I was talking with Silver today and I commented that it was weird how the game has changed over the years.  During Cata, I healed everything.  I did Dragon Soul on my paladin, shaman, and priest, because so many people wanted a good healer.  I healed arena and bgs, rbgs, dungeons.  I did challenge modes in MoP, heroic progression as a healer in Cata and MoP.  Could hardly log in without being asked to do something.  It was an actual problem, believe it or not.

Now, none of that is a thing.  After Post Mortem died, I went to Time Lords, which died.  Then I went to Erratic which died, then to Drop a Feast which died, and now I’ve moved mostly off Whisperwind to play on Sargeras on my fire/frost mage in the guild Second Attempt.

It’s 9pm on a Monday and all but there were 4 people online.  No one is in the discord.  I even sat in it one day to play Overwatch hoping to play with some new people but nope.  It’s just… weird.

I’ve heard some people throwing around an idea for a third faction and I don’t think that would work, at all.  We have huge problems balancing two at this time as it is.  Horde is the ‘good’ faction to be right now for whatever reason.  I don’t recall if there is a legitimate reason they are good because of racials or whatever, but let’s say there is no in-game reason currently.  It doesn’t matter, because one way or another all the ‘good’ players are pushing Horde.  Then Alliance players see their friends as Horde and they go Horde.  Other Alliance notice horde teams are pushing progression better and then they go horde.  Now Alliance see they have little in the way of groups whether it’s in towns or group finder and they go Horde where everyone is.  Snowball effect.

Anyway my solution was not a third faction but a friendly Horde/Alliance setup. I was thinking about how Sylvannas burned the world tree and how some horde, Tauren in particular, were very against this.  Tauren by their nature, and possibly also blood elves, if we’re going by lore, would not approve burning the tree, much less civilians.  Other races may roleplay that way too.

So I would suggest Horde and Alliance can mark themselves as ‘neutral’.  This would mean they could party with any Horde friends who are also ‘neutral’. Now I could see this as being a real big problem if everyone just marked themselves as neutral and we’ve be right at a 1 faction kind of thing.  For that I would think having a ‘neutral list’ would work.  I am neutral with X Horde and they are neutral with me.  But other Horde, I still have a problem with.  This way you could play with friends but not play with the other faction willy nilly. It’s like how I use to hang out with Ladiesman but when other Alliance showed up, we would fight each other. Sorta. My friendship with him, didn’t mean my faction had to be friends with him also.

I talked about this in stream last night but I wanted to write it down in case it happens.

Since I earned the kitty-face Ana skin, I decided to play her a little more.  I’m really trying to figure out her toolkit though.

NO mobility.  She’s a sniper, but she doesn’t have a climb (Hanzo) or a grapple (Widow).

She cannot self heal passively like Lucio, Mercy, Zenyatta, Symmetra.  Like Moria she can heal herself with a cool down BUT it’s at a loss of using it’s other abilities, most of the time.  Moria can throw her healing ball to heal herself and as it travels, hit other players.

Her heal bomb has 3 potential effects but it’s a single use on a long cd.  Throw it at your own feet and heal yourself.  Throw it at someone else and heal them.  That’s typically an OR.  You’re a SNIPER, what the ever loving fuck are you doing close enough to your team to hit you and them? OR you can throw it on an enemy and they cannot heal themselves or get healing for the duration.  So that’s 3 “OR’s” but only 1 grenade.  Junkrat has a bomb that pushes back/damages enemies OR allows him mobility.  So what did they do? Oh they gave him 2 charges.  Ana has 3 choices but gets 1 chance.

She has to aim her god damn heals.  Have you ever tried to snipe heal a Tracer, Genji, or some other crackhead skinny minny? Come on. I’m talking both with the gun and throwing the healing bomb, which is tossed in an arc  with no good way (maybe because I suck I dunno) to see where it’s going to land.

On top of that, she has ammo so may need to reload at a critical moment.

And sleep dart you have to aim, so GL hitting anyone smaller than a D.va. I don’t really have a problem with this though.

If it were up to me, I would give her double heal grenade,  and Zen’s targeting for friendlies.  You’d still have to legit aim for enemies.  Call it a day.