What if Ana's not a problem?

General Discussion
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Serious question: what if Ana’s not a problem? Has anyone considered that? What if getting slept and antied, while annoying, isn’t a problem in the long run?

Hypothetically speaking, what if the Devs know that tanks need counters, and so they don’t want to nerf Ana because they know they’d be creating two issues:

1.) Tanks will get a giant indirect buff, and now they have to consider nerfs for them which will anger tank players more and possibly drive them away.

2.) Players will complain on the forums, so they’d just be replacing “Nerf Ana!” complaints with “Nerf Tanks!” complaints.

See, I ask this question to see if someone’s paying attention to the consequences of nerfs. Has anyone considered that nerfing Ana could actually make the game worse? Before you say “Pfft! Make the game worse? How!?” consider that nerfing shields and removing a tank made the game worse by indirectly buffing snipers.

Why in the world wouldn’t the same thing happen for the same reason if we do the same thing?

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Personally I think supports, outside of Lifeweaver, are easily the best balance role in the game. Ana is powerful but not overly so. If she gets nerfed it needs to be minor, but I could see a rework.

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literally every tank has counterplay to nade. People just dont like losing. I love playing vs ana when I tank bc its good practise to eat all her cooldowns and kill her over and over. Agree that tanks would be op without ana. I think supports are in general fine with their offensive utility

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A hero that has been the most picked support for years is not a good sign for good balance. Especially when they had to add a hero with an ability that is specifically designed to counter her

Ana is not needed to keep tanks in check. Discord does that, poke-DPS do that, snipers do that, etc.

In OW1, tanks were not able to do as much damage as they are now, and Ana was still never nerfed in any meaningful way so I don’t think the devs keep her in her current state to deter tanks.

Though even if it was, there are way fewer tank players than any other role and it’s just going to get worse if nothing is done to try and fix it.

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I find Kiriko kit is pretty bare bones, like she suzu. And doesn’t do much from their for 14 seconds.

She has no tempo tools. Or unique primary fire to play around. She kind just exists till the tool is ready.

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I’m a tank and support player. I don’t think Ana is an issue. Discord is more obnoxious to me than Anti-nade. You kinda need Anti-nade because of the strength of healing.

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I think Ana is either a problem, or the standard all other Supports should be brought up to. Ana has been a must pick hero for a long time, even if she’s not Meta she is almost always a good choice in primary healing.

She has avoided almost all real nerfs and had a monopoly on anti heals for years. Not saying Ana has to be nerfed, but if she can be that strong I really don’t understand all these attempts to nerf other support hero’s that are not even that meta.

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Ana has always been pretty strong, from when she was introduced. Her HPS and utility blew the other Supports out of the water at the time, particularly. They haven’t been keeping Ana this good for most of the game’s life because they’re worried about Tanks getting out of control.

Also, maybe it shouldn’t be one hero’s job to counter one or two other roles (Tanks and other Supports?) Maybe spread some of that out. Give Moira’s damage orb a healing reduction effect? Probably a terrible idea, but Ana having Sleep Dart and a 100% anti-heal is just a lot for one hero to have. Dropping the game to 1 Tank just made that even worse.

I don’t know if I’d say Ana is just straight up busted, but I do think at higher tiers she’s been either the best Support or a contender for the best Support for a while now, without anything major happening to her.

Ana’s (net) changelog since OW2 has been around:

  • Sleep Dart: Went from a 12 second cooldown to a 14 second cooldown.
  • Sleep Dart: Has a maximum duration on Tanks of 3.5 seconds instead of 5.
  • Biotic Rifle: Ammo increased from 12 to 15.
  • Biotic Rifle: Damage and Healing increased from 70 to 75.
  • Biotic Grenade: Effect duration decreased from 4 seconds to 3.5 seconds.
  • Biotic Grenade: Explosion healing decreased from 100 to 60.

So Sleep Dart got a 2 second CD increase and only lasts 3.5 seconds on Tanks (but the full 5 on Supports and DPS,) Biotic Rifle got 3 extra ammo and 5 extra healing/damage per shot, and Biotic Grenade got a 0.5 second effect duration decrease, and the healing part of it lost 40 healing.

Not shown is that some of those things got nerfed then buffed (for instance Sleep Dart went from 12 to 15 seconds, then later changed to 14.) Which is honestly a good thing: I’d rather small, baby-step changes more often than big ones less often. That way they don’t accidentally dumpster a hero, you know?

It looks like the devs themselves are thinking Ana is a problem against tanks? Why lower the effect duration on anti if she’s supposed to keep Tanks down? Why make sleep dart lose 1.5 seconds of duration against Tanks if she’s supposed to keep Tanks in check?

To me it seems like the changes that have been made to Ana since the OW2 update were made specifically because she’s… too impactful against Tanks at the moment.

Now of course there’s unintended consequences when you nerf/buff a character. That’s why they should be testing it, and probably doing PTRs or experimental cards or something to see how their changes work before they put them into the live game. But considering Ana’s OW2 changelog, I don’t think the balance team is trying to keep her strong specifically to counter tanks. (I personally think they’re keeping her strong because she’s a favorite and because streamers love her, but that’s the bitter cynic in me, what can I say?) If they wanted to do that, why would they nerf Sleep Dart specifically only against Tanks?

As for not wanting to see “Nerf Tank” threads… they don’t care about the forums. Literally. They don’t read them, they don’t check them. They don’t interact with them. They write up blog posts and then drop those on the forums, and that’s about the entirety of the interaction.

So for me, they’ve already made Ana worse against Tanks, which to me is at least circumstantial evidence that the “We don’t want to nerf Ana because we want to keep Tanks in check” theory isn’t that strong. And they do not care about the forums. Maybe the community at large? But not the forums. And people will always cry for nerfs to someone anyways. And yes, nerfing Ana could have unintended side effects. Nerfing or buffing any character could do that. But if Ana is overperforming and there’s a Support that’s underperforming, they can nerf Ana, see what arises from it from testing, and give that underperforming Support a buff/tool to handle that situation.

The game simply does not require Ana to be as strong as she is, I think.

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Why? How do you know that’s not a sign of great balance? What if she’s a sign that more supports should have her level of impact? You see, I don’t think you people on here have thought of that once.

They didn’t have to do that for Ana. Cleanse should have been in the game way back in OW1. You have status ailments, like stuns, poisons and such, you should have mechanics to beat that.

No no, counters do that. And Ana is one of them. Meaning if you nerf her, tank gets an indirect buff.

And I have a sentence for you to consider:

“We can lose a tank and nerf shields without worrying if Snipers are a problem. There’s other counters. Flankers do that. Natural cover do that. Snipers counter other snipers, so we don’t need two tanks to counter her”.

Agree? No, you probably don’t. And that’s because, even with other counters, and indirect buff is till an indirect buff.

You say that now, but tunes will change if Tanks are actually a problem. Remember: this is Overwatch, not Tank watch. We shouldn’t cater to tanks just to get more of them, we should focus on making a good game. Tanks will always be some of the lowest players simply because no one likes that level of responsibility. If you ruin the game to cater to tanks, well then every role will be played less because people will play it less.

Why don’t we bring up supports to her standards? People are so focused on tearing heroes down that they rarely consider the inverse.

They do, though. As the other guy said, Ana counters tanks along with Zen, Snipers (debatably IMO), and such.

That’s a fine opinion, but I don’t think Overwatch can survive nerf after nerf after nerf to its heroes. I think, if the people here really likes Overwatch, they need to consider what’s actually a problem and what’s just annoying.

So, Ana’s played a lot. For once, lets take that as a sign of a character being good instead of taking a hammer to her, leaving her ruined, and then going “Now that character’s being played a lot!”.

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it is true that tanks would become op if ana’s sleep/grenade combo didnt exist. i guess its a symbiance. maybe just buff other supports to be like ana but then you have the ones that are not aim like moira and mercy that people have issue with. the “aim” with ana is what gives her the free pass and her popularity with high rank influencers.

im glad im not balancing this game. its a mess, would probably have to rework the whole game but then you’re just making it like other mirror type fps game where if there are characters they are all same’ish

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Yeah, because it’s a moronic thought. Support is already the strongest role in the game, it doesn’t need all of its heroes to be completely busted like she is.

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You decided the thought was moronic because you personally believe support is the strongest role. No reasons given, just you slamming your opinion down like a fact and then insulting me based on it.

I’d insult you, but the biggest insult I can think of is a simple fact: Overwatch has terrible balance because of listening to the community. Because they try to appease ill informed people like you.

At least, with my suggestion, I’m trying a new line of thinking besides “beg for this character to be nerfed, prepare to beg for another character to be nerfed, honestly question why the game is getting worse, but do no introspection”.

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Ana isn’t an issue as long as you’re using your damage mitigation abilities properly and actually utilising cover.

Discord is busted though. It needs some kind of actual counter outside of just kill the Zen.

If you’re anti’d or slept, that’s it until the next cooldown rotation.

Discord? Constant uptime that you can do very little about as a tank. Cleansing it is useless. LoS it just results in the enemy tank taking space.

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It’s an extremely common sentiment in high ranks where people can actually play the game. Sorry to break it to you but your silver games don’t represent reality.

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All I am saying:

If there is a DPS hero released that also has an Anti-healing mechanic in the future, it might be time to nerf anti-nade’s heal impairment.

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Ana is fine tbh, either it’s bad tank players who think they should be able to demolish the enemy team with zero counter plays or It’s the classic Mercy mains malding about how she was nerfed and go “what about Ana” whenever it happens for some reason.

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She isn’t fine and never has been. Nade does too much and should have never, ever been 100%

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That’s literally a logical fallacy. “Everyone’s saying it, so its true” means nothing. Especially in the Overwatch community which is full of entitled crybabies.

Tell you what: tell me how many high ranked players understand game development, and I’ll agree. If the answer is “none of them”…lmao, your words mean nothing. You know so little about the game, you keep appealing to nonexistent authority.

You can’t even counter my logic, so you try to bully and say “well, you’re bad at the game because you’re not at ARBITRARY RANK, so”. I know more than you about the subject, so save it.

Mhm, I see. Your emotional outburst is truly compelling. Tell me, when did you decide you didn’t like Overwatch? Because this line of thinking has only harmed the entire game, and at this point I’m forced to assume you don’t actually like the game.

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Tank players will complain about anything that stops them from just being able to W+M1 their way through an entire team, it’s best not to take their concerns too seriously.

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You’re below the average rank so yes, that’s a pretty reasonable claim.

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