Ana by gustmes

The latest hero added to Overwatch, Ana is a sniper support who can heal allies or damage enemies with her rifle.

Noticing the lack of recent support heroes added to HotS, I thought Ana would make an excellent addition to the game, since her design could be a very different and interesting support. And that's how I think she should be transported to the Nexus.

Coming from Overwatch, I feel that some of the principles used in Tracer could also be applied here. Namely, she has only one Ultimate ability, available at level 1; at level 10, she can choose between one of 3 upgrades to the ultimate. However, unlike Tracer's, her ultimate's cooldown works normally - as in, after you use it, just wait the timer to go off. Some talents allow her abilities or attack to reduce the cooldown timer, though.
Also, similar to Tracer, she has no Mana. She can use her Scope without cooldown, and all other abilities have only cooldown, except for Biotic Rifle, which uses ammo and has a reload mechanic.

The similarities end here. For Tracer, her shooting mechanic comes from her basic attack, while her melee attack is an ability. I believe Ana should operate differently - her basic attack is a melee strike with her rifle, and her main weapon (Biotic Rifle) is an ability (although it does not have cooldown, only ammo). There are 3 reasons for this:
1 - Tracer is very mobile, so it makes more sense making her melee strike an useful ability that she can use by darting in and out. Ana is not meant to go near enemies to attack in melee, so it would have been an useless ability for her. As a basic attack, her melee strike is like Abathur's - used only as a last resource.
2 - Making Biotic Rifle her basic attack could be kinda confusing, since this weapon has double functionality (healing and damaging). Unless she could be able to basic attack her own allies, but that could be weird.
3 - It's obvious that Biotic Rifle is her most used option. To make Ana (in Heroes) feel like a sniper, she couldn't use her main weapon as auto attacks - she has to aim up these skillshots to hit allies and enemies alike.

As for her kit, I tried to make as much a direct port from Overwatch as possible, obviously tweaked for Heroes.
- Scope is an on/off switch that makes you see farther and increase range of your weapon, but you lose peripheral sight and moves slower.
- Biotic Rifle works like in the game, but without the healing over time / damage over time effects (these are talents. So the base hero won't be overloaded with different mechanics).
- Sleep Dart might be overpowered, so maybe numbers can be tweaked. It works similarly to Overwatch, but the target gains great healing while sleeping - this is an attempt to make the ability less overpowered, and creates interesting synergy with Biotic Grenade.
- Biotic Grenade works quite similarly, except that it doesn't completely negates enemy healing, only reduce them.
- Nano Boost is the ability I felt had to be more changed, because otherwise it would be very similar to Morales' ultimate. As I designed, the target gains a bonus to damage dealt, movement speed, and reduce incoming damage, but it's not a huge bonus. The duration is rather small, but when you hit the target with Biotic Rifle or Biotic Grenade, it increases a bit. The ideia is that Ana can make that buff last for long periods.


So basically, this design ports her abilities almost directly from Overwatch, with only minor differences. Since she has 2 skillshot and 1 AoE abilities, combined with Scope, grants this design the fantasy of being a sniper - she'd probably be a high skill cap hero, being so much dependent on skillshots. And she's an interesting, more active Support which is something the game could benefit more from.

So, what do you think?