Ana Opinions from an Ana Main

If Dev team sees this, please check out some of the suggestions that come from mostly Ana mains. I think we've really got some above average ones and some solid justification for them. <3

Ana is great.

She’s a secondary healer, and many complaints are based on a lack of understanding of that fact.
Her biggest strength is her range over other healers.

That being said, the meta evolution has not worked in her favor. She generally can’t outdo snipers, has trouble with dive without proper team support, and is defeated by shields in every way. She has some frustrating limitations she didn’t have before.

I don’t think she needed that damage nerf, but straight up going back on it is not going to happen.
I don’t want her to be able to shoot through shields either, that’s a quick lazy simple fix to her healing abilities.

I want her to require another set of skills besides aiming. Skills to capitalize on her good positioning.

I would like mobility! Nothing major. No hanzo dodge, no grapple.

Something very small that would would allow her to:

  • Survive dives by being more mobile and dodging flankers just a little.
  • Get to high ground where dives cannot reach and kill her with ease (they have to work for it just a little).
  • Position herself to maybe stand a chance against other snipers just a little.
  • Get to locations where she can shoot around/over shields and walls instead of praying the teammate realizes he better get back to her LOS.
  • Give her positioning skills more room to grow. She heavily relies on positioning, but she has a low positioning-skill ceiling with her slow pace and 1 foot jump.

The lore is crying out for more mobility!
In her POTG she jumps over bullets and rolls under bullets!
If you look at her “Introducing Ana” video we first see her up high (where she can’t actually get to)!
In her comic she is also in a high location to support Soldier (that she couldn’t get to)! She uses it to defend herself against Reaper. In game, she would have just accepted her death.

Let Ana be able to move vertically a tiny bit. I don’t care how. Even if it’s just a little ledge-hoist rather than wall climb or grapple or roll or leap. ANYTHING would solve a lot of frustrations.

Comments Conclusion:
We've had some different fix ideas thrown around (all suggestions are either/or):

* A ledge-hoist, or other very slight vertical boost, to minimally expand her positioning options entirely for the sake of healing. _Nothing to dodge dives with._
* Reverting her damage and healing nerfs would help her be a stronger secondary healer by increasing her offensive capabilities and healing output.
* Giving her a passive healing ability would increase her survivability a little, and her healing output by a lot. Allowing her to use her Biotic Grenade entirely for healing teammates/nulling enemy healing. However, spamming nades into battles may be overpowered.
* Faster cooldown on Biotic Grenade and Sleep Dart. This would improve her survivability by a lot, and her healing output by a decent bit.

I would also consider which changes affect her range. The first two retain her long-range, and even increase it, but the last two would result in a much more mid-range healer who mostly uses Biotic Grenade.
15 Likes

Symmetras portal helps. Note that she is old lady. Not many seniors are agile enough to climb

9 Likes

Mercy and Zen are just so strong combined that it’s a real problem for all other healers and Ana is by far the weakest in general.

They just don’t know what to do with Mercy and kept her Rez which is still too powerful she can bring back anyone…

Sucks because i love to play any Support more than Mercy, she’s just so passive in a way that she always tries to stay out of enemies while flying around and damage/heal-boosting with her long range ability.

2 Likes

In her current state, i completely agree. With that being said, she has no place being a secondary healer without a team saving defensive ult. She was made to rival mercy so people who didn’t want to play healer would play healer.

13 Likes

Jet pack Ana

12 Likes

Exactly. Give Ana a jetpack. Easy.

1 Like

not a Pharah type jet pack something to help her reach higher places like a limited burst

That way she could burst left, right, forward or back for escape
Burst up for positioning

2 Likes

I’m pretty sure they know exactly what they’re doing with her. Keeping her meta is profitable. She’s the new Tracer, but for overwatch league.

2 Likes

Mobility creep has shown that it doesn’t just help heroes play around dive comps but actually counters them. Here’s the current meta simplified after the mobility creep happened on snipers:

Snipers are the Scisors
Divers are the Rock
(Bastion, Torbjörn, Symmetra, Junkrat, Roadhog and Reaper are mushrooms)
Rest are the Paper

Scisors beat Paper, Paper beats Rock and Rock beats Scisors
except Rock and Scisors don’t fight anymore after Scisors got mobility buffs

All in all Ana lacks sustainability when compared to other main healers. Her healing numbers on average are worse than what people think they are and tweaking her healing and/or self-sustain would be the correct way to approach her right now in an objective matter. The developers don’t consider subjective reasons other than “fairness” and “fundamental flawlessness” which are the reasons they used to change hog, df, sombra, scatter and so on. These changes are also internally excluded as in they consider only internal views of officials on these matters.

3 Likes

Right, that is why we dont see any Ana and Lucio played at all as far as i know, to be fair haven’t watched Overwatch-League in 2 months. (hope its still true xD)

1 Like

The Overwatch balancing team is so good they’ve managed to make one of the all-time best main healers in the game a secondary support, thanks to the Mercy rework and Moira. Congrats.
But yeah, giving a roll, a lunge, a mini-jetpack, anything to make Ana less vulnerable could be nice.

2 Likes

overwatch league needs views. the casual crowd brings in those views. keeping mercy a boring, low skill high value hero is great for entry level casuals. They see her being played in the highest levels of the game, they immediately want to play her too.

We don’t see lucio and ana because they’re not casual friendly. It’s that simple. Why do you think Junkrat got massive buffs, and then brigitte was added.

1 Like

It’s pretty sad the Overwatch team isn’t willing to balance Mercy. At least, make Mercy on-par with the other healers. Variety is also important to keep the game fresh and running.

4 Likes

I completely agree, which is why we saw dive forcefully finally come to an end after it got stale to watch.

So, she’s great, but she’s bad against every meta that has existed for the last, what, 5 seasons?

1 Like

I’m gonna infiltrate the Overwatch team to push these changes to the live servers. It’s the only way our voices will be heard.

1 Like

She’s bad against Winston. Her hard counter. His shield is impossible to play around, it’s too big. Him dropping it can take away all of ana’s value. Mercy’s rework kept winston meta for 5 seasons.

1 Like

We’re in World of Warcraft meta

One shots and stuns

It’s pretty anti-Ana.

2 Likes

Last time I checked Reinhardt has a higher pickrate than Winston. The OP indirectly listed 3 metas - Dive, BarrierWatch, and Double Sniper. These metas have been one after the other since season 6 ( I think), and after saying she’s great proceeded to say she struggles vs all of them.

So, he’s kind of saying “Ana is good but everything else in the game is just better”, which is a silly argument.

2 Likes

i think her nade and sleep just need cooldown reduction

8 sec nade (2sec reduction)
10 sec sleepdart (2sec reduction)

nade was 5 sec duration before, it got nerfed to 4 sec, but cooldown still the same, 8 sec nade should be good

i dont like to give her a new mobility skill, all she need was cd reduction

2 Likes