The devs are afraid to buff Ana because they are afraid of a resurgence of a tank meta. Which was why they preemptively buffed Reaper and Mei.
As it stands a big thing that is holding back Ana is the Biotic Grenade. Her power is pretty much shoved into that and its the thing she has been balanced around.
Due to its healing boost and anti-heal, which is what drove the tank meta.
They could go and remove the healing boost and buff Ana’s healing output. Of course that still has the problem of that she would be putting out ult grade healing output on large easy to hit targets like tanks. Which could once again necessitate running an Ana for anti-heal to break the enemy healing so the tanks can die.
You could nerf the Anti-heal, or even remove it, but then what do you buff? Cannot buff the healing boost cause once again ult grade healing output every 10 seconds. Cannot buff her healing because of the healing boost. Maybe you could buff the raw heal on the grenade, but you cannot touch its damage but then again those changes focus on maker her grenade stay central to her.
Could give her a passive to grant her mobility to get to high ground.
As she is right now though, Brigitte can enable her in a 2.5 tank comp. Ana’s main problem is flankers. With Brigitte on bodyguard duty it opens Ana up to make use of her entire kit to utmost effect.
At that point though if you are running a 2.5 tank comp, you should be rolling Moira instead. Superior healing, superior survivability. Also frees up Brigitte to go do stuff on the front line than having to sit on Ana and babysit her.
What do u want them to do with Ana? She’s a victim of the meta. Winston shield and dva matrix destroyed her. I’m not sure how to counter that.
Her kit ATM is anti synergistic.
She has a sniper rifle and no way of using it properly. Vertical mobility can help so she can get up to high ground to make the most of it, and be able to return later when she gets forced off. That would also improve her survivability if she can get to positions where it is more difficult for flankers and divers to reach her.
not necessarily better, just more reliable, Ana takes 0.4 seconds less to kill a 200 hp hero, surviving longer is also tied to skill and rank, personally I’m particularly hard to kill when I play Ana
I do think Nade usage isn’t much tied to personal choice, you don’t choose when to use nade, the game flow tells you when and how
Aside from that Moira is just more mobile but Ana can kill you from across the map if she’s good, as every sniper does
Ana is f tier has been and its sad , in low sr play you see tons of anas they have no idea how bad she really is
Your tanks and supports have to be kinda sleeping on the job for you to get sniped out by an Ana though. Or you have to be playing some hero that doesnt really fit with your team composition.
Mercy’s heals almost entirely negate Ana’s damage, and grenade is dodgeable when thrown at long distances.
Ana’s survivability issues comes from her vulnerability to flankers which Brigitte bodyguards against.
When it comes to utility Ana is superior to Moira, and if the enemy tries to run a Moira in a 2.5 tank comp against them then Ana just nulls the healing of Moira and then the tanks die.
Also in that kind of comp making your DPS more powerful is better then just having a ton of healing when you got shield tanks holding the line. Nanoboosting your DPS so they can rip through the anti-heal’d tanks makes for an easy teamfight win.
Yeah, Ana punishes those who are out of position, not everyone can be behind orisa’s barrier or rein’s shield, there are always outliers but more importantly, Ana can also heal an ally from across the map, something only Moira can do with her orb but it takes forever
Not saying that her best place is far away from a fight since flankers will make it hard for her but she can always toss a few shots before getting to mid range, my tanks loves when I play Ana but this has been a thing that took ages, aiming is a big deal when playing her though you seem to know more about that than I do
Yea but then you are tying Brigitte to Ana. Effectively forcing Ana to have to do the work of 2 characters since Brigitte is full time protecting her (meaning she wont be doing much else due to that short range).
Moira might have less utility, but she frees up Brigitte to actually contribute to the entire team rather than pocket Ana.
I assume you are running 2 tanks, 2 supports, Brigitte, 1 DPS. If so then tying Brigitte to Ana means you are going to have poor damage output since your sole DPS is gonna be the vast majority of your team’s damage output.
Running Moira lets Brigitte rotate to damage duty, while still providing sufficient heals.
Util is nice, but its pointless with no one to capitalize on it.
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You only got that part of my post huh?
Let me write it in simpler words so it might be easier to grasp.
Ana kit and design viability? Bad.
When good? Triple quad tank.
Other situations? She’s meh.
Other situation mercy>>>Ana.
Ana buff?—> Triple tank stronger----> Blizzard says no no.
The only possibility? Ana stays the same. Or mercy nerfed.
Now is it understandable enough for you?
Ah the triple tank Boogey man.
The justification used to not buff Ana.
Moira is better at sustaining triple tank than Ana ever was. Triple tank isnt back.
Ana needs buffs. Nerfing other supports wont fix her problems, ever. You do realize that by your own logic you want to nerf all the supports down to Ana level, which would make them all bad in most situations except the ones that you dont want to exist.
Stop trying to nerf all the supports down to the level of one of the most underpowered characters in the game. You dont see us asking to nerf Mccree because Torbjorn is useless.
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Brigitte was built to cover the healers from flankers, as if she tries to run into an organized group she gets focused down and dies, and then the flankers are free to kill the support line. Moira may be more durable against flankers, but she still falls.
Even if you have Brigitte try to help the frontline she has poor damage output. She is built to duel flankers who try to duel supports. In a clustered group her shield bash hitbox is too big and makes it so that its hard for her to stun a particular target she wants to stun. She is also bound to that stun in order to be able to do her combo for a reasonable moment of burst every 5 seconds.
Better use of her is keeping the supports alive, because if the supports die then it cascades into a quick teamfight loss.
You can say that Ana then has to do the work of 2 heroes, but if the enemy flankers are not doing anything to Ana because of Brigitte then the enemy team has to work to make up for being a person down as well. So it all evens out.
If the enemy winds up swapping off flankers altogether then Brigitte can join the frontline.
The thing about flankers is that they are effective against tanks and DPS as well. They dont have to hit the supports, meaning they are still very effective even when Ana is protected.
Flankers can always hit where Brigitte isnt and be effective, Brigitte being tied to Ana isnt contributing much. At that point you are basically fighting a 5v6. You cant fight a mobile strike force with static emplacements. The French tried that in 1940, we all know how that worked out for them.
Ana is a high skill support. Most players who liked playing Ana have quit or moved to other roles.
I always like to remind people that when Ana’s nerfs started rolling in during the triple tank meta, they also nerfed the tanks quite a bit in the exact same patches. They never gave Ana a chance to be herself while the tank nerfs settled in.
Blizz never gave us the chance to see if triple tank would stick after adjusting the more powerful offtanks at the time, to see if triple tank would still be highly viable.
Takes 6 heroes to make a meta work, but everyone blamed Ana. I got my golden Ana gun just in time to see her fall out of the meta completely. So the option of getting good at a higher skilled hero was removed for me as a support, since Ana became a throw hero essentially. 
Glad dps get to have fun on their high skill heroes without fear of neutering…
And if they are not hitting the supports then the supports are getting a ton of ult charge. Which means Ana can nanoboost more often, Zen can transcend more often, Lucio could Sound Barrier more often, and even Brigitte can Rally more often.
And when Brigitte Rallies Flankers lose a lot of their damage output against everything. Especially tracer.
Also the French emplacements failed because no one thought that tanks could get through the river filled black forest. This was because the concept of the tank by then was outdated in the minds of the French who still thought in WW1 terms. Instead of seeing that tanks with reasonable armor and high speed would become the thing of the future.
If the French had also setup their emplacements through the black forest then Germany would have had to either engage the mobile force that was the other “wall” to lock down the advance, or be forced to engage the emplacements directly.
Which is how a defensive comp works. The enemy is forced to engage them in order to stand a chance at winning.
Um. You do realize that the team running Moira will be getting more ult charge than Ana’s team?
Moira will be doing just as much healing, if not more. Brigitte will be doing more healing and damage, and the off support will still be doing the same thing.
Its not like you can kill a Moira easily with a flanker, so in both cases the flankers wont really be effective hitting the supports. If Moira gets hit she can run to Brigitte, which is much easier than vice versa. But in Ana’s case the DPS and tanks are gonna be weaker and receive less heals than Moira’s team, allowing for Moira’s team to outlast Brigitte’s team and build tank and DPS ults faster as well.
As for the fortifications being extended to the Ardennes, yes that would have delayed the Germans, no it would not have stopped them. The issue about a static defensive line is that it stretches you thin everywhere, since you need to defend every mile of your border.
Meanwhile the mobile adversary can have a schwerpunkt that lets them concentrate their force and bust your defense at a single point. See Ouvrage La Ferté. A German frontal assault that broke through the Maginot line.
Trying to defend everything and putting considerable troops in static, inflexible defensive positions is a surefire way to lose. Having your forces be mobile and able to fight where you NEED to fight is the far better option.
This does not mean slow units are bad and speed is everything. No, it means that slow units need to be at or near the schwerpunkt at all times, thus maximizing their utility and effect. In a 2.5 tank composition your schwerpunkt is your tanks and frontline, not your main healer. You do not want to pull resources away from your schwerpunkt to defend your main healer if possible. Ideally the main healer should be able to draw the fight into the schwerpunkt if she is attacked.
Not really, Moira’s healing output is much stronger and she applies a HoT, Which means that she can tap everyone and Brigitte wont have much opportunity to use repair kit. So Brigitte wont be able to ult as much as if she was paired with Ana. Not to mention that the biotic grenade healing boost means that Repair Kit heals for 225 base. Which means repair kiting a target at heal boosted low health target is going to full heal and overheal 200 HP heroes and massively heal tanks.
But then all Moira can do is just ult which is more for healing then damage. Which the healing can be nulled by Biotic Grenade.
Pretty much no matter how you look at it most of Ana’s viability involves that grenade. You can say Moira heals more but healing output wont matter when you cannot heal the important targets. The healing boost greatly increases all of the supports and Brigitte’s ability to heal.
Which is why Blizzard is having trouble changing Ana.
Because of that pocket ult grenade combined with the damage/defense boost ult and the longest hard CC in the game. She has too much utility where if her weaknesses are covered then it would be better to run her over a raw stat healer.
I also love how history can be applied to the tactics in video games.
its true i gave up in complaining because theyre never going to respond
The thing is Moira’s orb is basically a biotic grenade lite. It doesnt have the offensive abilities, but in terms of healing it can put out a LOT of healing at once. It doubles Moira’s healing, which is more than a 50% increase, and since your off healers arent doing much healing anyway, its results in a superior amount of healing for your team.
And I would honestly take a faster Moira ult over a faster Brigitte ult anyday. Brigitte ults are easy to blow through and dont offer the survivability of Coalescence. Not to mention Moira’s ult can actually outpace DPS ults, and can be used to initiate the snowball effect. Rally… not so much.
The only argument for picking Ana here is anti-heal, but is that really worth removing 1 entire person from the fight?
TBH Grenade is very powerful, but I dont see it being OP as an ability, after all we have discord. It does however mean
- No buffing Ana healing
- No buffing grenade
Her survivability and mobility are fair game since neither of them affects the power level of her grenade.
TBH I would actually ascribe Dive vs Triple Tank to the Vietnam War. Where Dive is the Vietcong and Triple Tank is the US.
Dive is this guy who constantly pops up and stops you from doing the objective, but can get away before you can do any significant damage. Then when you are worn down and tired they attack in force with artillery and a big charge. Meanwhile the big and heavily armored Triple Tank force can never actually bring their firepower to bear where it is needed.
Doesnt help that the Vietcong in this case have better weapons, and the US dont have air superiority.