Oh, so let’s buff the heroes that don’t even take half the objective skill to get value out of than Ana so that they can be as effective as her, because
Kill the grandma!
She is too powerful!
You are a brave soul, OP.
Or in other words, since her main competition Mercy got nerfed into the ground. Even if Mercy looks statistically okay-ish right now (after her Valkyrie healing was brought back up), she’s still a shadow of her former self and lacks a truly potent contribution to the team’s ultimate economy.
I honestly don’t think Ana is overpowered right now. As I’ve said since Blizzard added the 300 hp heal to Nanoboost (which I specifically requested by exact number on the forums… yay, senpai noticed me!), I maintain that Ana is where all of the supports should be. I don’t think the nerf to 250 heal on nano was needed, not that it had much effect anyway.
This is applicable to the entire internet about any topic, sadly.
Skill as it is viewed by most players is an entirely subjective concept because of limited perspective. Most players are too ignorant of the game’s minutiae to grasp the extent of the actual skill required to play any one given hero, and even the ones that have a clue don’t fully understand every hero. The game is simply too complicated for that.
Interesting. I think nano should not be as high as 250, seems like 200 or 150 would be more than enough, but I haven’t given it much thought.
Cool thread but why are you coming out of the woodwork just now?, she’s been in this state since early 2018.
Increase her head hitbox, since she has higher propensity to take sniper shots to the face lorewise.
NEXT UP:
Overwatch, umm, ““experts””
are claiming that the heros Brigitte and Bastion take more skill than Widowmaker and Soldier 76. Logical people all over the world are dumbfounded.
Its an issue within the fundamental structure of the game, nothing that nerfing Ana will ever fix.
Here’s where it’s relative. Bastion in non bunker is super hard to play properly
*Only in higher ranks though.
Wouldn’t have made too much a difference since people usually/should usually bionade + nano tanks, and those are the same to squishies anyways
Widowmaker can hard carry teams up to Diamond with zero game sense if they have crazy good aim. Bastion absolutely requires good game sense and a moderately good level of aim. Brigitte requires some aim to be useful at range and even more game sense than Bastion (and miles more than Widowmaker) to both maximize her potential value and avoid death.
Soldier: 76 is simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest heroes in the game to play. With a nearly linear skill curve, his kit is a well-designed model of what other heroes should aspire to.
How hard any of these heroes are to play, or how much skill they require to succeed, is entirely dependent upon the SR bracket that we examine. Brigitte can totally wreck face in Bronze by just running at people and holding left click, but put her up against a competent team in Masters+ and consider all the decisions she has to make compared to Widow.
At some point, aim becomes a challenge that all players in the SR bracket have met. At that point, Brigitte starts to look a lot harder to carry games with than Widowmaker. Also at that point, Ana becomes hands down the best support pick in the game because the one thing holding her back in lower brackets is the aiming requirement.
Exactly, so if you take into consideration how much a hero requires of the player to do well in each of the current skill sets (aiming, game sense, positioning, etc.), then you can easily make an accurate conclusion about the objective amount of total skill a hero requires to get value out of.
And heroes that require less objective skill than others (like Bastion, Brigitte, etc.) should, at least on paper, not be able to have as much impact on a game as another hero with a higher skill floor (not skill ceiling) would have.
I think you’ve missed the point. There is no such thing as an objective skill requirement to play a given hero. All skill requirements are subjective because they vary with the environment a player finds themselves in. The skill requirement of any one hero depends on the individual player’s perspective.
Your line of thinking as applied to game balance would lead to the game being completely ruled by teams made of ultra-squishy DPS heroes with high aim requirements, like Widowmaker and Tracer. They aren’t even “meta” right now and they’re STILL a problem in high ranked gameplay. They afford an individual player too much individual control over the outcome of what is supposed to be a team game.
If Blizzard balanced the game using your philosophy, we would never see heroes like Bastion in the OWL at all. We’d be watching the pros playing nothing but snipers, Genji and Tracer. Even Soldier: 76 wouldn’t have a place in your world.
The game must be balanced from the top down to maintain healthy dynamics between the heroes across all SR brackets. It’s not ideal for the average player, and the gold/plat brackets should be a secondary balance target to hit whenever possible, but never at the expense of Masters+ gameplay.
It’s less problematic to have slightly better heroes in certain lower brackets than it is to have overpowered must-pick heroes in high-end brackets.
Nah, the original GOATS was a Moira composition and a lot of people run Ana GOATS on ladder because the odds of seeing a mirror match and/or a D.va are much lower. Ladder has its own logic.
A lot of people run zen goats on ladder, probably even more common than ana goats due to raw dmg
Not even close, Mercy pickrate was about 16%, which means played close to 100% of the game played, at all ranks.
And because she was so OP she defined by herself the meta in pro, which is the opposite from the pro play currently - Ana is getting countered by the pro meta, most of the time.
You forget sometimes ppl on ladder pick what they like to play more than optimal.
That is why ppl still played dps on GM on prime Goats meta when clearly where sub-optimal choice.
Also there was a time when Ana was the most played healer on prime Goats in GM while Zen goats is objectively better 90% of the time.
I kind of agree with you and as a reminder, that’s why I said “on paper” in my reply, as due to the fact that Overwatch is so complex and contains stuff like roles, counter, etc., this design philosophy cannot really be used all of the time, but sometimes it is pretty useful to take into consideration.
The best thing about Mercy is that she works with any comp. When Mercy was meta, you could slot in literally anything for the other 5 players and still have a good chance to win.
It was a pretty good time for everyone except the one guy on every team who really didn’t want to play Mercy but felt obligated to.
Oh for sure, I expect people to copy the OWL compositions no questions asked, I just think dismissing Moira, Ana or even Baptiste GOATS as “misunderstanding” the idea is a poor statement considering a team can choose to de-emphasize the Zenyatta carry aspect for more of a value/team play aspect if they’d rather diversify the weight of their team evenly. There’s also Sombra and Pharah to consider, without Zenyatta EMP has nothing to bite on in the backline and with a 2nd hitscan Pharah is easier to deal with. Barring Mercy, every support in that slot has specific utility that it adds to the comp.
She’s not op. Her only competition is useful in niche well coordinated quad dps comps. Brig back 60hps and she becomes viable enough with tanks to sustain a 2/2/2 and that will take some of Anas pickrates away