Lucio, Mercy, and Zenyatta have passive regeneration and Moira and Brigitte can heal by using their primary fire. In other words, every support in the game has some way to sustain themselves from chip damage and keep themselves alive. Every support, that is, except for Ana.
Yes, Ana can heal herself by using her biotic grenade. But it just so happens that biotic grenade is Ana’s best ability by far. If you’re always throwing it at your feet just to keep yourself alive, then you aren’t making efficient use of your best ability. At that point, I’m not sure why you’re picking Ana to begin with.
No other support is forced to choose between using their best ability for its actual purpose, or for keeping themselves alive. Brigitte doesn’t have to burn through shield bash if she wants to keep herself up, Zenyatta doesn’t lose discord orb. Every other hero gets a base amount of sustain and the freedom to use their abilities when they are actually most impactful. Why not Ana?
I understand Geoff’s argument about heroes having strengths and weaknesses. I agree that different heroes should be vulnerable in different areas. But with Ana, you have a hero with a ton of weaknesses and not that many strengths. Geoff says that Ana’s strengths are ranged healing, anti-heal, and an offensive ultimate. Let’s leave the ultimate thing aside, because I’m not sure it’s actually a strength, or even nearly as good for offensive pushes as Moira’s, Brigitte’s, or even Lucio’s.
But Ana’s two other supposed strengths are totally undermined by the fact that she has no self sustain.
She can heal from range? Yeah, except that her combined lack of mobility and lack of any kind of self sustain make her extremely vulnerable if she gets jumped, so good luck actually staying away from your team. It’s ironic that the support who is designed to stay at a distance from the team is the one who is more dependent on her team keeping her alive.
Her grenade is really strong, and antiheal is powerful? Of course it is, but again this ability is being used half the time just to keep Ana herself alive, which is self defeating because you’re wasting the main reason to even pick Ana in the first place, all in the name of keeping her on the field.
Four extra shots in a clip will help Ana’s healing numbers out a bit but it won’t solve the main problem with the hero, which is the fact that her lack of self sustain is totally contradicting all of her supposed strengths. Even a small amount of self heal would help Ana shrug off chip damage and allow her to make better use of her kit.