It’s almost like that’s what a skill floor/skill ceiling mean. Yes, an easier character will always do better than a harder character if you dismiss skill from the equation. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Ana’s problems are not due to her healing output–its due to the irrelevance of her kit in the face of an instant death meta. Mercy would be just as irrelevant if not for the guaranteed, unearned Rez she starts every game with as well as an ability which doubles the lethality any other character.
The problem is that nothing else in Ana’s kit comes even close to the value of those two abilities. In addition, Ana had problems dealing with Dive LONG before Mercy was reworked and before Moira or Brigitte existed. Her kit is fundamentally flawed in a game where mobility and damage-blocking abilities are king.
There is no skill rating where Ana would be better though.
If you hear somebody saying skill is being erased from the game, this is one thing they mean.
The instant death meta is BECAUSE of other healers being overpowered.
You said that Ana’s healing is skill-dependent. And I agreed. Her healing, in terms of reward vs skill, is not the problem. With pro level skill, her raw healing is superior to every other hero in the game.
The reward she gets from skill alone is not the problem; likewise, the ease of the other healers is not the problem. The problem is with the basic principle of her kit: she can’t shoot through barriers.
No it isn’t. At the pro level, DPS players have never had consistent trouble killing other players when they needed. Even in games against Brigitte, Tracers can still consistently outplay her. Brigitte wouldn’t be map and comp-dependent if healing was so broken that nothing died.
Not to mention, the principle of dive (destroying one target before the healers can react) existed (as I said before) long before Mercy’s rework or Moira and Brigitte’s debuts.
Mercy hasn’t just more reliable and accessible healing output than Ana, she also has more suvivability, self-peel and ultility.
Whoever thought giving her res as an ability, along with buffing her mobility absurdly by giving her the ability to fly past allies by holding jump probably doesn’t understand much about balance.
Plenty of first person shooters have balanced the impact of an individual gun because they were overperforming, and the only proper counterplay to it was to also use that gun.
In Overwatch instead of a particular gun, it’s a particular hero.
The philosophy is the same. The only counter to a particular kit should never be to also use that kit.
Now, I don’t think Widow should necessary get a nerf. I haven’t seen anything besides the owl to indicate that, honestly. I just think Blizzard probably needs work on map design. But, I’m just saying this isn’t a good argument for keeping a hero imbalanced at the GM level.
Ana’s issues can basically be boiled down to 2 things
1:) She is a positional nightmare. Shields shut down her healing and we have a mobility creep that is getting worse with each new patch. She moves like a grandma which is what she is.
2:) Why would you run her if you can get far more out of Mercy and Moira? Mercy has arguably the most powerful ability in the game as an e ability. Moira’s throughput is ridiculous and she is far harder to kill than Ana.
Well right now, individual dive heroes are being run more than Brigitte but your still getting these complaints. And she wasn’t exactly trash in dive, though presumably she should have been.
I don’t think she is the issue though, for the record. Just looking at the data, I feel like its probably moreso Hanzo. I just think needing an entire comp to be around sounded broken as hell, and I was like well then maybe they have a point here, lol.
Sorry to break it to you but Brigitte isn’t stopping dives on Widowmaker, say… from Winston or even D.Va. It’s not as if Brigitte is setting up camp by Widowmaker. I’ll offer a clue though, it’s a certain bowman who got somewhat reworked recently into the best damage dealing hero in all of Overwatch.
but you can counter her easily … a widow is ruining the game ? take some winston and dva and make space for your team . you dont wanna go dive to counter her ? then go shield comp orisa rein brig and there s no way she can hit someone.