Just a thought experiment, how different would Ana’s design be if she were built to be consistent with the high skilled heroes she’s often lumped in with? Here’s my best guess:
Hitbox:
Critbox enlarged by 66%
Body hitbox enlarged by 20%
Notes: Heroes designed to appeal to high skill players near uniformly have hitboxes greatly enlarged from their model (compare Zen to Brig for instance). In particular, long ranged heroes have larger head hitboxes to allow for fair countering. As a lean woman taller than Widowmaker, my best guess is that she’d be given at least Widowmaker’s hitboxes. Curiously, Ana has arguably the most form fitting hitbox in the game, so I’ve changed it here to match Widowmaker.
Sleepdart:
Hitbox: Reduced by 75%
Notes: Large projectile sizes on non-ultimates are nearly unique to spam or cleave abilities, like on Junkrat, Rein, or Mercy. Sleepdart is an odd exception, having four times the area of Hanzo’s logs, so it’d seem fair for them to be similar.
Bionade:
Now does 20 impact damage with 40-10 area of effect damage, and 40 impact healing with 60-20 area of effect healing.
Notes: Consistent with every other explosive in the game, you are now supposed to aim bionade for maximum effect. After even Junkrat was changed to be expected to aim his mine, it remains curious that Ana doesn’t.
Nanoboost:
Now has to be aimed
Notes: Just like every other projectile ultimate, Ana would be expected to aim. If Bastion can do it, Ana can.
I mean you could fix her in game model by making her stand instead of having her hunched. Nano boost is fine. Maybe get rid of the insta heal and nerf some other effect. But I’d like to see the addition of speed because why not. Bio nade can be nerfed with the anti heal being lowered but not taken away. Sleep set should only be active for 3 seconds and maybe have a struggle mechanic so that it can end sooner. But we can lower its cooldown. Also I’d prefer a passive for Ana where she can heal a target for more if their much farther away from her just to reward Anas with good aim. And we can have an excuse to buff her but not have a flat buff for anas that can’t aim.But that’s just me and I’m not a game designer.
Hitbox complaint: I disagree. She’s shorter than widowmaker is, for one, and unlike widowmaker, she doesn’t have a mobility option period, and she also doesn’t oneshot. Noteably, all the heroes you’re thinking of have upwards mobility option. Echo, Widow, all can get to the sky. While Zenyatta’s is curiously large, It’s a common ask is to have his critbox shrunk a bit. Ana, like him, is stuck to the ground, and has a much lower DPS than Zenyatta. Interestingly, she has no ability to headshot, either.
I won’t actually comment much on sleepdart and Bionade, even though I disagree. Sleepdart is different to the others because, well, its on a rather high cooldown. And Bionade…isn’t an explosion? Its just full of liquid that splashes.
Nanoboost being aimed though? Unlike bastion, you only have one go at it, and unlike bastion, it isn’t used to kill people directly. It’s being used on a teammate, who can, in fact, waste it.
we don’t want to see speed boost added back to it. Trust me. Those days were dark and the fact it was removed after only a season should tell you something.
I mean it certainly is interesting. And people don’t like the insta heal.So it could at the very least be an experimental change. And let’s not forget we have a ton of cc added since the speed boost.
Are you decreasing the cooldown of sleep dart? It’s already hard to hit characters like tracer and genji. They also have buttons that require no mechanical skill to use.
Are you also allowing her to land headshots on enemy targets?
Some people don’t like the instaheal. I think it might be tweaked still, but I think I prefer it to a speed boost. Did you play with it back in the day? Don’t you remember Reaper being able to get down the entire dorado straightaway between point 1 and 2 while ulting?
I think that’s the funniest thing about this post. OP compares her to various other characters, but fails to see what way’s they’re different. Comparing her to Widow, but forgetting Widow does 300% headshot damage, and has mobility, and has headshots…period. If this went through without completely redesigning Ana from the bottom up she’d be the worst video game character ever made. Her role would best be changed to, “tracer food.”
I mean you can still make changes to blade to deal with that. And even then I’m
Suggesting an experimental to see if that’s possible. And I don’t need to be a broken record buuuut since the speed boost being taken away more cc has been added. Which certainly gets in the way of a speed boost. And getting rid of the insta heal would certainly be interesting to see if adding the speed boost is workable or even viable at this point in time. And the speed boost can be adjusted we Can lower it maybe.
Yah that’s true. Unless theirs a sombra, or mei, or junkrat trap, or mccree flash, or Orisa halt, or sigma, or brig, or hog, or Ana sleep, or doom, or sym turrets yah know it’s weird listing all the cc in this game. Well not all but you get the jist of it. It could be broken but I feel like we won’t know until we test it. And it’d also require the Ana to have better timing since now you can’t just wipe it all away with the insta heal.
Again, I don’t disagree, but here me out here: you’re relying on teammates being smart. Had a genji/widow/Reinhardt/Zarya complain endlessly about one the other night on competitive. They asked why we lost ana (me) for brigitte. Our moira and myself seemed to be the only ones who, well, understood the purpose of CC in the game. think of how dumb the average person is, and then recall that 50% of the population is worse than that.
there is more CC in the game now, but notably, the effects of it are shorter than ever. I’m not opposed to a joke experimental, but I think they were ultimately right. It was a lot, and combined with ball especially it would be considered mobility creep.
Now this is a thought experiment , but id like for ana to have an actual balanced hitbox like the rest of the cast, as this game hitbox design is based around the fact of zero movement acceleration, her hitbox with that fact makes it broken.
Just change the in game model to have her standing instead of crouched. Just making the hitbox bigger isn’t the healthiest thing for a hero. You can make it larger but I feel like I’d prefer to change the in game model and maybe make it bigger. But adjusting it I feel like is better.
Adjusting it will be too weird and require work and probably be given the “saved for OW2” treatment, giving her more head hitbox and more body hitbox so that shotgun heros can actually work against her, it is giving her an unfair advantage, zen has the biggest support hitbox and he is doing gucci, i dont think it will hurt her as she works from the same range.