If Blizzard recognises Mercy as a main healer why are they nerfing her healing per second and not the other parts of her kit?
The reason why Mercy is being chosen over Ana is that she doesn’t require aim and Ana does.
Let’s face it… Most people don’t know how to aim well enough to provide a sustainable and reliable source of healing to their team, ESPECIALLY when there are heroes with such high mobility like Tracer, Genji, Doomfist etc… Furthermore, most of these high mobility heroes have tiny hitboxes and slim and petite frames.
Thats certainly part of it. But additionally the reality is, that it is not difficult to provide adequate healing as Ana. But because Mercy’s healing output is so high, basically Ana is being power creeped out of the competitive healing environment. Which is why Mercy’s healing is being nerfed. Instead of buffing all main healers and making sure nothing ever dies, they are being balanced.
Ana’s healing is rediculously easy to hit with. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Ana doesn’t live long enough to put out the healing, or gets cucked by barriers and can’t put out healing.
Meanwhile all Mercy has to do is spam shift off cooldown to stay alive while spinning in circles not caring about anything else in the world.
60hps is a little much considering the Caduceus staff beam can stay on the target indefinitely, with no need to recharge. It can make tanks and Pharah very tough to kill. Why play the high risk, high reward Ana when you can play the low risk, high reward Mercy?
There’s many reasons Mercy is picked over Ana, and aiming is not in the top 3 reasons.
Mercy has better survivability, mobility, and utility (constant damage boost whenever, and then Resurrect) than Ana does.
Mercy’s healing was technically a revert, not a nerf. And her core problem is still everything else she can do better than Ana, especially Resurrect. Mercy can also solo-heal even at higher levels; we’ve seen it being done in OWL games with triple-tank, a reason Ana was nerfed into the ground way back when.
And Ana has hard time healing when she is seprated on the ground and team is flying around second third floors.
Her healing is limited to close LOS or certain maps that has good views
One of the main reasons that Ana isn’t ever going to put out as much healing as Mercy is because she has another job as well. Ana also needs to repel squishy heroes and shut down ultimates.
They actually have, Mercy was increased to 60 HPS to compete with Ana. And the Ana-nade’s healing boost was halved. Which put a big dent on Ana’s healing output.
Which is why I am saying that Ana will never be what they want her to be unless they make it so that she can provide a reliable and sustainable amount of healing.
No OP. You could be the best Ana in the world and high level players would still want Mercy or Moira. Because Ana can’t heal through barriers or matrix, which Mercy, Zen, and Lucio can, and she can’t fight inside those barriers and survive like Moira.
Yes but THE REASON why her healing is so significantly different is that she has a lock-on healing ability, therefore, providing sustainable and reliable heals, whereas Ana has to aim and shoot heals into allies.
When Ana was her strongest, it had nothing to do with aim. She’d follow along Roadhog with her rifle stuck up his butt. It was impossible to miss. Her Biotic Grenade lasted six seconds and did 100% healing bonus rather than 50%. Again, nothing to do with aim there. Ana’s strength has never been in aim, and aim wasn’t required when she was strongest.
The fact is, her healing is actually countered by barriers and defense matrix.
If a Winston drops a bubble between Ana and her team, there is straight up nothing she can do to help her team in those crucial 2-3 seconds.
Should we just give Ana lock-on healing? Maybe we’ll give Widow lock on damage too.
This nerf will only serve to help Ana. Now she might be able to keep up with Mercy a little better in healing, while also providing a ton of utility as well. Mercy will still certainly be the strongest main healer, but it’s still a straight up nerf and will only serve to help the other two main healers.