What Fantasy Does Ana Fulfill?

General Discussion
1

Capturing the fantasy of these heroes is very important to the developers. Each hero is supposed to be an experience that makes you feel like the hero you are playing. This was a big motivator for Hanzo’s rework now on the PTR. It’s not just that Scatter was broken or unfun, but it didn’t make players feel like they were playing as or fighting against a ninja assassin or expert archer.

I’m curious; what is Ana’s fantasy? What is the character she is supposed to embody in her gameplay?

Based on the comics and backstory of Ana, “Watchful Eye” is what I imagine the intention was. A distant healer who bails her allies out of trouble with intense healing, covering them while they move through dangerous territory. However, Ana doesn’t fulfill this fantasy. All of her abilities are most effective when she is in close-range to their targets due to travel time. Further, she has virtually no self-defense, so being that watchful eye in the backline only makes her vulnerable to being dove upon. She needs a bodyguard to keep her alive, when the fantasy is supposed to be that she is the one protecting her team.

“Sniper who heals” makes sense, but Ana doesn’t really fulfill that fantasy, either. She’s a healer first, sniper second. She can’t really win a fair fight with anybody or secure kills on enemies who are being healed.

“Alchemist” was the inspiration for her kit that Ana’s character was later given, but that also isn’t a good fit. The alchemist trope involves all kinds of, but Ana’s only “potion” is on a long cooldown, and she is forced to use it on herself more often than not. She isn’t hurling flasks everywhere or liberally applying debuffs. She’s far from an alchemist.

What is Ana’s identity? What role is she supposed to fill in the roster? What is she supposed to be better at than anybody else? Moira has better healing. Mercy has better utility. Zenyatta has a better debuff and sniping power. Brigitte has better CC. Ana is second-best at a lot of things, but not really the best at anything, yet she isn’t well-rounded either. She has glaring weaknesses that her team needs to shore up in order to get value out of her, but the reward for that dedication is comparable to running Moira or Mercy without all the fuss.

I really think Ana needs a balance pass, something to make her role clear and help capture the fantasy of playing her. As it is, you just get jumped on, and have to use your playmaking tools to attempt to save yourself. She doesn’t feel powerful or useful when the enemy Winston can hit one button and cut Ana off from the people she’s trying to protect, or when she lands every single ability to try to keep herself alive, but still dies.

20 Likes
2

I’ll agree with this…

The “Fantasy” Of a few characters have been… Changed.
Or otherwise aren’t living up to what they probably should be.

2 Likes
3

Well her sitting in the back and getting rekt is pretty fitting considering how her encounter with Widow went.

4 Likes
4

That encounter only happened because she “Hesitated” in the moment.

6 Likes
5

TL;DR: Ana was really, really poorly designed. Blizzard just said, “How does a healing sniper sound?” and the devs replied, “Cool, let’s just do it and not put any thought into it!”

3 Likes
6

Her fantasy is being an F tier hero along with Bastion, Symm, Torb. :joy:

2 Likes
7

The caring grandmother.
The elite sniper.
The alchemist.

All of them.
Sadly, she doesn’t live up to the lore.

7 Likes
8

I like the idea of being the “watchful eye” for my team. I can only hope that one day blizzard allows Ana to live up to that.

1 Like
9

A sniper who heals.

You use the sniper, to heal your teammates. Not pick enemies.

And the sniper players who play Ana, can do that quite well.

2 Likes
10

She fulfills my fantasies. :wink:

3 Likes
11

A distant guardian watching over you, helping you fight and even saving your life.

I don’t know if you played borderlands 2, but during the arena missions, I actually liked it when I got booted to the sniper deck outside, and helped the squad from there.

The trouble is that Ana is slow to position herself onto good sniping locations, or save herself if someone jumps on her there. So in practice I end up sticking close to my team anyway for protection, getting my shots blocked by allies.

12

Say what you will, but Ana does have one thing no other healer has; range. On paper, Ana can sit on the other side of the map and heal her team, out of danger. The problem is that most comps and most maps don’t work like that, because when she’s sititng alone on the other side of the map she’s a really easy target, and she has no mobility so she can’t reposition easily when the map gets in the way.

1 Like
13

She can deal damage with that gun for a reason…

Any good Sniper is an Opportunist, First and Foremost.

Ana, Happens to be a Spit, Healer/Sniper.

Healer, And Opportunist.

14

The fantasy she fulfills now is of being a helpless granny who needs help crossing the street (in this case moving around on the map)

1 Like
15

In this thread, people pretend there wasn’t an almost 9 months of Ana being the strongest hero in the game where she does what she is designed to do best.

2 Likes
16

Grenade 1.0, the horror –

17

Not really? We’re not talking about Ana the way she was in the past, it’s her current state where she is one of the weakest heroes in the game and that’s partially thanks to dive being the comp you’ll see the absolute majority of the time, but also thanks to other healers being able to do her job better and with a lot less effort required.

18

Granny fantasies i guess

19

I ask this Legitimately.

Could someone list what Ana’s Stats were back then?

I’m very interested in comparing the two now… As i didn’t pay much attention at the time that those things had been part of her kit… :laughing:

20

watch the whole enemy team dying being anti heal around zen in the graviton