The Problem with Ana and a Solution For It

General Discussion
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The reason why I brought this discussion up because we all know Ana is in need of some buffs and as an Ana player it’s been awhile since Ana has gotten something since her slight damage revert and I’m tired of waiting as she gets worse and worse. I know some people here would have an opinion and say I’m probably complaining but I’m tired of Ana not coming even close to value with the other supports. But first I want to point out about all the healers in the game right now and what’s within their kit compared to Ana.

Healers

Mercy
• Self-Heal
• Mobility
• Rez
• Most Consistent Healing
• Can Heal Through Shield
• Somewhat Reliable Pistol

Ultimate (Valkyrie)
• Always Self-Healing
• More Mobility
• Can Heal/Attack Boost Entire Team
• Infinite Ammo (This does make a difference)
• Can Fly
• Can Heal 50 Meters Away
• Lasts 15 Seconds

Opinion of Mercy: Every since the rework of Mercy she has became a lot better than her previous version of herself. Even after all the nerfs she’s still really good and is still the best solo healer in the game. The funny thing is OWL is still using her even after all those nerfs which I’m surprised.

Lucio
• Self-Heal
• Speed Boost
• Heal Multiple Targets At Once
• Mobility
• Defends Himself Pretty Well
• Boops
• Reliable Weapon

Ultimate (Sound Barrier)
• Can Keep Team Alive
• Good Push For Team Fights

Opinion of Lucio: Back then Lucio has been a must pick in high levels of play and still a very good pick. Ever since the ult charge nerf when activating ults has come around it has really hurt Lucio. Lucio technically was always easy to stop from doing his ult but he never lost the ult charge for it. But ever since that and reworks to Mercy its been her and Zenyatta running as the best support duo. Lucio is still a really good support hero and will always be a good support hero because of speed boost.

Zenyatta
• Self-Heal (Somewhat cuz of Shields)
• High Damage Output
• Can Heal Through Shields
• Discord Orbs
• No Cooldowns
• Tank Buster

Ultimate (Transcendence)
• Best Defense Ultimate In Game
• Completely Invincible
• Good Push For Team Fights

Opinion of Zenyatta: Ever since the Mercy rework and the past seasons of dive meta Zenyatta has been the second most picked support under Mercy. The combination of having Discord Orbs and Rez along with Transcendence has made them best two support heroes to use since season 6 and both are heavily used in OWL still to this day. Even after the recent nerf to alternate fire he still decently snipes and destroys DPS.

Moira
• Self-Heal
• Flanker
• Can Heal Through Shields (Do to Bug)
• Consistent Damage
• Defends Herself Well
• Escape Options

Ultimate (Coalescence)
• Goes Through Shields
• Consistent Healing
• Consistent Damage

Opinion of Moira: Moira has been out for quite a while and everybody can say that she’s completely surpasses Ana and is 3 times easier than Ana and puts out way more healing. But of recent experience she’s been known for having most eliminations and doing quite well at healing even though some Moira DPS more. Moira is a good duelist and is very hard to kill and can carry games if both healing and damaging is done correctly.

Brigitte
• Self-Heal
• One of the Best Duelist in the Game
• Armor
• All Low Cooldowns
• Anti-Flanker
• DPS Buster

Ultimate (Rally)
• Turns Everbody Into Tanks / Tanks Become Tankier
• Good Before/After Team Fights
• Good Push For Team Fights

Opinion of Brigitte: Brigitte is new and the first support-tank hybrid that is bringing in all the rage. As flankers learned she is very hard to kill and is able to one-shot Tracer and is Tracer first hard counter (that hasn’t been nerf like Sombra). Season 10 hasn’t started but with her in the game people believe season 10 will be a meta we have never seen and Ana continues taking more Ls.

Ana
• Anti Heals
• Sleep Dart (Depends on your/enemy team)
• Heal at Safe Distances (If no Widowmaker)
• Good Damage Output (Based off Player)

Ultimate (Nano Boost)
• Good Team Fight Starter (Bases Off of Team Members)

Opinion of Ana: Ana is a high skill cap hero and that’s what I like about her. She’s really fun and the better you are at her the more she can put in for her team. Anti-Heals is still one of the best counters to all other healers same goes for Zenyatta’s discord as well.

The Problem With Ana…

The problem with Ana as you seen from my list all other healers have is Self-Healing. Another problem with Ana is her kit is very limited and is very dependent based off of team and enemy team. For instance you don’t know how many times I sleep dart a good target and my team wakes them up or doesn’t go for the headshot. Also when it comes to shields Ana gets destroyed so hard by shields especially Orisa & Winston’s Shield. You don’t know how many times an Orisa shield completely shuts me down not to mention most of the time it will be when Orisa is dead or is doing something else. Ever since the shield buff to Orisa she can completely shut out my healing through certain passage ways my team needs to get through.

Another problem with Ana is she’s too easy to dive. Yes I know Zenyatta is easy to dive but he can potentially kill you really easily if you’re not careful. Also every other healer have somewhat of a good escape option including Zenyatta which is using his ultimate. It’s not a very good idea but its the fact that he can is what counts. With the introduction of Moira it just made Ana’s case worst on top of the Mercy rework. I believe Ana only got her minor damage revert is because of the Mercy rework otherwise they would have not given it back to her. How can the devs be scared of buffing with all the stuff I posted above shows that Ana has nothing compared to them and has more weaknesses than they do and don’t even get the value for the work she puts in, she’s high-risk and low-reward. With Brigitte in the game and recent PTR update that gave Lucio the buff/nerf and Ana not getting a single thing just makes me believe the devs really don’t care about Ana.

A recent friend of mines “EYShot01” said

“Their official stance is that they’re afraid of a tank meta coming from buffing Ana. The fact that EDUCATED GAME DESIGNERS think buffing Ana would reinstate triple tank is nothing short of laughable. I don’t think they can even believe their own words.
Triple tank, or as I like to call it, 2.5 tanks, was enabled by several factors. DPS roadhog. Roadhog was not a tank. Roadhog was a fat DPS. Tseini even said on stream once (before roadhog rework, I think this was hook 1.0) “Roadhog is not a tank, roadhog is a 600hp DPS”
Roadhog was a DPS, Rein had no counters, Winston was trash, D.va was balanced, Zenyatta was trash, Lucio could peel for Ana while speeding up his tanks while also contesting the point, Soldier did 20 dmg, mercy was trash.
It’s foolish to say ‘Ana dictated season 3’ hurr durr because there were so many factors in triple tank. No viable burst healer while tanks are super strong, of course Ana will be picked every game. She had no competition. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this. Why is Ana so bad? She’s only gone down 10 dmg since season 4. That’s not a whole lot. In fact, people ran triple tank way after 60 dmg because nobody had figured out how to play dive with new Winston.
So she’s gone from ‘dictating the meta’ to being absolutely worthless but her numbers are the same as when she was OP? Doesn’t add up.
Ana has no purpose anymore.
You can go zen because, well, it’s zen. When is it a bad time to pick Zen? Discord and tranq are almost a bit OP (they are, but dont need nerfs)
You can go Lucio in a coordinated team because he still has the monopoly on speed. running lucio in scrims is a freaking blast.
You can go Mercy because she synergizes so insanely well with Zen and rez is still a broken ability.
You can go Moira to heal feeding tanks and go triple/quad tank.
AH! Oof. Blizzard contradicted themselves there. They’re scared of buffing Ana because ‘oh triple tank’…and then they add Moira? This has to be trolling. It’s impossible to be this hypocritical unironically. You’re scared that Ana will bring back deathball tanks back? But you will IGNORE the QUAD TANK META THAT MOIRA HAS BROUGHT?
TLDR: Moira has accomplished what Ana could ever dream of and if Blizzard is so scared that anything but monkey and d.va will be run then they should nerf Moira to oblivion as well.”

I totally agree with him and what makes things worst is this community is even scared of Ana too. All I see of comments is that Ana is “fine” and that you need to get good or if she gets that she will be broken.

A Solution/Possible Buffs For Ana

Now I know some of y’all are not going to like this but here’s what I believe Ana should get…

[New] Passive: Shrike (Same name taken from HotS)
Gains 15 HPS for every shot she lands on her teammates (Doesn’t include full health teammates)

• Sleep Dart Cooldown 12 to 8 Seconds
• Clip Size increased from 10 to 12 (Recently been increased to 14 instead of my suggested 12)
• Reload Time 1.5 to 1.2 seconds

  • Reverts
    -Damage
    - Nano-Boost
    - Biotic-Nade (5mm and last 5 seconds no 100% heal boost)

REASONS: She is the only support with no self-heals and having this would not be broken at all. It’s really stupid to be heavily babysitted by other healers or wasting nade to heal the 20 DMG you took.

Most 12 second cooldowns have been dropped to 8 seconds if you haven’t noticed. Sombra’s Hack, Orisa’s Shield and Widowmaker’s Hook. Also Sleep Dart only lasts for 5.5 seconds giving the enemy 2.5 seconds to get out that situation which is enough time for them to get out of it. Besides it’s a skill shot and Brigitte has a Shield Bash on 5 seconds this compared nothing to that.

Nano-Boost getting it’s speed back would not be that broken anymore. The game is different now and we have a lot more options now. Besides Orisa and Mercy’s Ults can boost the whole team and lasts longer than Ana’s.

All reverts I mentioned can come back. Let’s be honest the weak Ana we have today is made for Old Overwatch and the S3 Ana is made for today’s Overwatch. The only thing I believe that can’t come back is the 100% healing boost.

NOTE: All these changes still doesn’t fix the shield problem she has or the other issues she has of hitting the wrong teammates with nade or shooting nano to the wrong person or healing the wrong person because body blocking. I still want Ana to have these core problems because it still gives her the high skill cap that she needs to be played. Also I don’t want her getting a bit easier that everybody hop on the character and get her nerf in a state worst she already is. That already happened with my other main Sombra so I don’t want to see this happen again.

Thank you for reading and I hope I could get positive feedback on this.:grin:

EDIT: As of recently Ana has gotten a clip size increase which I suggested which is a good start but…they still haven’t addressed her real issues yet.

38 Likes
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even sym has a form of self heal (most of her health is shields) but ana is forced to use and ability that can have a lot of utility either denying healing or buffing healing, on a lengthy cooldown, just to give yourself 100 health, not even bring you to full.

7 Likes
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I disagree with the movement speed on ult part, that was huge and pretty much made someone near unkillable. Yes ults are meant to be strong but I feel like the first steps would be to introduce some sort of self heal to her and potentially something with her sleep dart, whether its a SLIGHT cd reduction or a minimum 1 second sleep timer. Also note, I would sacrifice some of the utility of the nade for a buff somewhere else in a heartbeat, I don’t want to be a nade bot anymore.

3 Likes
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Then what you would do with nade? I think nade can stay the same like I said in the note all those problems are still around.

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I meant if Blizzard isn’t comfortable flat out buffing Ana, then I’ll take a nerf to the nade for a buff to sleepdart/self-healing/ammo clips.

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Which is crazy considering how good Moira is and what she does. I don’t see how Ana has to stay terrible when she has a skill cap that everybody can’t even use.

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Here’s an idea I’ve had for a while. Hopefully it will quell fears of another “Ana Triple Tank.”

  1. Get rid of Biotic Grenade’s 100hp healing (this will be explained later).
  2. Increase rifle damage to 75: Can two-shot tracers, but when compared with the old 80 damage, tracer has more time to recall during the burst.
  3. Give Ana a new passive: For every shot that either heals/deals damage, Ana regains 20% of the damage dealt/healed.
  4. Slightly decrease reload speed (maybe as small as from 1.5 to 1.2).
    And/Or
    Reduce cooldown of Sleep Dart by 1-2 seconds.
    I believe a nerf to the Biotic Grenade well justifies these other buffs; they put more consistency into Ana’s kit, and give her a better self-sustain in return. That way Ana doesn’t have to be as greedy with Biotic Grenade, and thus has a much better healing/damage potential.
1 Like
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Sounds really good I totally forgot about the reload speed being slow. But I don’t think an Ana triple tank meta can come back because of Reaper, Junkrat and Mei. Most likely might be a brigitte/moira meta because they are more valuable and Ana could somewhat be a counter.

3 Likes
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i agree with everything, except nerf to her nade… she doesn’t need any kind of nerf… i honestly thing she needs 2 nades, so she can heal herself and still have one for your mates or enemy… have auto aim for healing. when i use zen its so freeing, im healing while killing poeple left and right… while ana just struggles and can only do one or the other… she just straight up sucks compared to everyone else… blizzard do something please

3 Likes
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I wasn’t technically nerfing the nade. It will still do 50% healing boost just not 100% when I was talking about the nade that is all. But I get where you are coming from. She doesn’t needs any nerfs to compensate at all. Just buffs which I do agree.

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I actually think speed boost should come back. I was playing rein the other day, I got nano’d at full health, and got hooked and killed in less than two seconds. Aren’t I essentially 1000 health with 400 of that being armor?? It’s an ultimate but it barely feels like it. It’s the only support ult(including symmetra) that doesn’t effect the whole team, let alone multiple people. If it’s gonna be a dps type ult, it should be one. There would still be ways to counter it. This entire post is right. I had my own idea for a buff where if she double jumps she can roll like mcree, though still on a cooldown like hanzos new double jump. Either way she needs buffs, and this post is 100% accurate.

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Thank you for agreeing with me! I have like almost 300 hours on Ana and even though I’m quite good with her. I don’t understand why out of all supports she can’t be buffed when everybody doesn’t have the skill cap to play her at that level. And besides Moira will always out do her. Also if the meta did ever shift or people scared of Ana/Moira as the support duo why does have to stay the weak one though?

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I didn’t know brigitte had discord orbs

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lol I’ll fix that my bad. Thank you for seeing that.

1 Like
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What’s funny is I don’t even play Ana. I’m a main tank player(top500 on console), but I think Ana objectively is in dire need of a buff. She is the most skill based character in the game but apparently she doesn’t get the value for it. I have my own thread about it

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I know exactly how you feel. She needs to get the value for it. Also I’ll check your thread out. Just send it to me.

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Just look up my name

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As an Ana main, you made great points and I agree she needs to be buffed in some way. I think if Blizzard doesnt want to go too extreme with ana and buff everything you said, they could at least give nano-boost some sort of self benefit. If you look at every support ult you listed, it gives the user a benefit.

Mercy

  • Unlimited Ammo
    *Instant Health Regen
    *Flight

Zen
*Invulnerable
*Increased Movement Speed

Lucio

  • Shields

Brigitte

  • Increased movement speed
    *Armor

Moira
*Only Ult that has the potential to do damage in itself
*Heals her as she does damage
*Increased movement speed

Symmtra (for the sake of all supports)
*Access to a teleporter
*Shields

Ana

  • …nothing

She gets absolutely no benefit from her ult that she took time to gain. I dont think it needs a speed boost, I think she needs some kind of secondary effect for nano or give her a secondary ultimate like Symmetra

1 Like
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Which is true but I can’t think of anything that Ana could use to benefit her when using ult.

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Hanzo just got an ability where he enters a new state so what if Ana herself when she nano boosts enters a new state so she can support her teammate that she nano boosted. Her rifle is instantly reloaded, making that clip an automatic clip, letting her shoot constantly while not having to load each bullet into the chamber. Or maybe all her abilities come off cooldown or have reduced cooldowns? What if while in this state, all her shots pierce through allies, enemies, and barriers? Going through barrier might be a bit much but I mean look at Moiras ult, goes through everything. Maybe that would make ana’s ult too similar to moira.

But its somewhat similar to what Ana has in heroes of the storm (Eye of Horus) but instead of piercing, the healing and damage of each shot (6 shots) is increased. And Ana becomes immobile so not sure of the immobility would work unless she has a shield around her or something.