Ana Buff Idea (feel free to suggest your own!)

[Skald-1493]

The ONLY thing I want for her is a slightly improved survivability option. That’s it; Not better DPS; Not better heals; Not a better ULT.

I hate the fact that the weights are so terribly stacked against her. If only she had something that made her survivability better than merely being a walking piñata.

I had advocated for wall climb then later again for perhaps having her rifle maybe heal her some hp’s per unused dart when she reloads. Sadly Jeff shot both ideas down to give her some seriously hard weaknesses. I do mean serious.

@GeoffGoodman

I think its worth talking a little about our balance philosophy here. People often will post things such as “why doesn’t Blizzard see that this hero has X as a weakness and that is what should be fixed.”

One aspect of our heroes that is very important is that they all have various strengths and weaknesses. This is a core aspect of what makes teamplay so important in Overwatch. If you have an Ana on your team, this gives you certain advantages such as being able to be healed from very long range, having a more offensive-favored ultimate, and having the ability to disable healing on enemies (which can be especially vital against heroes that really rely on healing such as Roadhog). That said, she also brings her own weaknesses that must be managed, such as low mobility and lower self-healing. A team may opt to run Brigitte or Lucio with Ana to help peel attackers off of her, for example.

When we want to buff a hero, sometimes it can be the right call reduce these weaknesses. For example, if a weakness is just too overbearing or a hero just has too many weaknesses compared to their strengths. But more often we would rather amplify a heroes strengths and make the hero just better at what they do, which leaves their weaknesses still around for enemies to exploit and for allies to try to manage.

I hope this helps explain how we look at balance issues and heroes in Overwatch in general.

So you have it there, the DEVs don’t want to give her a wall climb or a self heal since the lack of mobility and weak self heal are supposed to be her weakness.

@JeffreyKaplan

Ana’s Sleep Dart ability was intended to give her the ability to disengage.

Yet sadly this self defense is a lot harder to land than her own regular shots and is easily broken by stray damage. The sleep dart’s hardly the tool you want to have in a panic – especially at the lower brackets.

At the level I play at Ana’s a masochist’s dream. She’s a long range hero that can’t really operate at long range. She has too many hard counters that easily shut her down hard – D.VA, Winston, Genji, Tracer, Doomfist or Sombra. They force her to hug the Tanks hard just to survive.

I get that she can do well if she’s protected but her lack of self defense leaves her totally open in brackets where team coordination is at best poor. She plays awful at the low end and is clamped down hard out of fear at the high end. Honestly, Ana needs something that’ll let her play better at lower brackets and yet isn’t as useful in high skill play.

She needs a passive that’ll flatten out her hard curve and make her gameplay linear and transitionable with from low end all the way to high. That way a person can reasonably pick her up, enjoy her and sorta grow with her into the upper brackets. What that would be doesn’t exactly matter so long as it’s usable and practical.

The only thing I can think of that won’t upset her unforgiving playstyle limitations is to perhaps give her a passive that’ll let her operate at range beyond the distances she’s likely to get a peel — a Ghillie Suit.

The Ghillie Suit seems decent to me. Yet, I’m sure higher level players who play on teams with good to great coordination would think it sucks. I think it’s a darn good idea since wall climb and better heals aren’t an option. That’s about right considering where on the spectrum of play my skill and elite skill is at. Maybe at the high end a ghillie suit is trivial to circumvent. However at the lower brackets where I play it just might make this hero a bit more bearable to play – and subsequently a whole lot more popular.

@Skald-1493

Can we give Ana a ghillie suit – a passive that simply lets her be invisible to enemies past a certain distance. Of course abilities like Widow Sight, Opportunist, Sonic Arrow and some such work as normal.

Firstly this would allow Ana to be a different kind of sniper than Widowmaker in her sniper’s nest. Secondly it’ll allow her to play at range – which at the moment she cannot. Lastly it turns her relationship with dive into a cat 'n mouse game – leaving her that much less susceptible to that meta overall.

Also, it does NOTHING to give her extra mobility – which is perfectly in keeping with her play style restrictions.

Thanks everyone.

This gives her two mutually exclusive play styles — up close in where she relies on the protection of her team and further out where she must regularly change locations or risk being outed and killed.

Given her imposed hard limitations this might give her the edge she needs — even in games where her own crew won’t baby sit her.