Overwatch's Ana Now Live Plus D.Va & Zenyatta Buffs
What do you think of Pharah's mum?
Overwatch's first post-release hero has now been added to the game. Ana, a support sniper, was revealed just last week and added to the Public Test Realm, but is now live for all alongside a new trailer and a patch that brings buffs to D.Va and Zenyatta.
Ana has a bolt-action sniper rifle which heals allies and harms enemies, and a secondary weapon that fires tranquiliser darts to knock enemies out. She also has "Biotic Grenades", which simmilar heals allies and harms enemies, as well as giving a buff to all ally healing for a few moments and preventing all healing of enemies.
She's also Pharah's mum.
We've already had story and game trailers featuring Ana, but Blizzard have now put out a developer update video where the designer Jeff Kaplan talks through the thinking behind Ana and her abilities:
The same update also brings other changes over from the public test realm, including those long-mentioend buffs to D.Va and Zenyatta. For D.Va that mostly means changes to her defense matrix, to turn it into an 'alternate fire' ability, reduce the cooldown from 10 to 1 second, and introduce a new resource meter that powers it with a full charge giving you 4 seconds of use. Meanwhile Zenyatta's shield has been increased by 50 and his orbs of discord and harmony now travel much faster. Except no one cares because D.Va is much more fun than Zenyatta anyway.
There have also been small tweaks made to Soldier 76, Roadhog, Mercy, McCree, Lúcio, Bastion, some game modes, plus bug fixes. The full set of patch notes is available on the Overwatch forum. Despite the changes most of the tips in our Overwatch character guide should still apply and we'll update it with Ana soon.