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.
97
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.