arguing for no reason because your argument essentially says what I’ve been looking for… Except that Ana is overpowered. I actually think the other healers are just underpowered considering everyone does huge amounts of damage. While from what you’re saying I’m getting the idea you want them to be equally situational… I guess I’m fine with that. I still think that Ana should be viable for more situations with Moira and Mercy ever so slightly behind in the amount of situations they should be viable in. Also high levels of play can be taken however you want… In my mind it’s in general anything higher than diamond including OWL. As for the skill ceiling… Yes there is difference in skill even at the highest levels of play. Imo there is no such thing as a strict skill ceiling but between a “skilled” character and a “basic” character (quotes are there because I don’t really like those kind of expressions that much but I have no other way to really describe it)… Let’s say someone is at a level 8 skill level and another at a level 9 skill level. The person at level 8 will be slightly worse than the person at level 9 with the “basic” hero, while with the “skilled” hero… The gap is still very small, but it ever so slightly larger than the gap for the “basic” hero at high levels.
Any decent plat Moira can 100% outheal Mercy now, and maybe 40% Ana in plat can also outheal Mercy if they want to.
If Mercy is meant to be a main heal, it isn’t fun at fun when she doesn’t stand a chance to at least get gold heals.