Ana Guide

Ana Biography

A Founding member of Overwatch, Ana uses her abilities and knowledge to defend her home and loved ones. Ana is an elite support sniper who was considered the absolute best in the world. Her unparalleled decision making, marksmanship, and instincts made her a natural selection to join the Overwatch Strike Team.  

Despite her responsibilities in helping to lead overwatch, Ana would not step away from combat excursions and remained active in her duties well into her fifties. Where she was believed to have been killed, during a hostage rescue mission by Widowmaker.

Ana Abilities:

Biotic Rifle

Ana’s rifle shoots darts that can heal allies or deal damage over time (Dots) to her enemies. The rifle’s scope allows a great zoom in, to target allies or enemies for extremely accurate shots.

Sleep Dart

Ana fires a dart from her gun, putting her targetted enemy asleep, though any damage to the unconscious target will wake them immediately.

Biotic Grenade

Ana throws a biotic grenade that has an Area of Effect (AOE) that heal all allies in the small area, and also deals damage to any enemies in the same area. Allies who are hit by the grenade also gain increased healing from all sources.

Nano Boost

After Ana hits one of her allies with Nano Boost, they deal 50% more damage, and take less damage from enemy attacks, 50% damage reduction.

How Best to use Biotic Rifle

This is Ana’s primary weapon, it will shoot 14 times before it needs to be reloaded, and can affect both teams, healing your team for 75hp per shot, and it deals 70 damage to the enemy team. It has a great scope, to precision sharp shooting, but it will eliminate all vision of your surroundings and movement speed. It’s a unique weapon as it heals and deals damage in rapid segments, instead of all at once, as it deals 4 segments in one shot, so it’s less effective against armored heroes.

Now even though Ana does not do as much damage as other sniper characters, Biotic rifle give you the ability to fluidly flip back and forth between healing and dealing damage. A key tip is to only scope when you have to do it when the scope is not being used, your shots are barely visible to the enemy team. But when scoped your bullets will have a large trail, that will reveal where you are positioned, so be as sneaky as possible, Ana is all about stealth like other sniper characters. The only real downside of the Biotic rifle is that it is unable to perform a critical shot, so aiming for headshots is utterly pointless.

How Best to use Sleep Dart

Ana’s side piece (Sidearm), is her own personal anti flanking tool to keep her safe. It fires a single dart that fires at a high velocity, once the dart hits the enemy they take a little nap. While your enemies are in dreamland and drooling on themselves, they can’t move, attack, use any skills, for five and a half seconds, but can be cut short by any damage dealt to them. Sleep dart does next to no damage but it can kill an enemy, but it’s not wise to try it out.

Now you are able to use the skill as an anti flanking skill, but its true power lies in the fact it can utterly destroy any channeled abilities. Such as Dragonblade, 76’s tactical visor, or just making life hell for the big tank characters who are gunning to kill you. To get the most out of the ability you must be in constant communication with your team because any amount of damage dealt to a key target that’s asleep will instantly wake them up. Certain targets are always a higher priority, so outside of interrupting ultimates, you should be aiming for tanks or any immediate threat to the team.

How Best to use Nano Boost

Ana’s ultimate Nano Boost will temporarily make one of your teammates a total monster when it comes to dealing damage and taking damage. Damage will be increased by 50% and Damage Reduction by 50% for all attacks coming from or into the teammate of your choosing, it also lasts a grand total of 8 seconds with an instant 300 hp heal, so plenty of time for your teammate to rampage all over the enemy team.

The ability can’t be missed so it will ignore deflect or a defense matrix skill. While your teammate is under the effects of Nano Boost, character models will glow red for enemies and blue for allies. The key to using this skill properly is to save it for your teammates who have an ultimate ability ready to go, for example, Reinhardt, Soldier 76, or Genji would be excellent choices to make them god tier when it comes to damage. Though certain ultimates like Hanzos will have 0 benefits from nano boost, so make sure you keep all of this in mind.

Now there may be many ways to use this Ultimate, but it’s all situational, would turning a teammate into a drug-fueled killing machine be better than a clutch 300 health heal on a teammate. Always think how you can best benefit the team, though personally using nano boost to boost damage, feels like you get to turn your teammate into the hulk, and it is extremely satisfying.