Ana being played to the extent she is right now can’t be attributed solely (or even mostly) to her fun factor.
Interestingly enough, different people find different heroes fun. There are a lot of people out there who find Mercy or Moira or Baptiste much more fun than Ana.
I don’t really support this particular nerf, but the general reason here is that she’s too strong right now so something has to give.
Sure… 
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[Characters required].
Overwatch is a FPS. Would it not make sense that the majority of the playerbase would prefer a hero that gets to shoot? Besides, I only listed her being fun as a part of the reason, because despite what the forums claim, Mercy is also a very strong hero right now and definitely capable of challenging Ana in terms of power. So either people can’t play Mercy or she’s not as fun as Ana. Moira is a bit weak at the moment and Baptiste is a little bit less versatile, although arguably stronger in his own situations.
no, she’s fine. the rest of the game is broken though. flankers and mobility is not strong enough, CC is too strong, snipers are too strong.
Splashing at the very least 2 people really isn’t that hard, the bigger issue is the vast majority of the time once someone is debuffed they will die unless the enemy team decides not to follow up on it for whatever reason. Debuff a tank and watch their frontline crumble, debuff a support and finish them off w/o them being able to do much and take away a portion of the enemy team’s sustain.
It makes getting higher value pick off’s easier and then she has sleep dart to take someone else out of the fight for a good duration.
Total healing shutout is just too strong an effect.
I don’t know. Maybe it makes sense and maybe it doesn’t. I personally prefer Mercy, and I know many other people do. Some people seem to really like melee heroes. Or CC focused heroes. I know a bunch of Reinhardt and Winston mains. Doomfist seems to be pretty popular. I have a friend who likes shooting things, but strongly prefers Baptiste to Ana.
Different people like different things. Overwatch is not a traditional FPS, and it attracts lots of different kinds of players.
It doesn’t seem right to me to claim that Ana’s high pick rates are attributed to fun, but not to make the same claim when other heroes have high pick rates. No one bought that claim when Mercy’s pick rates were high. I don’t think most people think that Orisa is categorically more fun than Reinhardt (except when Reinhardt is top tank, in which case he’s more fun).
I understand your argument, and I don’t think it’s without merit, but I don’t think it can explain the current situation on the ladder.
Mercy is better than some people make her out to be, but I don’t think she challenges Ana in terms of raw power.
pickrates do not inherently mean overpowered. You want to nerf one of the weakest parts of her kit to compensate for an inflated pickrate due to meta. I’m not sure how you think that would help when she already heals less on average per game than every other main healer.
It’s not. look at the 5th and 6th most picked hero’s across all elo’s. Look at the 7th most picked hero in GM. Other main healers are not being oppressed into obscurity.
Well, she doesn’t have decent damage, with one of the lowest dps’ in the game.
Her only buff is an ultimate, and her debuff is tied to her only means of healing less than average to other main healers as well as her only form of self sustain, on a 10 second cooldown.
Not sure how that entails excellent burst healing cooldowns either, being one of the longest cooldowns in the game.
So no, she doesn’t have the damage, healing, buffs or debuffs you’re over exaggerating.
This lasted for like a month, if that. Because Moira was just released and people wanted to replace mercy. We got the short lived slambulance that still couldn’t compete against dive, or the lesser known anti dive at the time with spamrat.
You are seriously downplaying how long Mercy was a must pick for.
https://i.redd.it/bw0k20jeghg11.png
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/b4ub8m/overwatch_league_hero_pickrates_per_stage_season/
This is like text book denial. Literally Mercy was must pick until the healer buffs patch.
She didn’t. She got nerfed within the first month which killed moth and we went right back into dive. She then got nerfed once more like a month later and she stayed the same until the support patch. Well, there was also the damage boost “nerf” that didn’t just affect mercy, and also affected Ana and Orisa’s ultimates.
She is not, quit the hyperbole already. 5th and 6th most picked hero’s overall, mercy and moira. 7th most picked in GM. Mercy. Overwatch league has Mercy’s pickrate right behind Sombra in a bunker heavy meta that doesn’t even favor her. Baptiste is literally right behind Ana in pickrate in OWL.
3 actually, and 4 main tanks if you wanna get technical.
2 of which have serious problems of their own.
On most points and maps she cannot be far in the backline.
And she is easy to dive, especially when she is far behind her team.
There absolutely is a disparity. The main healer category is small and is relatively necessary. You’re expecting main healers to be high on the pick lists. You should be comparing them to each other, not to all other heroes.
Here’s the current GM numbers this week for main healers:
Ana 12.85, Mercy 5.65, Baptiste 3.47, Moira 1.12.
Here’s the masters numbers:
Ana 13.34, Mercy 5.19, Baptiste 2.63, Moira 2.17
And in diamond:
Ana 12.41, Mercy 4.63, Moira 3.69, Baptiste 2.45
In all of these cases Ana has more than twice her next competitor. She also has more than all the others combined. What’s more, in many of these comps Mercy is being used as an off healer, not as a competitor to Ana.
This isn’t a blip in the data. This has been going on for more than a year. Some of that time was far worse than the current situation, with Ana getting pick rates of over 15% for weeks at a time. I don’t know what to call this aside from a disparity. Maybe you and I use the word differently.
Just for some context, in March of 2018 Moira had a GM pick rate of about 7%, Mercy had about 4.5%, and Ana had about 3.3%. That’s much closer to being balanced than what we’re currently seeing.
It lasted from late January to mid April. Then we had a couple of months of Mercy’s pick rates increasing, and then they started decreasing. People were trying to figure out what Brig meant for the game. The trend was going towards GOATS, and they would have continued. Especially with the buffs to Lucio and Ana.
What’s more, during the entire time that Moira was more meta than Mercy, their win rates were very similar. It’s hard to claim that Mercy is a must pick when she’s winning the same amount of games as her competitors who are played more than her.
This is simply not true for that whole period. It was probably true from the introduction of the rework in August 2017 till the Valkyrie nerfs in January 2018, but it wasn’t after that. She wasn’t winning more than Moira when Moira was picked more than her, and comps that featured Mercy lost in a big way to GOATS that was on the rise. She was not a must pick past January 2018.
She was a must pick for half a year. Ana’s had very high pick rates consistently throughout this past year.
She absolutely did get nerfed repeatedly. The devs were aware of the problem and were working on it. It’s much more than can be said of Ana.
As I said above, you should be comparing main healers to each other. They are absolutely being crowded out on the ladder.
OWL is not monolithic. Mercy’s pick rates in OWL come from the fact that several teams like to run comps that play to her strengths, many of which use her as an off healer.
Healing grenade is also a buff. I’m counting sleep as a debuff, but that might be an eccentricity of mine. I don’t mind adding a CC category.
She does have excellent burst healing cooldowns. Both grenade and nano are burst healing. Burst healing is not usually needed on a constant basis, and having two of them (on top of her already high single target healing) qualifies her for this tag in my opinion.
It’s true that grenade is also her means of self sustain, but she’s not the only healer. Her second healer should be helping her out. I know that if I play Mercy alongside an Ana I do my very best to make sure she NEVER has to use grenade for self healing as it’s too good an ability. In any case, this is a weakness but it’s not been enough to keep her under control.
Regarding damage, that’s debatable. I was comparing her to her competitors. Her damage is certainly higher than Mercy’s (even when you factor in damage boosted). It’s also less trashy than Moira’s. Her damage has also historically affected her viability, so I put it in.
They don’t always mean that, no. But you have to have some explanation for pick rate disparities this high that last for this long. They’re not random. They require some reason.
What’s more, pick rate arguments were leveled at Mercy as well. Sometimes they were justified, and sometimes they weren’t. You can’t use them for one hero and ignore them for another.
I don’t think I’m guilty of hyperbole, but if I am it’s reminiscent of some of the claims people made about Mercy.
I think you’re understating the issue that the main support class has. Two of the main supports, as you say, have serious issues. One of them is being used as an off healer as often as not. It’s possible that Ana is completely fine and that the other main healers need some adjustments, but it’s also quite possible that Ana just needs a nerf.
It’s been inflated for over a year, meta after meta. At some point one has to wonder why Ana has always managed to stay so close to the top. Why the meta never shifted against her. Metas don’t change randomly. They’re influenced by all of the heroes, support included.
Something has to be changed. I think that a heal nerf is an effective way to do it. Let Ana bring utility, and force another healer in to shore up the healing.
Mercy has no business in the high ranks.
I’m not quite sure why I’m answering this, it has all the marks of a troll post and there is no way this can end well.
Mercy is not as easy as you think she is. There are good Mercy players and bad ones. There are Mercy players stuck in Bronze and Mercy players that climb to GM on every alt account.
There’s many people who enjoy her more than other heroes. Some of them are really good players. These players deserve to have their hero be decent in the ranks they play. There are various dps heroes and various comps that really need her to be relevant, and I’m sure they want her on their teams in high ranks as well.
Ideal high rank balance should be just that - balanced. Every hero viable and relevant in certain contexts and combinations.
Mercy absolutely does have business being relevant in higher ranks. You are certainly entitled to your opinion about the hero, but it really doesn’t seem like a relevant or even mildly reasonable way to balance the game.
Stopped reading right there.
With role queue coming, you’re already going to struggle to fulfill dps players’ ability to fill in support if zen and Ana aren’t available to viably play.
I for one am not really interested in playing any support except Ana or zen.
Oh no! I’m sure I missed out on a fascinating and intelligent conversation.
The nerf i will give ana is:
For the moment is RIDICOLOUS she can sleep you almost 10 seconds with the dart and can recover her entire HP with the grenade**. You barely have chances to kill her as WINSTON anymore**
That’s fine. Other people play the game as well. To each his own.
Also - Zen is perfectly viable.
The intent is to keep Ana very viable, just a bit closer to the other healers.
Support is not as popular as dps, but it’s much more popular than tanking. There are many support mains out there.
Granted there is a new hero in tank class on PTR, but that’s not the case I’ve seen.
Been playing a decent amount of role queue, and I usually queue for all 3 roles. Haven’t gotten damage a single time, only gotten tank a couple times, and got support role literally 20+ times. I’m seeing, by far, support is the least popular role.
Interesting. I’d be very surprised if this carried into live. Tank has always been the hardest role to fill in LFG, and I’ve met many more support mains than tank mains.
Not sure. My suspicion is that dps players are more likely to be willing to offtank than flex to support. I think offtank is closer to damage, while main tank is probably the least desirable role out of everything.
I’d guess preferences are: damage, offtank, flex support, main support, main tank.