Possible Ana rework in the near future

[Skald-1493]

The DEVs already stated the following.

@JeffreyKaplan

Ana’s Sleep Dart ability was intended to give her the ability to disengage.

@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.

Essentially they kind of straight-jacket’d their options on buffing her. She’s been designated to lack mobility and decent self heals. They’re wary on buffing her grenade too for fear of bringing on another tank meta. They’re also afraid of buffing her DPS for fear of overshadowing Widowmaker.

For starters I’d up her healing shot throughput enough that she could operate better as a main healer.

Next I would improve her self defense. Perhaps make the sleep dart easier to land on a target. This would go a long long way on making the tool more feasible to use as an evasion tool. As is it’s harder to hit with than her own basic shots. That’s terrible for a self defense tool – especially at lower brackets.

Perhaps they could also give her a passive to make it easier for her to operate at range. That way she wouldn’t have to hug tanks every game just to survive. Maybe give her a ghillie suit to allow her to function at the range her weaponry suggests she ought to be.

@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.

I say 30 plus meters or so is fair. That’s a large local area of where you can be seen and you pretty much have to be outside the area of contention for the passive to apply — most likely outside the ability of anyone to peel for you too.

This is precisely the point where this ability should kick in and where it shouldn’t — the practical maxim past where anyone could peel for you. At that point you’re on your own and the cat ‘n mouse game begins.

Either way Ana does need something. Already she has too many hard counters in the form of dive. Aside from Brigitte every new hero added to the game has only served to increased the size of the dive pool. Now it appears that Hammond will be yet another hard counter soon to arrive.

If we’re to help the DEVs help Ana we need to come up with better ideas than a better self heal or more mobility. Those wont fly anymore. The DEV answer regarding them is a definite NO. We need to move on and forward better suggestions than we have been doing.