New Overwatch Hero Revealed; Watch the Healing Sniper in Action

Blizzard teased a new Overwatch hero recently with a blueprint of a healing sniper rifle, and now the developer has revealed the new character. Ana is a Support character who uses her rifle and other abilities to simultaneously heal her teammates and hurt her foes--and she just so happens to be Pharah's mother, too. You can try her out for yourself through the Public Test Realm right now.

The weapon you'll use most as Ana is her Biotic Rifle. It fires long-range darts that restore your allies' health or deal ongoing damage if you shoot an enemy with one. In addition to the rifle, Ana has a Sleep Dart, which knocks enemies unconscious.

For close-quarters combat, Ana can utilize her Biotic Grenade, which heals teammates and damages opponents standing within its small area of effect. An added bonus to the grenade is a temporary increase to all healing your allies receive. Additionally, any enemies caught in its area of effect will not be able to receive healing for a period of time.

Lastly, Ana's Ultimate ability, Nano Boost, turns a teammate into a superpowered soldier. It gives them increased damage, faster movement, and a higher resistance to damage while active.

You can watch Ana's gameplay video at the top of the article, and you can learn more about her backstory in her origins video here.

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To try Ana out for yourself right now, you'll need to have Overwatch on PC. Open the Battle.net client, go to where you select your region/account (right above the Play button), and choose "PTR: Overwatch." The PTR will need to install, but once it has, you'll be able to play as Ana as much as you like.

Ana's Legendary and Epic skins offer some new looks for the healing sniper. She has one skin that makes her look like her younger self, and another that looks like it's been pulled straight from Destiny. You can see them for yourself here.

Many players believed the Support sniper was named Sombra, as the name can be seen in several locations on the Dorado map. Reaper can also be heard saying, "Where is Sombra when you need her?" Although the Support sniper character turned out to be Ana, it's still possible that Sombra could be an entirely separate character.

Ana is introduced alongside a patch that makes several balance changes to multiple heroes. Some of the changes affect Zenyatta's vulnerability and D.Va's Defense Field. We'll keep you updated as the patch notes are released.

We got the opportunity to speak to Blizzard's principal designer, Scott Mercer, and he told us that players can expect some changes to Competitive Play in the near future. There will soon be a one-hero limit, which will prevent teams from having multiple players using the same hero. And when Season 2 commences, Sudden Death will be removed in favor of ending a game in a tie.

In other Overwatch news, the first-person shooter stayed near the top of the PS4's top-selling digital games for another month. The only game to beat it was Battlefield 4, which was discounted heavily during June.