To a point, but it is what has been holding her back as we learned from the Q&A
If they buff Ana, her and Moira with the heal bonus on the Grenade are able to put out almost 400 hps, more than Zen’s ult, with their baseline kits.
By shifting power away from her grenade’s healing bonus, they can now add power to her baseline healing, survivability, and other areas WITHOUT making her too good in too many areas like she was before.
Ana will STILL be able to have a super strong 185 burst heal, but without the worry of making other high healing supports ALSO give huge numbers.
Plus it would ALSO make Ana the highest hps (Landing every shot that is) like it should be, rewarding her rifle aim more than relying on bonus’ and abilities.
Moira heals AOE, and has a much easier time surviving with Fade, and a more reliable way to deal damage. On paper Moira can heal 5 targets for 80 hps, or 155 hps with her Orb.
Ana will still only be single target, with the chance of every 10 seconds to have an AOE burst. Ana could heal one target for 102 hps, or 202 hp on one target, 100 on others.
Can’t forget that Moira also has the HOT effect after healing meaning she can heal and forget a target, Ana has to keep focus on ONE person at a time to heal them.
In the Q&A they told us Ana is scary because tank meta, and she was OP in tank meta because of one thing: Biotic Grenade.
Back then the Bio-Nade increased healing received by 100%, and also did more damage.
This is also part of why Hog was meta, because her nade allowed him to full heal himself, and Lucio (who was the S-Tier support at the time) could use it to heal everyone else. And it would also block the healing of any enemies caught in the fray on top if that AFTER it had already taken half their health away (or most, if you were Tracer).
As long as Bio-Nade is kept weak, Tank Meta will not return. The real threat of enabling Tank meta is Moira + Lucio.
In my opinion, I feel like having a “Main Healer” being centered around her utility is sort of self-defeating when she doesn’t have the cooldowns necessary to use that utility in battle.
…but she can’t get shorter cooldowns because she already does more healing than the Supports who DO have utility moves that can be used at the regular.
Ana has the utility of an off-healer like Zenyatta & Lucio but the healing potential of healers like Mercy/Moira…but they don’t really mesh as well as they should.
Off-Healers have powerful ultimates and relatively short cooldowns to make up for their piddling healing numbers, whilst Main-Healers have weaker ultimates with longer cooldowns on their most powerful abilities to offset their much strong healing.
Ana tries to combine both the utility of an off-healer with the strength of a main-healer and all you get is inconsistency; inconsistent healing, inconsistent utility and an inconsistent ultimate.
I dunno what you read but Geoff literally said they are afraid to buff Ana (The currently 2nd lowest winrate hero in the game) because of a preceived Tank meta that could happen
Biotic Grenade is literally the one ability that holds Ana’s lackluster kit back due to how much it does at once.
A lot of Ana players may disagree with me about it but at this point, I would rather get rid of Biotic Grenade and just revamp her to where she’s more consistent (and self-sustaining) instead of being a one-note Biotic-Grenade thrower.
If Ana did NOT have Biotic Grenade, people would realize just how awful her kit actually is, but seeing as Biotic Grenade is the end all be all for Ana and the only reason why most people think she’s viable, that won’t happen.
That’s not what you said, you said Ana alone = Tank meta, and thats not what the devs said either.
They said they are afraid of buffing Ana because of tank meta, but its not Ana’s normal healing, sleep or nano that enables that. It was bio-nade.
Blizzard knows this, which is why they nerfed the nade, and why it should stay nerfed or possibly get nerfed even more so the rest of her kit can be buffed.
I feel you, everybody puts so much faith in Biotic Grenade, and yes, when it works, it IS a very powerful ability/tool to use in a fight.
However, 9 times out of 10, it’s either wasted on yourself, blocked by fat teammate hitboxes, or a barrier, and that’s not even mentioning that it’s on a 10-second cooldown.
It’s too inconsistent for her to be relying on it as her only saving grace.
Unfortunately, that is not what the developers think and is exactly why Ana isn’t getting buffed, re-worked or powershifted.
The developers seem to want Ana to stick to a niche where she’s centered around Tanks (which is stupid considering Moira is so much better at it) instead of changing her role in the game.
That said, no one seems to actually know her role outside of saying “utility” which isn’t a role so much as a basic function.
Sure we can say long-distance healing, but her kit and the way maps are designed do not allow her to benefit from it without getting her killed trying to position herself properly.
As it stands, Ana is still considered to be a Tank-healer even though that niche has already been filled.
Okay so after they told us they were afraid of giving Ana any kind of buff because of the threat of a Tank meta because of her and Moira being able to put out INSANE healing levels,
It’s a big change but you’re right that they are putting the entire stock of the character in biotic grenade. The devs fear buffing her because of antiheal and healing boosting but as you said it’s so situational it rarely can be put to good use the way other support abilities are.
If there was an option to add antiheal to her sniping shots or somehow transfer some of the power from the grenade so she’d be a better character I’d take it in a heartbeat.
I agree, completely remove bionade’s "increased healing receive " effect and add these:
1.Decrease biotic grenade’s burst healing (again) by 33% while increasing splash radius by 33%.
(This will prompt people to use her nade for the anti heal effect on a potential tank meta around moira’s orr brigitte’s aoe healing ability. The lower heal value form her grenade would also make her a less viable pick for that tank meta.)
Many have already said this but again, lessen the cd on sleepdart from 12 down to 9 or 10 maybe even 8 (with brigitte’s low cd stun , i dont see why this is op xD)
This sounds crazy but hear me ou. how bout giving her “2 biotic grenade charges”. That heals/damage for 10 or 15 hp with NO “increased healing received” effect. This wouldn’t support a tank meta since the the healing is way too crappy fo but it Shuts down every other healer’s burst healing.
Think about it. Why run tank comps when you cant sustain them cuz the enemy frequently hurls anti-healing nades on your slow moving tanks.
With all the aoe healing from the new healers(brigitte and moira) ana wont be able to compete with them in terms of healing and thats a good thing cuz if she’s buffed in the healing department, she would contribute to that tank meta that blizzard tries to avoid. BUT, she will be Viable with ANY BUFFS to her utility (wider antiheal range, more antiheal charges or more frequent sleepdarts )
Current design is to make the higher skilled heroes obsolete outside of the top tiers. Look at Moira/Brigitte. Unless you are at masters skill, why would you ever take Ana over those 2? There’s no situation to learn Ana, except she happens to fun due to aiming.