At first glance piercing shots seems like a good quality of life change. The issue with this is it comes at the expense of Ana being able to preheal targets. For those not aware:
Ana shoots one shot every 1.25 seconds from her rifle
Each shot heals the target over 0.85 seconds for 75 heal
This means if I shoot a full hp target and they take damage within the next 0.85 seconds they will receive some of this heal even though they where full health when it originally hit them.
Is this important? I would argue it can be extremely important. This topic has been raised a few times and several people have stated this seems minimal, inconsequential and a waste of her magazine. The issue is total amount healed and overall efficiency are not the most important thing. For example:
If its just myself as Ana and a low health offense / defense hero on the point trying to buy time before reinforcements come and I have a full clip I do not need full value from each shot. I need to keep myself and my ally alive.
Think how often in a game you survive a fight with 1 - 10 hp left over. The small amount a preheal can give can easily make all the difference.
If I heal a target, they reach full hp and my next shot goes through they are completely denied healing for the next 1.25 seconds. Most heroes can easily be killed within this interval (tracer can easily kill a low hp target in this time solo for example let alone the damage that can be dished out by multiple heroes). Again that small heal is essential.
Sometimes a target is full health and is obviously going to rapidly take damage within the next second (frozen, trapped, stunned, slept). Reacting after they take damage will be too late.
Additionally while this is meant to be a quality of life change for Ana it has many flaws and possibly can make her even more vulnerable than she already is:
If I can’t heal a full health retreating ally I have to wait to take the shot. If this means I have to stay scoped up for a small target like tracer or genji I have to limit my field of view and mobility making it more likely I will get picked off also. This is already a MAJOR problem for Ana.
In the same vein to the last point sometimes you only get a brief window to take a shot, genji at the apex of his double jump over a wall while he is retreating, someone passing by through a door about to be pounced. Being denied the opportunity to take these shots because they are already full hp (but clearly about to take damage) is devastating.
In the vast majority of cases where you get blocked the blocking target will have chip damage and block the shot regardless.
Any Ana player worth their salt will position and quick scope to avoid this issue. Quick scoping allows a snap hit scan shot as soon as you can see the target and take the shot, it does not allow the opportunity for your line of sight to be blocked when done well.
If you do end up being body blocked you won’t be able to see the target anyway to make the shot making this change only really useful if you have a large tank like roadhog at full health (again unlikely) blocking you from healing another tank like reinhardt.
To be honest this title is slightly click bait and I don’t begrudge people that are excited about this change and keen to use it (there are some situations where it is useful I just overall personally feel on balance its a net loss). What I would really like to see implemented is the option to choose in Ana’s character options.
Please don’t force Ana players to be the only healers that can’t preemptively use our game sense to preemptively react to situations. Ana already has several weaknesses and deficits compared to the other healers as it is. If you agree please support similar threads on the PTR forums to get this issue noticed. Thank you!
The character is just continuosly getting dumbed down. First the increase on nade aoe (you can hit nades across the map blindfolded). Now the clip size increase and shots going through allies.
Make the system do a trajectory check. If the ally I am aiming has no other allies in the same line/trajectory, the healing should get registered. Because that means I am intentionally healing that ally. Or it can decide between whoever has the lowest HP. All this is a little bit confusing considering her out of scope primary is a projectile with travel time, unlike her hit scan scoped shot, so it’ll be tricky to actually do a check when anything can happen when the dart travels. Maybe only apply this mechanic with her scoped shots?
As the guy said above, make her darts pass through allies. This however has potential to be extremely overpowered as nade+passing healing darts could make for huge AoE heal bursts. Moira however has similar AoE healing burst in the form of her yellow ball, so there’s that.
Make her healing pass through, BUT at a reduced healing rate after the 1st, 2nd, etc collisions. Eg: healing for first target does full 3 ticks, the one after 2 ticks, and rest only 1. Also full HP allies will get a fixed healing for reduced rate/ricks, eg: 1 or 2 ticks only. I think this solution is the best one.
One thing for sure is they HAVE to think up of something about prehealing since that’s a core component to her mechanics (both her healing and offensive shots go in stages).
Friendlies blocking healing was more of an issue than pre-healing was a necessity. With this and the extra ammo you’ll have to reload far less often and be able to put out more healing.
4 extra shots is not exactly “far less often” as I can tell. No Ana player is going to rely on their ammo count reaching 0 before reloading to full capacity as it is.
A lot of what kills Ana gameplay is the reload. It doesn’t matter when the reload happens, because it makes both you and your allies especially vulnerable since you are unable to heal.
Ammunition needs to be done away with for Ana to thrive.
It should just not pierce anyone past 5 meters, so only fully healed people in front of your face are ignored. Very simple rule that will not be confusing.
While this would change Ana’s rifle completely the simplest solution would probably be to make it hit-scan and then have it check for targets on the other side of the ally - if your target is full health but an ally is on the other side it pierces, otherwise it will pre-heal like current build. Question is, would that make Ana’s rifle too strong? With the current rate of fire I think it would be fine, but I’m not completely sure…
I’m assuming you also think Hanzo’s projectile speed buff was just a crutch for bad hanzos too ,right ? after all ,good hanzos would have landed their shots anyways.
I don’t think you’d find an argument if your hand went in yours and came out the other side, you haven’t proven how this wasn’t a direct buff ,unless you can actually come up with something worth replying to ,I think I’ll take your advice of not replying next time