Shortly after Ana was released Blizzard added her to the list of characters you can play with or against in a custom game. This opened up a new possibility for Overwatch practice due to two unique aspects of Ana that make her an excellent AI target dummy; she has a small hitbox and she is one of the few projectile-type characters who cannot hit headshots. Using a few custom settings players could now create a challenging target practice using live characters who couldn’t shoot back, thus Ana bot training was born.

By now if you have spent a reasonable time around the Overwatch community you have probably heard of Ana bot training. Many of you may already be using it actively or have experimented with it a few times. For those players who may be unfamiliar with it, I am going to go over the basics on how to set it up along with a few modifications you can use to make it more difficult.

One thing I want to mention quickly before getting into this - if you are not taking individual time to practice then you are limiting your own abilities in game. Spending a few minutes on these types of exercises prior to jumping into a game will help set your focus, warm up your hand-eye coordination and over time it will give you a competitive advantage. I will be discussing this more in subsequent posts but to put it briefly, if you are struggling to climb out of your rank this is exactly the type of training you need to be doing to separate yourself from the crowd.

Ana Bot Training – The Basics

This method will set you up to play against 6 Ana bots and you will be required to land headshots in order to kill them. This will be difficult at first, but with a little practice and dedication you will see almost immediate improvement in your game.

To set up a the custom match choose Play from the main menu and select Custom Game. Click on the option to Add AI and select the following options:

Ana bots on hard difficulty will strafe around you constantly, mimicking the types of movement you will see in the game. If you choose medium instead they have a tendency to strafe, pause and shoot, and strafe again. While this is a little easier I naturally catch myself waiting for them to stop strafing before I shoot, because I would rather try and train myself to hit moving targets I have always preferred to set difficulty to hard.

After the characters have been added, click on Settings on the top. There are three adjustments you need to set for the basic method of training:

Rule Set (the first option): Skirmish

-Scroll down to the Gameplay Options section-
Damage Modifier: 200%
Headshots Only: On

If you only change one setting, the Headshots Only setting is the most important. It makes it impossible for Ana to damage you, setting up the perfect environment for dedicated target practice.

Optional Settings

You may have noticed my screenshot above also has a couple of other adjustments on it. There are a few optional changes you can make that are a matter of personal preference-

Healing Modifier: 25% - This will limit the Ana bots ability to heal each other. If you have the Damage Modifier increased you will probably one-shot them which make this useless. However, depending on the character you are playing and their potential damage fall off this may be useful.

Respawn Time Modifier: 25% - After practicing like this for a few days you will begin killing these bots more quickly, having them respawn faster keeps things moving. I do not recommend this if you are just starting because it can be a little overwhelming having 6 Anas shooting at you at once, even if they aren’t dealing damaging. Keeping the Respawn time at 100% (or even increasing it) will make it easier in the beginning as you kill them at a slower pace and will only need to face a few at a time.

Ability Cooldown Modifier: 25% - I used to do this so I could spam abilities that I wanted to practice. Eventually I stopped adjusting it because I realized that it was enforcing bad habits like always using McCree’s roll to reload which obviously is not viable in-game.

Those are the basic settings and it may be worth noting it will not work if you are playing characters that cannot land headshots like Zarya or Symmetra. I prefer to use hitscan-type characters like McCree, Soldier, and Widowmaker (don’t judge) but it is really a matter of who you want to practice as the skill will carry over to all characters to some degree.

Ana Bot Advanced Training – Increasing the Difficulty

I was regularly using the basic method to reach 200 kills before starting normal games and it became significantly easier over time. Since then I have found a few ways to make the training more challenging in order to vary the level of difficulty:

Keep strafing constantly. This may go without saying but it is natural (and ok) to stop moving when getting used to hitting those headshots at first. As you get better, make sure you are forcing yourself to move constantly while shooting. The closer you can mimic how you move in a real game the more beneficial the practice will be for you.

Add two, medium-difficulty Lucios to the enemy team. Not only is Lucio another incredibly difficult target to hit, his Speed Boost will make his teammates more challenging as well. If you add two it guarantees that one will always be healing and the other will always be speed boosting, making your targets that much more difficult. One thing to note: Lucio can land headshots so you will need to find health packs occasionally. (If you set them to medium difficulty their aim isn’t very good so it’s not too much of a concern.)

Add two, medium-difficulty Lucios to your team as well. For the same reason as above, except this time you will be moving faster as well. This combination is great training and also incredibly difficult.

Limit how many times you can try to shoot each enemy. This is a self-discipline that really helps when trying to imitate in-game pressure. Instead of shooting freely at targets, choose a target and give yourself two shots to try and hit them. If you don’t kill the target you chose, move on to the next one. See how many targets in a row you can kill doing this.

One last thing I will mention here, which is not any harder but I have personally found to be useful, is to do this same type of training but against a team of random heroes. There are only a limited number of AI characters you can add to the match but by playing against a random team it helps you to learn where the headshot hitboxes are located in a variety of characters. In a live match I don’t usually have time to think about this as much so I have found this to be helpful in practice.

If you do want to play against a random AI team, I would suggest putting at least one healer (I prefer Lucio) on your team. I also limit the enemy difficulty to medium because it seems like they cannot land headshots at that level which allows you to practice without dying constantly.

Final Thoughts

If you are stuck in your current rank ask yourself what you are currently doing to improve. If your only answer is “playing Competitive as much as possible” then you are missing out on some of your potential. Using this technique will help you to reach that next level.

I have only covered one element of training here, there are a couple of other tools and techniques that are helpful to learn and I plan on exploring those more in posts to follow. I would like to look at some of the different types of mechanical skills that go into the game (tracking, flick shots, projectile training), how to set up and review recordings of yourself to improve, and some of the mental preparation and psychology you can use to gain focus in game.

Please feel free leave me comments below if you have any thoughts, otherwise shoot me a message on reddit at /u/ArkistHex. I appreciate feedback and would love to hear about it if this helps you at all.

-DZab

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