Let me make something clear to start, I’m not advocating for Blizzard to nerf Ana into the ground, but something does need to change. It is no mistake that Ana has been top tier for the entire span of this game despite multiple nerfs. The biggest problem is anti-nade as an ability is insanely over-tuned.

Not only is anti able to prevent the other team from healing, but it also heals and makes your team receive extra healing for a time. This makes it an offensive tool as well as a defensive tool. On top of that she has decent damage, the ability to have hitscan or projectile fire, and a weakness that is not hard to play around. Yes dive is a huge weakness of Ana’s due to her lack of mobility, but it’s also super easy to counterplay. Simply having brig on your team will make diving Ana much less effective and if she is for some reason alone she has a counter dive ability in sleep dart. In addition if you do damage to her while diving she can nade and not only heal herself, but also prevent the person diving from healing at the same time. In addition, when you play against dive comps you know you will need to peel at times, the only time dive is an actual weakness for Ana is when your team is not counter playing properly or you get outplayed. It’s a very soft weakness compared to other dive weak supports like zen.

It’s just too much for one character and the usage rate shows that to be true. It makes no sense that supports like lifeweaver, zen, bap and, kiri are getting nerfs and Ana isn’t, she is the root cause of tank gameplay being so miserable. The fact that JQs ult is so similar to anti-nade shows how completely over-tuned it is, it is an ult level effect. No one is calling JQs ult bad, cause even though it can be easy to deal with, the effect is crazy good. And the reason JQs ult is so easy to deal with isn’t because anti is easy to deal with, it’s because it has a voice line and super long startup. And yet we have a support that has it as a cooldown that she can toss with no warning and not that long of a cooldown.

The worst part about anti is how many characters it invalidates. Many tanks without shields have no way of dealing with anti, you have to have kiri and her cooldown is longer than antis. This is not good game design, the effect has far too much value and needs to be nerfed/removed/changed. Ana simply has too much value with her non ult cooldowns (her ult is super good too). People might argue that her purpose is to be a utility support, and that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean she should be immune to balance. If she is providing more utility than what is balanced for her weakness then she needs to be changed, and that is the state we currently find ourselves in.

I’m expecting a good amount of downvotes, Ana is a popular character and no one likes hearing their character is too strong and needs a change. But it needs to be said. Blizzard has done a ton of balancing during this games lifespan to try and make tank more fun and less of a chore, but they have consistently ignored the root problem and tbh, until anti is adjusted we will not see a game state where every tank can be viable anti is just too strong for that to come to pass.