The focus has shifted onto Ana now that Mercy’s been reworked. This comes as no surprise. For a while now Ana players have been clamoring for a buff. They often say she feels underwhelming compared to Mercy or Lucio. Ana’s competitive win rate comes dead last among the supports. Her popularity plummeted after Season Four, and she’s currently the least picked healer across all ranks. Last season in Diamond, Mercy was picked 98% of the time and Ana a dismal 24% of the time in Competitive.
The easiest and most intuitive way to fix Ana is to adjust her numbers. That's exactly what Kaplan announced Blizzard would do in a series of posts today:
Game director Jeff Kaplan wrote:
"Yes, we're increasing her damage. We've been testing it internally for a while. Last night, we threw our competitive group at it (Masters/GM level players) and they really liked it also. So it will probably make the PTR soon."
Ana's rifle damage will likely increase from 60 to 70 per shot. She'll have more impact in fights once she's able to 3 shot a 200 HP hero.
The damage buff could also play an important role in countering "Pharmercy," the strongest synergy in the game. Pharah’s traditional counters suffer from damage fall off but Ana does not, making her a viable pick to fulfill the secondary role of sniper.
Ana's finest hour may never return. It's unlikely the devs will restore her damage to 80 HP per hit. However, upping her damage dealing ability by 10 HP per hit should improve survivability and viability. She's one of two heroes considered to be primary healers, but she's a niche pick and generally not a big part of the meta. We're hoping the damage boost is enough to balance the seasoned sniper!
