The Best Way To Play Ana Amari In Overwatch

Ana Amari is the first new hero to be added to Overwatch's roster since the game's launch, and this support sniper is set to shake things up. As one of the original founders of Overwatch, and also Pharah's mother, you'd expect the 60-year-old sharpshooter to have an elite set of skills when it comes to combat. In this article, we'll show you how to best utilize her abilities to keep your teammates alive—and your opponents in constant fear of your damage and debuffs. When it comes to dominating the battlefield, this mother knows best.

Ana's primary weapon is her Biotic Rifle, which is an interesting device because it can be used to both attack and heal, depending on which target you're aiming to shoot. You'll have eight rounds to work with before you have to reload, so you'll get plenty of opportunities to lay the hurt on the opposing team, especially since each shot does 80 points of damage. The one drawback is that the damage is applied over one second, instead of taking chunks of health away all at once. Because of this, you shouldn't try to burn down enemies near a healer and should prioritize taking out weaker foes first. And since Ana's a sniper, you can hang back and scan the environment for easier targets without having to get into the fray. Just pray you don't have to countersnipe a Widowmaker.

One nifty thing about Ana's Biotic Rifle is that, while it can lay down the hurt, it can also heal your allies for 75 points of damage over one second as well. You don't even have to toggle anything to set it to damage or heal, since it'll change effects depending on your target. It's entirely possible to take pot shots at enemies and heal your teammates to full health, all within the same eight-round clip. Ana fires at a rate of 1.1 rounds per second, so it's not super fast, but it can still keep a teammate going in the middle of a team-fight, maybe even long enough for them to take out enemies or pop their ultimates. Thanks to Ana's versatility, you're going to be very useful in every situation.

Being a mother and the former second-in-command at Overwatch, Ana is certainly an authoritative woman. We can imagine her getting sternly telling a younger Pharah to go to bed when she got too rowdy. In similar fashion, she can put enemies to sleep just as quickly with her sidearm, which fires a Sleep Dart that incapacitates enemies for almost six seconds. Now, this powerful method of control has a 12-second cooldown, so you'll want to save it for things like a buffed up Genji or a Winston who's popped his Primal Rage ultimate. Stopping threats like that in their tracks and negating their ultimates is what makes Ana such a powerful hero. Just make sure to communicate to your team who you're going to put to sleep, because any damage inflicted on the target will wake them up, angry and looking to kill.

Ana's got a Biotic Grenade that's a real game-changer. Friendly targets hit by it will see 100 points of damage healed, and they'll also receive a boost to their healing from all sources for five seconds. Enemies hit by the grenade, however, take 60 points of damage and are unable to be healed for five seconds. Brutal, right? This ability can be huge in a team fight, giving your healers a boost while making sure your enemies can't be spot-healed and are easier to take down. Few things are more satisfying than seeing a Mei run back towards a Mercy when she's low, only to be taken out because she received no healing. In those moments, it's perfectly acceptable to let out an evil chuckle into your headset.

Ana's Ultimate Ability is her Nano Boost, a projectile that injects a friendly target with Nanobots that augment their damage output by 50%, their movement speed by 30%, and halve incoming damage. In other words, it turns her target into a nigh-unstoppable instrument of pain for about eight seconds. We recommend using this on big, tanky characters that can also dish out the hurt—like Reinhardt, for example. Though he's usually quite slow, shooting Reinhardt with the Nano Boost can turn him into a zippy German juggernaught that swings around a rocket-powered hammer of doom. We're sure your enemies will enjoy that.