not even flaming or anything but for the last 2 years supports have been invincible interms of survivability, now in OW2 where you have to actually think and be quick on your feet, especially in a beta release where people are adjusting, supports are definitely going to look weak for a while
And she is #1 consistently, for 6 years.
2 Likes
You see a roughly 50% win rate and you see this as evidence that she needs a nerf? Also, what the hell are you talking about; her highest unmirrored win rate was about 48%, and it dropped over the course of the beta, especially after she got nerfed.
There’s really only 2 “dedicated” flanker DPS in the game, and one of them got a pretty substantial nerf.
I think you mean better dive tank. Singular. Yeah, they’re a little stronger, but they aren’t double as strong, which is what they would need to be (more, actually) for your argument to hold water.
See now this is interesting, because do you know what the single strongest peel ability in the game is? Sleep dart. Why would Ana not feel good in a dive heavy atmosphere? Especially one with less enemy players, meaning the potential impact of sleep is increased?
Good job looking up the stats page to see her pickrate. Too bad you couldn’t ever actually watch OWL so you could realize that they’re playing on a pre-nerf build, where her anti-nades are still lasting 4 seconds.
I’m curious, how many Bronze level players do you think were in the Beta? When I think of a Bronze level player, I don’t think of someone who’s gonna be dedicated enough to even sign up for the beta, much less watch for Twitch drops. I’m thinking that a lot of the people who were playing Ana were, in fact, skilled with her.
Dont forget healing on nano.
“Players are really enjoying this hero and picking her quite often. This is evidence that she needs to be changed.”
I think your priorities are quite skewed. You want balance, right? You want all the heroes to be equally played? But to what end?
The goal of the devs should be for the game to be enjoyable and fun for many players. Obviously, fun is subjective, and it’s an art, not a science. Balance can assist in this, but it’s a means, not an end.
If players love playing Ana, that’s great. That’s a victory, not a defeat. If other heroes aren’t fun, maybe they need help.
Maybe you’re arguing that pickrate directly correlates with strength. Well, we can clearly see that it doesn’t if we just look at the first Overwatch. Ana has the highest pickrate in the entire game, and she’s not even meta. Anyone who plays the game seriously will tell you that Baptiste and Zenyatta are the strongest supports, and Ana has seen little to no play in OWL or Contenders on the current patch of OW1.
This wasn’t the case in OW2; she’s essentially permarun at the highest level of play, so she’s thriving in the new game. She was justifiably nerfed (in a subtle way that doesn’t affect how she plays), while other supports were buffed. Just don’t be surprised if she still has an absurd pickrate in QP, because people love playing her, and that’s not a bad thing.
2 Likes
Get rid of her dart, her grenade, her nano, and replace her rifle with an FP-45 Liberator.
That should help tone her down.
You need to read or re-read the article, because you aren’t understanding important parts of it.
Both sleep dart and nade are nerfed in OW2.
1 Like
She is in every match. She should have close to a 50% win rate.
Everyone is a flanker in OW2.
Ana shouldn’t be good cause in theory, she should be dead to dive. In reality, she enables it and then some.
She was still the most picked support after the nerf to 3 seconds.
Time to pull the band aid.
Ana is the second most picked hero in bronze, and is almost beating mercy. Just saying.
Oh, and Ana is in fact the most picked support hero in Silver - GM.
3 Likes
I am obviously talking about unmirrored win rate. Why the hell would we be talking about total win rate? Did you even read the article?
Wow, this is dumb. Is Bastion a flanker? Is Mei a flanker? I’m sure there’s plenty of heroes you can make valid arguments for, but Tracer and Genji are the only ones that fulfill my personal criteria for it, which I’ll explain.
- High mobility to engage.
- High damage to kill supports and weakened targets.
- Ability to disengage after the dive.
Pharah, for example, fulfills 1 and 2, but can’t really disengage after a dive; she either kills everyone or dies. Sombra basically plays like a flanker, but doesn’t have the damage to be threatening to anyone who isn’t alone. Reaper has high damage, but only against Tanks unless he somehow manages to sneak up behind people.
I just presented an argument about why Ana is pretty dive resistant, and you just said she’s not dive resistant and yet really strong in a dive environment. My head hurts.
You need to re-read the part this is responding to. I’m talking about OWL there.
Is she effective? Pick rates don’t matter. If people like her, that isn’t a reason to nerf her. Is she overpowered in these brackets? If you’re going to try and convince me, you need to realize that I don’t give a [blankety blankety] about pick rates. Like, I could be wrong about any number of things; maybe there were actually tons of Bronze players in the beta, maybe Ana’s actually super OP in bronze, but I don’t have those numbers, and guess what? Ever since they added private profiles by default, neither do you. Most low level players probably don’t even realize they can make their profiles visible to others, or even want to.
Do you know who would both know how to make their profiles public, and be good on a character like Ana? Smurfs.
This thread is about the numbers presented by Blizzard for the OW2 beta. I don’t care about overbuff’s crappy numbers, and OWL participation doesn’t matter until they start playing the already-nerfed version of Ana.
2 Likes
Who cares if a hero is popular? All that maters is balance and avoiding “Pick Hero X or Lose” issues.
Something that the data directly shows isn’t a problem. I think a whole lot of the people in this thread don’t seem to understand what the data is showing as they screech about pick rate.
/brick wall/ So the data shows Ana tends to lose if you play any other support heroes against her /brick wall/
yeah but her pick rate!!!
1 Like
- It is nowhere near 52% and never even broke 49%.
- 47% is very very bad when a character has a high pickrate. Being played a ton tends to drag the winrate to 50%.
What we’re likely seeing is that supports are weak and people are gravitating to the ones that still have impact among the ones that they actually know. Given that good Lucio and Brig mains are rare, this leaves Ana.
You have it backward. If her abilities don’t fit in OW2, then neither do a ton of other things and it’s OW2 that needs a rework. I don’t think the current state of the game is balanceable long term.
my point wasn’t necessarily about sample size, but about what kind of data that was shown.
WR alone (unmirrored or not) can’t tell you the balance state of a hero in regards to their niche design. like even if WR of a niche hero measured was something like 80%, that’s not really indicative that they’re necessarily balanced or fine overall because that WR is likely the WR conditioned on the hero’s niche occurring and not to take much into account how well they perform outside of their niche, nor would it take into account for how large their niche is.
e.g. 80% WR for 1% of the game that is their niche measured, and if for example they have 30% WR for the rest of the 99% of the game that isn’t their niche, that averages out to be 0.8 x 0.01 + 0.3 x 0.99 = 30.5% which is straight up terrible esp when an underlying global WR (i.e. inherent WR agnostic of all situations, comps, etc.) for a balanced hero should be 50%.
It is evidence that we need more support characters LIKE Ana, that can heal well from a distance.
Its not evidence that Ana needs to be nerfed.
ps. Personally I hate Baptiste because I hate the disparity between his heal and shooting. Same reason why I find it annoying to play Sojourn. There is too much disparity between first and second firing modes.
Ana is the only support I actually enjoy playing. (and even she has this disparity… but is the only support character with actually good design)
edit: If they would nerf Ana, it would force me to play other support heroes, which would just mean I’m not going to even queue healer if gameplay is something I dont enjoy.
2 Likes
I agree. Baptiste may be strong in OW1, especially in higher ladder. But his design feels wonky and is nowhere near as fun to play as ana. And it’s telling how many people prefer playing ana over baptiste by looking at their subreddit.
/r/AnaMains subreddit has 4 times the amount of subscribers compared to r/BaptisteMains. And before people start saying “it’s because ana is the most broken support in OW1”. /r/MercyMains and /r/LucioMains has significantly more subscribers than both ana and bap.
So according to subreddit at least, it seems like lucio is the most popular support hero, followed by mercy, followed by ana.
Regarding ana’s oppressiveness in OW2, I haven’t formed any strong opinions since I never got to play the beta. But it does seem like her abilities might need to be reworked but who knows, it’s up to the devs to decide and make the call.
i’m starting to love playing ana so no nerfs please!! 
1 Like
I hate Lucio. I hate chaos and randomness where things are bouncing around like ping pong balls. The hero I would most want removed from Overwatch is Lucio.
Mercy I cant play cause I cant do the superjump, and she is such a bad carebear character (bad because her healing output and single focus).
I have never managed to shake the mental image that Mercy was created so a gamers girlfriend could play and support the boyfriend despite having no skill…
Seems like we agree then.
It’s 4 seconds, and the nerfed version is 3 seconds… highly doubt knocking it down 1 second is doing to budge her pickrate if its almost 100%…
It’s not like they nerfed sleep, or nano, or how the passive stacks ontop of nade… or changed anything meaningful about her synergy with winston, aka, the meta tank…
Also, i did watch a fair amount of OWL which is why i know she has an almost 100% pickrate… don’t know why you think someone having a different balance take than you = “they obviously didnt watch OWL!”
Meta =/= fun to play. We’re talking about quick play you know. People don’t care if ana is numerically the strongest support, if she dies on cooldown they won’t play her even if you win every team fight because you picked ana. Same reason people not many people played zen before his buffs. She seemingly had little issue staying alive and being impactful given her pickrate was super high and people weren’t just playing Moira, Lucio, brig instead, something that matters less at higher ranks where people generally care more about winning
And of course all of this is rank/MMR dependent. Another reason I really wish we had these stats for every given MMR tier.
I feel like pick rate vs win rate is very important to provide here…
I admittedly don’t have the data myself, but, from personal experience and hearing it from others, it seemed as though it was difficult to be effective as Ana with less shielding and more flanking and mobility present in OW 2.
I also wonder how many people picked Ana because the other supports felt underwhelming. That doesn’t have to mean that Ana is OP, but rather the other supports need additional attention. I felt like I wasn’t even in the game as Mercy so naturally I didn’t pick her…