I made this post on the old forums sometime in late January earlier this year, and I’m going to post it exactly the way I wrote it at the time to show how very little has changed since then with regards to Ana (while the game itself obviously has changed quite the bit in terms of meta). Since then Winston has basically been ousted and Tracer and Genji sees considerably less play, yet we’re still not seeing any improvements for Ana - it’s not the meta, she has deep issues with her kit, and no amount of tweaking with the other healers is going to change that.
I keep seeing people say that “Once Mercy is nerfed Ana will shine again!”, and I want to provide my perspective on that because I believe it’s blatantly not true. There are several issues with Ana that are not related to Mercy whatsoever. These are what I perceive to be the biggest struggles when playing Ana:
Aim
Ana needs good aim to get any real value out of her. And this is fine and as it should be - this was how she was designed after all. The consequence of this though is that she will always provide less value with less mechanically skilled players and make her less viable in lower tier games. To compensate Ana was supposed to bring burst healing and a lot of utility for those who are skilled at using her. However, her utility is decreased by the prevalence of barriers.
Barriers
THIS is probably one of my greatest annoyances playing Ana - the moment someone puts up a shield my efficiency is greatly decreased. Ana doesn’t have the mobility or speed to get around these obstacles to find a way to get LoS. Especially Winston’s bubble can be a real nightmare since it’s big and covers many angles. Nothing in Ana’s kit bypasses barriers, unlike any of the other healers. Ana needs a way to do what a sniper should do - find the gaps in the barriers to shoot. For that she needs some way of gaining higher ground. Why do we even have a sniper that has less mobility than half of our tanks? Give Ana wall climbing as a passive and make it slower than the one Genji and Hanzo has.
Dive
The current dive meta is absolutely wrecking Ana - she doesn’t have the sustain or means of keeping herself alive, her only tool being her nade that should be used to burst heal her teammates rather than herself. If a Winston gets the jump on you, GG, your only way of survival is if you manage to land your sleep dart (which has a longer cooldown than abilities like deflect, scatter arrow, flashbang, hack…). Which reminds me; the sleep dart, which is supposed to protect Ana against flankers, is notoriously difficult to land on smaller and highly mobile characters like Genji and Tracer (with Genji you also run the risk of having it deflected since sleep dart has a cast time but deflect does not). Even if I manage to get two shots on Tracer she will recall and the dance will begin all over. Even if I somehow have survived through all this I’v still spent valuable seconds fighting off this flanker, making it a win either way for the enemy team. Ana needs a better way to sustain herself than her nade and/or escape or we need a shift in the meta that makes it harder for these characters to dive the back-line unimpeded. I would also suggest making her sleep dart travel faster or her cast time being faster.
What’s not an issue - her healing output
Despite what a lot of people think, Ana’s healing is fine - in fact, it’s great. I can heal up to the same amount as I do with Mercy… BUT the reason I often don’t is because I die a lot more with Ana. If I die more I spend more time respawning/walking to point, which means less time healing. And again, the barriers are also a huge hindrance. When we increase Ana’s survivability you will see her healing stats increase as well. However, I do think she could use a bit more ammo with how long her reload is.
In conclusion
Mercy’s nerf won’t really change anything for Ana unless it leads to a change in meta, which I doubt it will. A lot has happened since Ana fell out of the meta, and Ana needs changes and buffs if we want to see her make a true comeback. The two I think is most important is giving her more vertical mobility and more self sustain as they will lead to her surviving more and making her harder to dive, and it will also help her find ways to work around all the barriers.
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i’ve always thought of a neat change for the sleep dart. rather than press the button and it fire you can press and hold it to get the aim and then shoot it. while keeping the original mechanic to tap the button and it shoots out.
just gives you a bit more scope to get that sleep dart where you want it.
there were 2 reasons for ana’s suffering. Winston, Mercy.
one’s still here.
Mercy never needed aim. And she NEVER outshined ana. EVER. Not until they reworked mercy.
Barriers aren’t that relevant unless we’re talking about winston barrier. She wasn’t effective against dive. she thrives in rein meta.
What makes a support character powerful isn’t just their healing. It’s their utility and what they can bring. Zen SUCKS at healing. But due to his potentially good dps as well as DISCORD and trans, he’s always viable.
Ana has a potentially good amount of dps. Plus she single target heals greatly AND has nade.
But when mercy can hold E and res people, no one can compete with that. end of story.
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Mercy should have never been reworked anyway. Rez as E is bad whatever they do to her. Rez must be an ult.
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Friendly reminder that if they nerf Mercy, Ana would just be outclassed by Moira then.
I’m pretty sure they could remove every healer except Ana and meta would become 6 dps because Ana is so easily countered.
It’s not about Mercy though, and that’s the point I’m trying to make. We’re in a meta that should work better for Ana, yet she’s still barely picked at all. Is it because Mercy and the other healers are better? Sure, but are they better because they are OP or because Ana is weak?
I hate to say this, but Ana needs a rework. Her current kit works against itself and she needs to be updated and brought up to speed with the rest of the game.
I can’t play Ana in this meta because her primary fire gets blocked by everything. She can’t escape, she can’t get to sniper spots.
Back to season 3, only Rein’s shield and DVA matrix were an issue. Now Winston’s shield got buffed, Orisa and Brigitte got released.
And I’d add that her ult is… seriously bad. As bad as Orisa, even worse because it’s only one target. 
for lower tiers, yes. For higher tiers? No. Ana is by far better in the hands of a skilled player than moira.
Wait, wasn’t Mercy “finally perfectly balanced and doesn’t need changes” according to most of this forum 2-3 months ago? What changed?
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Here’s the original thread if anyone is interested to see the responses back then:
That’s the thing, nothing changed. It’s as if people are constantly putting the blame on Mercy without looking at the support class and meta as a whole. Ana is actually a soft-counter to Mercy, but because Ana is never buffed to a reasonable level she can’t do her job and thus people prefer the safer pick instead. It wouldn’t surprise me if they removed rez only to find a lot of people would still pick Mercy over Ana…
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even mercy would be removed from the game i wouldn’t play ana.
it’s simply her sniper mechanik. 80% of the playerbase can’t play her.
too hard to hit and too random whit your teammates jumping around the world.
even your beloved “pros” couldn’t play her outside of deathball with giant tanks and the op speedbuff on reinhardt or reaper.
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Moira is only as good as the enemy allows her to be, which is why Moira falls off so hard in higher elo’s. Basically, Moira can’t heal if you don’t let her do damage.
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And it seems they nerfed her healing pool regeneration on the ptr now… because yes, people have expressed sooo much dissatisfaction with Moiras that heal a lot…
Higher levels would then just play Lucio/Zen like before Mercy meta, and if not, Ana would still be played only on highest level of play, with Moira being much better than Ana on most ranks.
Nerfing Mercy is the worst possible way to fix Ana. With her current kit full of powerful abilities and reliability, you would have to nerf her to trash tier before Ana is better than her in most ranks. It only means you have two f-tier support heroes instead of one. You are not getting anywhere with that sort of balances changes, because you are not actually fixing anything.
Ana still needs help. Her kit simply has too many weaknesses to outweigh the positives, and she is way too easy to counter on most ranks. Nerfing other supports is not answer to the problem.
Similarly, if Mercy actually somehow is still too good, only reasonable answers to the problem are buffing other supports, or to rework her again, and this time make sure her kit doesn’t have too many positives outweighing her weaknesses.