Hammond is coming. That’s a fact. Now, when dive was a thing, we had a long range, but weak healing support (Zen) and a medium range, strong healing support (Mercy/Moira). That was when they ran two tanks. If they run three, they need two strong healers to keep the team alive. Now who is a major long-range healer? Ana. Who is the only character that can stop healing? Ana. With some buffs to sleep and her damaged raised, she could pair great with Moira and mercy. The two will never die. Proceed to list arguments, but make them good.
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Since when the hell was Zen weak.
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Weak healing, my dude.
She has been in F tier for sometime now and she really hasn’t been on Blizzard’s radar to buff. I agree that with some buffs she’ll be more viable, but will Blizzard even buff her?
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Hopefully. But they might say, “AnA iS BalANcEd. sHe Doesn’t NeeD aNy ChanGeS.”
For the most extreme example of why not: How can Ana ever be viable as a main healer if a hero like Doomfist can automatically kill her without fail every time his ultimate is up? Without mobility (or some type of invulnerability/damage reduction) she can’t do a thing. Not even an exaggeration. If its aimed at her (and it probable will be, shes a high priority target) doesn’t matter how good the Ana player is or if they saw it coming they are automatically dead.
Counters are fine and should exist but with the severity of match ups between Ana and her counters she currently can’t be meta. If she ever was the other team would instantly pick these heavy counters and destroy her.
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That is why Moira/Mercy is there. They come in and heal her, but she still needs buffs. And since when has Doomfist been meta? Le Baguette is almost always there to shut him down.
The problem with Ana is that Winston and D.va in the enemy team make her useless. Winston bubble your team, you can’t heal them. D.va DM someone in your team (even for self-defense), and you can’t heal them.
She have other issues (that I don’t know in details because I’m not an Ana player), but this one is the big one.
There is rarely enough room on a team for a mercy and ana at the same time. Having both is a bad idea as it limits how quickly they can charge their ultimates. You don’t need that much healing.
Moira can’t do diddly in the above example. If Doomfist drops his ultimate on Ana she is dead instantly. She can’t move out of the way and you can’t heal one hit KOs.
Doomfist is the most extreme example. She runs into similar issues with very good flanker / dive heroes in general. But frankly, once again, if she ever became meta people would just pick doomfist or the like to force her back out. You can’t play around him at all as an Ana player no matter how good you are. How can a hero be meta if you can guarentee counter them with a single pick? Your team will lose if Ana just gets killed off over and over.
I wont really defend Doomfist here but considering you are playing Ana, your position tends to matter quite a bit, Doomfist can kill you without fail but if he goes after you he should be out of position afterwards, if he’s killing you and then killing everyone else… that’s your fault, Ana has the kit to stay particularly far away, so far away that flankers have to be heavily out of position in order to kill her, use that your advantage
The OP is meant to say that a buff for Ana would make her meta, as long as it’s an actual buff.
If the main healer on one side is down then clearly the opposing team has a steep advantage.
Staying far away from your team in this situation means you are forfeit to his regular combo (unless you land a very difficult sleep dart which just delays things) as you have no one to protect you. Staying alive is the most important aspect of a healer. If you are dead you can’t heal.
Then maybe zen would stay meta, he can deal lots of damage with long range heals.
Zen currently works because while he has similar survival issues to Ana he often pairs with mercy who can resurrect him.
Ana and Mercy don’t work well together to achieve a similar pairing.
Ana’s problems revolve less around her own power and more around how insanely strong Mercy is.
If you nerfed Mercy, it wouldn’t take much to make Ana top tier again. Now maybe she’ll never be a good Dive healer, but that’s fine since her strengths in deathball, especially with the buffs, more than make up for it.
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Again, that is why the title is that she’ll be meta with some buffs.
not in Ana’s case though, if your death means that the enemy is out of position, he can be punished pretty quick, the fight isn’t 5v6 for long if this happens, it’s 5v5 and as far as you’re concerned you did what you could, you took the enemy out of position and honestly, hitting a sleep dart on a doomfist isn’t particularly hard considering everything he does is in a straight line
So basically, if you die far away and your team doesn’t even turn to see why you did… your team is bad. If you die close to your team then yeah, it’s your fault for bad positioning
You can’t sleep dart Meteor strike.
Losing your main healer vs losing your flanker (who has already done their main job) is much much worse. All things equal the team without the healer quickly loses a battle of attrition.
However, that’s why we have mobile mercy there to save the day.
Edit: Disrupt Dive has 3 tanks, we need two big healers.
I don’t think damage would help (without making her oppressive or stepping on widow / mccrees toes). Sleep dart maybe (but as above, Meotor strike still near 100% automatically counters her).
While the dev team doesn’t want to give her it I feel she needs some minor mobility or some way to briefly reduce damage (ie Bionades effect briefly reduces damage when applied to Ana).