People that blame Ana players should feel ashamed

[Skald-1493]

A person’s take on Ana is directly proportional to their bracket. Go on Overbuff and look at her win rates per bracket. You’ll find that she’s in the middle of the pack at grand masters. At platinum she’s serviceable but rough going. Anything below plat she’s pretty much a masochist’s dream on suffering — she requires skill atypical for the bracket, there’s plenty of dive and almost no peel to speak of.

She needs something that lower brackets can use that becomes easier to circumvent as brackets, personal skills and team coordination’s improve.

That’s the direct opposite of the Bastion experience – a hero that’s a terror at the low end but ultra trivial at grand masters. That hero needs a skill difficult for low brackets to master but would nonetheless keeps him viable later on when he hits grand master play. Same too with Ana but in reverse.

There are skills and passives they can introduce that scale as such. Why they don’t is a mystery to me. As is Ana’s too much of a sitting duck to dive. Not until she gets something that addresses her survivability issues she wont be back in the meta. She lacks mobility, self sustain, self defense and has a pinpoint accuracy requirement that pretty much guarantees her as easy pickings to dive – especially in the lower brackets where there is no peal. These heroes move faster than her, hit harder than her and have very lax to hit requirements when compared to her.

So here we are in a game where dive hard counters Ana overall. We started off with just four dive heroes – Winston, D.VA, Tracer and Genji. Since her creation every other hero they’ve added to the game only added to the dive roster – Sombra, Doomfist and Now Hammond. Each time they add a dive hero she gets harder to keep in the field. Believe me the dive roster can only continue to grow. Do they really want her to always be countered by dive – a hero pool that keeps getting larger?

Maybe if they gave Ana a Ghillie Suit she wouldn’t be so easy to dive. One sniper already has a nest to shoot from. Why can’t the other have some camo gear to stealth from in the back unseen?

@Skald-1493

Can we give Ana a ghillie suit – a passive that simply lets her be invisible to enemies past a certain distance. Of course abilities like Widow Sight, Opportunist, Sonic Arrow and some such work as normal.

Firstly this would allow Ana to be a different kind of sniper than Widowmaker in her sniper’s nest. Secondly it’ll allow her to play at range – which at the moment she cannot. Lastly it turns her relationship with dive into a cat 'n mouse game – leaving her that much less susceptible to that meta overall.

Also, it does NOTHING to give her extra mobility – which is perfectly in keeping with her play style restrictions.

Thanks everyone.

The DEVs stated that they’re not interested on improving her weaknesses — not her mobility nor her self heal.

@GeoffGoodman

I think its worth talking a little about our balance philosophy here. People often will post things such as “why doesn’t Blizzard see that this hero has X as a weakness and that is what should be fixed.”

One aspect of our heroes that is very important is that they all have various strengths and weaknesses. This is a core aspect of what makes teamplay so important in Overwatch. If you have an Ana on your team, this gives you certain advantages such as being able to be healed from very long range, having a more offensive-favored ultimate, and having the ability to disable healing on enemies (which can be especially vital against heroes that really rely on healing such as Roadhog). That said, she also brings her own weaknesses that must be managed, such as low mobility and lower self-healing. A team may opt to run Brigitte or Lucio with Ana to help peel attackers off of her, for example.

When we want to buff a hero, sometimes it can be the right call reduce these weaknesses. For example, if a weakness is just too overbearing or a hero just has too many weaknesses compared to their strengths. But more often we would rather amplify a heroes strengths and make the hero just better at what they do, which leaves their weaknesses still around for enemies to exploit and for allies to try to manage.

I hope this helps explain how we look at balance issues and heroes in Overwatch in general.

What other option makes sense then?