Thought dump is a regular series where I post my unedited thoughts and musings about Overwatch that don’t merit a real article.

Reddit, and esport subreddits in particular, seems to act like a pendulum. The consensus of opinion will swing to one side of an argument, and sure enough the hive mind will eventually decide to backtrack to an exact opposite opinion.

Players can go from over-rated to under-rated in a matter of days. For me, however, the most aggravating swing is Reddit’s approach to balance issues; perceived, or otherwise.

R/CompetitiveOverwatch is one of my most frequented subreddits, and this community is guilty of such swing behavior. While this community consistently voices balance complaints, a recent, and prolific example, is Ana.

There have been several complaints, with several core issues. Those being Ana’s low win-rate on ladder, Mercy’s dominance, and general whining about Ana being too weak.

We’ll just go in order here, so first I’ll address her low win-rate on ladder.

Who gives a fuck?

I’ll never understand why a hero’s ladder win-rate matters to people. But regardless, because of her low win-rate this somehow equates she needs buffs. First of all, according the the same website Zenyatta is the highest win-rate support in GM this week. Why are there no calls to nerf Zenyatta? The answer is because people are too focused on the issues they perceive.

Beyond that, Overbuff also reports that Ana has been the lowest win-rate support in GM over the last six months. This doesn’t mean that I agree she needs buffs, just that she hasn’t historically performed well on ladder.

Let’s take a step back and move to another esport title, League of Legends. I honestly forget, but I believe the fourth (third?) rework of Ryze was the version in which his ultimate was changed to be a short distance teleport.

This version of Ryze was dog-shit on ladder. I can’t recall the exact statistic, but his win-rate was somewhere in the 30–40 percent range on ladder. At the same time, however, he was nearly 100 percent pick/ban in professional play. Why?

Because ladder play in every game will always make high skill-cap heroes, that require strong teamwork to function at their best, suffer. Ryze was one, and Ana is as well.

While GM is certainly full of mechanically skilled players, who communicate far more information than players in my elo, their ability to coordinate will NEVER be at the same level as even an only competent pro team.

A pro team has discussions on how they communicate (or they should) in order to develop clear and focused comms. While the players in GM may know the information they want to communicate, when every player begins to call it’s easy for stray messages to get lost in the literal noise.

This environment is not where Ana thrives. Sure she is relatively capable of keeping herself alive in hectic scenarios, but her strength lies in coordinated teamplay because her ideal play patterns can be so easily interrupted.

For example, Winston dives a Zenyatta. His Harmony Orb remains on his allied Winston, and his own damage and Discord Orb are now focused on the Winston in his face. The Zen is still healing his front-line, and he would likely have Discord Orb’d and shot at the enemy Winston anyways. While he may under threat, Zenyatta is still accomplishing his goals.

Now, when Winston dives an Ana there are two options. Ana could hit a sleep dart, and be safe for a few seconds. But often Winston blocks the dart with his shield or the Ana simply misses. Ana now is forced to use her Biotic Grenade on herself to try and stay alive, and her line of sight is blocked by Winston’s shield or his own mass and she can no longer heal her allies.

In plain speak, Ana is no longer helping her allies once she gets put under pressure. And at their core, supports are supposed to be helping their allies. Keep your tanks alive with healing so they can protect the team and enable your DPS to pick up kills with damage increases, preventing enemies from being healed, or getting them into position with speed buffs.

And it isn’t just Winston that can do this to Ana. D.Va, Genji, Tracer, Doomfist, hell even Sombra. Disrupting Ana’s play patterns is much easier than any other support. Meaning that often in order to play at her full potential she needs a bit of help peeling off her enemies. And on ladder, even in GM, that simply doesn’t happen at the same level as in pro play.

Short point, but raw win-rate is also a dumb stat to use to say Ana is weak. She’s map dependent, as long sight-lines favor her. She can contribute at any range, and the farther away she is from the enemy the safer she is.

It’s far harder to play Ana to 100 percent than it is to play Zen to the same level. A mistake can mean you contribute almost nothing to the fight, where a Zen can still do something. I’d imagine this leads players to “feel worse” playing Ana.

That combined with the fact that Ana can’t frag like Zen means that players who derive enjoyment, and rightfully so, from picking up kills feel less rewarded from playing Ana. These favors contribute to her perceived weakness, where in fact there isn’t one.

In essence, Ana isn’t bad. You’re bad at playing with her.

675 words later, we’ll move onto the second point which is Mercy’s dominance is somehow stemming from the weakness of Ana.

Again, Zenyatta is still the highest win-rate support in GM this week but there are no calls for nerfing him.

Mercy is strong because her kit, unlike Ana’s, is favorable in ladder play. The ability to bring back an ally who gets too aggressive is hugely valuable. Especially now that it’s on such a short cooldown, tempo raising players is even better than it was before.

But returning to the previous point about Ana, Mercy is much harder to restrict. Her healing isn’t blocked by anything, and where Ana might only get off one Sleep Dart and Biotic Grenade to attempt to survive Mercy can fly toward an ally every few seconds.

Her mobility combined with the fact she can stay airborne for so long allows her to stay safe in many situations where Ana would die. And being alive means you’re contributing to the flight, blah blah, I hope you get the point by now.

Wrapping this up, Mercy’s strength doesn’t somehow come from Ana’s weakness. She is strong in her own ways, and doesn’t rely nearly as much on her allies to survive and contribute. And she can actually fix her allies mistakes, which on ladder are common.

I think Mercy is a bit overtuned, and I wrote about it in more detail in my previous Though Dump. Feel free to check it out if you’re curious.

Now the final point, that Ana is too weak and needs to be buffed, wraps up the title of this piece nicely.

The Reddit pendulum is in full effect here. Previously people whined about Ana’s dominance and cried for her nerfs. Now they beg for those nerfs to be reverted. In particular by bumping her damage back up to 80, or just to 70, from its current 60.

This is inane, and I can’t believe I have to even remind people about this, but the reason her damage was nerfed was because two-tapping Tracer and three-tapping Pharah with no range limitations was fucking busted. Pharah literally dropped out of the metagame because Ana players just murdered her over-and-over.

“But Elbion, we said 70 damage is still ok!”

No, 70 is not ok. 70 means she three-taps Pharah again, and any 200 hp hero who gets hit with a biotic grenade can then be two-tapped. We’re then back into the exact same state of balance she was before.

Of course, it’s my opinion that this is not ok. But these are simple math problems. If a buff to 70 damage goes through I would bet money we would see a Reddit thread down the line complaining that Ana does too much damage.

The question, however, is that inherently a problem. Is Ana being a huge offensive threat an issue? This is where the balance philosophy comes in. In my eyes, Ana being an offensive threat on top of what she already does is ridiculous.

First of all, we already have Zenyatta. If you want to be a support that is capable of being a damage carry, even on ladder, play Zen. That’s a whole other discussion if heroes should have distinct roles from each other, but Ana’s kit does so much besides damage.

She is the only hero whose healing is not limited by range, just by line-of-sight. Her raw healing output far exceeds any other support’s, the combination of raw power and utility on Biotic Grenade is crazy, and Nano Boost is the single best enabling ability in the game.

Ana at her core is designed to enable. Just like a support should be. Your ability to “carry” comes from your ability to enable your allies and alleviate their mistakes by hitting your abilities in the correct manner.

And if I’m being frank, Ana might not be the hero for you. You might not enjoy that playstyle as much, in which case just play Zenyatta.

But when you the combination of the right map, a pro team helping you, and a smart player come together Ana can do insane things. The question you have to ask yourself is, are you ok with there being a hero whose full potential is only unlocked in specific situations and with proper teamplay?

I am, I hope you are too.