Consistent damage and AoE burst healing on the second hardest support hero to kill are strong utility.
Conviniently, she doesn’t have to use it as engaging into combat is completely and entirely optional as she has the means to disengage every 2 seconds. Which is virtually no cooldown, realistically.
Absence of a strength isn’t really a weakness(at least imo). When I’m playing Moira I don’t notice my lack of utility, when I’m playing Mercy I don’t feel like not being able to damage is detracting from my character.
When I’m playing Zen I feel by absence of mobility and huge hitbox because people can punish me for it. When I’m on Ana I feel the lack of self regen when taking chip damage or not being able to have my grenade up in crucial moments.
In the very best of cases if those are indeed Mercy and Moira’s weaknesses their strengths more than make up for it. On Ana it doesn’t feel that way at all.
100% this
As Mercy I never feel like I’m keeping the team back because I can’t always use res or can’t always dish out a lot of damage
Same with Moira; I never feel like I’m hindering my team because I have to DPS sometimes or my orbs bounce away
Same with the off supports; If I’m having a bad game and not getting a lot of kills or important CC/ knockbacks, I know I’m still helping my team by simply using my kit as best I can
Playing Ana just feels so greedy to the team. Like; “Hey build around me, and only protect me.” kinda deal
Which didn’t use to be the case because Ana had the best of both worlds at the time, Lucio’s healing aura being a health regen as well as higher damage.
Both of which are long gone, and now Ana desperately needs one or the other.
I am so happy Ana is finally be looked at! cries tears of joy
I still think as a sniper, and a a healer, she needs some sort of mobility/high ground capability. Look at Ana’s “Under Fire” highlight intro for inspiration. She leaps high into the air as she moves forward and rolls.
Gameplay wise this could be translated into an ability: “Long Jump”
Hey Mr. Goodman,
That’s why I’ve suggested reducing her up front burst heal on her granade to 50 and a over time heal to 100 over the duration of the double heal for a total heal of 150 (keeping in mind the increased heal effect). That way Ana is still susceptible to burst damage but has at least 150 of self healing.
I think the majority of Ana players would also favor a shortened CD on sleep with some power being taken away in the form of of reduced duration.
Have you considered either of these two adjustments?
That sounds like a great change!
Ana would be fine if she could just scale walls like the shamada brothers, maybe at half their speed.
Absolutely! I’ve been saying this for ages!
A sniper, most effective on the high ground, who can’t reach half the places Widowmaker can ![:joy:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=5" ":joy:")
Crazy idea but I just thought.
What if it was made so Ana could head-shot?
The damage still ticks down and will only get a small increase (say 10-15 points) along with healing getting a small increase of 10-15.
Just going by the dev post which said about making heroes better at what they do, this would reward those who have the aim and can hit head-shots when its most crucial ![:smiley:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=5" ":smiley:")
Just a random idea, please don’t come for me if you hate it
I like the balance philosophy, however you’re definitely selective when applying it. When will you start practicing this part of it. Lucio is being made easier to play because one of his weakness is player based, and that is wall riding. One of widow’s weakness was that she couldn’t fire full shots quickly so each shot made was strategic, then you buffed her along with hanzo so they could shoot fully dmg shots faster. I don’t like that you said this and do the opposite. Sym is getting a new rework because she isn’t viable in every game. Lucio got many buffs because of his ability to survive when a lot of that is due to the players positioning. Zenyatta and torb has some of the less forgiving hit boxes in the game where you don’t need to shoot them in the head like most characters to hit their critical hit box. Also, zenayatta has some low survivability but he didn’t get any speed or healing buffs to improve this because its due to the players positioning. Now I know the philosophy is true for certain characters but why isn’t it true for all characters?? Genji is the only character in the game who can get stunned during his ult but it won’t cancel it? Roadhog, Mei, Tracer, D.V.A, Rein, McCree, Lucio, pharah, reaper, soldier, bastian, junkrat, zarya, and moria can all be stunned out of ult. Characters like, roadhog, reaper, pharah and rein are usually in close quarters combat when using their ult just like genji. However, you are very selective when applying this philosophy, i mean you just gave hanzo a second escape, his first escape “wall climbing” had the one weakness of not allowing him to move to quickly once he jumped over his obstacle and you gave it to him. IMO you can’t say certain characters like zenyatta are the most balanced and not give them any certain extra buffs to make those characters thrive but then turn around and buff characters who don’t need it because of a weakness they have. Lets not forget the buff they gave junkrat as well, no self dmg anymore all because people couldn’t keep track of their environment. If a junkrat killed himself it was the players own fault however, you buff him giving him no self dmg because it was a weakness. Like seriously you must’ve just invited this “philosophy”.
Thank you for taking the time to read this,
Have a fantastic day,
Josch
They must’ve developed this balance philosophy after they nerfed Ana’s damage and ult into the dirt.
And after they put out the Mercy rework; where her res number per game jumped up like 40%
Or the launch of Brigitte who’s ultimate is the most snowbally ult in the entire game’s history
Or the Hanzo rework that makes him have his ult every 10 seconds because they didn’t touch his ult numbers after giving him more damage and more consistency
Or the Junkrat nerfs that pretty much undo what the entire reason he was ever buffed up in the first place for, without the simple fix of just nerfing his ult charge rate and slowing the tire
Sooooo ![:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye.png?v=5" ":stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:")
I get it, it still needs to make sense! Like she can’t have a passive re-gen by only having a rifle right? So given that she has unlimited healing ammo I think maybe if she can just grab her ammo and use it on herself and that would be enough, maybe as a passive that works under certain conditions such as being less than X HP and combine it with a long cool down… That would make a big difference to escape and she won’t be indestructible at the same time.
Geoff respectfully, i think ana is sometimes remembered as she used to be. Ana was strong when zen had 150 dmg, mercy was not reworked, and lucio had not been reworked so we didnt really have a proper feild to compare her with at the time.
geoff my concern is the community largely did not like the gamestyle where ana simply pocketed a tank like rein. Then we got a healer like moira that could heal multiple tanks and heal them better than ana. However antiheal is where she has most of her strength right now not her sustain.
I feel this buff 10-14 shots just makes her compete in a race with moira to see who is better at supplying massive amounts of sustain but does not make either hero that unique because they are filling a very similar role.
Anas biggest strength right now is her antiheal because it is unique to ana and it could be a great counterplay to a meta that is now allowing 3 healers.
I personally believe that if ana had some type ability to reach high ground and see around barriers she could offer some valuable counterplay to comps that run such insane amouts of healing as the triple healer meta we are currently in.
she would need to lose some healing sustain like returning to 10 bullets but ana can be very well isolated from a team by simply blocking her with a barrier, easily outsniping her with widow/hanzo, or jumping her with any number of characters that actually force her into a 1v1 duel where she is no longer providing healing.
ana is not healing when she is dueling another hero. Even if the ana kills the flanking genji… She did zero healing for like 4-6 seconds. A hero like mercy or moira could just move away and keep healing. Giving her better defense would not be game breaking. And skill would counter skill which alot of players seem to be upset about right now. If moira brig fighting against tracer genji is unfair then at least a harder to play hero fighting against them to survive could be seen as more fair in may peoples eyes.
anyway food for thought. Thanks
Does this mean the big diamond shape that normally appears on team mates that need healing will now disappear if the team mate is at full health?
I ask because, sometimes, the visual itself can also kinda impair one’s view.
That was one of the most annoying things. I’m standing in the hallway trying to heal the team on the far side who is getting flanked by Tracer and Sombra, but no I can’t hit them, because the Winston and Rein that are hopping all over the place in the front of the point, even though I’m not hitting them.
Hey Geoff
With the Ana changes now live and several people giving feedback if they couldn’t try her on PTR (or even if they did) it’s apparent that there’s a divide in those who enjoy the darts passing through full health allies and those who don’t.
Is there any chance we could introduce this as a toggle option under Ana’s controls? Just like Mercy has “Guardian Angel prefers beam target” etc.
The clip size increase to 14 is a great help for sure, but these changes just make me find Ana unenjoyable to play.
An example post:
This is a really old dig but why keep Ana’s weakness with her low performance when hanzo who had low performance loses the weakness of burst consistent damage and horizontal mobility? It’s just feels bad when other character weakness are totally removed.
This might be really weird that I am haunting you over something you said months ago( I would be pissed if someone brought up something ages ago too) but I promise this will be my last ‘buff ana’ thread or reply(I won’t stalk your threads anymore). Its not because we consider anything you say written on stone we just value the words of every dev.
Overwatch is the first game that made supports such a fun pick. As a projectile user it just felt great to hit that sleepdart it felt so good and accomplishing and really fun even with her rest of the kit but after hours and hours of playing and climbing it just felt like getting stuck.
Mercy
Self heal - Strong
Mobility - Strong
Rez - Strong
Dmg boost -Strong
I can understand that taking away anything from her kit will remove the ‘active’ part of her gameplay making her unfun and not going with the philosophy to make a fun game is more important as the philosophy doesn’t promise fun.
I’m not saying that Sleep dart, Nade and Ana’s insane no fall off range are weak but when it comes to comparing quantity of utility provided by Mercy just cancels every weakness she could have. You can perform well with training as Ana but the reason why mercy always shines is not because she has better stuff its just she has more stuff. When it comes to ana tweaking her primary or nade or sleep dart is going to extremely unbalance the game as it is going to make her value go extremely at a point. If she is to gain any other ‘new utility’ to bring quantity of utility so balancing is easier similar to how Hammond was designed then it could be easier to keep her in check. For us having Ana’s action slots already filled with different abilities we just can’t seem to come up with any other passive that doesn’t involve giving her mobility or self healing which would help her greatly at the same time. We just want more skill demanding stuff from her that feels great to use. A new ability need not be a mobility or self healing based anything that makes Ana extra fun just makes it feel good to be a shooter support.