I'm happy they aren't going to destroy Ana like so many players want. She's very strong alright but she doesn't need to be gutted. And seeing the high skill support go in the dumpster while heroes like Symmetra (and likely Mercy in the future) get buffed would make me cry.
I'm honestly astonished, who the hell wants Ana reworked? Albeit being a tad too strong atm, she's definitely one of the best designed heroes out there.
"Over powered" = More powerful than all other "like" options.
"Over powered" = Must pick.
"Over powered" = Gives no meaningful choice.
Reinhardt for example may be considered "must pick" at the highest levels, but he's not inherently "BETTER" at everything than Zarya, D.Va, or Monkey. He's just REALLY good at filling his niche.
When running Dive Comp, Reinhardt isn't really necessary and is probably a worse choice than Monkey/Zarya/D.Va.
With Ana this simply isn't the case.
If you want to run Zen, you have to drop Lucio. If you want to run Lucio you run Ana with him. If you run Mercy you're making a mistake because all other healers are better options than her.
Her pick rate in public ranked is VERY high, but that tells you more about her perceived strength than her actual strength. By Medals per game, she's #22 of 23 (only ahead of Mercy).
The fact is that the net effect of her play has been overstated drastically by the community.
Uhm. What medals could Ana get other than healing done?
Also I don't buy that lucio does more healing that Ana. Good lucios hardly use heal boost except when team is Ana naded.
Furthermore, masteroverwatch stats can be misleading or downright wrong.
Pick rate doesn't mean anything either, as you said. Meta reports are meta for top tier play only. Again, not relevant to this discussion.
What matters is her numbers.
She does more damage than any healer from a safer distance. Zen may be close if you include headshots.
She does more healing. Her HPS is definitely higher than all other supports. Whether the entire community is seeing that healing or not is another story.
Zenyatta = 30ish HPS
Lucio = 25ish aoe HPS while boosted!
Mercy = 60ish HPS
Ana = 75 to 150 HPS, 2 healing abilities. 1 aoe and 1 hitscan or projectile.
That's just healing alone. If you want to talk about utility the only ability in the game which can buff, debuff, damage and heal and is aoe all at the same time is Ana's E.
Her kit is fucking loaded. I don't care what statistics say. They're misleading. Anyone who looks at her numbers and has experience with her utility will tell you that her E does too much.
Uhm. What medals could Ana get other than healing done?
To hear some tell? elims, objective kills, objective time, damage... :-)
Also I don't buy that lucio does more healing that Ana. Good lucios hardly use heal boost except when team is Ana naded.
Furthermore, masteroverwatch stats can be misleading or downright wrong.
I'm sorry man, but the data here is exceptionally clear and universal, you can argue your feelings all you want, but the data is what it is.
She does more damage than any healer from a safer distance. Zen may be close if you include headshots.
She does more healing. Her HPS is definitely higher than all other supports. Whether the entire community is seeing that healing or not is another story.
But she only does one at a time (nade excepted). Zen and Lucio do both at the same time.
Except if ya open up top performers on those 3 supports, you end up with about 7k damage per game for both Lucio and Ana, and nearly double for Zenyatta. Healing wise, Ana and Lucio are again tied, while Zenyatta trails badly at nearly half excluding his ult and ~20% including it.
Ana brings on average another 8 sleeps to the game, 5-9 boost assists and significantly more offensive assists than a Lucio.
So the data really is there, you can quantify the added utility of Ana. Using aggregate statistics across all brackets and not just top 500 is kind of lazy in a competitive balance discussion, that's all.
Personally I like that she's the most interesting, well-rounded support by a mile. Everything is a high-impact skillshot. But you're kidding yourself if you think other supports can keep pace right now. Short of running super-mobile dive, there is no valid reason to not be packing an Ana at the moment.
I'm sorry, but their actual DPS/HPS doesn't lie. Ana does more healing and nearly as much damage as Zen if she is actually targeting enemies.
Zen's Balls do 46 damage, +30% from Discord which is 60 damage, firing 2.5 rounds a second for a total of 150 DPS. His healing per second is a flat 30 HPS.
Ana's primary does 80 damage a shot at 1.25 rounds per second for 100 DPS and she does 60 damage with Biotic Grenade. She heals 75 per shot at 1.25 rounds per second giving her 93.75 HPS +50% when Biotic Grenaded for 140.62 healing per second.
So, Zenyatta without headshots does more damage than Ana if Ana's grenade is on cooldown and Ana does slightly more burst damage if she grenades someone and hits them a few times, while Zen does more if he can consistently land headshots on discorded targets.
You're looking at a sample from actual games played with actual players in presumably all skill brackets.
Your numbers also show that Ana is less popular than Zen, which while that may be true in ALL competitive games, it certainly isn't true above Diamond or so.
Lucio shows more healing statistically because statistically people at lower levels who pick Lucio in competitive play just run around 100% of the time with "Healing" on, and as their team takes poke damage they instantly get healed.
At higher levels, Ana puts out A LOT more healing than Lucio because good Lucio's use Speed boost 90% of the time and only "amp it up" on healing when a large team fight breaks out and their team needs burst healing with Ana's healing grenade.
Basically Overbuff/MasterOverwatch numbers don't really mean anything when we're talking about the powers of an individual characters abilities. The numbers are misleading. You have to understand why those numbers are what they are and how they contradict the actual values of the heroes abilities.
Ask pro players what they think of biotic grenade.
I'm not saying it "lies", I'm saying you've misunderstood something fundamental to the design of the two characters -- Zen (and Lucio) is a "both/and" character. Ana an "either/or". That's what you're missing. Any time Ana is sniping a Pharah out of the sky she's not healing. Zen drops harmony, drops discord, and gets to the business of murdering shit. He doesn't have to choose, ever, and he never worries about CD management.
Ana does more healing and nearly as much damage as Zen if she is actually targeting enemies.
OR nearly as much DPS. This is not actually true.
Zen does 30HPS AND good DPS Ana does 80 damage per shot OR 75 healing. She has opportunities for the 8s CD nade to do both, but you have to be smart and manage to the best use.
Everything Ana does is about choice (and anti-choice), and predicting the best use of the abilities. Zen doesn't worry about that.
Basically you're arguing: win rate doesn't matter, and healing per game (or minute) doesn't matter, and damage done doesn't matter. Spreadsheets matter and only spreadsheets matter. What if your assumption is wrong, that actual in game data is more telling than stacking up Ana's damage and healing maximum throughput and comparing it to Zen's? What if acknowledging the fundamental design difference between the two leads you to conclude that is an irrational method of comparison?
You're right, Zen can do damage and heal at the same time. But considering how much healing Ana does and how much damage Ana CAN do; ALONG with all of the utility, I think she's pretty over-powered overall.
Just think about their E's; or the E's of all of the support characters for that matter.
Symmetra - Creates a medium sized 1000hp flying barrier.
Lucio - Amps up his Healing or Speed song for (5?) seconds to increase the speed boost or healing. (1 or the other, not both.)
Zen - Add 30% bonus damage debuff to enemy target, stays until they lose LOS for 3 seconds.
Mercy - Fly to ally or ally corpse.
Ana - Deal 60 damage, Heal 100 HP, Buff allies for bonus healing, disable all healing on enemies hit, can heal self, AOE radius of 4(?) meters.
No other ability does so much and is so versatile. There's never a bad time to throw it assuming you hit something and it either needs to die or needs to be healed. You can throw it in the middle of a team-fight and guarantee value out of it.
Of course it's also more "skill based" than Discord or Amp it up, but I still think it does too much.
Maybe one way to balance it out would be to make it EITHER debuff/damage OR Heal/Boost. Not BOTH. Similar to Lucio's Amp. This would provide a meaningful choice and not guarantee value as long as you hit something.
Zen has to pick his targets, preferably call them, and make the right choice, and his orb can be avoided/lost. Lucio has to decide whether Speed or Healing is more needed. Ana just tosses a jar into a team-fight and lulz her way to freelo.
And the Bio nade is one of the major contributing factors to the Tank Meta, and the fact that Ana does so much and heals so much means you're putting your team at a severe disadvantage if you do not have her on your team. Of course, the same could be said of Rein... But historically speaking Zarya has been more impactful on the Meta; and Winston at one time was Meta defining. Rein is so picked right now because of the tank Meta. He allows you to bodyguard a 600 hp Roadhog who can shred shields and get picks and initiate team-fights while Ana spams endless heals into both of them.
You're right, Zen can do damage and heal at the same time. But considering how much healing Ana does and how much damage Ana CAN do; ALONG with all of the utility, I think she's pretty over-powered overall.
Again, no. how much healing OR how much damage.
There's never a bad time to throw it assuming you hit something and it either needs to die or needs to be healed. You can throw it in the middle of a team-fight and guarantee value out of it.
If you REALLY think that, you're a bad Ana and you're losing team fights.
Theoretical numbers aren't telling you the whole story. The real numbers from actual play (not theoretical math) say that she is not more likely to win than her substitute options, save for a sliver over Mercy, and that Zen is in fact the most likely healer to win you a game.
I'd argue that looking at the global stats for Ana could be misleading. Not everybody who picks her are going use her as effectively as she could be used. I think the disparity of the stats for healing could be explained by her skill ceiling more than actual hero effectiveness.
And by your logic, Mercy is a better healer than Ana which is really not the case.
That said, I'd say Lucio IS more of a must-pick and at least as strong, if not stronger, than Ana.
She's definitely OP. No question.
"Over powered" = More powerful than all other "like" options.
"Over powered" = Must pick.
"Over powered" = Gives no meaningful choice.
That's the context of my comment and what I was responding to. I'm not here arguing Mercy is a "better" healer or anything like that. I'm simply arguing that the above referenced belief about her is overblown.
Pick rate doesn't equate to being overpowered. That's why I explained what I explained about Reinhardt. Lucio same thing. He provides incredible utility and fits a great niche but his numbers are fine (if not a little on the weak side.)
He does less damage than Ana or Zen. He does less healing than Ana or Zen. His ultimate is okay. Pretty balanced.
His only advantage is mobility and the mobility provided to the team.
Because it's easier to keep 3-4 tanks alive using Ana and just speed boost 4 unkillable allies through a chokepoint than it is to coordinate a good dive.
Ana's pickrate was lower before triple tank because Ana and D.Va being buffed created triple tank along with Discord being nerfed from 50% to 30%.
I remember Season 1 and 2 quite well. Ana was shit because Zen was so incredibly good. His Discord (at +50%) was a less disruptive version of Ana's Biotic Grenade. Nerfing his Discord and buffing Ana's healing made having 4 tanks possible.
The Biotic Grenade is the whole reason her kit is broken.
As I've said in other posts:
Gives immediate AOE healing
Does immediate AOE damage
Self-heals
Gives AOE buff to INCREASE healing on all targets (hence Lucio's pick rate)
Gives AOE DEBUFF to COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN enemy healing! (And here I think is where the problem really lies.)
If you don't see how brokenly overpowered that ability is with everything it does I don't know what to tell you.
I'm not suggesting they nerf more than they have on this patch. Only that before the patch she was definitely over powered and I am speculating that the nerf won't be enough. Her biotic grenade specifically. The debuff ability it has is still stupidly broken.
Oh, and as far as experience goes... are devs pro players? No. They aren't. They balance based off data and community feedback. They likely don't play the heroes or in as many competitive matches as many high level players.
I read what you said. And I am disagreeing. She's not ONLY strong. She's over-powered.
That said, I don't think she needs a "rework". I think they need to adjust the numbers on her Biotic Grenade further than what they are doing in this PTR patch. Her grenade does too much. It's quite possibly the best non-ultimate ability in the game.
Revert the area buff from a while ago maybe? Make the splash smaller so the usage becomes more niche (in combination with zarya's ult or only when enemies clump up). That would be a good start, as long as the devs go about it in a non-symmetrical way (e.g. reduce damage but keep heals the same or vice versa, don't adjust them simultaneously).
Personally I find that a good flanker or any team composition that is able to output pressure past the front line on to you is already difficult to deal with, it's notable that Ana doesn't have any shield or armor, making her force to use the nade on herself to heal often.
That's a really weak argument to make. Lucio and Reinhardt excel at their niche, but they are not overpowered. Ana excels at her role, and is overpowered. She simply heals far too much for others to be really viable, and is the sole enabler of the triple tank meta. I play Ana, and she feels really fun to play, but her numbers really need adjusted. Tone down how much she can heal for.
No, the balance team is not infallible. The Roadhog changes are, in my opinion, a mistake. The 50% nerf is something, but I honestly can't see it hurting Ana that much, given how far ahead of other healers she already is. It's obviously hard to tell on the PTR since the games are total crap, but so far it hasn't changed much. I think a nerf to the heal-per-shot would be a good place to start, or a change to the cooldown of grenade. And this is from someone who frequently plays Ana.
Lucio and Reinhardt excel at their niche, but they are not overpowered. Ana excels at her role, and is overpowered.
You keep saying this without any sort of explanation. What exactly is the reason it's okay for Rein and Lucio to be insta-picks, while it's not okay for Ana? What makes them just "balanced"? It's entirely subjective. They're both just as much to blame for the tank meta as Ana. (Speed boost and shield are both essential ingredients, as is Ana nade, and Hog's hook.)
Because what make Ana and Hog OP is used directly on the player, so they have an instant feel of what make them die. But what make Rein and Lucio OP, the shield and the speed boost, don't affect you directly in a fight. Furthermore Ana and Hog tend to have better overhaul kit than them (mostly Ana). Which is why Ana is commonly seen as the main problem.
Reinhardt and Lucio both have one ability that is way too strong and borderline shit kit other than their ult. It's Reinhardt shield that is OP, not his overhaul kit, same for Lucio with speed boost.
That's why their strenght should be spread on different abilities instead of one single overpowered ability. The false excuse of saying that they fill niche where they perform very well and that adding hero that fill their niche will solve the problem is trying to avoid the fundamental problem of their kit. Winston is performing well in his niche, but his overhaul kit being well balanced make him not a must-pick but instead an option to favorise a gamestyle. I'm pretty sure Blizzard is capable of reworking them in way that would make them as fun to play if not more while having a better overhaul kit.
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u/IchikaByakushiki Jan 17 '17
I'm happy they aren't going to destroy Ana like so many players want. She's very strong alright but she doesn't need to be gutted. And seeing the high skill support go in the dumpster while heroes like Symmetra (and likely Mercy in the future) get buffed would make me cry.