Ana self heal Passive ability idea

[Skald-1493]

The DEVs stated that they’re not interested on improving her weaknesses — her lack of mobility or her poor self heal.

@GeoffGoodman

I think its worth talking a little about our balance philosophy here. People often will post things such as “why doesn’t Blizzard see that this hero has X as a weakness and that is what should be fixed.”

One aspect of our heroes that is very important is that they all have various strengths and weaknesses. This is a core aspect of what makes teamplay so important in Overwatch. If you have an Ana on your team, this gives you certain advantages such as being able to be healed from very long range, having a more offensive-favored ultimate, and having the ability to disable healing on enemies (which can be especially vital against heroes that really rely on healing such as Roadhog). That said, she also brings her own weaknesses that must be managed, such as low mobility and lower self-healing. A team may opt to run Brigitte or Lucio with Ana to help peel attackers off of her, for example.

When we want to buff a hero, sometimes it can be the right call reduce these weaknesses. For example, if a weakness is just too overbearing or a hero just has too many weaknesses compared to their strengths. But more often we would rather amplify a heroes strengths and make the hero just better at what they do, which leaves their weaknesses still around for enemies to exploit and for allies to try to manage.

I hope this helps explain how we look at balance issues and heroes in Overwatch in general.

A more likely fix would be for them to make her sleep dart efficacious — actually have it do what it was intended to do. As it is the dart’s a more difficult a shot to make than most any shot in the game. That makes it a terrible “Oh Sh*t!” panic button.

@JeffreyKaplan

Ana’s Sleep Dart ability was intended to give her the ability to disengage.

Another possible solution that doesn’t try to improve her mobility or self heal is to give her a little shadow cover to operate under as a preventative measure…

@Skald-1493

Can we give Ana a ghillie suit – a passive that simply lets her be invisible to enemies past a certain distance. Of course abilities like Widow Sight, Opportunist, Sonic Arrow and some such work as normal.

Firstly this would allow Ana to be a different kind of sniper than Widowmaker in her sniper’s nest. Secondly it’ll allow her to play at range – which at the moment she cannot. Lastly it turns her relationship with dive into a cat 'n mouse game – leaving her that much less susceptible to that meta overall.

Also, it does NOTHING to give her extra mobility – which is perfectly in keeping with her play style restrictions.

Thanks everyone.

But good luck with that. DEV gods are cruel and harsh whereas Ana’s concerned. They like seeing lower bracket Anas suffer and die horrid deaths many times and often.

Whatever the case dive is here to stay. It’s not going away soon, they keep adding heroes to it near every other patch; and each time they do they add yet another hard counter for Ana to bleed on.

Honestly, she needs a retune; but don’t expect that until it’s blatantly obvious to everyone… and then some.