I stopped coming to the forums for a long while because of this exact sort of thing people were doing.
When I left, everyone was crying about how overpowered Baptiste is and how he’s broken; and since then there’s been 0 changes to him or Ana, but now Ana is the big bad
As annoying as it is, her kit is too powerful to pass up. Not mirroring an ana is just making everyone on your team more miserable in most cases. I’d rather play zen or brig, but if the other healer doesn’t choose ana then we’re gonna be at a huge disadvantage from the start unless I pick her.
It’d be nice if she got knocked down a bit
You tell me! You say “game bad” thousands of times, and the people on here say “ana bad” thousands of time. Why not be clear if you’re going to be repetitive.
No, actually. I think this will be incredibly needed as it allows tanks to be really strong while still having a dedicated counter. We nerf Ana’s anti, then we’ll have to nerf the viability of tanks because one of their main counters is removed, then we’ll be in the same situation now where only very specific tanks are allowed to be good if their pocketed by the rest of their team.
How?
What? Yes! Because it means we can make the rest do more without even touching the one good support. I’d argue this matters the most!
That’s debatable; if one support is picked over every other one, clearly the other supports are lacking in some way.
Yeah we can. I’m denying it now because I’ve never seen an ana preform in a way that’s alarming. She heals a lot, and can stop the healing of the enemy team. However, she has poor self defense and no mobility, so it averages out.
Your entire comment is filled with hyperbole. In no way is Ana’s skills “game winning”; this entirely depends on which forum user you want to ask.
Also, I just want to say this:
I straight up ignore complaints like this since they sound silly. Here are some ultimates:
Sigma can LIFT ENEMIES OFF OF THE POINT and do a ton of damage to them. He can even grab THE WHOLE TEAM if he’s lucky.
Zenyatta can HEAL HIS ENITRE TEAM so well that they’re practically invincible.
Reinhardt can deal immense damage to the enemy, while also STUNNING THEM so that they can’t take any action for a few seconds.
Meanwhile, Ana’s anti-nade can do mild damage and stop healing for a few seconds. If you think that’s as powerful as an ultimate, you shouldn’t be talking about abilities.
Anti nade might need another slight nerf in OW2, but we still need to see new heroes, returning hero changes, new maps, and how we learn the game.
All the Supports are pretty darn powerful in their own way.
But yeah, you guys here on the forums complain about any and everything all the time lol. Like to ridiculous levels.
Support, DPS, and Tank players, all of you (all roles) whine your butts off excessively.
That wouldn’t be logical at all. Bastion would be an absolute monster (who still isn’t played), and Ana would be completely anemic (and still played).
The assumption that people pick their heroes based on their strength is false.
Someone will have a post count of like 50k, still whining about OW, when they sit on the forums and complain more than play the game. They build up so many complaints you can’t possibly please a person like that. And they are too stubborn to move on to something else they enjoy.
Solid point. Too often we see X is OP without considering the alternatives are actually under powered. I don’t actually have an opinion on Ana specifically though.
Is it? Or maybe other supports have been overnerfed over the years to the point where Ana is the only one thats still impactful and has agency?
Considering the state of OW2… its later.
Nah, I don’t believe that’s true. If we’re talking about OW1 all the Supports are highly valuable in their own ways. Moira, far less so the higher you go.
If we’re talking OW2 first beta, Zen, Moira, Lucio and Ana all felt great. Not sure about Mercy, but Bapt suffered. I didn’t play Brig much, but I didn’t really take much time to understand her.
ana is only “meta” in double bubble, and she’s only at her best with a brig sitting next to her; otherwise she’s vulnerable to dives. you casual players don’t know a thing about game balance, she’s probably the most balanced support this game has lol. look how long it took to get brig right, and she’s still insanely powerful, and how insane bap immort is, or how ridiculous zen is.
then you see how useless moira is as a support, only ever useful in organized play (6 man) and has a hard cap at masters of getting any value
Because it’s a distinction without a difference. A character with a pickrate that high is like a fever - there’s a lot of potential causes, and if you are taking care of a sick child that has a high fever, you should absolutely be doing whatever you can to both mitigate the immediate harm plus identifying the cause and trying to treat it.
Your suggestion that she’s the only support worth a darn is certainly a topic worth exploring. But the problem is that other supports were repeatedly nerfed and had their iconic team contributions stripped from the game. So if it’s true that “she’s the only support worth a darn”, then it’s a diagnosis without a treatment option. That actually leaves us with a second problem. Because now it’s not just, “she’s the only support worth a darn”, it’s also, “she got special treatment to keep things and other supports were stripped down to make them more palatable”. Now you have to solve both of those issues.
No matter what the cause is, it’s exceedingly unhealthy for multiple convergent reasons to have a single character with sky-high pickrates. Nobody liked being in “Rein jail” or “Mercy jail” when it was “use these characters or have a high risk of losing because you’re leaving a lot of power on the table”. Nobody wants to face the same heroes every match because synergize well with the single omnipresent character, and your choices are limited to those not directly countered by a character you know will be present on the enemy team. It forces staleness and stagnation, and this game has suffered that already multiple times at the behest of multiple heroes in the past and Ana shouldn’t be singled out for an exception of it being okay this time.
So let’s indulge in some theoreticals. Let’s say the forums come together and unanimously agree Ana isn’t op, she’s just the last support left standing. Your statement was to buff the other ones. How do you pull that off when the recipients of these proposed buffs were already nerfed out in the first place. Will you be reversing all those nerfs? If not, what do you plan on giving to each hero to give them a unique flavor and strategy to bring to the battlefield so that the match is appropriately changed by their presence? Keep in mind we can’t have a second Mercy on our hands where the effect is largely carried out by a second party and thus not aiding in the skill expression in the support - you need real things they do that either hit or miss depending on the actions of the aforementioned support. And optimally, the supports should do things that dovetail nicely with the needs of different compositions (like broad archtypes including dive, poke, brawl).
I grant you the floor and I’m all ears. What will you give to the other supports so that they can take pickrate and gametime away from Ana?
Thats no basis for a government.
In OWL.
In real OW:
Lucio was bugged and Zen did not feel great and they even gave him the super kick because he was a farmeable.
Without a hitscan to pocket she feels awful. The jump buff helped but she went from doing little other than pocketbotting out of being nerfworked and nerfed out of any other impact, to… being able to hit the map ceiling that makes her an easy hitscan target and/or unable to do anything to help her team.
Without her stun she is even more of a pack mule, and her new higher damage is mostly applicable against immobile targets, effectively removing her entire role as an anti-flanker support.
Bap has solid healing, but he lacks the sheer power and hitscan healing of ana in favour of more utility. Mercy is mercy. She’s solid but struggles without ana or bap. Zen lacks a lot of healing but he makes up for it with plenty of dps, though his ult is countered by ana and barriers
Mercy and ana fit into most any comp while the rest get situational
Key words are “valuable in their own ways.”
Thing is there’s not going to be a chance for all of them to be equally valuable in all the same ways across tiers. That’s delusional for anyone to even consider.
For the record I hate Mercy, and have said she needs more agency to affect the outcome of a match for years now. But Mercy players get angry and tend to think that requires having the ability to click heads instead of playing around with other ways to enable that side of her.
Lucio is a fair argument.
Zen is awesome, and like all heroes depends on the player.
Everything is situational. Top Support players have to trade heroes fairly often to succeed, so I stick by my original statement.
Something to be mindful about the whole ‘‘mercy pocketbot’’ thing is that its something that came because of the rework, and was increasingly more prominent the more she got nerfed.
Before the rework, optimal Mercy gameplay was to actively FARM your team for ult charge for tempo ult resurrections. She had an ultimate to farm, and permapocketing a single support NEVER gave enough ultimate charge to have it for this. She was rewarded for awareness and taking risks and tracking enemy ultimates.
Her own design was, literally, what incentivized a very anti-pocketing gameplay.
‘‘Niche’’ is just codeword for weak.
You know that they were right. Much more equal a long time ago before the years of kneejerk nerfs due to OWL metas like GOATS, right?
Right?
Right?
Like literally who are you calling delusional when you are intentionally ignoring the extremely basic fact of ‘supports that have been overnerfed have not enough impact’ and most of them HAVE been overnerfed.
Hard disagree. Just saying “Character is OP!” without elaboration may just be bandwagoning. This clogs up the forum since every 3 thread is the same post under a different username.
Yeah, but imagine if I said “That child has a fever!” then one doctor said “What are her her symptoms?” while the other said “This child has a fever!”. Which doctor would be helping?
Anyway, it looks like you quoted one thing, but your post really wants to elaborate on my opinions of her being picked a lot exclusively because she’s the only good support. Lets see your opinions on that:
…Yes it is? The treatment option is simply “buff other supports”. This seems to be explored with the buffs Baptiste is getting, and like with double shields, people are clamoring for more support buffs anyway, so this seems like an easy clap for Blizzard.
However, also like double shields, I think we’ll see more nerfs to supports before we see the userbase receive the buffs they’re literally asking for.
You guys still haven’t proven how she’s gotten special treatment. Where’s your evidence for that and why? Is it really because “Well, she didn’t get the nerfs we asked for, so she’s getting special treatment”?
Also untrue. If we nerf Ana, and people start picking Moira, the forum will say the literal same thing about Moira. The issue? Right now the narrative is “Moira is an underpowered support!” but as soon as her pickrate goes up with literally no buffs, it’ll be “actually, Moira was always over powered! Nerf her!”.
You see, that’s the problem with arguing off of pickrate alone. You don’t really know what you’re talking about at all. You say “pick rate is a sign of being OP”, I say “Actually, a character who’s picked a lot must be well made”. Which one of us is right?
Why not? Why not reverse the nerfs, or do what they’re doing with Baptiste and give him a buff that’s linear with his character? He’s about group healing, preventing deaths and massive cooldowns, so now he’ll group heal for a flat amount while also having a lingering effect for a few seconds.
What if we gave other supports dramatic healing abilities like this? Give Mercy an ability where she can give overhealth like the medic from TF2. I don’t think Lucio needs any buffs becuase he’s been consistently picked for the entirety of OW’s lifetime, but we can discuss it. Maybe take a skill from Heroes of the Storm where he can do AOE damage to enemies?
Zen’s offense oriented, so uniquely buff his offense and not his healing ability. Like an ability called “Dark Flow” where, if he’s placing his Discord Orb on mulitple people, there starts to be a lingering discord effect on mulitple heroes instead of one. That can easily be balance where, the more people under the lingering discord effect, weaker that lingering effect will be.
My point is that we have options on the table, but everyone keeps going “Ana OP! End of post!” so we’re not allowed to actually discuss anything in an intelligent way. And after doing this, if Ana is still played more than any other support, then we can talk about nerfs.
The people who think the game is balanced are the ones who are playing broken heroes like hitscans or Hog.
Always was. Ana’s been the biggest problem in the support role since they added her, since she set a new bar for healing throughput and has SSS tier utility.
Like, people cry about discord orb, but discord is literally only one ability and it doesn’t guarantee a fight win when you use it–Ana has three win conditions in one kit, plus more healing output than Mercy, the Honest Healer who trades offense for healing.
Oh, I forgot Ana can also three-tap 200HP heroes and ignores armor damage reduction. Gives up nothing but requires slightly more mouse waggling. Fair and balanced.
Other supports come in and out of the meta because the tanks and DPS get buffed occasionally to change the meta around, but largely Ana is always a good pick. You’re never like “man. I can’t believe that guy picked Ana” unless you specifically need Lucio.