She wasn’t used much in GOATS meta, either, which was ~2 years when you combine it with Dive. But she’s been dominant for the rest of it.
From February 2017 (When he damage was nerfed) until August 2018 (When Nanoboost had the heal effect added) Ana was the least used support with the 2nd lowest winrate in the game
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that is simply untrue. Even before her 50HPS nerf, Ana was creeping back up and Mercy was loosing pickrate. If they kept the buffs to everyone and had not nerfed Mercy, Ana would likely have taken over as well.
Oh, so what about Ana and her clip size increase, being able to shoot through allies, nano boost heal and damage increase?
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That cooldown buff was only 2 months of Orisa being release, that’s YEARS of her barrier being unchanged!
Ana’s nade got a buff 3 months after her release.
And it wasn’t really a change to Orisa’s barrier, it was a change to her reload, barrier still functioned the same, it was reload that was no longer cancelled by throwing barrier. It was hardly the case of “well deploying barrier doesn’t cancel reload, better increase cooldown by 25% and cut max barrier health by 33%”
I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to, sounds like a bug fix that still happened YEARS ago.
And deserved improvements, improvements that would be wrong to revert like full health allies body blocking a 1hp ally. You can’t revert things like that.
But it’s more than that, the devs have been trying to move the game away from stale states and one of those stale states is an over-reliance on barriers. Why are barriers used so much? To defend from anti-heal.
Remember before 2-2-2 you could have Rein, Zarya and Dva, all really shut down anti-healing from bionade. Now the two most dominant tanks are great counters to anti-heal and one thing that keeps coming up when anyone proposed reining those heroes in:
“You can’t nerf them! They need to have this just to stop Ana’s anti-heal!”
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Can’t really say if that would have achieved balance. Mercy was a must-pick since her rework, even with just 60 HPS. They nerfed it and buffed other supports at the same time. Can never factually say, “this would have happened” in that since it’s now a hypothetical.
But, it’s not untrue that she was a must-pick up until that balance patch. She was…I was often the Mercy player.
You…do realize that I’m on the side that feels that Ana is overtuned, right?
I literally wrote all those out, fam:
My whole, “look at the entire hero’s kit” goes for her, too, and that’s why I feel Ana is overall a bit overtuned.
LET THIS MYTH DIE ALREADY
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Damage increase was a necessity, Ana needs a way to defend herself.
But as Ana has a way to defend herself I don’t want everyone acting like she’s also entitled to mobility. Moira needs mobility because she’s only got a 50dps attack.
Ana can combo with her nade to frag 200HP heroes VERY quickly, in about 1.6sec.
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"There must always be a “B*tchking”. (Insert image of Bolvar putting on Lichking’s Crown) There will always be something to complain about as “old issues” get resolved. It’s a never ending Cycle, and when they Nerf Anti-nade, they will complain about Discord Orb, or Lucio Boop. As a king gets taken down, a new one will rise to the top, and be the next target in sight.
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After the rez was nerfed to its current state, Mercy wasn’t a must pick for several weeks. Then Hanzo was reworked and she became meta because of GravDragon, not because of her healing.
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Zen Goats was a staple in OWL but GM and top 500 used Ana GOATs. She was the no 1 support on ladder during GOATs with a 14% pickrate.
True. I was focusing on OWL and was being too narrow-minded with that. I’m happy to concede that point.
I actually don’t think she was garbage “for ages” honestly, though. In the timeline of the game, she’s had a pretty good amount of time in the spotlight.
It’s not because if you look at STATISTICS CAREFULLY, Mercy dropped to 2% pickrate in GM after her last rez nerf and Moira comps started dominating and then Hanzo rework created the double sniper/grav dragon meta which had no place for Moira or Ana to be used. I repeat, KILL THIS MYTH
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We’re going to disagree on this because there are a plethora of statistics that contradict each other, and the subject of Mercy isn’t even the point of my post. I’m happy to concede that I was wrong about Ana not being played in GOATS, but from experience and from the statistics I’ve looked up in the past about Mercy’s pickrate post-rework, I still think she was slightly overtuned. I would have rather had a support buff or a Mercy nerf, the fact that we had both is making the whole thing even more complex. And I just don’t want to get into that because it’s an Ana thread.
My whole contention is that Ana is slightly overtuned and that you can’t focus on one aspect of a hero’s kit to compare them to reach a conclusion like that. Taking a hero’s entire kit into consideration is important. Ana’s Bionic Grenade was not buffed in a long time - but many parts of her kit elsewhere were. The person that I was replying to that started that whole reply-thread was saying that Orisa’s Barrier was the same for years, as was Mei’s freeze, etc. Someone replied and ignored the rest of what I wrote, mentioned Mercy, and that’s where that sub-topic came up.
My point with those were - those were all changed (i.e. Orisa had her barrier buffed, Mei had her freeze buffed) so that was incorrect, and that even then - focusing on one part of a hero’s kit isn’t ideal because raising the base kit of a hero will raise their overall power, including specific abilities.
It’s not that she was played in GOAT but HOW she was played in GOATS.
As that comp was all about stacking tanking ability with healing ability, the main use of bionade was to keep the +50% heal buffs on as much as possible, potentially 40% of the time. Then with Lucio’s AOE heal stacking with Brig’s AOE heal, both buffed by +50%.
And Brig’s burst heal could be combined with ana’s burst heal and Zarya’s bubble, it was really hard to kill anyone in GOATS.
The anti-heal wasn’t the main concern at that time because it went against the ethos of goats which was to stack heals, as much heals as possible.
The game is not in anything like that state and frankly the standards have changed, while something like area anti-heal would have been tolerated before it’s not going to be tolerated for much longer.
It WAS the same for years.
Orisa got that 8 second cooldown only 2 months after Orisa came out and with 900HP for that entire time until The Great Barrier Nerf.
The interaction with barrier and Orisa’s reload is ancilliary, like the interaction between Ana’s primary fire damage and the damage of bionade. When her primary fire went up to 70 it meant 2 shots + bionade = 200 damage
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Appreciate that insight. I really did neglect a lot of perspectives on it, so this is helpful. I imagine it was one of those, “Ana is good for this team and also helps screw the enemy team” situations, which probably reinforced her position in that variation.
Orisa’s barrier was the same for a while, but she received buffs to its cooldown, and a QoL adjustment so you could deploy it and not have to stop shooting. I’d argue the QoL was pretty impactful since Orisa has the longest reload in the game, and it helped cover yourself while you did it.
But even outside of the barrier, staying with the, “look at their whole kit” aspect of it all, she received a net-buff to her base armor, her Fortify, and a movement speed buff while firing.
I guess my whole point is, look at everything. Orisa received a lot of nerfs, too (and IIRC the damage on her Fusion Rifle went back and forth like, 3 times). Shield may have stayed the same, but the rest of her kit went through different balance changes, too.
I’m looking at Ana similarly. There’s some nerfs, but there’s also a lot of buffs to her that have occurred that have helped her reach the dominant state she’s in.
IIRC she received
The only nerf ana needs is further increasing Winstons barrier duration and Hp.
Winston will never be meta on Ladder unless they deal with the Burst Damage creep issue, and with the release of Echo and the buffs to Ashe, this isn’t going to happen at all if ever
Or until we get more heroes with OW2
Only two months after orisa hit retail.
For years Orisa’s barrier was 900HP on an 8 second cooldown.
Yeah but it’s just a nice QoL, it doesn’t logically follow that THAT is what suddenly meant the 900HP barrier on an 8 second cooldown had to become a 600HP barrier on a 10 second cooldown.
i fully agree with you looking at the whole kit,
But I’m relating back to what OP said. OP said bionade wasn’t changed for years, I added that also Orisa’s barrier wasn’t changed “for years”.
Both ana’s nade and Orisa’s barrier got a change shortly after their heroes went live on the retail game but they then has such respective abilities got unchanged for years.
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nade was always a topic of debate
I wish Moira was meta again so people would cry about her Damage Orb