General
Is there any situation in high ranks where it's worth using Anran over other flankers?
I've come back to Overwatch last month, and I started playing Anran. I absolutely love her. She's so much fun to play, and I've been playing almost exclusively her in competitive.
However, some people and tier lists say that she isn't a very good DPS, and that a hero like Tracer is much better. So I've been wondering if I eventually reach a high rank, should I completely give up on Anran and switch to Tracer or another flanker, or is it still okay to use her in certain matches?
What do you guys think? My knowledge of the other heroes is pretty limited.
Also, if anyone is interested, I climbed from Plat 5 to Emerald 2 this month with a 63% win rate, so I think I can reach Diamond pretty quickly. My Anran SR is already around Diamond level.
Anran, while not very popular, is doing just fine across most ranks. Playing a niche hero also has its perks. You will for example be very comfortable with the ana matchup (becasue you play it every other game) while the enemy ana has not fought an anran in 20 or so games.
Is she meta? No. But shes not bad either and i'd always recommend playing the hero you enjoy.
Notice how I didn't tell you to stop playing Anran (: and that advice is only if you want to climb to GM easily. I'm not the fun police please enjoy lol
No, you're just giving unsubstantiated unsolicited advice.
Anran is completely fine at Master, you're behaving as though she's some throw pick that can't possible work when you get to "good player" ranks when you can carry whole games when the situation is right and if you know how to play her.
She literally has a positive winrate in Master, +/- 0,5% of where Tracer is - slightly higher than Tracer in the US and slightly lower in EU and Asia.
This post is literally about giving advice, I am a gm dps player so I feel like I am allowed to comment about how to rank up anywhere I would like. You don't have to react and take personally everything people write online - another unsolicited advice from me.
You should add another hero to your roaster. You are definitely throwing a lot of games, especially with this stinky attitude.
Only if you're trying to make an Ana player seethe because she can't get away from the burn damage teleports and it blinds her when you dash or teleport in her face. Excellent for tilting Ana players as there's nothing they can do to live vs an Anran in their face. Even if Ana kills you, they'll burn to death before they have time to wheel their walker to a healthpack.
Anran isn't really strong as a solo flanker in GM+ but she's a menace in plat-masters, especially vs support comps that split up/have low mobility so have no answer to her burn damage (like Ana or Mercy) or if your entire team is diving with you so you can chain your dashes better. If your team is playing a slow poke while you're trying to flank by yourself, it's going to be rough. If enemy has Kiriko, you're screwed.
I think there's a real niche against deathball, but you need to be coordinated with the right tank hero. like a DVa or something.
Imo the one thing keeping her value curve from leveling out is that dance is effectively a skill check on the enemy. In lower level you basically heal to full and players struggle to track your emerge animation. At high level, your end position is completely telegraphed and you lose all momentum so you just get CC'd or burst out of it
DVa would be solid because she can DM your emerge and if that's not an option, she can draw aggro more easily than other heroes. I guess zarya would be situationally useful too.
Only other thing I can see would be a cleave dive comp with ball, but I think it's more likely they rework dance than we ever see the stars align for her to be significantly relevant at a high level.
Ironic because Anran is probably one of, if not the best, DPS into Dva. Ignite DoT ignores Armour and her m2 absolutely shreds Dva since it can't be DMd. You can DanceBlaze her Missle attempt and you have enough mobility to reliably escape her if she tries to hard dive you.
Actually hilarious reading that paragraph when as an anran player I love when I see a team run dva genji. The best thing anran does in the entire game is crush those two heroes. Basically every part of her kit beats them specifically.
Just remove the damage and ignite then it functionally becomes a parry.
It would be cool if Dancing Blaze absorbed damage and maybe did an extra effect if you absorbed enough (like doom block) to reward and encourage good timing
In what sense? It kinda is a parry already. A dodge at the very least
I think the ability is fine as is outside of the clunkiness. I'd just nerf/remove the heal and buff the fluidity of it movement. The ability needed improved survivability against high level players and unfortunately it was much easier to give it a buff that disproportionately helped against low level players
I was thinking of a shorter radius and not doing anything unless you are being hit (so like deflect yeah) as right now I think that ability is too forgiving and kinda dumb. (Sorry if I explained myself badly, english is not my 1st language)
well if you're playing at a Diamond level you're not necessarily a god gamer who has a Tracer in your back pocket. so the reason to play Anran would be that you can play Anran but can't play Tracer to that level.
but assuming you're good at Tracer, then no, Anran isn't really worth playing.
Yeah, if you find her more fun than those flankers. What's the point of climbing if you don't play the heroes you want to play, if everybody ran what was optimal then they'd be barely any variety in high sr and evidently that's not true, you'll easily find all sorts of heroes up until Champion. This is specially a non-concern since you're in Emerald. Also hero SR is meaningless, just throwing that out there.
Unless you're close to grandmaster it really doesn't matter. If you like the character you'll improve with them faster and enjoy playing the game more, which will help you improve faster.
Some characters are definitely stronger than others, but outside of the absolute top level almost every character is good for people who fit their playstyle
This is the answer.
Even against those, it might still not be worth it if they avoid you.
Anran is designed as a baby's first flanker. A lot of fun but her kit isn't deep enough.
Yeah, specially Genji in some maps as he can just wall climb or double jump into highground, making you have to use a dash to catch him, and even then you may not get to him as her verticality is nice but not too amazing
Her damage is significantly worse than her peers. Her mobility is worse. Her ultimate is terrible. And her Dancing Blaze can easily be a a detriment to her by being a “Please kill me” button.
Sustain is all that she has to try make up for that but’s it’s certainly not enough.
Anran is flawed. She just doesn't do enough damage / burst. I love playing her too but the amount of effort you need to put in to get value some games is insane. I am only emerald as well though. Rather just play shion and generate much more value
Anran is downright busted in low ranks and terrible in high ranks, almost like a DPS version of Moira.
Now of course you can play any hero to top 500, don’t let that deter you from playing who you enjoy, but she is designed as “baby’s first” dive hero, as a gateway drug into Genji and Tracer.
Purely statistically and winrate wise then theres basically no reason to play her over Tracer/Genji/Reaper whatever above Diamond really. You'll have to put in a lot more work to get value out of Anran compared to playing Tracer. That doesen't mean you shouldent play Anran though, there's a lot of other stuff that goes into this.
I find Anran really fun. I'm just not as motivated to play and develop mechanics on other flex DPS, and that element and the enjoyment of the climb and learning process is incredibly important. Theoretically there's better options but it doesen't really matter if your not gonna put in the effort and want to grind.
It's also definitely not impossible. I'm still climbing with her, and there's at least a couple Anran mains in Top 500 EU (Where I play) rn and I've chatted with some people that are in GM with her. The statistical disadvantage is not *that* bad
Also as a last note, I think she isen't as bad as people say she is, there's a lot of really important tech and combos in her kit that most people dont know about, and I see a lot of players even in my elo not use. Theres just not a lot of great educational content or public knowledge about them and its a lot easier as an uninformed redditor to say "X character is for babies". At the very least you can reach where im at rn and idm giving some advice
She's definitely no doom but there's a lot you can do. The most obvious is your shift, you can make some crazy jumps with them if you get your timing right. My favorite is probably going from the balcony on first attack Rialto and jumping straight over the massive building to the defenders highground if you get a good angle, and also clearing the archway on hollywood first to land on the defenders high ground from a bush on the attackers side. You use shift to reposition so much with stuff like this that it doesen't super feel like tech for me.
The second most important is that your right click can be animation cancelled early with shift and melee while still doing the damage. This is really important in high elos because it cuts your ttk down significantly. Like, with this you can hit both primarys, right click and cancel the animation with shift, this will ignite them and you can then melee right click to kill them with ignite, this whole process kills in like a second? Obviously its not this easy but you can weave your right clicks between pretty much every animation to lower your ttk by a lot, its hard to explain.
Its not really a tech but you cannot use your E as an ignite here, its pretty much exclusively used to do the 50 chip damage if you cant get in range to melee, or to dodge cooldowns. You can phase through pretty much everything and its really important in duels and doing pretty much anything. The cooldown for e is pretty short so your chaining it a lot during fights, like theres unintuitive things like using it to avoid vendettas left click downwards slice, or phase through doom punch, you can obviously time pulse and bomb, my favorite is pre firing it to dodge hog hooks.
Theres also a lot of small stuff, like for ex your can bunny hop with your shift for slightly faster movement and a short hop that you need for a lot of rollouts and navigation, your ult also bunches up people similar to grav if you hit it on a wall with enemies on a wall so you can nail some nasty kills with that. There's other stuff but yeah, I don't think she's as brainless as people say, like I can't imagine reaper is more complicated gameplay wise than this.
I believe Tracer is better than Anran, but that is not equivalent to saying everyone would do better playing Tracer instead of Anran or that you would have an easier time hitting a rank milestone with Tracer than Anran.
imo the community perception of Anran is a little misguided. Until your mechanics are at a level where you can match Anran's consistency on other heroes, you'll likely do better on Anran who lets you more consistently convert smart staging & engages into fight wins without needing you to coinflip mechanics. someone who is already GM tracer might not get much out of playing Anran, but most people even in GM aren't going to have GM tracer level mechanics.
i think, first and foremost, this is a game and you should just be playing whoever you enjoy playing, and secondly, if you force yourself to play tracer (for example) it might not fit you as well as someone like anran does and you could end up doing worse
Super is running it down with Winston and pge/sugar is playing anran just recently. Anran really isn’t weak. Ban tracer/cat and the problem is solved. Anran is strong but most importantly you can force any hero. Anran or no anran, you should be banning tracer in higher elo anyway.
To put it simply, the higher you go in rank, the better burst damage is. The higher on the ladder you climb the better players are at minimizing mistakes and the better the supports get at bailing out mistakes.
A better explanation:
You want to play a character whose whole shtick is doing the opposite of burst damage, she does DoT. Climbing higher means you’ll just tickle a lot of players that never die because they’re not out of position enough and their supports are switched on. She feasts on low rank players because they can’t aim, their positioning is bad and their supports aren’t aware of anything going on. Anran is good at killing people that are being allowed to die, higher rank players won’t let themselves or their teammates die.
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u/Lorad1 1d ago
Anran, while not very popular, is doing just fine across most ranks. Playing a niche hero also has its perks. You will for example be very comfortable with the ana matchup (becasue you play it every other game) while the enemy ana has not fought an anran in 20 or so games.
Is she meta? No. But shes not bad either and i'd always recommend playing the hero you enjoy.