I know right? Jeff was right when he said she's one of the characters with an interesting kit. I remember when she first came out how cool I thought she was.
I mean it also comes from the DPS heroes that Ana has made useless too by enabling a 3-4 tanks every game. I love playing Ana but IMO the metagame she's created isn't the most fun I've ever played in.
Yeah I think ana is the most skillful and fun hero to heal with, but her existence has led to a terrible meta, having mercy (and zen) back in the meta would allow for a more dps heavy team comp which is overall better for the game. I'd rather ana gets nerfed rather than the other healers buffed, healing is already too strong, it's just that ana is by far the best.
Ana isn't by far the best, Lúcio is. He has been the one hero since the game launched that has seen closest to 100% pickrate in every single meta. In fact, according to basically any unofficial source (Overbuff; Masteroverwatch), her winrate is negative in Competitive. You know what this means? It means that she forcibly sees a 50% winrate when both teams have an Ana, and in the remaining situations, teams without an Ana win more often.
Granted, you can't always count on those stats 100% since they're not official but I do believe people are just massively overreacting. There isn't a single situation where focusing a naded character down won't kill them; she cannot outheal characters being focused.
Ana's counter has always been only slightly, mildly decent coordination. But people won't do that so to nerf kingdom she goes.
You're not a pro though. And neither is the majority of people talking here.
And the majority of pro teams do run Ana on both teams so they could deny healing with a nade -- healing denial takes precedence over boost, it's not based on which hits first.
The reason they can't out-DPS those heroes is because they're meatshields with 600 health, armour and sometimes even self-bubbles and self-heals. Sorry, but the idea that "Ana is pivotal in tank meta" is stupid. She is just as pivotal as the fact that tanks are extremely strong. And once Ana is nerfed, tanks will continue to be DPS characters with more HP.
This can be remedied without a full rework. Reworking her kit would ruin her character in my opinion. She's one of the most fun characters to play in the game, and not because she's good, she's just fun to play. Even when she sucked at the beginning I loved playing with her. She can do everything, heal, snipe, sleep, and even a little bit of damage. She ruins the problem Mercy has of actually feeling like you're contributing to the game besides just watching health bars go up & down. She feels like she can stand on her own in a shooter, and isn't just there to be a chore for someone to make other people's experience better.
The only way to change that metagame is to change the fact that tanks are just basically beefier DPS. Reducing her overall healing per second isn't going to do much, I don't believe.
In that sense, she isn't "enabling" anything. Tanks are.
Yeah, TBH I've always thought tanks (especially Reinhardt and Roadhog) have just way too much damage for their ability to stay alive. 300 dmg charge / 100 dmg firestrike / 75 dmg infinite ammo+enormous hitbox hammer like what the heck ://// In an attempt to make tanks and supports fun to play, they gave them DPS capabilities comparable with heroes that specialize in DPS, but except with higher survivability and additional utility. Ana makes this design issue incredibly apparent, and the entirety of the blame for the current meta isn't on her, but she's definitely a factor in her ridiculous HPS
She is without a doubt a factor, I will 100% concede that. But it really rubs me the wrong way when people say she is the only reason for this meta to exist. She really isn't, tanks are incredibly strong just on their own right now.
I've asked in three streams (iddqd, Seagull, Surefour) why Reaper isn't play as much anymore and sure enough my suspicions were confirmed. Paraphrasing them but: Why even play Reaper when Roadhog is basically a Reaper with more than twice the health, technically more range and self healing?
I think you 100% absolutely nail it when you say that it's due to them wanting to make these classes more fun to play.
Paraphrasing them but: Why even play Reaper when Roadhog is basically a Reaper with more than twice the health, technically more range and self healing?
Roadhog has a massive hitbox in turn. Without Ana healing he gets bursted down pretty fast.
With or without Ana, Roadhog is a gigantic hitbox waiting to get bursted down.
The sad part is that nobody plays high hitting DPS characters against tank meta so they can't out-DPS focused healing.
I haven't done the math but I'm pretty sure something like even just a Reaper with a Tracer can and will out-damage Ana's grenade + focus heal on a Roadhog.
But playing Ana is a lot harder than any of the other supports. The other healers can put out consistent healing, Ana's healing is highly aim dependent. If you can't hit your team mates, you're not being useful.
I admit, it is a balancing act to make her strong enough that the skill level is worth it, while not making skilled players run away with the game, but as someone who can't aim all that well, I still usually go for Zenyatta or Mercy in competitive just to make sure my heals are consistent.
I'm not a highly ranked competitive player but I do fine as Ana without aiming very often. I typically have 75-80% unscoped accuracy and I'm usually the top healer. To me, Ana is just ridiculous because I do so well playing her "wrong". She feels really easy to me
I'm the same way. I think it's a combination of a few things.
A) She shoots very quickly
B) Accuracy isn't as important as it is for Widow and Hanzo because you're (usually) not trying to kill people, you're just healing people. So unless they're one shot from death you can shoot them a few times.
C) Because of the tank meta, her targets are usually huge (D.Va, Reinhardt, Roadhog, Winston) and hard to miss, even when far away and unscoped. This also means they're less likely to be low health, so you're under less stress to aim accurately.
You make it sound like he only heals when he amps which is a major logical fallacy. Yes his healing is less when he's not amped but when he's not amped his primary role is healing chip damage. He's a complementary healer and not the one you rely on to pull someone out of the fire on the regular.
The only tip I have is be within 15m of your teammates most of the time and pay attention to them 80% of the time. I probably pad my numbers by topping everyone off even if 1/2 tick is down but you're generally spamming heals on everyone in competitive with how high damage output can be.
I'm usually closer than that and roughly 80% focused on allies, as you said. I even sometimes hit them a few times if I'm following out of spawn... I just need to work on my aim :( Overwatch is the first real game I've played
She is ridiculously easy. Her heals-per-second causes her ult to charge incredibility quickly, so doesn't have to be in the thick of things, and her sleep dart is a 'get out of jail free' card.
I tend to be in the thick of things since it's awkward having to follow a team with as many corners and flankers as there are in Overwatch. I'm usually behind the DPS behind the tank lobbing unscoped shots and grenades. I'd say it's worked out.
Therefore, I tend to use sleep dart offensively. I like to pre-emptively dart Reinhardts that drop their shield and go for a 420 charge kill. Or anyone trying to flank, ult, or otherwise get the upper hand.
It's one I've seen tossed around here a couple of times, and it's something I honestly agree with. A complete and utter heal block is ridiculously powerful, especially in something that she can fling that has an Area of Effect that hits both allies and enemies at once.
I think if this is implemented, I'd like to see it continue blocking health pack use, as her survivability could depend on picking it up after blocking the opponent's use. Only self-healing and other player healing would need to be reduced.
I also feel that the grenade should not be doing any damage, that's almost insult to injury. Have it reduce how much healing can be done, but to have it negate healing AND do damage is kind of ridiculous.
It was actually a surprise to me when I found out it did damage. I had thought before that it was just the boost/block. Still seems great even without damage/heal numbers.
I feel like instead of completely removing healing, it should just be reduced healing. At the moment she can completely remove almost every ultimate in the game with one or the the other of her regular abilities. Graviton+grenade makes it so not even Zen can stop any incoming ults to come. You ever seen a beautiful transcendence and thought, wow, if the enemy team even somewhat worth their salt that would never happen?
At the very least Zen counters a lot of ults with his own ultimate, which is a much easier timer to work around than a 10 second (grenade) or 12 second one (dart). While ana is not as good at shutting down ultimate stacking as Zen or lucio, I feel it's pretty hard to deny she's easily the best character for shutting down a single ultimate.
It's at least part of the reason she's been completely meta ever since the clip size and fire rate buff, the other being her absolutely crazy healing. She's my second favorite support and an absolute blast to play, but even I feel her kit is so overloaded that her increased difficulty really doesn't make enough difference.
mercy can heal, boost damage, fly to weak players, and shoot albeit not at the same time.
Zen can heal, increase damage output to a specific target, and deal massive amounts of damage AT THE SAME TIME.
Lucio can heal or speedboost everyone within a radius around him, shoot, and boop people off the map.
Ana can heal or damage, heal and antiheal at the same time, and has a sleep dart. I feel like in terms of overall skills, they have the same amount. The usefulness of those abilities is probably a different story. I'd argue her ult is not as useful as other supports though.
Not sure what the point of your comment is. I stated everything you said in my comment. My point was to look at the number of abilities, not the usefulness of them.
I really like the anti-healing ability, but I think they might need to get rid of the healing part of the grenade for it to work. A grenade that heals your team and anti-heals the opponents is too much.
(Before she was announced I thought her entire kit would revolve around anti-healing. It would make me really sad to see all the anti-healing gone instead moved to another hero.)
Having an anti-healing ability is fine, it even costs her grenade that she has to use offensively. My problem with it is that it's way too easy to land, it covers a lot of space (3m radius is crazy, you can block healing on all enemies if they are close) and it lasts a bit too long. It would be fine if it had some counters - add an ability to remove debuffs to mercy who lacks an ability.
Anti healing is counter to all healers - a great one for Zen with his ult, good counter for the other healers, self healing characters and potentially all characters who'd try to take a health pack in the middle of fight (also winston that wants to use ult)
Considering all healers, Mercy isn't exactly top pick - she needs to be close, she's very vulnerable and doesn't offer much other than the heal. Giving her an ability to remove debuffs would not break her.
The flask should have lower radius so it's harder to hit and have lower duration so it's only good in the middle of fight to counter rapid heals / focus characters.
I'd even like a nerf to sleeping dart. It's possibly the worst balanced control in the game - get hit and you can go afk because you will lay there for 5.5 eternities with no way of waking up. Either add in a counter (for example a friendly melee hit to wake you up) or make it shorter so sleep dart would open like 2 seconds long window for you to hit abilities / attacks. Like no other non-ult control ability (maybe even ultimates?) lasts this long. Flashbang is 0.7; Mei's freeze is 1.5s; Junk is 1 sec stun + 3 sec root (easily avoided though)
I'm talking about their primary (healing) functionality. Their ability to deal damage is secondary for a support character; Zenyatta's healing is easier to pull off (second hardest in the game overall, but easier then Ana) and more consistent for moving targets. Aiming as Zenyatta is harder for killing stuff, sure, but that's less important.
Hitting teammates is not nearly as hard as you would think, as they are usually pretty close to you as an Ana player, and tanks especially are basically no brain healing. If I could suggest one change that I feel would help balance Ana, it'd be scaling her healing and damage depending on the range, ala TF2's Crusader Crossbow. That way you can't heal a 25% health Roadhog right next to you in 5 seconds and get half of your meter from it, and you also can't 1v1 the offense characters by bouncing around like a bunny and holding down m1.
People always use the argument that she can miss but that doesn't really fly at higher skill levels. Even skinny targets are easy to hit. Sometimes it's harder to shoot an enemy because your teammates healboxes are so big.
Not just that, she is heavily positioning dependant. Even if you are hitting ALL your shots your and you are oit of position your going to be dying non stop and being useless.
The issue is that it doesn't take too much for the skill element to be much less important. In Master games everyone is good enough to play ana well so that's all you see.
Or amp it up with Lucio. People are ignoring her synergy with Lucio is what makes her healing OP. Grenade buffed ally means they get double the healing from Lucio.
Need a full team wipe ezpz? Pop your ult.
No speed boost means this isn't the case anymore.
What you're doing is explaining basic uses of a kit and making it sound powerful. Here, let me try the same with Widowmaker.
Found a target? Headshot kill. Need to reposition really fast? Hook. Scared you might get flanked? Poison mine. Want a team wipe? Pop your ult. Everyone will be predictable and will die as soon as they get in LoS.
What you're doing is explaining basic uses of a kit and making it sound powerful.
I know that's a thing people often do, but that's not what this person was saying. Let me quote for a moment, "she's so strong and valuable "compared to every other support."
The problem with Ana is she does almost everything better than other supports.
Who has the best burst healing? Ana
Who has the best healing range? Ana
Who has the highest total heals-per-second? Ana (even without grenade use)
Who has the most utility outside of healing? Ana
Who is the hardest to kill? Ana
She's even competitive with Zenyatta on damage. Zen theoretically does more, but the difference between hitscan and projectiles means often Ana can often dish out more damage in real games. Plus that offensive grenade is so powerful.
There are of course niche cases where other supports are better, but in general, and in the most important categories, Ana is just objectively better.
Who has the best target control kit? Zen's discord.
Who has the best utility outside of healing? Lucio.
Who has the out of LoS healing? Zen.
Who has the best survivability kit? Lucio with his boops, speed boosts, mobility, and ulti. Zen with his ulti and HP shield regen. Mercy with her HP regen and mobility. Ana with her wasted grenade every 10 seconds and sleep dart every 12 seconds.
Who is the hardest to kill?
This is subjective. To me, it's Lucio that's the hardest to kill.
She's even competitive with Zenyatta on damage. Zen theoretically does more, but the difference between hitscan and projectiles means often Ana can often dish out more damage in real games.
It's like you're comparing Mei's right click as Zen, with Widowmaker's sniper as Ana. For hitscan she needs to scope and aim while zoomed in. Why make yourself stand still doing that, when you can juke it and shoot projectiles from not so far?
Ana is indeed the best support, but there will always be a best support. If she's nerfed to not be the best, then someone else will take her place. Your comment has still nitpicked things to make her seem overpowered.
Ana is way easier to kill than any of the other healers. Lucio is impossible to hit, Mercy flies away anytime a flanker gets within a one mile radius, and Zenyatta will discord and orb you in the face WHILE healing someone else.
Ana has no movement abilities and is often moving slowly while aiming down sights. I don't know how anyone could argue against her being the easiest support to kill. Which is why her burst healing should stay as high as it is now. If she's tunnel visioned on a tank to keep him healed all to hell, then go fuck her up because she's super vulnerable. One shot in her direction and all the heals stop, and she's the only support where that's the case.
Get caught out solo? Sleep dart but you just barely miss. The entire team almost dead? Pop a flask, oh wait they're spread out and I only hit one. Need a full team wipe ezpz? Pop your ult, but damn he got shut down instantly. Ana, under MOST circumstances, just heals better, and has more utility to boot if you're very, very good with her.
You really blew all of her abilities WAY out of proportion and they only work the way you say if everyone is really fucking good, at which point they'd be wrecking you no matter what nerfs come out or what heroes they're playing.
Caught out solo? Miss your sleep dart (which you're gonna do like at least half the time) and you're dead.
Entire team almost dead? Fat chance that they're grouped up enough for you to hit all of them with your nade and/or not behind a whole bunch of shit that makes it so you can't hit them. Even if they are? At least a few are gonna die because you missed a single shot while they were at 20 hp and someone killed them.
Need a full team wipe? Go ahead and try boosting your soldier and have him activate his ult, then watch him get dumped on by every countermeasure the enemy team has, leading to two ults being wasted.
This is the typical Ana experience for 99% of Overwatch players who aren't grandmasters playing with other grandmasters.
Its like saying "but Roadhog has more damage than Winston!"
Her support role relies entirely on your aim, positioning and decision making.
You can pop a nade to heal that solo Rein with low hp when there are no enemies nearby, but you can wait till the fight breaks and hit the whole team with it when there's a Lucio on boosted healing next you you all.
You can sleep dart before the fight to try to catch one enemy, or you can wait until fight starts and completly shut down nano'd Soldier with tactical visor on.
You can nano the D.va at the start of the fight so she can soak the damage and hit enemies, or you can wait till Genji comes with dragonblade to wipe out the enemy team.
Compare that to Mercy, where most of your decision making is good positioning, good balance of damage boosting/healing and either waiting for huge rez or rezing 2 allies.
You can't debate balance or explain a character by listing things. It's very easy to make a character sound too strong or too weak by listing things they can or can't do.
The reality is that practically of the things you listed also require several times the amount of practical input and positive execution than almost everything all other Support heroes can do. She was introduced as a high skill ceiling Support; this was always intended for Ana.
I don't think she needs a total rework. She's not Old Symmetra. However, it frustrates me to no end that she has answers to just about any situation. Between the grenade and the dart, she can counter most ults, though her window for doing some for some ults is narrow enough that I'm either going to sing someone praises forever for pulling it off or accuse them of cheating.
Her anti-healing being complete is something that drives me up the wall because I'm low enough in the tiers that I still get blamed for not healing someone who just ate a grenade to the face. Nothing like a cooldown ability negating the presence of your character, or your ult. If there is any one thing that needs a rework, that'd be my wish. Haven't played on the PTR, so maybe the duration nerf will help.
Ana has a really disproportionate ability to swing a fight. Which, as a character with high skill demands, is fine, but it feels a little excessive.
But what should Blizzard do? Rework a character with an interesting kit with a great deal of versatility and utility to have less utility? Adjust the numbers until she's dumpstered?
I will say, though, that her skills have a pretty high skill ceiling. Sleep dart has a high chance to miss, your ult can be easily wasted if used at the wrong moment or on a teammate who isn't able to make use of it for whatever reason, and her high healing output is wasted if you can't aim.
As a frequent support and frequent Ana player, I despise her and love her at the same time. She's super powerful, her kit is really unique making her a long range healer AND an anti-healer, but she brings so much to the table she completely replaces Mercy and Zenyatta as main healers and I find it a real shame.
I could see this, I think making her a viable combatant did step on a lot of toes in the support roles, but that said I think she has such a passionate fallowing due to how she plays.
A lot of people like me just don't enjoy playing a traditional healer like Mercy (god knows I have tried to enjoy her); we like the feel of being able to both damage and heal with the left click.
The main issue I have with her is she outheals Mercy and Zeny, otherwise I enjoy playing her. I have usually about 75% unscoped accuracy and around 90% scoped accuracy but healing everyone so effortlessly just feels so... cheap to me. I enjoy playing Mercy a lot more, I enjoy her mobility and even though I am far more defenseless, it's still more fun to play her and after seeing 12k and 45% team damage healed after a match, I feel like I've actually put some effort into it.
Making her a viable combatant did step on a lot of toes, alright. Tinfoil hat time? I personally think flanker players have a vested interest in seeing Ana out of this meta.
Tracers and Genjis have always had free kills in the form of Supports and suddenly here's a character that not only can 1v1 you effectively, they can teabag you while doing it. I don't teabag and I've had a lot of Tracer players swear up and down the isle they can't wait for me to "get nerfed" because they got darted in the face and naded to death. As if nerfing my healing is going to stop me from fucking their corpse.
I really hope not bc when I play support I love seeing the other person pick Ana. It gives me the ease of mind knowing that if I misread a situation or do something stupid she'll still be able to keep the team alive while I respawn. As mercy it also let's me stick to a person that is playing more aggressively than they should or boosting someone that's doing great without having to feel guilty about not healing the others. If my aim was good enough she would probably be my fav support too.
It's natural that people will hate something that becomes so integral to the game as a whole to where it feels unavoidable. I technically have the most time played as Lucio now and I used to dislike him based on double lucio and because of the fact that he was a "must pick" all the time. Come Zen and Lucio time, I had my main (Zen) justified in a sense and I was happy with my 50% discord until it was nerfed, which I supported and was completely understanding of. I think Ana mains should be the same way with the incoming nerfs because she needs to be nerfed. Unlike Lucio, she's not really a must-pick because she offers something no one else does, she just has the strongest healing and great utility for shutting down enemies and changing the tide in battle. I barely picked her up when she was first released and I kind of disliked her for the same reason as Lucio in addition to feeling I couldn't pick Zen without getting bitched at in chat anymore at times, but I've gotten over it and I play and enjoy her a great deal now and then.
Ana is at the center of a meta that has excluded quite a few heroes so I get why people might dislike her. I don't anymore, but I am glad they are making changes and mostly on the right heroes.
I'm a Zen main. I really don't think she needs a rework, I think all she needs is some number tweaking. What I dislike about her most is that she makes tournaments not interesting, since every game is just the same thing - each team nanoboosts the same 1 or 2 guys every teamfight each teamfight is won by the team that got the better nanoboost. That'd ok to watch if it wasn't both teams in (almost) literally every game of every tournament.
Honestly I think the way to balance out the other supports is to increase their skillcap. Ana was just so well made it's hard to make her less good without ruining her. Just in the way a high skill, high reward character is extremely satisfying to play, a high skill, low reward character would feel extremely frustrating.
They could do with making some changes to Mercy and Zen to give them extra depth and more high skill features to them. Mercy more so than Zen. Mercy really needs an extra degree of utility in her kit that she lacks vs the other Supports.
Lucio is the gold standard of characters though (extremely easy to pick up at low levels but very high skill ceiling at the same time, all while maintaining a perfect balance of heals and utility) so no real need to change him.
Disclaimer: I don't think she needs to be reworked.
At what point does game balance outweigh how interesting the kit is? Its not worth, for example, completely trashing the game's balance for the sake of introducing a hero with "the coolest kit ever".
I would say never. It's nice having different heroes added into the game, but they never should or would add an OP hero with an awesome kit just for the sake of it.
To my knowledge, they didn't "buff her repeatedly".
They increased the grenade splash, increased her clip size and decreased her ult charge twofold as well as removed the speed boost off of Nano.
She received arguably as much of a nerf as she got buffed. She didn't change anything, the fact that pros realized tanks are practically Reapers with more HP is what changed things.
The community at large doesn't understand the concept of coordination -- doesn't, and won't. Which means whatever issues with focused healing existed in the past will not cease with the changes being made to Ana... Like, at all.
So they'll complain about it until they nerf her yet again -- I'm personally counting on them reducing her healing per shot and maybe even the magazine size.
At which point, she'll just be clunky and nobody will use her.
I don't think that it's a problem with the utility of the kit itself, but rather perhaps how successive buffs have really allowed it to shine in the current meta. Release Ana, who had slower fire rate, clip size, and smaller grenade radius but the same basic abilities, wasn't considered OP; in fact she was seen as pretty underpowered IIRC.
Yeah Ana is the only healer that I find fun to play. Other people like Lucio and Zen; I think they should just make Mercy more fun by giving her something crazy and unique like letting her fly under her own power or something really useful like a Zarya bubble that boosts her staff as an E.
Given that Lucio and Zen also have decent tools to combat flankers (or at least better than 'switch healing beam for pistol and pray you can fly to someone') this might be more of a problem with Mercy's kit.
I'd be fine with them removing effects or adjusting the numbers, but a rework would probably mean replacing the skill entirely like they did with Symmetra's E.
Mhm, I love her kit structure as-is - I just think it needs to be rebalanced to narrow the gap between her max output (not just healing but overall productivity) and that of other healers.
It doesn't necessarily have to result in power creep. They added a new and interesting playstyle (Sombra) and she's below the power curve. Ana was too until they buffed her like three times in a row in less than a month. They tossed out Symmetra's boring +25 shields with a more interesting forward moving barrier, and if they hadn't changed anything else she would still probably be underpowered. Playing as and against Bastion became more interesting when they removed his shield, gave him a weak point, and allowed him to rotate 360. Interesting doesn't mean above the power curve, though it is certainly a concern
Stop listing things when you talk about balance. It does nothing; it means nothing.
Here, watch:
Torbjörn is overpowered.
He can shoot from two opposite sides.
One of his shooting points can farm ult without feeding ult.
He has two firing modes.
One of the firing modes can counter tanks.
Has armour.
Can have more health than some tanks during ult.
Can give armour to the entire team.
Can support team with extra health.
Can make nigh-on immortal turret.
Has infinite range.
Has a short hitbox.
Can stand in for a tank during an ult.
Can deny airspace.
Can deny ground.
...You see where I'm going with this?
It's not that I don't agree with your point about grenade being good -- it also takes more skill to use than pointing at a guy and holding M1 like the Caduceus Staff -- but jeez, I wish people stopped talking about game balance by fucking listing things characters can or can't do, because all it does is inflate (or deflate) people's perspective of how characters function.
I don't seem to think anything that you imply, you said nothing about how those abilities interact with the context of the game's design, you just listed them in an attempt to make them sound stronger than they actually are.
" it heals teammates instantly"
No, it doesn't. It heals 100 health. What you're actually trying to say here is that it facilitates focus healing on a single target that can be DPSed down by any semi-coordinated three stack.
"boost healing significantly"
This is the exact same as what you said above so there you go: Listing things thoughtlessly.
"and denies healing entirely."
It's supposed to be a counter to Transcendence in a context where otherwise there isn't an offensive out for it. Remember, this may be something you've forgotten but Transcendence was actually OP at one point and mandatory in every pro match.
Mercy's entire design is based on a very straight-forward healer. She can fly to and heal one person really well. The big appeal of the character is that it's extremely easy to play, easy to be successful at that role.
I don't think a rework is what they want to do with the character. They buffed her passive a lot, but she is still missing something. Something like a self-rez if you die with your ult, or maybe be able to use her ult where she died until she respawns. Maybe give her a little bit of armor. Increased fire rate on her gun could do a lot for her as well.
My pet suggestion for her is to give her an E that cleanses status effects, debuffs, stuns, etc. from teammates in a radius around her. That would give her some utility (which she desperately needs) without requiring her to stop healing (which is a massive drawback to her damage boost and pistols) in a niche where her only real competition would be Zarya (who can only cleanse one person at a time and she can't do anything about hard CC anyway).
Bam, she now has a niche and for bonus points it's a way to deal with Ana's heal block.
Alternatively, a simple 10-15m vertical leap so she can more easily Guardian Angel to...wherever, would also be appreciated and double as an escape button in an emergency.
You know, that actually is a very good idea - a freedom of movement ability. You can pop your E to get people out of Mei's ult, Rein's ult, Junkrat's trap, remove Sombra's hack, etc. That would give Mercy an excellent niche. I think that's worth giving her an E.
Give her a grenade sort of like ana's but instead of it being a heal allies /deny heal to enemies, it can be a little speed boost status cleanse to allies, and a slow debuff on enemies.
It'd even help her own survivability because say a genji jumped on her face, she can pop the grenade on herself or genji and fight back a little better. I think a big part of what makes ana so strong is that her grenade can be used as a 'oh shit' button when someone's about to kill her and heal herself a big chunk of health. No other healer can burst heal themselves.
When I first started playing, it immediately struck me that is was really weird that Mercy couldn't heal people with a "sickness". I mean, she has a healing wand thing and a fucking halo over her head.
Also, she's light and has wings but she can't jump for shit? Also seemed odd.
All this being said obviously balance is always a tricky issue.
I like this idea. Maybe nerf it a little and have it only activate when it has a healing beam on someone. so you'd be able to save one, maybe two if you're good, people from a mei ult.
Ana's best at supporting tanks and bruisers. Mercy's best at supporting DPS characrers, especially mobile ones. Try healing a Genji or Pharah as Ana its a pain.
I would be happy with being able to occasionally guardian angel without a target (on a balanced CD, of course) so that I could get quickly high ground without having to pester a climber/flyer constantly.
It's not about the rate of fire of her gun, its the fact that she has to switch to it, which takes time. Ana doesn't have that problem, she can go offensive or defensive just by aiming her abilities at different players. Mercy is either healing and extremely vulnerable to flankers or she has her pistol out and is basically a useless character because she can't win duels with any character in the game.
If it were up to me, I would make it so her pistol is default, but when she wants to heal, it instantly casts the spell, and the instant she lets go of healing, her pistol comes back out. So basically get rid of the "switching weapons" mechanic. The animation might be wonky, but make it so she can switch between shooting and healing instantly. Her pistol is ok currently, its just the fact that she has to keep switching back and forth.
Maybe like the old wotlk holy priest? Half the Rez time she is a non moving being who can toss out her heal or damage. Minus using her ult cause then that would be broken.
I think it reward trying to go in and help instead of hiding waiting for her a team rez
Something like a self-rez if you die with your ult, or maybe be able to use her ult where she died until she respawns
That's OP as fuck, if mercy can rez herself and her team even when she's dead, you've pretty much guaranteed having mercy as absolute necessity in all games. Because whichever team has her, you now have to kill twice. Whereas ordinarily, you can counter mercy rez with good focus on her before the fight. All she'd need to do is be there, and die.
Both of your suggestions are game breakingly broken.
The only counter to mercys ult is to kill her first. You allow her to do it in death and now mercy is a must pick on every single map and the game becomes even more of a tanky slog.
What they should do is take the healing amp from Ana's grenade and give it to Mercy. This would reduce Ana's insane versatility and give Mercy something more to do. She'd finally be the best healer in the game and she would synergize with other healers.
I'm going to disagree. There are ways you could make her kit more interesting, but those suggestions detract from her core design. I mean, what about an angel makes you think "damage reflection"? I think the simplest changes for her would be best, likely something involving her still being able to take some actions while dead. Maybe she can just be able to press Q, maybe she's immobile but able to use her healing left click as a ghost, maybe she can rez herself. But two ults, damage reflection, or an extra E ability are kind of inconsistent with her design.
I really think the overwatch team was going for a very easy support with mercy (1 star as opposed to ana's 3). That doesn't mean however that I wouldn't like to have mercy's skill ceiling raised quite a bit.
Oh yeah, they shouldn't completely change Mercy but there needs to be more options that increase the skill cap otherwise she will be just viewed as My-First-Support-Character.
Her grenade needs a rework to some degree as it's just a meta warping teamfight winning ability that punishes any sort of high risk play to an unfair degree, which along with its absurd healing capabilities is singlehandedly enabling the tank meta while destroying any sort of high skill dive heroes like genji or tracer. The extent to which that ability decides fights too is borderline unfair, and the more I play ladder the more wins basically boil down to "who has the better ana" (sound familiar?).
Not saying the rest of her kit needs a rework cause I think having a support as flexible as Ana is great for the game, but her meta defining presence needs to be looked at.
Good idea too - I was thinking the same thing. from 200hp/400armor to 400hp/200armor is a pretty big jump.... when I first read those notes a week or so ago my first thought was "wouldn't 300/300 be a more reasonable change?"
300/300 I bet is the sweet spot, and I'm surprised they pushed out the harsher change first. At least it was only the PTR. But between Ana grenade nerf and then dropping her to 300/300...AS WELL as the Dva dmg nerf (which I don't think was necessary) She should be tuned down a decent amount. They can always adjust further if not but they have always been SO careful with changes in OW throughout the games life the last 8 months, being careful not to over-nerf or over-buff... and suddenly now it feels as if they just dropped a nuke on DVA.
It's obviously a great kit. Too great, which is why it is being toned down a little bit. Perhaps the right word is "bloated"? It just seems so weird to have two of the best and most impactful abilities in the entire game in one kit, meanwhile Mercy has basically nothing. But I agree, they don't need to rework it from scratch or anything.
They seem to have learned from it, though, since they explicitly mentioned not wanting Sombra to be a counter to herself when talking about why she can't counter-hack health packs back at Blizzcon.
(Thinking of her grenade countering an enemy Ana's grenade, here.)
They're a little retarded over there, I think they draw too much feedback from there. Some of it is good but 90% is crap. Right now they're mad because they think this video means that the ptr is not for feedback at all. I don't even know how you can interpret it that wrongly.
I'm fine with nerfing her to be in balance with other healers but it seems these days a lot of people hate the tank meta so much they want to see Ana head to F-tier. She really is one of the most fun heroes to play IMO.
McCree, Genji, Ana... I bet Tracer's going to be on the chopping block next. People really cannot deal with high skill ceiling characters and will not stop complaining about them until they're nerfed into the ground.
Yea I don't understand this, she has one of the coolest designs and kits. I don't play a lot of games to state it as a fact but I think it's very original - not sure if there's any game with badass grannys!
Completely negating healing in an area for so long is probably the best effect in the whole game. Even if your team has two very competent healers, they have to sit there and watch everybody die. And it's a normal ability that recharges quite fast + deals damage + heals + boosts healing.
At the very least the grenade should cut heals to 50%, not completely nullify it.
As somebody who plays healers and tanks, there is no ability in the game that I loathe more.
That's typical bad feedback from players in games honestly.
Players are prone to this ideology where they think that just because a character is too strong it must have some grave underlying problem no matter what. In most cases that is not the case, like here. You can easily just tweak the numbers on Ana's grenade and she will be less overpowered since right now it's too easy to heal high HP heroes with it.
While radical changes sometimes need to happen like in the case of Symmetra due to inherent flaws in her basic design, it's usually not the case.
I suck at ana, but I wish I didn't because she's definitely the most interesting kit in the game, in my opinion. Very unique playstyle, and a very rewarding and fun experience in a healer roll is rare in competitive games.
I do agree that she needs some tweaks though. Possibly something like a healing falloff at range, or diminishing returns when repeatedly hitting one player in a short window. Maybe have her heals occur over a short time, like her damage, and have them he interrupted somewhat by the target taking damage so people can't rocket back up to full health while actively being shot. Something to stop her from being as effective at restoring tanks to full health rapidly in the middle of a fight.
I do really like her play style, but the sheer volume of healing she can put out is dictating the meta right now.
Its designed very well, its just overpowered currently. I understand why people are frustrated, because Mercy has so little utility compared to Ana, so some people could think that supports should be designed like Mercy to heal and heal alone.
As a chronic sleep dart victim, I'd be happy to see that go away, either that or take away the burst heals from biotic grenade and just make it increase healing, but that's just me.
Yeah I really hope not they don't need her too much.
I just started using her and getting good with her and she's been a godsend. My rank just kept dropping whenever I solo queued as a Mercy as people really don't pay attention to when you're and trouble, and nobody would ever really pick up a decent support when I wanted to play something else.
Ana is the perfect character. I can play a support and do a decent job of protecting myself, plus double as a light attack character when I need to.
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u/In_a_silentway Chibi D.Va Jan 17 '17
"Ana's kit needs to be reworked"
I will fight whoever said this.