In Ana’s lore, she is a grizzled war veteran. A survivor. Somebody who refuses to let injuries set her back. In-game, she doesn’t sell that fantasy. She is incredibly fragile, and her only way to heal herself is to waste what is probably the most powerful non-ultimate ability in the game, aside from Resurrect. She is dependent on her teammates, and this is the opposite of what her lore and her personality depict her as. Her team should be dependent on her.
However, the devs have stated that Ana’s dependency on her team is an intentional weakness that allows Ana to have other strengths. So my question is: What strength of Ana’s would you give up in order to have her accurately portrayed as a survivor with good self-healing?
Personally, I’d give up her high healing output. Ana has the highest potential healing output in the game, but she rarely reaches that potential due to the aim requirement. If that healing potential was reduced while still giving her the ability to burst-heal allies in a pinch, I could see them adding more consistent self-healing to her that doesn’t require the use of her grenade. She’d still have her massive utility and burst healing, plus she’d get more chances to use her grenade on allies and enemies rather than herself, but her overall sustained healing would be lower.
I’d love to see something like a self-injection, where she pulls one of her darts and jabs herself in the leg with it. It’s badass, it’s thematic, and it doesn’t require any suspension of disbelief like other ideas I’ve seen, like having her heal herself when she heals allies or having shield HP.
It would create weird situations where Ana wants her teammates to get hurt so she can heal herself off of them. Lifesteal like Reaper’s or Moira’s makes sense, they’re draining the life of enemies using their modifications. “Healsteal” isn’t really intuitive.
The devs think she’s fine. Regardless of whether that is true or not, they are under the impression that her strengths and weaknesses balance out.
What I’m saying is that self-sustain should not be one of her weaknesses. It doesn’t fit her character. She’s a fighter who refuses to die and refuses to let injuries set her back. Right now, she doesn’t fulfill that fantasy. She’s not a veteran in-game, she’s an old lady who needs help crossing the street.
I’m just abiding by what the devs think. I agree with them, partially. A large buff with no nerfs would push Ana back into being overpowered. She sits on a razor’s edge of balance. I think her strengths and weaknesses should be restructured to better capture the fantasy of Ana’s character.
Unfortunately this is something that the devs need to figure out, because they are talking out of both sides of their mouth. They need to decide if this is the philosophy they are actually going to go with, or if they are going to balance heroes like Mercy, Brig, Tracer, Genji and others are balanced where they have virtually no downsides at all. I suspect if Mercy had as many downsides as Ana, Ana would easily be the meta healer for those skilled enough to use her.