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Ana Build Guide “Mother knows best.”
Welcome to our guide for Ana, a Healer in Heroes of the Storm. Within these pages, you will find everything required to understand how best to play this hero, in both different map styles and team compositions.
Ana's Overview
Ana is a Healer who excels at manipulating the course of battle from a safe distance. She is particularly efficient if protected by a solid frontline, since she does not have any real escape mechanism. Consequently, knowing how to position Ana during a team fight is crucial when it comes to staying clear of danger, but also when it comes to healing allied targets from the right angle.
Ana's Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Relatively low Mana consumption- Counters other Healers
- Synergizes with Mages
- Provides crowd control
Weaknesses
Weak against dive- Underwhelming mobility
- Struggles to heal high-mobility allied Heroes
- Unable to dispel Silence effects
- Unable to provide Unstoppable frames
Ana's Talent Build Cheatsheet
Sleep Dart Build
Recommended
Ana's Sleep Dart Build improves your offensive tools, to help your team
find and secure kills with 
Sleep Dart, and slightly
increases your survivability, by Slowing enemy Heroes
and giving you Movement Speed to reposition, dodge, or flee.
Night Terrors at Level 7 adds a considerable
amount of percent-based damage on Heroes
your team intends to take down. Use it in conjunction with
Biotic Grenade to help your team kill
even the most durable Heroes (such as Diablo).
Shrike Build
Situational
Ana's Shrike Build is particularly good at trading
resources with the enemy team. You can do this by reducing their damage
and healing done when affected by 
Shrike.
The debuff comes from Mind-Numbing Agent
at Level 7 and can be applied in two ways: via Basic Attacks, when safe to do so,
or via Sleep Dart, thanks to Overdose at Level 4.
Biotic Grenade Build
SituationalAna's Biotic Grenade Build increases your healing when allied and/or enemy Heroes tend to group. This usually happens when either team has more than two frontline Heroes or when the enemy team is diving and your team is peeling.
The burst healing from Contact Healing
at Level 1 is quite handy when enemy Heroes are on top of you.
Anti-Healer at Level 7 helps you hit more Heroes,
to get more healing from it. Biotic Enhancements
at Level 4 lets you use it more often.
ARAM Build
ARAMAna's ARAM Build is designed to compensate the Slow
provided by the Aim Down Sights effect included in
Shrike by giving Ana some Movement Speed and by Slowing
enemy Heroes, using Night Terrors and
Slumber Shells respectively; furthermore, the former Talent
adds burst damage in the form of percent-based damage.
Ana's Synergies and Counters
Ana synergizes with
Nano Boost possesses outstanding synergy with
Mages (such as Mephisto) or, more in general,
Heroes who deal the majority of their damage with Abilities and not Basic Attacks.
Even if they can also be used
on their own, Sleep Dart and
Biotic Grenade benefit from allied Heroes who can provide
reliable crowd control with their Basic Abilities
(like E.T.C.) that will make them impossible to miss.
Ana is countered by
Since her self-healing is limited, Ana usually struggles against Heroes
who can ignore her team and dive her instead
(such as Chen with 
Storm, Earth, Fire).
Abilities that can isolate an enemy Hero (like
Cocoon by Anub'arak) or
disengage (like 
Mighty Gust by
Falstad) can be used to counter Nano Boost in two
different ways.
While not as effective as the counters that have been mentioned above, poke is also a decent tool against her, but only if you can actually do considerable damage to her from high distance (such as Hanzo).
There are no Healers who can counter Ana,
however, you might prefer going for a Hero who offers utility instead of raw
healing (like Lúcio that can count on 
Sound Barrier
to support his team without actually healing them).
Ana's Maps
Ana's Tips and Tricks
- Due to her limited survivability, Ana needs to pay special attention on where she positions herself during a team fight.
- Do not wait too much for casting Nano Boost because it lasts 8 seconds.
- Hold Biotic Grenade as much as possible because it can easily secure a kill or save an allied Hero.
Ana's Role in the Current Meta
Ana is a main Healer that fits into a variety of team
compositions, but make sure to have a good target for Nano Boost
to get the most value out of her, usually a Mage (such as
Li-Ming).
Biotic Grenade has the power to heavily counter
most Healers and even some Heroes that belong to different Roles
(for example Arthas with 
Army of the Dead).
Changelog
- 15 Oct. 2024 (talents page): Guide reviewed.
- 15 Oct. 2024 (this page): Guide reviewed.
- 12 Dec. 2023 (talents page): Guide reviewed.
- 12 Dec. 2023 (this page): Guide reviewed.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (talents page): Guide reviewed.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (talents page): ARAM Build added.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (this page): Guide reviewed.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (this page): ARAM Build added.
- 21 May 2022 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 21 May 2022 (this page): Builds updated.
- 12 Mar. 2022 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 12 Mar. 2022 (this page): Builds updated.
- 28 Sep. 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 28 Sep. 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 28 Sep. 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 08 Oct. 2020 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 08 Oct. 2020 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 08 Oct. 2020 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 12 Aug. 2020 (talents page): Talent Build page updated.
- Build added.
- Minor fixes.
- New layout.
- 12 Aug. 2020 (abilities page): Abilities and Strategy page updated.
- Minor fixes.
- New layout.
- 12 Aug. 2020 (this page): Introduction page updated.
- Build added.
- Minor fixes.
- New layout.
- 22 Apr. 2020 (talents page): Talent Build Cheatsheet updated to reflect the current metagame.
- 22 Apr. 2020 (this page): Talent Build Cheatsheet updated to reflect the current metagame.
- 31 Mar. 2020 (talents page): Talent Build fully revised to match new standards.
- Talent Build and Talent Build Cheatsheet modified to reflect the current metagame.
- Talent Descriptions modified to better describe when to pick them.
- 31 Mar. 2020 (abilities page): Abilities and Strategy page fully revised to match new standards.
- Tips and Tricks modified to add important tips that were missing and to remove obvious ones that were not worth mentioning.
- Ability Descriptions modified to better explain how to use Abilities effectively.
- 31 Mar. 2020 (this page): Introduction fully revised to match new standards.
- Overview rewritten to better describe the Hero.
- Strengths and Weaknesses modified to give a better idea about the Hero when being played right.
- Talent Build Cheatsheet updated to reflect the current metagame.
- Synergies and Counters modified to mention notable Heroes that were missing and to remove misleading Heroes that were listed.
- Maps modified to focus on the main aspects of the Hero when evaluating a Map.
- Tips and Tricks modified to list important tips that were missing before and to delete more obvious ones.
- Role in the Current Meta modified to reflect the current metagame and to remove the unnecessary part about the now fixed Experience Globes.
- 06 Dec. 2019 (this page): Added an entry about the current Anomaly to the guide.
- 03 Jun. 2019 (talents page): Changed Eye of Horus from Situational to Recommended and updated the talent builds accordingly.
- 03 Jun. 2019 (abilities page): Applied minor updates to Ana's ability descriptions.
- 13 Feb. 2019 (talents page): Updated Ana's talents and builds in accordance with the latest rework.
- 13 Feb. 2019 (abilities page): Updated Ana's abilities in accordance with the latest rework.
- 07 Mar. 2018 (talents page): Updated Ana's Talent Builds in accordance with the most recent balanced update.
- 07 Mar. 2018 (abilities page): Updated Shrike (and Biotic Grenade, very slightly) text to account for the latest patch.
- 29 Jan. 2018 (talents page): Overdose is now Recommended and Aim Down Sights is now Not Recommended as intended.
- 13 Oct. 2017 (talents page): Changed Dynamic Shooting from Not Recommended to Recommended and fixed Overdose's description.
- 29 Sep. 2017 (talents page): Updated talent builds and descriptions after further playtesting.
- 28 Sep. 2017 (talents page): Added talent discussions.
- 26 Sep. 2017 (this page): Guide added.
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Elitesparkle is a multiple times Master player in Europe who plays Heroes of the Storm since its release. He is an active member of the community who likes to teach new and veteran players all he knows about his favorite game.
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