They ruined Ana

[SiROSTRiKE-1954]

I don’t agree with the bashing of other heroes in your Post, CNR, but I will agree about Ana’s damage problem.

In my opinion, Ana’s darts should deal 75 damage per shot and not be affected at all by armor.

[ZFennec-1158]

I actually never thought anything was wrong with Ana to begin with which is why it came as a shock when they nerfed her. If any character needs a revert back to square one its Ana in my opinion.

[Frey-11130]

Why does Doomfist have high health, high mobility, and can one-shot not even having room to react to that.

Are implying doom is low skill? kek

[Skald-1493]

@Skald-1493

The DEVs already stated that they’re wont on giving her a wall climb or self heal. Her lack of mobility and weak self heal is supposed to be her weakness. Her only self defense is a dart that’s harder to land than her own regular shots and is easily broken by stray damage.

@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.

The only thing I can think of that won’t upset her current play style and limitations is to perhaps finally give her a passive that’ll let her operate at range; past the distances she’s likely to get a peel — a Ghillie Suit.

@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.

It gives Ana two different and mutually exclusive play styles — close in as it is now where she relies on the protection of her team to survive or further out where she must change locations regularly or risk being located and killed.

Given her limitations this might give her the survival edge she needs — even in games where her own crew won’t baby sit her.

DEVs if you do go for this, can we also get a Ghillie Suit skin for Ana to go with it? It’ll go very far on differentiating Ana as a completely different type of sniper than Widowmaker. One prefers the high ground of the sniper’s nest to shoot from and the other is that far off distant hard to see tree or bush.

@Skald-1493

Her scoped shots already leave a contrail as is — same as Widow’s does. To find her you only need get close enough. Her shots already point out the direction of her fire.

Considering all the limitations (weaknesses) the DEVs made required of her this is about the last buff you could possibly throw at her, meet that bar and NOT quit trying to meet the limitations they want on her. It’s about all that’s left to do for her I think. The rest is just about as good as putting lip gloss on a dying hero I think.

[Nippys-11246]

So hear me out on this

But right now I feel Anas kit works pretty well, I don’t really think she needs an extra thing added to make her viable again.

I am under the serious impression that her unscoped M1 is the biggest issue in her kit right now.

As a hero designed to defend herself and after like 100 hour of playing Ana I find her M1 to be purely unreliable, her projectile is the smallest in game being only slightly larger than hit scan yet retains a travel speed.

I usually find this to only be a problem when you get a smaller faster hero coming down at you but sometimes I’ll have my cross hairs over a moving roadhog and miss because he’s just moved enough

I think if they really wanted to start making a change to Ana increasing the damn size of this projectile would be a pretty stella start.

inb4 l2aim. I’m not the only one that can’t do it considering Anas got a fair bit of damage loaded into her kit and she still manages to be the lowest damage hero outside of Mercy

They need to make it that Anas can rely on hitting people rather than having to Bionade her side or hit a sleep dart

[Zeron-11203]

Uhm, I think Blizzard stated they did not want Ana to be able to do nade/shot combos to easily to kill people, thus is why they nerfed her rifle damage.

Shes a support, not a DPS. She still has an advantage over healing herself and still killing someone at the same time.

[Nippys-11246]

Her self defense is tied straight into her ability to not die.

She needs to be able to dps things to survive.

[Fritz-11233]

If climbing is really important to you, don’t cling to Ana and suffer. Use the lower skill, higher reward heroes

[FideWolf-1690]

They ruined Ana after season 3 they nerfed her healing nerfed her damage and nerfed her Ult. Yes triple tank was a thing then but now it can’t be because we have more tank busters and more shield characters to block her healing. Not only that but Ana had to aim to heal so yeah she should be able to heal a lot. Her damage nerf was very unnecessary. If you get shot by Ana three times(200Hp heroes) you should be dead (tracer and baby D.va with two) not three and nerfing the speed boost just made it so that you have to nano boost only certain people limiting who could’ve been nano boosted before. Her long cooldowns no mobility. How her healing can blocked by other teammates, (not full health) enemies, barriers, and objects is another set back. Not to mention she’s the only healer who can’t passively heal and can be out healed by other healers that take a lot less skill than her. They say the benefit from having her is distant healing. You play distant from your team and you’ll most likely die by someone who is diving you especially if you miss your sleep dart (Which I don’t understand because it totally contradicts her playstyle), but you know who else who can heal at a distance? Zenyatta, Brigette armor pack, Moira Orb. Point is she has more cons than pros. CNR I get your frustration too I love playing Ana but with the way the game is now it’s hard to play her. A damage buff and honestly passive self heal is all I’d want because you get stomped all over when you play Ana. Yeah anti heal from her nade is powerful but honestly picking Ana over another healer isn’t worth it when you can do so much more with the other support. (Sorry for the long rant I had to get the frustration out)

[CNR-11250]

Shes a support, not a DPS.

Don’t talk about Ana balance if your going to have this mentality.

Category system is meaningless & I can easily compare and contrast Ana to Widowmaker more than Ana to supports.

Ana’s role, shes a sniper. LIKE WIDOWMAKER. Not only focused on damage, but here role – FACT – is a hybrid sniper w/ utility. Shes a high-skill ceiling. Her dmg is lacking, and broken against armor. Fix it.

Then discuss other problems.

[Tabbulus-1451]

So many of you miss the point of Ana that all of your “fixes” are misguided. The value is in the Biotic Grenade’s ability to boost allied healing. But none of you use it as such. It’s a freaking reverse discord. But instead everyone wants to throw it on the enemy thus wasting the efficiency it provides. Ppl complain about her mobility, but I don’t see a “buff Zenyatta” thread. If you position her accordingly and learn to land grenades against architecture so that the splash still hits your targets, she is very effective.

Ana is a booster support. Her grenade boosts healing. Take an Ana/Brigitte healing pair with a Rein/Roadhog tank pair:

• A Roadhog using take a breather while under the effect of the grenade heals himself by 450 hp.
• A Brigitte who throws a repair pack on an injured Reinhardt under the effect of the grenade heals for 225 hp.
• Coupled with one shot from Ana at 112.5 and the Grenade’s 100 itself, that Roadhog will be healed by 550 hp (almost full) and Reinhardt by 437.5 (almost full).

That’s a lot of value that no one is identifying.

Secondly, her ultimate boosts damage and survivability of a single ally. Have any of you noticed that each hero category, prior to the combination of the offense and defense into damage, has a hero that provides a buff/debuff? Sombra (ability debuff), Widowmaker (visibility buff), Orisa (damage buff), Ana (damage buff). That is by design.

I’m not saying she’s in a good spot. In fact, I think both of her cool downs are too high relative to the cool downs of all of the other new heroes added since her release and the buffs to other heroes who had cool down reductions (Hanzo, Orisa, Widow to name a few). Grenade needs to be reduced from 10 to 8 and sleep dart needs to be reduced from 12 to 8. With Moira’s fade and Hanzo’s storm arrow both at 6 and 8 respectively, there’s no go reason for Ana’s cool downs to be as high as they are.

As far as flankers are concerned, don’t run her against flankers. That’s her weakness. Brigitte and Moira were put in the game for that reason. If you insist then you should have a teammate assigned to your protection (McCree, Junkrat, Brigitte, Lucio for example).

Ultimately, there’s a real pervasive lack of understanding of her kit that contributes more to her misuse than anything else.

[CNR-11250]

Grenade needs to be reduced from 10 to 8 and sleep dart needs to be reduced from 12 to 8.

The problem I have with this is Ana is a utility / hybrid sniper. Shes suppose to be the most useful at highest skill ranks to utilize.

If they keep adding bad mechanics like Doomfist / Brigitte, alongside something like that at higher ranks would just be power-creep crowd control meta.

I would truly like to see 80 dmg, & fixed armor. After that wait a short time, and then go from there.

What is the point of Ana sleeping someone, McCree flashbanging someones, Brigitte stunning someone, Doomfist knocking tanks around. Crowd Control is one of the things ruining this game for me at least. Other things that ruin the game is no aim heroes, mobility heroes, and low-skill = high reward.

[Tabbulus-1451]

If Ana is wasting her sleep dart offensively, it should be easy for flankers to kill her. The sleep dart is for self defense (sleep and run or sleep and 3 shot combo for 175 or 200) and to counter ults. Not using it as such is poor play on Ana’s part. Teams should punish it.

[CNR-11250]

Flankers automatically have an easy time with Ana without skill.

Ana has no mobility. This is easy to abuse for a flanker. They just can’t be stupid.

[Tabbulus-1451]

Armor is a non-issue. Run Orisa for Supercharger or Ana for Nano Boost or Mercy for chain damage boost.

Rally is an ultimate. Counter an ult with an ult.

[Tabbulus-1451]

Ana has no mobility.

Neither does Zenyatta.

[CNR-11250]

That is just non-sense. Fix the broken aspect of Ana.

What you just stated was a heavy crutch for Ana to rely on.

[KinetaTwix-1813]

Don’t talk about Ana balance if your going to have this mentality.

Category system is meaningless & I can easily compare and contrast Ana to Widowmaker more than Ana to supports.

But that doesn’t mean if I’m going 2-2-2, Ana will take a dps spot. She’ll be chosen as a main healer.

[CNR-11250]

But that doesn’t mean if I’m going 2-2-2, Ana will take a dps spot. She’ll be chosen as a main healer.

Healing is a priority, but so is damage and utility. It is something she does, its not her defined role. Also 2-2-2 I do much more than ONLY healing.

Zenyatta has long range damage with no dropoff while healing from range and a damage debuff that increases all damage taken from all sources by 30%. Zenyatta has no mobility.

Ana has long range damage with no dropoff while healing from range and a healing buff that increases healing taken from all sources by 50%. Ana has no mobility.

How can you not see this? Ana is the anti-Zenyatta.

How are you going to contradict yourself by saying a mechanic that is not used, because it results in death. When do you ever see Zenyatta sniping by himself? stop being silly. You would just get easily picked off.

Paper stats mean nothing if thats not how a class plays. McCree can shoot at range, but would you honestly be comparing a role like McCree to Widowmaker? No, hell no you wouldn’t. Different roles.

Also if you are to compare Zen to Ana what is the overall point you are trying to make.

[Tabbulus-1451]

First of all Zenyatta is an entirley different role than Ana. Zen is a team dmg support that plays with the team. Ana is suppose to be able to play outside the team like Widow.

Seriously this is nonsense.

Zenyatta has long range damage with no dropoff while healing from range and a damage debuff that increases all damage taken from all sources by 30%. Zenyatta has no mobility.

Ana has long range damage with no dropoff while healing from range and a healing buff that increases healing taken from all sources by 50%. Ana has no mobility.

How can you not see this? Ana is the anti-Zenyatta.