Forget about pros’ feels. They don’t care about fun or anything. Pros play to win and they’ll abuse any mechanic to make that win easier to obtain. Therefore, the only balancing that should be done around pros, is to remove the most egregious abuse cases.
That is, if you plan to actively support an e-sports scene (which Overwatch does). Otherwise, let the abuse happen as long as it doesn’t affect normal ladder play.
Pro players hate one thing: mechanics, that are reliable. That can’t be messed up, that don’t require high skills, that simply work, and can work even better, if player got some skills.
Mercy happened to have two of those: healing, that is very hard to fail at, and ultimate, that nearly always succeeds in bringing teammates back to life.
In contrast, Ana has no reliable mechanics: every single aspect can be failed at.
Yes. Mercy is now in a good spot again because they don’t have to deal with her.
The problem is that Mercy wasn’t changed because pros didn’t like her. That reason is just as stupid as “disheartening to play against”. The only one I can think of, after all this time, is Mercy’s place in the meta. If you recall, Mercy barely saw any play time in pro play. Only as the occasional Pharah or Widow pocket.
What Blizzard wanted, just like with the Symmetra rework, was to increase Mercy’s play time.
But clearly, Blizzard never bothered to investigate just what made Mercy such a situational pick. They clearly did not read the forums, which had been asking for an E ability for ages. They clearly also did not ask any pro, because pros would’ve said pretty much the same thing as the forums; Mass Rez just wasn’t reliable enough to warrant picking Mercy over Ana (or, with dive being so prevalent, Lúcio and Zen).
The forum discourse at that time, was complaining about Mass Rez in the exact same style as Blizzard described in their developer update, which makes it clear to me that they just used that as justification for a change that was completely motivated by Blizzard themselves, and little actual interaction with the community. They were going to launch OWL, and one of their most iconic heroes would see next to no use? No way in Hell.
Yes to all of this but the fact that popular streamers created an echo chamber (kind of hypocritical to use this wording but in this case it is applicable) of people claiming Mercy players were trash definitely contributed to their decision.
But pros had to pick Mercy, after Ana had her damage cut in half back there.
But they didn’t. They went Lúcio/Zen once dive became the meta.
Then Lucio got his famous nerf to AoE radius.
Not really, they weren’t playing Ana for her damage. The changes that killed her were the reduction of her nade’s radius and the removal of the speed boost for nano.
Her damage became too low for her to defend herself. With 80 dmg Ana could two-shot Tracer, but with 40 it became 4 shot.
Not sure when this happened. If this was before Mercy’s rework, then the change had little impact on Mercy’s pick rates, as OWL contenders (which preceded the first OWL season) hardly used Mercy at all.
Ana’s damage has never been less than 60.
It was nerfed to 40 at one point, but afterwards partially reverted to 60. As it became obvious, that it’s that kind of change, that can kill hero completely.
That revert was done pretty quickly, then, as I’ve never seen 40 Damage Ana in-game.
Because no one picked her at that point. When you need 4 shots to kill 150 hp hero with no rewind, it’s like having no self-defense at all.
That was still not the change that killed her as again the pros were not using her for her damage. They still had the sleep dart to deal with whoever might be harassing them and pros are also much more coordinated, meaning the Ana player would call for help whenever they were being harassed. It was actually looked down upon to do damage as Ana as the amount of healing she’s able to do is tied to her ammo, with every bullet you use to damage an enemy you’re reducing the amount of healing your team has that moment. This is why they increased the size of her magazine, to give her more versatility.
She was nerfed earlier during tank meta, yes, but it wasn’t enough for pro players to drop her. Damage nerf was final nail in her coffin.
They increased size of her magazine, because they wanted Ana to return to replace Mercy. Bigger magazine made her a bit more consistent, as well as ability to shoot through healthy teammates.
It’s balance, Blizzard-style: you nerf hero, when you want them to stop being used, then buff them again, if you want them to return.
The Overwatch team needs to go study game balancing at the StarCraft department. The StarCraft team adjusts their balancing to the shifting metas and relative unit power levels, and it works wonders.
No it was a shift in the meta and not direct changes to the hero that reduced the use of Ana (though the nerfs definitely did contribute). She just couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game. The popularity of D.Va and Winston gave Ana a hard time as Winston players would drop their bubble on top of her, isolating her from her team, and D.Va could DM all of her abilities (this was back when she always had DM available). She couldn’t do her job anymore rendering her to be more detrimental than useful to her team. This has been amended with the increase of her magazine as she is now able to keep tabs of the fight better.
Just… no. The magazine buff had nothing to do with Mercy, it was a necessary change to make Ana playable again.
Also:
This is false. Her damage was first changed from 80 to 60 on March 21st, 2017. It wasn’t touched until November 2017 when they buffed it to 70. It has never been at 40, that would just be ridiculously stupid.
I see this thread is still going strong, yet no dev response. I’m so surprised. ;3
That’s why they had to revert it back to 60. It was too late at that point, but still.