Ana Buff Opinions from an Ana Main

[Jabber-11739]

Ana got buffed!

I opened a topic last night about what I think Ana’s weaknesses are. I listed them out:

“She generally can’t outdo snipers, has trouble with dive without proper team support, and is defeated by shields in every way.”

^Notice, these are the metas from the last couple seasons. Dive, BarrierWatch, and Double Sniper.

We concluded with 4 different buff ideas:

• “A ledge-hoist, or other very slight vertical boost, to minimally expand her positioning options entirely for the sake of healing. Nothing to dodge dives with.”
• “Reverting her damage and healing nerfs would help her be a stronger secondary healer by increasing her offensive capabilities and healing output.”
• “Giving her a passive healing ability would increase her survivability a little, and her healing output by a lot. Allowing her to use her Biotic Grenade entirely for healing teammates/nulling enemy healing. However, spamming nades into battles may be overpowered.”
• “Faster cooldown on Biotic Grenade and Sleep Dart. This would improve her survivability by a lot, and her healing output by a decent bit.”

90% of the comments agreed with me, and it seems the Dev Team did, too! They said:

“…she has a couple disadvantages that can be difficult to overcome, such the potential to miss your targets, not having any mobility options, and having a more difficult time keeping herself healed up.”

This is all true!

So, what does turning her ultimate into a Zen/Lucio style ultimate (except only used on one teammate at a time) do to fix these problems??!

such the potential to miss your targets

Still cannot boost/heal them through 5 foot high walls, and shields/barriers still defeat her except when she happens to have her ult up.

not having any mobility options

Why did they even feel the need to mention this if they weren’t going to make any effort to fix it?

having a more difficult time keeping herself healed up

AND SHE STILL DOES!

I feel rather smacked in the face! The Dev Team recognizes these problems, tells us they recognize them, and then buffs her in a way that doesn’t solve any of them!

Another concern of ours was any incorrect buff to her would result in a run-and-gun healer, and not the sniper playstyle we all play her for.

With the new buff:
To keep my healing up to par with all the other healers I’m primarily working to build my ult. How? Get close, walk around shields and walls, spam hipfire blindly into friend and foe alike, chucking my Biotic Grenade every which way! My playstyle will now focus ENTIRELY on building my ult.

Then I’m going to use it on a nearly dead Mercy, even though my Soldier has his ultimate up. It’d be nice if I had that 'nade for her instead, but alas, I had to use it on myself because Moira tossed an orb toward my sea-level sniper perch and now a Tracer is strolling over to laugh at how she is able to get to more elevated locations than me.

Dev Team, please look at my last topic. Please play-test our suggestions! I think we really had some good ones from a couple different Ana mains! Mostly they are just what the forums have been recommending for months.

But this? This is not a topical buff. This is not quite what she needed.

[OWSaint-1218]

i don’t think they know how to balance healers. its why i am done playing a healer

[Hunterskull-1884]

How Blizzard’s Mind works.

This character has 3 crippling weaknesses. and 1 strength… They are currently underpowered…

A) Since we are buffing them we will need to nerf something to make sure they aren’t op.
OR
B) Well, lets make a minor tweak to a part of their kit that doesn’t matter.
Now this character has 3 crippling weaknesses and 1 strength.
PERFECT!

[faust-12793]

Low sustain and no mobility are character traits. She needed a sleep dart and anti-heal buff instead. (and increased Nano range)

[Hunterskull-1884]

does that mean ‘being underpowered’ can be a character trait too?

;3

[faust-12793]

McCree had both of these when he was OP because of his low falloff, so no.

[Hunterskull-1884]

The difference with McCree is that he has 2 supports that can heal him. Ana has 1 (assuming standard 2-2-2 comp).

Oh and his stun one of the easiest to land in the game and can be followed up with a kill (FtH or Double Headshot)… but small details right

lol

[Danmarsh18-1426]

What Ana needs is a lower CD on her sleep dart and bio-nade and at least for 50 of her health to be replaced with shields so she can regenerate something. I’d be okay with that. As for mobility, I honestly thought, what if she could at least have a passive ability that lets her move faster. I understand why they won’t give her wall climb or a grappler. At least let her move 10% faster. I think that’s still slower than 76 run, but still fast enough to let get to places faster.

[MikeUchiha-11562]

As someone who has put a nice chunk of time into Ana I appreciate the buff but it doesn’t even begin to address all of her issues. I mean, awesome, it fixes the problem where she’ll boost a target and they’ll die immediately due to oncoming damage but that’s like fixing one problem out of a hundred.

She has 99 problems but her Nano Boosted target dying ain’t one of them!

Heh.

This still doesn’t address the issues with her heals being so easily dodged, or the fact that she’s a sitting duck most of the time when dive happens or someone comes after her, or the fact that she has no reliable self-healing other than to waste a REALLY good cooldown on herself which is something no other healer has to do, etc.

Like they need to take a good hard look at her and realize this buff is just the tip of the iceberg of what Ana needs to be a decent healer.

I’m not denying that in the hands of a super skilled player she’s probably very threatening but for the casual player Ana isn’t in a good place - and they make up most of the fanbase. In addition for someone who wants to simply learn Ana she is not in a good place.

---

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Ana needs to be able to headshot with her healing darts: This not only rewards skilled Ana players but also helps Ana heal her targets quicker when battle is not happening.

Ana needs a faster healing method: I support her getting the Mercy treatment of switching weapons. Give her an alternative fire of a pistol where she can rapidly shot for low amounts of damage / healing to friendly targets.

Ana needs more mobility: I think she should get a wall-climb or maybe when she throws her grenade on herself it can propel her into the air so she can get to high ground.

Ana needs SELF-HEALING: give her a darn passive where she heals for a small % of the healing she does to friendly targets.

Ana’s ultimate needs to do something for her: Ana is the ONLY support who’s Ult does NOTHING for her. This makes no sense. Her Nano Boost should also heal herself or give her reduced damage or something. -_-

After that stuff, she’d be in a much better area, IMO.

[faust-12793]

are you seriously implying that you can’t make Ana viable without increasing her sustain or mobility?

the state of you

[Crypticarts-11895]

I think this is actually quite a solid buff. Think about it, nano is a fast charging ult. So you basically always have in your pocket. That means that by nading and nanoing a tank you can bring them back to full health in a clutch situation. Burst heal is very strong in OW. I think it will carve a niche for her without making her OP.

[Hunterskull-1884]

I mean sure you could.

literally give her a button that ends the game with her team winning…

VIABLE!

You would need something like Sleepdart now is heat sinking (to actually make it a reliable stun) would be a decent way of making her not flanker fodder. Ha but if you think the forums are going to like more powerful stuns after brigitte… LOL.

their would also be some complaints about lowering the skill ceiling but lol.

[mwb-1222]

My thoughts that I put in a different Ana thread - including alternate possible changes to her ult.

@mwb-1222

(Sorry, this response is super long, but I started typing and had a novel before I realized it.)

At least from what I’ve seen, Ana’s toolkit - although it has the potential to be very powerful - is fairly easily mitigated by other characters right now. Unlike the other supports, Ana doesn’t really have an “Oh snap!” ult. Even though this might seem like an interesting alternative use for her ult, I’m not sure that it would be used all that differently; even worse, I feel like it might end up enabling toxic behavior.

Consider QP or matches played without comms (at various skill levels): as it is, people have a preconceived idea of who should be the recipient. In the few cases that it’s used defensively on live (or when it’s used on heroes not generally perceived as nano-worthy for damage), it’s not unusual to see people get upset. Heck, when there aren’t those heroes on the team, it’s not unusual to see people get upset about even choosing Ana over other supports.

When it’s used, the target becomes the shiniest person on the screen, and usually the biggest threat. If it’s used defensively with the new heal, chances are, that player will become the primary target for the enemy team; meanwhile, if the player’s team doesn’t see that the target was low health, or if they’re not one of the “chosen ones” preconceived as a worthy recipient of a damage boost, flaming /tilting will probably ensue. (As it already stands for supports, dps/tanks often don’t pay attention to who is being healed, or whether or not they are in LOS of their healers in the first place. Imagine if suddenly, the team suddenly sees something like a non-ulting Mercy or off-meta hero get nano: cue Ana flaming."

Or perhaps it will cause players to become more reckless when Ana has nano available, because suddenly, they think “Ana’s got nano, she can just insta-heal me up if I get in trouble, also I can pew-pew more.” Sure this line of thinking works when there is a support (i.e. Brigitte) who is essentially built around insta-healing someone for a large amount, but Ana isn’t really designed for that kind of playstyle - at least not as the game (or meta) currently stands. (Yes, a nano-ed target also receives other benefits, but in many cases, players don’t consider the before - they just consider the after . Realistically, this change would essentially just tack a slightly beefed-up version of one of Brigitte’s normal CD’s onto her nano.)

Ultimately, I’m just not convinced that Ana’s single-target burst healing is enough of an issue to necessitate this type of change to her. Further, the change wouldn’t address many of Ana’s problems within the current state of the game.

Off the top of my head:

• Ana probably has the worst potential regenerative capacity of any of the supports. (Only biotic grenade, which using for self-heals means that she won’t have it available for use on her team or for offensive pressure.)

• Sleep dart isn’t particularly reliable due to being a fairly small projectile, in a game with high mobility heroes or heroes with small character models, it’s easily broken, and can miss due to non-reg bugs.

• She’s the only support in the game that generally requires a fairly high level of accuracy in order to provide throughput/burst that is on par with the other two supports generally considered main healers (i.e. Mercy and Moira).

• She’s the only support whose main source of healing often misses completely. (Moira’s can miss too, but Moira’s healing is also a frontal spray, which lessens the impact.)

• Her base mobility, though on par with Zenyatta, functionally makes her healing less reliable due to being projectile shots; consequently, the best way of improving the reliability of her heals landing is to make her less mobile (i.e. slowing her movement speed), so that they are projectile. Even then, her heals can often miss.

• She provides unreliable group heals.

• She has to reload her main source of healing. (Technically, Moira does too, but it’s fairly easy to avoid the need to wait for healing regen by damage-weaving on.)

• Biotic grenade and nano can hit unexpected/unanticipated targets if one of her teammates is standing too close to her, runs between her and her target, or even if they are close but behind her.

I think some alternatives changes to Ana could be things like:

• Nano can be used on an enemy target, increasing the amount of damage they receive and decreasing the damage output of the target. (Essentially, give it the same type of potential for dual application as biotic rifle/biotic grenade, where it can help your team or hurt your enemy.) Goes through barriers.
• Ana can use nano on herself, increasing the amount of damage done by the player, as well as causing her scoped and unscoped shots to splash heals onto nearby allies.
• Ana can use nano on herself, increasing her damage and healing done, and lowering the CD’s, and improves the effects of biotic grenade and sleep dart. During a self-nano, biotic grenade provides even more benefit to healing received (i.e. the percent modifier goes up), and provides a healing over time effect. Sleep dart’s accuracy is increased (maybe pierce barriers?), and the target of sleep dart receives a DOT and/or slow upon awakening; however, the sleep effect can still only be on enemy at a time.
• Nano is still only usable on a friendly target that isn’t Ana herself. Through the duration, the nano-ed target now provides healing to nearby allies, in addition to decreasing the amount of damage the allies receive.

Nevertheless, some of the baseline changes that Ana (arguably) needs are some kind of aim assist for things like sleep dart and scoped/unscoped shots, fixes to nano and biotic grenade proccing off unexpected/unanticipated targets (specifically, proccing off allies next to or behind you), some kind of increase to her mobility, a buff to self-sustain, etc.

tl;dr Ana’s biggest issues wouldn’t be solved by tacking what is functionally a beefed-up version of a normal Brigitte CD onto Ana’s ult. Other problems should be addressed first. If Blizz still wants to adjust her ult by providing additional utility to it, there are ways of doing so other than just “here’s a bunch of upfront heals too”.

[PuffyPony-1639]

Please play-test our suggestions! I think we really had some good ones from a couple different Ana mains! Mostly they are just what the forums have been recommending for months.

This is really what the PTR should be for. I don’t know why they don’t do this.

[HongKongNo1-3302]

Sleep dart seems too unreliable because it has too much power.

[DrClan-1789]

People were asking for Nano to heal targets, and Blizzard listened.

It is not ment to be a trans/SB style ult, but have the same use as it’s always had while opening up options for potential nano targets by eliminating their current health pool as a factor.

[Skald-1493]

Give it yet another month. The numbers will show what’s true and what’s not. As for me, I already know. So far all her buffs have been buffs on anything but her core needs.

I get that it’s incremental but sooner or later they’re going to have to buff something that matters or they’ll never be done.

Give it more time. Let the current round settle. She’ll still be under par comparitively and we’ll be back here either in a better mood because they got it right or unhappy because they still don’t understand what’s wrong with the girl.

Ana will always be my favorite; but nonetheless I have a duty to my team to always pick what’s most efficacious. That’s where the rubber hits the road and leaves her untouched and unwanted at the spawn room.