This is coming from a pretty angry top 500 Moira OTP (4 accounts currently in T500, all Moira mains) who’s hero already struggles to find value in the higher ranks of Overwatch.
Firstly, I’m not against change. I also like to believe I’m reasonably impartial when it comes to changes to all heroes, but I’m sure there will be a little bit of bias to take into account.
I was one of the few Moira’s to argue against the original fade experimental, not because it I thought it was overpowered, but because of how in reality the skill will be used. Fade is Moira’s escape ability. She has to live in the ability danger zone, where all sorts of stuns, splash damage and displacements reside. It will be pretty rare that a Moira player can effectively use this ability to save other players when she herself is constantly in danger due to her ability ranges.
So when will it be used? Well the answer is, maybe 5% of the time it will be used to deliberately save a player, the other 95% of the time will occur when she just so happens to be fading to escape an ability… lands next to a team mate, just as a Widow headshot or hog hook hits them. It will be highly frustrating for other players to play against this seemingly RNG based damage block.
Simply put, you should not tie an escape ability to have this sort of additional effect, at least not at the end of the ability. It just feels like bad design.
Anyway, there’s bigger issues in this experimental patch to talk about.
The Biotic Grasp change is fine. It will barely have any effect, I can’t see anyone complaining about that nerf, but it is a straight up nerf let’s be clear.
The damage orb changes are possibly the worst experimental change I’ve ever experienced. Here’s why.
Firstly, players are often frustrated by abilities with no counter-play. People hate Ashe’s dynamite burn effect for example. Now Moira’s orb will have this same effect. Once it’s stuck on you, that’s it. Currently you can walk away from the orb to try and minimise the damage output, or you can use a number of abilities to escape. Not any more. Frustrating to play against.
Now it will certainly happen less often, but that brings me to another point in how the ability is used.
Damage orbs are used for a few key purposes in the game.
- Zone control - They can be used to deny clean access to an enclosed area.
- Armour stripping - Being able to pass through shields allows Moira to soften up an attacking force, often taking away some of their dreaded armour. This provides the team with a utility that other supports lack, and with Moira’s lack of actual utility, this is pretty important!
- Assassination - Many argue that a support shouldn’t be an effective DPS, but Moira is not a normal support. List out all the other support’s utility, Moira simply has none, and yet this is actually fine, because Moira’s utility is damage output. The hero has been build around the whole ‘one hand give one hand take’ / ‘Light and Dark’ / ‘Heal and Damage’. Moira is played as a burst AoE healer, but the most effective Moira players should be finding a fine balance between damage output and healing output, in order to get the greatest value from her kit.
So talking about value, let’s compare the healing orb and the damage orb.
Currently, the healing orb is generally the preferred option. This is because often you and your team control how much value you orb gives. Your team want to follow it to get healed. The damage orb value however, is controlled by the enemy team. They want to extract as little value as possible out of the orb.
These changes do actually change this structure a little. Sure the enemy still can avoid a damage orb, but once it hits, they cannot reduce the value of the orb further. The biggest point however, it in most cases, it would actually be crazy to fire a damage orb with these experimental changes because of the risk of an absolute zero damage orb being thrown out, compared to a very reliable high value heal orb being thrown out.
If you miss the damage orb, you extract zero value out of the skill. There is no area denial, there is no partial value. It’s now all or nothing. Although, this is also reduced further, as hitting a 1 HP target with the orb, will now only produce 1 HP of damage value. The only circumstances the orb will have value in combat, are before a fight (when there is no healing to do), or when used in combination with a crowd control ability, such as Graviton Surge. The first example’s value is tainted because unnecessary damage on enemy players provides enemy supports with ultimate charge. The second one would result in a buff to the damage output of the orb, providing it hits a target that can hold onto the orb for the duration of it’s output, and if it is not blocked by a barrier.
Compared to a heal orb, which you can utilise as a zonal heal tool, with smart bounce play, damage orbs will nearly always be a bad choice of orb. So this results in Moira being a burst healer with no utility. If your team needs burst healing, just pick Baptiste, get the same sort of heal output but with far superior utility.
Orb bouncing is a skill that the best Moira players have greatly refined. I could show countless videos of intentional bounced damage and healing orbs that are designed to extract the maximum value from the orb. I do get it though… there’s a number of times when the orb will bounce off at a weird angle and just so happen to tag onto a passing player, resulting in a frustrating experience. But the longer an orb travels and as the number of bounces increase, this becomes more and more unlikely to happen, and much easier for a player to avoid.
I could actually add even more regarding the orb changes, but I really need to move onto the fade changes here.
COOLDOWN! from 6 - 8 seconds.
Myself and any other Moira in the game would rather have fade on a 6 second cooldown, than have fade on an 8 second cooldown with this phase effect. As mentioned earlier, Moira lives in the ability danger zone. If this area becomes too dangerous for Moira then another healer is simply a better choice. While fade is on cooldown, Moira often has to take a highly passive approach to the game.
Moira’s key strength lies with her ability to be an aggressive healer. In fact, she actually needs to play aggressive to maintain her healing resources. Her entire balance in Overwatch relies on the ability to be aggressive, and to live in the danger zone and the only thing that allows Moira to accomplish this is having a short cooldown escape ability. Remove that, and you’re better off picking a healer than can play away from that zone, or at least provide some strong utility for their team.
‘No longer frees Moira or allies from Zarya’s Graviton Surge or Sigma’s Gravitic Flux’. - This is exactly the same as above. Why play a melee healer who will get caught in these abilities when you could just play a healer with more utility who can sit outside of the effective range of them? You need to think why a player might actually choose Moira as a healer, and this nerf simply does not allow Moira to function effectively enough in her role to justify her as a viable pick, regardless of ranking.
Also… Gravitic Flux jumping can result in some highly flashy and fun plays and allow Moira to reposition for either aggressive or recovery play. I guess this is the change that kills a lot of the fun for Moira players then…
Also, running from spawn back to your team takes quite a bit longer with fade on a high cooldown. A further hidden nerf.
So what would I like to see?
Well… firstly let me say that I understand that one of the fundamental problems the developers face in hero design, is the number of ability keys available to a hero. You can’t just suddenly add an additional ability, and a lot of work went into the original set of abilities that often, they can’t just all be completely replaced. Secondly, I understand how each hero functions are different skill levels in the game. Balance is not static across all skill levels. Certain DPS are stronger at higher ranks than others, because they are harder to get maximum value from their kit.
I believe my suggestion could balance Moira’s damage and healing abilities in regards in the lower ranks, where more powerful healers (but higher skill cap ones) get less value because a player’s ability is less than in the higher ranks. At the same time, I believe my suggestion could reward players who master certain elements of the hero, bringing Moira in line with the strong support choices in the top levels of Overwatch… all of this without needing an additional key binding. I will not be too specific with my suggestion, because I believe the game developers will know far better than I on how to fine tune this concept.
So here it is.
Fade - Untouched.
Biotic Grasp - Attach angle reduced by 37% (just to stop people moaning).
Coalescence - Untouched.
Now here’s where things get interesting…
Moira has a healing resource meter. I would like to see a damage resource meter.
Damage would build the healing meter, and healing would build the damage meter.
When Moira’s healing resource is at 0, she will slowly regenerate healing (same as it is now).
When Moira’s damage resource is at 0, her biotic grasp will deal 50% of it’s original damage output, and will not provide her with any self healing. It will slowly regenerate naturally like the healing resource bar.
Now this isn’t all of it, but let’s address what this accomplishes first.
There are a number of complaints with Moira being used as a DPS player with no intention of healing their team. This addresses that as it provides an incentive for Moira to heal in order to deal more damage. A Moira used exclusively as a DPS will be incredibly weak.
Secondly, if Moira is too passive with her healing or doesn’t manager her resources correctly, she will not be able to sustain her high rate of heals (like now). This gives an incentive to use Moira’s complete kit. You can’t just play her as an easy healer and you can’t play her as a DPS. To get the most out of the hero, you need to find the correct balance. One hand gives, one hand takes.
So this addresses the DPS Moira issue that many people have a problem with.
Now, the next part of this, is the buffs. When a player manages these resource meters correctly, an additional effect is granted to their next Healing / Damage orb. There’s several ways to do this. Either you can have a joint resource meter, that can shift too far to the healing side, or too far to the damage size, but when it is perfectly in the middle, her next orb is granted additional properties. OR, you can have two separate meters, when the healing meter is full, you get granted additional properties on your next damage orb, and when the damage meter is full, you get granted additional properties on your next healing orb.
Either way, perfect resource management will result in hero buffs, while bad resource management will result in hero nerfs. This is where her skill cap comes into play. Not every hero needs to be about being able to aim really well. You can be skilful with mobility, with aim, or… with resource management.
So what would these additional properties be?
Well, the first one would be a cleansing orb. A bit like the original experimental fade effect, it would remove crowd control / debuff effects from team mates. This solves a big problem in the game with Ana’s grenade strength. Finally a hero would be able to counter this ability, providing they have managed their resources perfectly. This would be applied to the healing orb.
As for the damage orb… well, here’s where my ideas are a little short. Possibly an orb that does additional damage to barriers only, whenever it passes through them. Sort of like, a static shock effect. It wouldn’t increase Moira’s hero damage output, but would help with shield breaking. Beyond that idea, I’m not really sure what to apply here, but I’m sure the developers could come up with something different if my idea wasn’t strong enough. Just not a damn stun, slow, or ability interrupt skill! This particular suggestion would have helped with double shield meta, but I see we’ve already killed that :P.
So how does this address hero balance across ranks?
Well, you could go one step further with the meters… and scale the damage and healing output of her left and right clicks depending on how well she manages her resources. This could means that Moira would only get a buff when she hits that sweet spot of resource management, but is actually nerfed when she’s outside of it. Good players will focus heavily on resource management while also making conscious decisions as to when they sacrifice the additional orb effects in order to provide greater basic resource output. Lower ranked players will almost certainly be less efficient at keeping her resources in this sweet spot, or may focus too hard on doing so, resulting in worse in game performance.
An idea like this provides Moira with the much needed skill cap to allow her to be balanced correctly across all rankings, while not just requiring perfect aim to do so. It keeps the core principles of her kit and lore intact, requires no additional key bindings, and other than a slight UI redesign and possibly some particle effects on her orbs, doesn’t require much work to actually implement. It also removes the DPS only Moira option perfectly and encourages life in the danger zone, with a nice element of aggression that makes Moira both appealing, and different from other supports in the game. Fade remains intact and healthy, fade jumps are still viable etc…
Lastly, the bounces remain intact. Yes that can be frustrating for players, but with additional properties on her next orb, Moira will be less likely to spam orbs out on cooldown, and more likely to hold the more valuable orb until the time is right to apply the additional effects. Less orbs out on the map = less frustrations… so we can keep our skill bounces!