Ana, the most enjoyable and fair support

General Discussion
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Ana is on the hot seat these days. As someone who played about a two hundred hours of Ana, I feel like a lot of people who comment on Ana have never played her…

My perspective is that of an average player (I guess), who ranks about high gold on Ana, an high plat with Moira and Lucio. Ana is, by far, my favorite hero to play on support. Not because I am good with her, but because she is enjoyable. Everything you achieve with her is earned. You are not healing if you do not land your shot. You are not surviving if you do not land your sleep dart of if you are out of position. You cannot turn the fate of a fight if you do not land that grenade (and it requires skills, in execution and, more importantly, in timing). A badly timed nano will not achieve anything. This is fun to me, and most probably to other Ana. But (or maybe because) it is tough.

So many things kill you in a second. You have no escape mechanism. You have no self-healing, besides nade, an ability that you have to not use on yourself if you want to be useful to your team. Every mobile character is always hunting you hard. You are one of the prime target of most ults in the game. A well-placed shield can prevent you from healing your team. Threats come from all angles, and, I repeat, you have no escape mechanism and no mean to defend yourself besides landing you shots.

These days, forums are full of people saying Ana’s too good. Maybe it is true above plat, I couldn’t know… She’s not that common in OWL. But in gold, people complain when you choose Ana. They are not wrong. It is so much easier to carry with other supports. Value is easier to get, death is easier to escape. But it’s less fun.

I guess my point is : please, do not nerf Ana.
I really feel that Ana is one of the most balanced support. It is, for sure, a support that rewards skills, game sense, and good positioning. I feel like those are things we, as the OW community, should want more of in our games.

Oh, and by the way, Nade is not as oppressive as people make it; hide for a couple of second if you have been naded.

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Yeah, I love playing her as she’s rewarding. We need more high skill supports, even if it means reworking them slightly

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I do not want to be rude, but they simply do not balance for gold and anti is genuinely among the best abilities in the game. Hiding is just… not valid counter play. Even in low diamond I start seeing teams push on purple. It works at lower ranks, sure. But anti is relatively weak at lower ranks because of that fact. It is just a different game.

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Ana is really fun. I like her more than Moira, most of the time. She’s fine, IMO, but I’d rather the dev team do some interesting buffs to other supports. Their ‘agressive’ balance methods (of giving slight nerfs when something is good, or huge nerfs when they’re a support) aren’t working, and I’d like to see them make actually agressive changes. A small nade nerf (only blocks 50% healing) would be okay, and a zen volley buff+discord revert would be a good balance patch.

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Not rude at all!
What’s wrong with team pushing at big nades?. If anything, I wish more team would do it. Team also push when Doomfist get a (kinda) cheap rocket punch kill. You land a clutch nade, you can shape a fight. Is that not good?

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I personally think it is good. I am just asserting that it is really, really powerful. I can see the difference just in my high plat games, where people do not understand that the anti is a sign to push compared to my low diamond games where they just intrinsically know. It is only about a 2-4 hundred SR difference, but her impact is like night and day when you cross that line.

I do not really want her nerfed and largely agree with you. I just think it is safe to say that neither of us is really well versed in what makes a top level Ana oppressive.

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I’m just gonna copy and paste this.

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I’m not gonna lie, it’s a very strong ability.
But think about it, ana has so many other drawbacks.

  • healing requires aim and LOS
  • healing is single target only
  • all her cooldowns are very long
  • she has no mobility
  • no reliable self heal
  • extremely weak to flankers
  • big nades are still very hard to pull off and can be countered with matrix, shields, or even just… spreading out.
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I did not mean to imply it had no counterplay. I am just saying if you get anti’d and they push, the fact that you hid does nothing. That is more to avoid spam or poke damage killing you than to mitigate the effect of the anti.

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Fair point but as someone who plays a lot of Ana and Mercy (love them both!) I think they both are equally rewarding and challenging to play but in different ways.

Ana is more mechanically demanding than Mercy and has a much higher learning curve (knowing how to survive with low mobility, aiming, when and where to nade, ult use, etc).

Whereas anybody could pick up Mercy and just pocket or healbot with relative ease.

But carrying is a whole other story. After hundreds of hours in the game on both heroes, I know how to use them very well. It’s significantly easier to carry on Ana and therefore much easier to win (once you’ve mastered her kit for your rank).

On Mercy you need to play perfectly in order to carry and have to make waaaay less mistakes (not including situations when you’re literally duo’d with a smurf or god dps).

IMO Ana is harder to play but easier to win/carry with.
Mercy is easier to play but harder to win/carry with.

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That makes sense, I guess. Haven’t played a lot of mercy, so I wouldn’t know.

One thing for sure, below plat, Moira can carry hard most games. I played a couple of game with diamond friends, the other day, and I can see how this gets less and less true the further you go up the ranks.

I used to play Moira a lot a couple of seasons ago, and got to the highest rank I ever achieved. However, it got to a point where she was the only support I could play effectively at that rank, and I started to feel that her kit was making me forge bad habits (fade is such a “get out of jail” ability). So I decided to focus on my aim and positioning, hence started to play Ana.

I was a rough ride to learn her. I feel like I am only starting to be able to have impact with Ana.

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Ana is a hard topic solely because Blizzard has not added a SINGLE counter to ANTI-HEAL.
Everything else about her kit is cool and fair, but the fact that literally only ZARYA, 1 character out of the entire game, can “counter” Anti. And it’s a Tank.
If we had a SINGLE support with a cleanse, everything would be perfectly fine. But for some reason, they never added one.
Anti is the best ability in the entire game - while not having any sort of counterplay. Sounds balanced and fair.

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What about Baptiste? Why isn’t he enjoyable and fair too?

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He is fun but he is more of defence support than aggressive support, that said he is good now with moth meta 2 his hitscan really adds that extra oomph to take those pests down.

Plus ana can enable dives better than bap.

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But why would you say he’s more of a defense support? Ana also get some defensive moments of just shooting teammates for healing.

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Haven’t played Baptiste much, but I guess he is fair and enjoyable. I do not have an educated opinion on him, however.

I had problems with immortality field at first, but it hasn’t bothered me in the past weeks. I guess I don’t enjoy healing with him as much; how is gun work feels kind of weird to me. I would probably get used to it, but I often end up shooting at the ground to be sure to heal teammates.

But, more to the point, I guess I should not have titled this thread as I did… I am aware that Ana is the most enjoyable to me, but not to everyone else. l was just reacting to all those threads were people act as if Ana is OP and easy to play. I feel all value you get with her is earned, and hard to get.

And I feel that this point often get lost in debates about the power level of anti-heal grenades. If mobile heroes are harassing you, you are probably not landing fight-changing grenades. Hey, if your team is not peeling for you, you are probably dead.

It is strong when it lands, and if nobody’s putting pressure on you, you can use it more freely. But if a flanker is always coming at you, you have to keep the nade for self-sustain and are not helping you team much. Landing good nades is tough.

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ya certainly ana can be defensive, why i say bap is defensive is his kit is more value that way mostly, plus his ult rarely gets a lot of value there are some good combos like visor matrix and stuff but mostly its tough to get value, his most value come from imf by protecting a play or low health team.
Nano on the other hand just nano rein and wathc a team kill or nano blade etc.

Plus she enable dive like genji pharah dva better than bap ideally lucio mercy would be best for dive but mercy lucio isnt that great for heals.

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except you’re looking at this from a 1v1 perspective. the issue arises in a team situation and you’re support. as a support you’re not going to block a nade (highly unlikely even if you’re brig). and as a support generally you can’t do much for an anti’d ally esp if >=2 are anti’ed.

yet ana, as a support, is generating that problem for the other team and ana is also one of the few supports that can contribute a lot when teammates are anti’ed too (either sleep threats or anti back to even the playing field).

that independent problem generation and self solution is what inherently puts her above the rest of the supports (who can’t really counter anti status) along with all her other pros (burst healing, ranged heal, can decently damage, etc.).

that is a big problem.

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I’m legitimately not, actually. It takes 1 person to distract Ana. The role of flanker is specifically is designed to do that, but legitimately your entire team can pressure her and single her out, just like they used to during triple tank.

If anything, you’re the one who’s seeing this as a 1v1 thing. “as a support” No. You have a team. Your team should be working together to beat the other team. That involves focusing the enemies heals.

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She is very rewarding

People who say “nerf Ana” are the same dive heroes getting rolled by an Ana, reverting their attention to the forums, where their hopes might come true. She is the skill-based hero for the support class. None of her abilities are so rewarding without the element of communication. All her tools suddenly become top-tier with communication. Without it, it can be tricky to get around things. Anti takes communication.

Yeah, don’t nerf her.

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