Ana brainstorming thread

General Discussion
1

As most of us are aware our most beloved grandma isn’t in the best of spots. I refuse to just let her be and hope that eventually the meta will shift to make her useful, so I made this thread as a way for everyone to talk about how we feel about Ana and what can be done to make her better.

For starters, I want to clarify one thing I feel very strongly about - Ana’s issues are hers alone and not the result of other characters being better healers. I made a thread about this on the old forums (because I’m lazy and don’t care to repeat myself Overwatch Forums) and my opinion hasn’t changed at all since then. Ana won’t become better if Moira and Mercy are nerfed, she will still have the same difficulties. Ana struggles with having no mobility despite having a kit designed for high ground, with being forced to use her best offensive/defensive team-fight ability to heal herself, with having so many restrictions on everything she does (shields, cast-times, travel-times, effect times)… there are so many areas I feel you can experiment to make her feel smoother and sometimes just downright viable. With this said, I don’t want or expect Ana to ever become the queen healer again - she’s supposed to be a bit difficult to play but with the difficulty should come a greater value in utility. I don’t want her to heal more than Moira or Mercy (although the difference shouldn’t be too great), I want a skilled player to be able to bring more value with her.

Also worth discussing is the fact that Ana doesn’t really serve the same purpose she was originally designed to do. She was meant to be the character that could burst heal, that could keep tanks up, that could provide utility, that could heal targets far away… now we have to accept that Moira does the first two just as well and with greater ease while Ana’s utility is hampered by the amount of abilities that hard counters them (for example, since Ana arrived we’ve gotten 3 new shield abilities, and another one has gotten a lowered cooldown). If Ana’s niche is going to be shifted to primarily good ranged healing/burst heal rather than close to middle ranged healing something has to change.

I’m going to make a bundle of suggestions, and I obviously don’t mean for them all to be implemented. Some are small changes, some might be dumb, and some might even be a bit controversial. The goal is to get a discussion going on what Ana is meant to bring to the fight and how the player experience can be made better.

Biotic Rifle

  • Reload decreased to 1 second from 1,5 seconds while ammo is increased from 10 to 15.
  • Healing/damaging effect decreased from 0,9 seconds to 0,5 seconds.
  • Edit* Healing shots can now pierce full-health allies to heal teammates behind them. This would, however, make pre-healing impossible. Could possibly be solved with a toggle option.

Biotic grenade

  • Travel time increased from 40 meters/second to 50 meters/second

Sleep Dart

  • Mobility abilities are cancelled one second after awaking, regardless of whether the target woke on their own or not. This will make it a lot easier for Ana and her team to finish off high mobile targets she slept.
  • Damage cap of 35 hp damage before target wakes up.
  • Target can not be awoken the first 0,8 seconds after being slept regardless of damage.
  • Projectile speed increased from 60 meters second to 70 meters second.
  • Dart damage increased from 5 to 20.
  • Edit* Awakening time from sleep dart is the same regardless of whether the target was awakened or woke on their own.
  • Edit* Cast-time decreased from 0,5 seconds to 0,3.

Nano Boost

  • Instantly heals target 100 hp
  • Nanoed healer gets a 50% healing boost, meaning Mercy’s healing would be 90 hp/second instead of 60 hp/second.
  • Speed boost of 10%.
  • Ana can nano boost herself.
  • Nano Boost now instantly reloads weapon.
  • Nano Boost increases Ana’s rate of fire significantly and automatically reloads her weapon.

New abilities and passives

  • Ana gets a two second aimbot that only works on allies. This will help her land clutch heals on small targets far away like a Genji ulting (called Eye of Horus?).
  • Ana can wall climb but does so at half the speed of Genji/Hanzo, and can be interrupted by damage.
  • After standing still for two seconds Ana gets “camouflaged”, meaning she blends into the area around her (not to be confused with invisibility), can be clearly seen within 10 meters.
  • For every 5th consecutive shot Ana hits (friend or foe) she heals 15 hp.
  • Edit* Ana gets 150 hp and 50 shields instead of the current 200 hp. This would make it so she doesn’t need to use her nade for chip-damage.

Tell me what you like, what you don’t like, what you would like to see! What is Ana to you or what should she be?

23 Likes
2

:+1: be in high ground don’t always as an easy pick but can be use to reposition to heal team mate from another angel/direction or use as a bait

:x: this ability have a high possibilty to harm people

4 Likes
3

Thanks for the feed-back! Obviously Ana wouldn’t be camouflaged from her teammates, but I honestly would prefer not to limit her movement like that anyway. Just trying to get the ideas flowing! :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

I really like some of these changes that you are suggesting i hope developers take in consideration your post

1 Like
5

Play Ana every day she seems fine to me. It doesn’t bother me that I have to work harder for similar results when you do play her perfectly she is the strongest healer in the game. I honestly thing she is underplayed and even pros who are “amazing ana players” don’t play enough ana. I’m more confident in her than any other hero even against dive on poor maps I honestly don’t understand why everyone thinks she is bad. Since the mercy change she seems to be simply better 9/10 times.

6

If she’s fine to you that’s great, but stats indicate that Ana is struggling a lot. She doesn’t heal the most, she doesn’t do much damage, she has a negative win-rate, an abysmal pick-rate in tiers she should excel in, and has a kit that is in many ways contradictory. Not to mention I and many others here express frustration with the way she currently feels.

She’s an amazing character, but she does need help.

8 Likes
7

I understand what your saying but I don’t think any of that has to do with ana as a hero and simply the meta. I would guess Winston sheild for the most part. Not sure what rank you are maybe it’s a high Elo only problem down here with he noobs in gold she is the best healer for sure.

8

Well, I’m on console as well, so there’s added difficulties in playing Ana there. My experience is that almost any character can make Ana’s life super difficult, but especially Winston (shields and a no-miss taser), Genji and Tracer (both super hard to sleep and run from).

3 Likes
9

Ah well I feel your pain there inown Thai game on console I never player ana on Xbox lol. On pc even as a scrub I can 180 sleep dart or no scope tracers and genjis without much issue.

10

Tracer is very strong on console, so to hit her she has to basically be targeting someone else, be very unlucky, or just a wee bit daft (walking straight towards me). :tired_face:

11

I personnaly love your ideas. I don’t play Ana so much, but I think many of this ideas could be tested in PTR.

2 Likes
12

I like the ideas you have, but the last ability seems really weak to me.

Also could you go into more detail about how “camouflaged” works? does your body change color or something? Does shooting/turning your camera/going into scoped mode remove the camouflage?

Personally I think ammo should only be consumed on doing damage to enemies, healing allies/missing shots does not. And Nono-ing should fully heal your target, it’s an ultimate, it should be powerful.

1 Like
13

here my trick to sleep dart tracer:

  • close range: use melee+shoot first to bait blink or recall, if the tracer player use blink and use sleep dart to a direction that tracer player choose,if the tracer player use Recall try remember tracer position 2 / 3 second before tracer use blink ability and use that to reposition or do what you want

  • mid range: always count how many blink that tracer use (must tracer always use 2 blink and safe 1 blink so when they use recall they can use blink to run) then you can read tracer target and lead your sleep dart to position that you think tracer player will use to reposition they position

  • Long range: don’t always use sleep dart from long range target,if you still confuse what is right and what is wrong for my teammate or for my self (this one just a puzzle i create to help you target priority)

Good luck, have fun and take your time :grin:

1 Like
14

I will, I appreciate all tips, sleep dart management is the part of Ana I need to improve most upon!

I really dislike this system where I can’t make two posts in a row! Sorry I have to use the reply I made to you ShadowChaser!

The idea was that Ana wouldn’t be completely hidden from view, just blend in a bit more with the background to make her less of an obvious target for other snipers and hit-scans. Shooting or turning your camera would not deactivate it, only movement.

The idea stemmed mostly from the fact that in real life camouflage is a vital part of any military, and aside from Sombra’s cloak we don’t really have anything similar in Overwatch.

3 Likes
15

Curious on what people think of an idea I had. What if Ana’s biotic grenade doubled up as a smoke grenade. It would be see-through for your allies but your enemies would have a hard time seeing through the smoke, making it a possible escape ability while not making Ana too mobile.

The only thing is that this might make biotic grenade have a bit too much to it, as it can already heal, boost healing, deny enemy healing, and damage enemies already. Thought this up and felt it might fit her.

16

Yeah, I tend to agree with what you said; it’s not a bad idea, it just makes the nade a bit too much of everything. Wouldn’t mind it as an ability introduced in game for someone else though!

17

I just wish that Ana’s ult is somewhat more interactive. You literally press the ultimate button and thats about it. Why not thether herself to a allied target so they get both a boost as long as they are in LOS of each other or they seperate too far or one target dies. Let her Nanoboost herself, give additional stuff like increased healing, enable critical hits for the duration just anything to make that ability interesting again.

Give her piercing shots that decreases in effectivness after each target hit with one shot, let her heal for around 50hp every time she reloads, give her a slightly faster reload, make her projectiles slightly faster or decrease the cooldown on her abilities… just anything.

Jeff said a while ago they don’t really know what to do with Ana. Because of Moira and possibly Brigitte, there could be a tank meta on the horizon. Buffing Ana could further strengthen than idea so they want to wait and gather ideas what to do with her. I expect changes to her soon after Brigitte hits comp.

I just don’t want to wait any longer. Ana literally is the only thing that keeps me coming back to this game. I just keep disappointing myself because every time I feel the urge to play me some Ana I realize how badly she plays right now.
I hate it.

Rant over.

2 Likes
18

Did… did you actually look up this old post because I was sad about nobody caring about Ana? I’m actually a bit touched! :relaxed:

I’ve had an idea that aside from just nano boosting a teammate Ana would also gain an “aim-bot” mode for allies. It would only work when using her scope (because sometimes you may want to do damage, and then at least your un-scoped rifle would work for that) and it would work as a way to keep that crazy ninja-man alive as he flies around killing people. I fear it might be a bit too strong though, but it would be nice since you could then also use nano for clutch-heals on someone trying to stall a point.

3 Likes
19

I told you I would support you on this.

I don’t know about an aimbot because as Ana you don’t just have 6 targets, you have 11. An aimbot would take the descision away from the player on what to aim on and thats bad for a character like Ana. How could you tell the aimbot to aim for enemies or allies? I think that could hinder her more than anything, though I like the idea itself.

4 Likes
20

With Hanzo getting extended abilities added to his movement on top of his existing wall climb, Ana having a regular wall climb of her own still leaves her behind him in capability. I say let her use the wall climb as an escape tool too — afterall survivability IS her current issue.

This plus maybe convert 50 of her existing hit points to shields to mitigate her need to constantly ‘nade herself. That… or the self heal after every X shots you described in your recommends.

As for her healing throughput? I’m a GO for anything that’ll raise her back to primary support nominal.

3 Likes