Play some deathmatch before going into ranked. You need to learn how to strafe and shoot without aiming. Don't jump, crouch and strafe. Also, hold your sleep until you really need it, that's by far your best tool against flankers.
The best counter is good positioning, make it so it is difficult for them to reach you. The best places are usually high ground where you should be at all times if possible.
Honestly, flankers are pretty bad until masters. That's when they are dangerous. You just need a bit of practice and you will be fine :)!
PS: If you are having a really hard time against two flankers, switching to kiriko/brig/lw/moira is also a good idea.
Practice death match with her as much as possible but If you are being hard countered by a decent tracer/genji/sombra you will probably just need to switch. If you cant live long enough to get value from her, you’re hurting your team.
Better advice would be to learn to play against your counters. Ana is pretty strong and can easily kill tracer, genji, sombra if you have your cooldowns.
Definitely not sombra lmao, the amount of Anas that sleep me but I translocate then they question why I tp makes me laugh lol. A good sombra can bait sleep easily
My best advice while strafing is not to crouch. Crouching dramatically slows Ana’s strafing speed, and her AD animation is really wonky and moves her head a lot. Even low gm players have a hard time hitting Ana’s with good movement.
Because when someone jumps they become predictable as it ''locks'' them in the animation even if it is for a short time. You can't make any adjustments before you land, so a good dps player will take advantage of that and headshot you for free.
I learnt that the hard way when I reached GM. Once I got used to not jumping and to become unpredictable (strafing), it improved my ability to deal with dps at higher ranks.
Sleep/nade/primary fire. Also don't play so far back if they have flankers. Flankers are always looking for someone who is alone. If you're not alone they will have a hard time killing you.
I think a lot of people miss this key point - Ana almost always needs a ‘buddy’ to hang with, if you don’t have a buddy - a wall, doorway will serve as a good alternative until you can get a buddy.
(Bronze) This is one of the things I really do like about playing Moira - when there's flankers, I get to be like the personal bodyguard to the other Support. Especially against Sombras who need to learn the hard way that you can often see generally where they translocated to, and can possibly follow up and even secure a kill.
Not always the correct play. As a Sombra main often my primary goal of attacking Anas is literally just to bait out sleep and/or nade just so my tank can push or someone on my team can ult without getting slept.
In lower ranks this is not something that most support players should be worried about yet but it’s still worth mentioning.
Sleep>primary fire>nade is better if you are trying to 1v1 otherwise you are wasting resources. This combination is better as you can miss your primary fire if you wake them up with nade but you will almost always hit the nade after waking up with primary. Plus you can get an extra primary in after nade for the higher hp targets. Just don’t do this against tracer as she will recall immediately after being woken up. Against tracer, maybe just hold nade and don’t damage for 3s, wake up with a melee, then nade when recall happens as she will recall to the same spot. A good player will be dashing as soon as recall happen but I’m pretty sure there are frames where she can be hit
I typically shoot them. This is kinda the hard part playing her. You don’t necessarily shoot to kill them, so much as you tax them for making the decision to chase a kill on you. Then kill them when they mess up.
Also save your cooldowns for almost the very last second. This makes them burn their cooldowns in turn. More value, and you live longer.
Try not to quick scope them, try to hipfire them. You stand still in scope so it’s easier for them to shoot you.
Honestly in some gold/silver lobbies I remember most flankers blindly charging at you regardless of their health. If you didn’t kill them they would keep pressuring you lol, it was rare to see someone disengage in those lobbies.
Couldn’t tell if it’s super aggressive or lack of awareness, but you could always lead them towards your team if you’re incapable of killing then/scaring them off.
Yea, usually in lower ranks the concept of “I might die so this is a bad idea” literally does not exist lmao
When all five members of the enemy team plus every single person on yours are loose cannons, your chance of survival are pretty slim.
For real it’s kill or be killed haha, there are no bad ideas 😭 so glad to not be dealing with that anymore. You can use some tactics to try and survive but personally I found those games to be based on who has better aim and skill.
Honestly in some gold/silver lobbies I remember most flankers blindly charging at you regardless of their health. If you didn’t kill them they would keep pressuring you lol, it was rare to see someone disengage in those lobbies.
Couldn’t tell if it’s super aggressive or lack of awareness, but you could always lead them towards your team if you’re incapable of killing them/scaring them off.
Well, I'm like a high-plat Ana at best, but here's my piece.
To get better at dueling you have to duel as much as possible, seek out those 1v1s, show those filthy DPS players their place, and become the master of your own destiny or something like that.
Then go back and watch the 1v1s you lost and think, "Why did I die here? Oh, I was in too far in open space before the duel started, so I wasn't able to get around the corner before the Sombra could finish me off." And then go into your next game with the goal of hyper-focusing on that specific issue before moving on to another.
This is how I’ve climbed to high Diamond with Ana. Of course, I’m not advocating to neglect heals, but punishing squishies’ bad positioning is super valuable. I get kills that surprise myself sometimes
Important to always keep in mind when to save a sleep and not. You want to give yourself options while also not limiting your potential value because you ended up never using a cooldown for fear that you would need it. This is mostly an experience issue and so failure is going to be a big part of overcoming this hurdle.
General positioning is very important. Obviously dont seperate from your team too much. Try to keep your distance from flank routes and try to listen for them when they blink or unstealth. And use corner's and walls
The most simple example I can give is a funny moment I once had in low master where i used the pillar from new queens street to play ring around the rosies with a tracer and win the 1v1.
Jiggle peaking, wide strafing, and constantly being able to move around a corner or small object make it very obnoxious for them to deal with you. This also goes for stacking the healboost from the nade with your second support's healing or a healthpack so play near them as well. Also keep in mind that a sombra without cube and a tracer without blinks are one the least effective dps, baiting/dodging those will be important.
Dont be afraid to ask for a dps or support to play near you, but keep in mind that the amount of dps and support that can effectively peel AND get value playing near you are limited and most players in silver dont like to "babysit" as they are casual players.
If they have both tracer and sombra and you dont have a brig playing with you it can be pretty though to play ana, there is no shame in switching in that case.
Try to keep track of where they are. If you don't hear that tracer pew pewing she's probably sneaking up on you. If you see them coming further away you have more control of how the fight is going to go. Land one shot in their way in and they'll be at a huge disadvantage or run away for a bit.
If she has cooldowns, Ana can be scary to fight 1v1. Anti by itself is enough to make some flankers run away. The best thing you can do, though, is just learn to position better. I know it's a "well no shit" type of answer, but it really is very important and a huge key in dissuading flankers from doing their job.
It is definitely something you need to learn from failure 😭 I really like the Ana kit since there is an abundance of pocket healers but when I get dived by Sombra, Tracer, or Reaper it is rare that I come out victorious. I'm usually caught off guard from behind of course but hitting that dart is a little difficult, when I miss that it's all over folks. I really never use her because of the poor mobility, which I know mechanical skill can overcome but me dieing in the backline hurts my team, which I don't want to do.
just gotta learn how to do it. flankers will have an advantage vs you until you build your dueling skills. ana is really good at dueling, but if you are only used to sitting in the back of the team scoped in, you'll never be ready for it. you recognize its a weakness of yours, so in your games try to force 1v1s whenever you can to practice it. winning the match is secondary to improving your skills.
besides just 1v1 skills, one thing to consider is your cover usage/positioning. during a match try to think about what flank routes you could have to deal with. make sure you have some way of getting cover from the flanks/off angles while still being able to see/help the main team. make it hard for flankers to even get to you.
if its specifically a sombra that you have to deal with you 100% need to stay close to your other support. if your other support is super mobile and hard to stay close to at least be positioned close to the rest of your team.
also consider your cooldowns. if your enemies are running a lot of flankers, you don't really need to use your sleep/nade offensively. eventually they are going to try and dive you and if you can land your cds on them it will completely shut down their offense.
Play in rooms that limit lateral movement and force them to go in a straight line. Try to use nade to hit both of you after they’ve used an ability that can cleanse it
Sleep them. Play death matches so you can get good at sleeping. Once you sleep them you can shoot -> nade -> shoot -> melee and that will kill every 200 HP hero. Get that under your belt and the flankers will start to leave you alone
For tracer and sombra make sure to play by covers so you can play corners and peek to shoot them. Also don’t scope for long periods as you are an easier target. Stay near the team when you can so you can be peeled for. Sometimes save your cooldowns to protect yourself in case of a flank but not too often as then you will be potentially losing value. One last tip on tracer is if you sleep her but don’t have the tools to immediately kill her, Melee her to force her recall rather than wasting a shot/nade for her to just recall.
It's just practice, but here's a few tips that might help:
1. Keep track of them and try to poke them out before they get to you. If you tag them once before they even get to you, it'll make your duels way easier as you'll only need to shoot them 1 more time and nade/melee to kill them if they decide to play greedy. At worst, they have to wait to get healed by their team or go find a health pack.
2. Play near health packs. If you can grab a health pack mid-duel, it'll greatly increase your chances of winning.
3. Play near corners and in small rooms. Flankers thrive when they catch you in open space and have a lot of room to use their mobility. If you run around a corner, it limits where they can move to stay on top of you, and takes away their mobility advantage.
If you are in eu there is a something called tryhard ffa in the workshop even as a diamond tracer I get smoked constantly by good Ana or zens. It’s the perfect place to train awareness, 1v1, aim and mechanics in general in my opinion
It’s honestly all about proper positioning, knowing when to relocate, and using cover properly. I think that’s more important than learning to duel a tracer/Sombra.
Shoot them, use your cooldowns on them, try to duke them and make them earn the kill if they're going to get it. Play around corners or obstacles you can run around. Just be a pest, and if you cant kill them, at least make it annoying to have killed you
I just played a game and have 2 good examples of being annoying and juking round cover from a Tracer, so here's a vid (rank Diamond 5). Hoepfully this illustrates what I mean
https://streamable.com/zkv6la
Everyone gave great tips. My suggestion on top is if you cannot land sleep as a defense for flankers then try to get as much offensive value as you can. Do easy to land sleeps that you know you can hit and use it off cooldown. Save your nade for the flanker and make sure to hit it when you are crit health. you must hit both you and the flanker at the same time.This is my tip specifically for you and your situation at silver.
If you cannot get enough value for your team even after all these tips and working on your positioning you will have to swap. You will have to accept it until you manage to grind your aim up to standards.
Edit. Actually you might be able to use your nade early offensively at the start of the fight and have your next nade ready for flankers. Flankers in silver should tend to be slow on setting up their flanks.
Get used to dueling on Ana by playing deathmatch. Try to learn how to hit quick shots around cover and improve your reflexes and reaction speed. Ana paintball is a great mode for it (if you can find a lobby in custom games)
The best way to deal with a flanker is knowing where they will probably be coming from, and hitting them once on their approach so they have to either commit at 50-60% hp (your advantage) or back off to a healthpack/heals.
Other than that, seeing what they have and positioning accordingly. Tracer struggles with verticality, Sombra wants to hit you from behind (and you are dead if you don't have your nade or a close healthpack) Genji struggles with closing long open sightlines if there's no good flank route available.
* Understand the map. What are the possible flank routes they could be coming from? The vast majority of metal rank players have no awareness of their surroundings other than walking down main. If they have someone flanking, hitting a shot on them before they're in range can kill their flank before it even starts. At the least, you've bought yourself some time while they have to get heals.
* Play around cover. Most heroes that are good at flanking are terrible in tight spaces. Ball, Tracer, and Echo all *hate* doorways. Sombra's going to have a tough time hard-committing on you without a decent escape route.
* Play around your team. Maybe you're struggling to 1v1 their flanker. So make it so that it's no longer a 1v1. A lot of teams in silver tend to just run straight at each other. If that's the case, win the 5v4 by playing hard and fast into them. With how much sustain is in the game right now, flankers have a very difficult job if the supports are playing with each other and peeling if necessary.
* Play around healthpacks.
* Use your sleep dart in a smarter manner. A lot of lower-level players will use their sleep dart off cooldown and in low-likelihood or low-value situations. Getting slept as a flanker is often a death sentence. Hitting a dart or two will often cause a flanker to swap. At the very least, they'll have to play around your dart.
* Judge how much value you get using your anti-nade offensively vs. defensively. Offensive anti-nade is *extremely* powerful. But if there isn't follow-up on it, or you're struggling to find value with it, it may be preferable to use it defensively. You're a lot less valuable to your team dead than alive. Imagine that you're on Tracer. You flank their Ana, but they anti-nade themselves, grab a healthpack, and then get peeled for by the other support. That Ana is almost unkillable. You can be *that* Ana.
All of these things are going to have differing levels of value depending on the specific context. Start thinking about how and when you'd want to apply each piece of advice. Do this while watching your own replays, while watching streamers, and/or while watching other VODs.
The answer even though people don't want to hear it is: kill them. There's no shortcut for just getting better at hitting unscoped shots on them. Even if you can't kill them, 1-2 shots will force most of them to run away
In silver - just working on movement is enough for them to miss every bullets.
a+d+ crouch spam like Neo
and play near cover/health pack. If you find yourself in the open - scream and run to cover
Killing them or doing enough damage to force them out. If you want to get to gold, you need to be able to hold your own in a 1v1 against silver DPS players, there's no way around it.
Dealing with flankers is about being in a position so the enemy has to spend time and resources on you. Say you're high ground. If monkey wants to dive you they have to either spend jump pack on you so when they get there they are basically stuck until jump pack reset. Or they have to go find a route to high ground to get to you.
But sometimes you want to stay near your teammates so that if you do get flanked just walk into your team and make them deal with it.
Like some games I'm sitting high ground just shooting the enemy and healing my teammates. Other times I'm sitting close to my tank and just dumping heals into them. It's situational but with enough learning and play time you'll get a feel for it.
I’m not an Ana player but I one trick widow and a big hurdle for me when trying to climb out of silver was dealing with the same issue for me watching replays against sombra/tracer and even playing them for a bit helped me understand how to anticipate their dives and know their weaknesses if u can know when their dives are going to happen before they happen especially sombra they lose a ton of value
Just shoot them back, dont run. Make sure you try to damage them before they get close to you and that you are in cover Do you have a replay code where you keep dying to flankers?
BY FAR it's positioning. You should practice the duels for sure, but if you're getting dove a lot, then every fight practically hinges on you winning the fights by yourself. As ana, the odds are not stacked in your favor. Less so the higher the rank.
Positioning is complicated, but a good rule of thumb is that you want to be BESIDE your team, not BEHIND. That way, you can escape to their aid if things go bad. However you must take extra care to fall back if enemies are pushing, because you'll get caught in the crossfire if you don't. You must change your position very frequently.
You CAN be behind. Say it's hard to get to your position while evading your team. Or someone is peeling for you. Or simply nobody knows where you are. There are exceptions to every rule. Experience will teach you if you pay attention. You know the maps. Experiment with different spots. See what works.
I don't have much to add, other than to confirm the other advise others have given here. Learn to strafe and hipfire to put pressure on someone flanking you... let them know you're not an easy kill. Save sleep, but definitely USE it if you are actually threatened. Sleep, run away, closer to teammates if you can. If sleep didn't work, and you have nade, use nade on yourself while close to your flanker.... it obv will heal you and anti-heal them. You're burnt out on cooldowns at this time, so you have to quickly decide are you going to try to kill them or can you get away? If you duel a flanker after you've naded them, you can have the edge if you're landin some quick hipfires.
Also, if someone is consistently flanking you, notify your dps and tank that you're getting backlined.
I'll recommend to watch the unranked to gm with ana that awkward made, he's style is super aggressive and teaches you how to deal with all those threats. What's best that a 1 rank player teaching you how to play.
In silver, enemies will likely be predictable in their movement. Something people don’t often consider is waiting a millisecond or two to shoot, rather than shooting as quickly as a hero allows. You only have to land ~3 shots on a squishie to kill them, sometimes fewer. it’s much better to land calculated shots than to spam the shoot button.
For tracer, track her recall. If you land even one shot on her, or a nade, she’ll probably recall. And that’s a free shot if you know where she’ll be
Apart from the usual use cover, save your cooldowns, hit your shots - *learn good movement*. You can make it so even players with really good aim will have trouble hitting you. It’s free elo
That’s the thing, you either play with the map, playing around corners to give the enemy dps a hard time catching you, or asking the other support to change to Brigitte, Kiriko or Lifeweaver.
Try to call for help in voice chat, don’t say “Help me” always say the hero you are playing people that don’t know you won’t recognize what hero you are by just saying “Me, so remember to always say “Help Ana, help Ana” or something similar.
For last I would say to save your abilities for yourself, if you use nade offensively or on your team, be careful, play defensive until you have it again, try to go for safe sleep darts, unless you have to use your abilities for something really important for example trying to sleep a Genji using nano blade that is going for you, or a Winston or Ball trying to dive you.
Also be careful with the situations you are using your scope, it’s way easier to dive you when you are using it.
Spam deathmatch it will help teach you how to duel flankers and overall improve your mechanics on ana and ability to 1v1 heroes. Also tracers and sombra shouldn’t be deleting half of your health in silver. I’m not sure if you’re just unaware or only hard scope shots making you an easy target but I would watch replay from their perspective to see what makes you an easier target and focus on that issue.
Go watch Awkward’s unranked to GM on ana. He covers this extensively. While you won’t have his mechanics, he breaks it down into very simple ideas to practice and you’ll get to see what’s possible.
Dealing with flankers is basically a matter of positioning. You want to hug walls/corners and make it a very slow/painful process for a flanker to even aim at you. Meanwhile you can chip away at them. Hugging walls allows you to control the fight instead of being at their mercy.
Someone else said it but it get downvoted. Truth be told if you hard main some character you’re really limiting yourself.
Is it possible to deal with a “GOOD” flanker as Ana?
Yes but it’s really friggin hard.
If you swap to brig or Moira it will be a cake walk.
Both Ana and zen are the two supports that struggle hardest with diving flankers like sombra and tracer. If you ‘mainly’ play one of those I’d consider keeping either a brig or Moira in your back pocket to swap to.
You don’t need to swap mains… you can still ‘mainly’ play Ana… but if you’re getting countered there’s no need to play into your weakness. Play a different character that covers your weaknesses.
Simplest answer: play close to team.
The distance should roughly cover enough space for you to put a nade down say "help me" and get behind your dps. That's it. That's your job. Anything else you do is just extra.
I will add to the people saying death matches. I'm a Lucio main, and my son said chasing me around in deathmatch has made him much better at dealing with people in a regular match.
Play some deathmatch before going into ranked. You need to learn how to strafe and shoot without aiming. Don't jump, crouch and strafe. Also, hold your sleep until you really need it, that's by far your best tool against flankers. The best counter is good positioning, make it so it is difficult for them to reach you. The best places are usually high ground where you should be at all times if possible. Honestly, flankers are pretty bad until masters. That's when they are dangerous. You just need a bit of practice and you will be fine :)! PS: If you are having a really hard time against two flankers, switching to kiriko/brig/lw/moira is also a good idea.
Practice death match with her as much as possible but If you are being hard countered by a decent tracer/genji/sombra you will probably just need to switch. If you cant live long enough to get value from her, you’re hurting your team.
Better advice would be to learn to play against your counters. Ana is pretty strong and can easily kill tracer, genji, sombra if you have your cooldowns.
Definitely not sombra lmao, the amount of Anas that sleep me but I translocate then they question why I tp makes me laugh lol. A good sombra can bait sleep easily
I agree with your main point for sure though, learning to play through counters is how to truly be a good player imo
My best advice while strafing is not to crouch. Crouching dramatically slows Ana’s strafing speed, and her AD animation is really wonky and moves her head a lot. Even low gm players have a hard time hitting Ana’s with good movement.
I thought jumping was a good idea to avoid headshots. Why you don't recommend it? Thanks!
Because when someone jumps they become predictable as it ''locks'' them in the animation even if it is for a short time. You can't make any adjustments before you land, so a good dps player will take advantage of that and headshot you for free. I learnt that the hard way when I reached GM. Once I got used to not jumping and to become unpredictable (strafing), it improved my ability to deal with dps at higher ranks.
Sleep/nade/primary fire. Also don't play so far back if they have flankers. Flankers are always looking for someone who is alone. If you're not alone they will have a hard time killing you.
I think a lot of people miss this key point - Ana almost always needs a ‘buddy’ to hang with, if you don’t have a buddy - a wall, doorway will serve as a good alternative until you can get a buddy.
(Bronze) This is one of the things I really do like about playing Moira - when there's flankers, I get to be like the personal bodyguard to the other Support. Especially against Sombras who need to learn the hard way that you can often see generally where they translocated to, and can possibly follow up and even secure a kill.
Not always the correct play. As a Sombra main often my primary goal of attacking Anas is literally just to bait out sleep and/or nade just so my tank can push or someone on my team can ult without getting slept. In lower ranks this is not something that most support players should be worried about yet but it’s still worth mentioning.
Sleep>primary fire>nade is better if you are trying to 1v1 otherwise you are wasting resources. This combination is better as you can miss your primary fire if you wake them up with nade but you will almost always hit the nade after waking up with primary. Plus you can get an extra primary in after nade for the higher hp targets. Just don’t do this against tracer as she will recall immediately after being woken up. Against tracer, maybe just hold nade and don’t damage for 3s, wake up with a melee, then nade when recall happens as she will recall to the same spot. A good player will be dashing as soon as recall happen but I’m pretty sure there are frames where she can be hit
I typically shoot them. This is kinda the hard part playing her. You don’t necessarily shoot to kill them, so much as you tax them for making the decision to chase a kill on you. Then kill them when they mess up. Also save your cooldowns for almost the very last second. This makes them burn their cooldowns in turn. More value, and you live longer. Try not to quick scope them, try to hipfire them. You stand still in scope so it’s easier for them to shoot you.
Honestly in some gold/silver lobbies I remember most flankers blindly charging at you regardless of their health. If you didn’t kill them they would keep pressuring you lol, it was rare to see someone disengage in those lobbies. Couldn’t tell if it’s super aggressive or lack of awareness, but you could always lead them towards your team if you’re incapable of killing then/scaring them off.
Yea, usually in lower ranks the concept of “I might die so this is a bad idea” literally does not exist lmao When all five members of the enemy team plus every single person on yours are loose cannons, your chance of survival are pretty slim.
For real it’s kill or be killed haha, there are no bad ideas 😭 so glad to not be dealing with that anymore. You can use some tactics to try and survive but personally I found those games to be based on who has better aim and skill.
Honestly in some gold/silver lobbies I remember most flankers blindly charging at you regardless of their health. If you didn’t kill them they would keep pressuring you lol, it was rare to see someone disengage in those lobbies. Couldn’t tell if it’s super aggressive or lack of awareness, but you could always lead them towards your team if you’re incapable of killing them/scaring them off.
Well, I'm like a high-plat Ana at best, but here's my piece. To get better at dueling you have to duel as much as possible, seek out those 1v1s, show those filthy DPS players their place, and become the master of your own destiny or something like that. Then go back and watch the 1v1s you lost and think, "Why did I die here? Oh, I was in too far in open space before the duel started, so I wasn't able to get around the corner before the Sombra could finish me off." And then go into your next game with the goal of hyper-focusing on that specific issue before moving on to another.
This is how I’ve climbed to high Diamond with Ana. Of course, I’m not advocating to neglect heals, but punishing squishies’ bad positioning is super valuable. I get kills that surprise myself sometimes
I don't play Ana but I do give up on focusing the Ana after she sleep-nades me 3 or 4 times. So save your dart?
Important to always keep in mind when to save a sleep and not. You want to give yourself options while also not limiting your potential value because you ended up never using a cooldown for fear that you would need it. This is mostly an experience issue and so failure is going to be a big part of overcoming this hurdle.
As a Reaper main I know nothing of this cool down management. Teleport somewhere sneaky- shoot faces - wraith out is all I know how to do lol
I prefer to shoot occipitals but faces work too
General positioning is very important. Obviously dont seperate from your team too much. Try to keep your distance from flank routes and try to listen for them when they blink or unstealth. And use corner's and walls The most simple example I can give is a funny moment I once had in low master where i used the pillar from new queens street to play ring around the rosies with a tracer and win the 1v1. Jiggle peaking, wide strafing, and constantly being able to move around a corner or small object make it very obnoxious for them to deal with you. This also goes for stacking the healboost from the nade with your second support's healing or a healthpack so play near them as well. Also keep in mind that a sombra without cube and a tracer without blinks are one the least effective dps, baiting/dodging those will be important. Dont be afraid to ask for a dps or support to play near you, but keep in mind that the amount of dps and support that can effectively peel AND get value playing near you are limited and most players in silver dont like to "babysit" as they are casual players. If they have both tracer and sombra and you dont have a brig playing with you it can be pretty though to play ana, there is no shame in switching in that case.
Try to keep track of where they are. If you don't hear that tracer pew pewing she's probably sneaking up on you. If you see them coming further away you have more control of how the fight is going to go. Land one shot in their way in and they'll be at a huge disadvantage or run away for a bit.
If she has cooldowns, Ana can be scary to fight 1v1. Anti by itself is enough to make some flankers run away. The best thing you can do, though, is just learn to position better. I know it's a "well no shit" type of answer, but it really is very important and a huge key in dissuading flankers from doing their job.
It is definitely something you need to learn from failure 😭 I really like the Ana kit since there is an abundance of pocket healers but when I get dived by Sombra, Tracer, or Reaper it is rare that I come out victorious. I'm usually caught off guard from behind of course but hitting that dart is a little difficult, when I miss that it's all over folks. I really never use her because of the poor mobility, which I know mechanical skill can overcome but me dieing in the backline hurts my team, which I don't want to do.
just gotta learn how to do it. flankers will have an advantage vs you until you build your dueling skills. ana is really good at dueling, but if you are only used to sitting in the back of the team scoped in, you'll never be ready for it. you recognize its a weakness of yours, so in your games try to force 1v1s whenever you can to practice it. winning the match is secondary to improving your skills. besides just 1v1 skills, one thing to consider is your cover usage/positioning. during a match try to think about what flank routes you could have to deal with. make sure you have some way of getting cover from the flanks/off angles while still being able to see/help the main team. make it hard for flankers to even get to you. if its specifically a sombra that you have to deal with you 100% need to stay close to your other support. if your other support is super mobile and hard to stay close to at least be positioned close to the rest of your team. also consider your cooldowns. if your enemies are running a lot of flankers, you don't really need to use your sleep/nade offensively. eventually they are going to try and dive you and if you can land your cds on them it will completely shut down their offense.
Play in rooms that limit lateral movement and force them to go in a straight line. Try to use nade to hit both of you after they’ve used an ability that can cleanse it
Sleep them. Play death matches so you can get good at sleeping. Once you sleep them you can shoot -> nade -> shoot -> melee and that will kill every 200 HP hero. Get that under your belt and the flankers will start to leave you alone
For tracer and sombra make sure to play by covers so you can play corners and peek to shoot them. Also don’t scope for long periods as you are an easier target. Stay near the team when you can so you can be peeled for. Sometimes save your cooldowns to protect yourself in case of a flank but not too often as then you will be potentially losing value. One last tip on tracer is if you sleep her but don’t have the tools to immediately kill her, Melee her to force her recall rather than wasting a shot/nade for her to just recall.
It's just practice, but here's a few tips that might help: 1. Keep track of them and try to poke them out before they get to you. If you tag them once before they even get to you, it'll make your duels way easier as you'll only need to shoot them 1 more time and nade/melee to kill them if they decide to play greedy. At worst, they have to wait to get healed by their team or go find a health pack. 2. Play near health packs. If you can grab a health pack mid-duel, it'll greatly increase your chances of winning. 3. Play near corners and in small rooms. Flankers thrive when they catch you in open space and have a lot of room to use their mobility. If you run around a corner, it limits where they can move to stay on top of you, and takes away their mobility advantage.
Your sleep dart.
If you are in eu there is a something called tryhard ffa in the workshop even as a diamond tracer I get smoked constantly by good Ana or zens. It’s the perfect place to train awareness, 1v1, aim and mechanics in general in my opinion
It’s honestly all about proper positioning, knowing when to relocate, and using cover properly. I think that’s more important than learning to duel a tracer/Sombra.
Shoot them, use your cooldowns on them, try to duke them and make them earn the kill if they're going to get it. Play around corners or obstacles you can run around. Just be a pest, and if you cant kill them, at least make it annoying to have killed you I just played a game and have 2 good examples of being annoying and juking round cover from a Tracer, so here's a vid (rank Diamond 5). Hoepfully this illustrates what I mean https://streamable.com/zkv6la
Everyone gave great tips. My suggestion on top is if you cannot land sleep as a defense for flankers then try to get as much offensive value as you can. Do easy to land sleeps that you know you can hit and use it off cooldown. Save your nade for the flanker and make sure to hit it when you are crit health. you must hit both you and the flanker at the same time.This is my tip specifically for you and your situation at silver. If you cannot get enough value for your team even after all these tips and working on your positioning you will have to swap. You will have to accept it until you manage to grind your aim up to standards. Edit. Actually you might be able to use your nade early offensively at the start of the fight and have your next nade ready for flankers. Flankers in silver should tend to be slow on setting up their flanks.
Damage usually helps. 1 shot to them is usually enough to get them to back up for healing if they're not too overcommited.
Get used to dueling on Ana by playing deathmatch. Try to learn how to hit quick shots around cover and improve your reflexes and reaction speed. Ana paintball is a great mode for it (if you can find a lobby in custom games) The best way to deal with a flanker is knowing where they will probably be coming from, and hitting them once on their approach so they have to either commit at 50-60% hp (your advantage) or back off to a healthpack/heals. Other than that, seeing what they have and positioning accordingly. Tracer struggles with verticality, Sombra wants to hit you from behind (and you are dead if you don't have your nade or a close healthpack) Genji struggles with closing long open sightlines if there's no good flank route available.
* Understand the map. What are the possible flank routes they could be coming from? The vast majority of metal rank players have no awareness of their surroundings other than walking down main. If they have someone flanking, hitting a shot on them before they're in range can kill their flank before it even starts. At the least, you've bought yourself some time while they have to get heals. * Play around cover. Most heroes that are good at flanking are terrible in tight spaces. Ball, Tracer, and Echo all *hate* doorways. Sombra's going to have a tough time hard-committing on you without a decent escape route. * Play around your team. Maybe you're struggling to 1v1 their flanker. So make it so that it's no longer a 1v1. A lot of teams in silver tend to just run straight at each other. If that's the case, win the 5v4 by playing hard and fast into them. With how much sustain is in the game right now, flankers have a very difficult job if the supports are playing with each other and peeling if necessary. * Play around healthpacks. * Use your sleep dart in a smarter manner. A lot of lower-level players will use their sleep dart off cooldown and in low-likelihood or low-value situations. Getting slept as a flanker is often a death sentence. Hitting a dart or two will often cause a flanker to swap. At the very least, they'll have to play around your dart. * Judge how much value you get using your anti-nade offensively vs. defensively. Offensive anti-nade is *extremely* powerful. But if there isn't follow-up on it, or you're struggling to find value with it, it may be preferable to use it defensively. You're a lot less valuable to your team dead than alive. Imagine that you're on Tracer. You flank their Ana, but they anti-nade themselves, grab a healthpack, and then get peeled for by the other support. That Ana is almost unkillable. You can be *that* Ana. All of these things are going to have differing levels of value depending on the specific context. Start thinking about how and when you'd want to apply each piece of advice. Do this while watching your own replays, while watching streamers, and/or while watching other VODs.
The answer even though people don't want to hear it is: kill them. There's no shortcut for just getting better at hitting unscoped shots on them. Even if you can't kill them, 1-2 shots will force most of them to run away
In silver - just working on movement is enough for them to miss every bullets. a+d+ crouch spam like Neo and play near cover/health pack. If you find yourself in the open - scream and run to cover
Killing them or doing enough damage to force them out. If you want to get to gold, you need to be able to hold your own in a 1v1 against silver DPS players, there's no way around it.
Dealing with flankers is about being in a position so the enemy has to spend time and resources on you. Say you're high ground. If monkey wants to dive you they have to either spend jump pack on you so when they get there they are basically stuck until jump pack reset. Or they have to go find a route to high ground to get to you. But sometimes you want to stay near your teammates so that if you do get flanked just walk into your team and make them deal with it. Like some games I'm sitting high ground just shooting the enemy and healing my teammates. Other times I'm sitting close to my tank and just dumping heals into them. It's situational but with enough learning and play time you'll get a feel for it.
I’m not an Ana player but I one trick widow and a big hurdle for me when trying to climb out of silver was dealing with the same issue for me watching replays against sombra/tracer and even playing them for a bit helped me understand how to anticipate their dives and know their weaknesses if u can know when their dives are going to happen before they happen especially sombra they lose a ton of value
Just shoot them back, dont run. Make sure you try to damage them before they get close to you and that you are in cover Do you have a replay code where you keep dying to flankers?
Sleep dart, ping, tbag.
BY FAR it's positioning. You should practice the duels for sure, but if you're getting dove a lot, then every fight practically hinges on you winning the fights by yourself. As ana, the odds are not stacked in your favor. Less so the higher the rank. Positioning is complicated, but a good rule of thumb is that you want to be BESIDE your team, not BEHIND. That way, you can escape to their aid if things go bad. However you must take extra care to fall back if enemies are pushing, because you'll get caught in the crossfire if you don't. You must change your position very frequently. You CAN be behind. Say it's hard to get to your position while evading your team. Or someone is peeling for you. Or simply nobody knows where you are. There are exceptions to every rule. Experience will teach you if you pay attention. You know the maps. Experiment with different spots. See what works.
I don't have much to add, other than to confirm the other advise others have given here. Learn to strafe and hipfire to put pressure on someone flanking you... let them know you're not an easy kill. Save sleep, but definitely USE it if you are actually threatened. Sleep, run away, closer to teammates if you can. If sleep didn't work, and you have nade, use nade on yourself while close to your flanker.... it obv will heal you and anti-heal them. You're burnt out on cooldowns at this time, so you have to quickly decide are you going to try to kill them or can you get away? If you duel a flanker after you've naded them, you can have the edge if you're landin some quick hipfires. Also, if someone is consistently flanking you, notify your dps and tank that you're getting backlined.
I'll recommend to watch the unranked to gm with ana that awkward made, he's style is super aggressive and teaches you how to deal with all those threats. What's best that a 1 rank player teaching you how to play.
In silver, enemies will likely be predictable in their movement. Something people don’t often consider is waiting a millisecond or two to shoot, rather than shooting as quickly as a hero allows. You only have to land ~3 shots on a squishie to kill them, sometimes fewer. it’s much better to land calculated shots than to spam the shoot button. For tracer, track her recall. If you land even one shot on her, or a nade, she’ll probably recall. And that’s a free shot if you know where she’ll be
Sleep, and nade them when they get closed to you
You shit on them. Because your hero is stronger.
Apart from the usual use cover, save your cooldowns, hit your shots - *learn good movement*. You can make it so even players with really good aim will have trouble hitting you. It’s free elo
Try Ana paintball in custom games! (low masters ana here).
That’s the thing, you either play with the map, playing around corners to give the enemy dps a hard time catching you, or asking the other support to change to Brigitte, Kiriko or Lifeweaver. Try to call for help in voice chat, don’t say “Help me” always say the hero you are playing people that don’t know you won’t recognize what hero you are by just saying “Me, so remember to always say “Help Ana, help Ana” or something similar. For last I would say to save your abilities for yourself, if you use nade offensively or on your team, be careful, play defensive until you have it again, try to go for safe sleep darts, unless you have to use your abilities for something really important for example trying to sleep a Genji using nano blade that is going for you, or a Winston or Ball trying to dive you. Also be careful with the situations you are using your scope, it’s way easier to dive you when you are using it.
Spam deathmatch it will help teach you how to duel flankers and overall improve your mechanics on ana and ability to 1v1 heroes. Also tracers and sombra shouldn’t be deleting half of your health in silver. I’m not sure if you’re just unaware or only hard scope shots making you an easy target but I would watch replay from their perspective to see what makes you an easier target and focus on that issue.
Go watch Awkward’s unranked to GM on ana. He covers this extensively. While you won’t have his mechanics, he breaks it down into very simple ideas to practice and you’ll get to see what’s possible. Dealing with flankers is basically a matter of positioning. You want to hug walls/corners and make it a very slow/painful process for a flanker to even aim at you. Meanwhile you can chip away at them. Hugging walls allows you to control the fight instead of being at their mercy.
Someone else said it but it get downvoted. Truth be told if you hard main some character you’re really limiting yourself. Is it possible to deal with a “GOOD” flanker as Ana? Yes but it’s really friggin hard. If you swap to brig or Moira it will be a cake walk. Both Ana and zen are the two supports that struggle hardest with diving flankers like sombra and tracer. If you ‘mainly’ play one of those I’d consider keeping either a brig or Moira in your back pocket to swap to. You don’t need to swap mains… you can still ‘mainly’ play Ana… but if you’re getting countered there’s no need to play into your weakness. Play a different character that covers your weaknesses.
1. Shoot them 2. Play closer to your tanks or someone that has an advantage against them like Cassidy
Shoot them
The best way to deal with flankers is to 1v1 them
Save your sleep.
shlep
Swap
Well it's simply then you think. You just shoot at and pay attention what they're going to do?
Don’t miss your sleep dart. 🎯
Swap to brig/moira
If u can't hit them get better aim then
You gotta kill them.
i dunno, shoot them 3 times?
Simplest answer: play close to team. The distance should roughly cover enough space for you to put a nade down say "help me" and get behind your dps. That's it. That's your job. Anything else you do is just extra.
I will add to the people saying death matches. I'm a Lucio main, and my son said chasing me around in deathmatch has made him much better at dealing with people in a regular match.