Hello and welcome back to another Overwatch Tips! We will be going over today the most skill based healer I think in the game and that would be the sharpshooting sniper, Ana! When she was added to the game all the way back in late 2016, she reprised her role heavily (on PC) as a must pick healer. But, once dive meta came, it became a little bit harder for her to stay at that must pick status. Nowadays, with a fairly balanced meta, Ana is making a resurgence on PC and on console. Let’s get into how to play this badass granny.
Biotic Grenade
This is an essential part to Ana’s kit. And once you use it to it’s full capacity, healing will be a cinch! Of course, you can use it to heal allies but I would try to save it for that perfect moment. Your tanks might be low and shooting at them will take a while for them to get back to full health so that biotic grenade comes in handy making them immediately get 100 health and gets a 50% from and other healing source!
So the squishies on your team will be fine if they just get shot by you a couple times rather than wasting your grenade on them and having your tanks suffer. Also, using your grenade can negate healing to the enemies, so say an enemy Zenyatta or Mercy pops their ultimate, if you are able to ‘nade them all it totally negates all that healing they might have done and your team can reap the benefits!
The Ana Combo
So you’ve slept a Genji that’s behind your team and your teammates are not around to help you kill him: what do you do? Well this old lady isn’t totally helpless. Getting them to sleep was the hard part, but you just need to give them the old Ana combo. This combo is Shoot+Grenade+Shoot+Melee. If you can land all of those on a hero that’s 200 hp or below, it should be a sure fire kill.
Overwatch- Blizzard Entertainment
Positioning
A lot of people make the mistake of keeping very close to their teammates, in the middle of the fight as Ana and that’s simply not good positioning. They put a scope on that gun for a reason! Keep at a moderate distance away from your team, a bit behind them. You’ll be able to see the whole battlefield and all your teammates will be in view so when you see a critical you can go after them and they will know if they just go back there will be heals for them. Bonus Tip: For all the console players, I know it’s been difficult for Ana to become prevalent in the meta there, but there is an answer! Just recently Blizzard has added ally aim assist to the options menu, making it so you don’t miss as many shots when trying to heal your team!
Counters
While Ana does have the ability to kill heroes like Tracer, Genji, or even a Winston, she is not very mobile. If you’re in a tight situation and being focussed by heroes with high mobility, you don’t have a chance. So the best way to counter this is to let your teammates know you are being targeted so they can help you out. If they don’t listen to you, your team is down a healer, and your team will collapse. It’s like a domino effect.
But that’s all we got for today! Precision and situational awareness is key in becoming a good Ana player and it will pay off big time mastering her. She’s a very satisfying hero to get good with so keep practicing! Until next time you guys, farewell!
