Ana: Ghillie Suit Passive

[Skald-1493]

Ana still needs something to mitigate the fact that she has too many hard counters and is easily shut down by D.VA, Winston, Genji, Tracer, Doomfist or Sombra — dive.

At the moment she’s a hero with too many hard counters whose forced to hug her Tanks to survive and can’t really operate at range.

The DEVs already stated that they’re wont on giving her a wall climb or self heal. Her lack of mobility and weak self heal is supposed to be her weakness. Her only self defense is a dart that’s harder to land than her own regular shots and is easily broken by stray damage.

@JeffreyKaplan

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

@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.

The only thing I can think of that won’t upset her current play style and limitations is to perhaps finally give her a passive that’ll let her operate at range; past the distances she’s likely to get a peel — a Ghillie Suit.

@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.

I say 30 plus meters or so is fair. That’s a large local area of where you can be seen and you pretty much have to be outside the area of contention for the passive to apply — most likely outside the ability of anyone to peel for you too.

This is precisely the point where this ability should kick in and where it shouldn’t — the practical maxim past where anyone could peel for you. At that point you’re on your own and the cat ‘n mouse game begins.

It gives Ana two different and mutually exclusive play styles — close in as it is now where she relies on the protection of her team to survive or further out where she must change locations regularly or risk being located and killed.

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

DEVs if you do go for this, can we also get a Ghillie Suit skin for Ana to go with it? It’ll go very far on differentiating Ana as a completely different type of sniper than Widowmaker. One prefers the high ground of the sniper’s nest to shoot from and the other is that far off distant hard to see tree or bush.

[Krows-1256]

I would love to see this on one condition: When she fires, a small glint of light at her location can be seen. Enough that if you are looking for her, you should be able to see it.

[Skald-1493]

Her scoped shots already leave a contrail as is — same as Widow’s does. To find her you only need get close enough. Her shots already point out the direction of her fire.