A deep look at Lt. Morales and her talent tree

General Discussion
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Hello, after playing Morales for several months now, I eventually mained her and got her to level 47. Now I know this isn’t really impressive but throughout this journey I noticed a lot of positives and negatives about the character that I would like to point out in hopes of seeing changes in the future.

NOTE: HotsLogs doesn’t work for some reason, so ill use my experience when it comes to talents. If I remember correctly though most of the stuff I’m going to note does reflect pick rates for talent tiers.

Main kit

Positives
Allow me to begin by talking a bit about her base kit. I love me some medic, I can certainly say her kit is well rounded and very useful in a lot of situations. I can’t really say she isn’t fun to play, granted a lot of people say she is boring but I find her base kit and functionality really solid.

Negatives
Really the only thing I believe could use some tuning would be to make it a tad bit more clear that pressing D or whatever key your trait is bound to, disconnects healing beam. I was struggling a lot in the beginning to constantly keep tapping teammates personally, but when I found out about her trait canceling it, it was a looot easier. It’s also a mistake I see a lot of Morales players make, that being they never even stop their beam and just try to get out of range to make it stop.

Talents General thoughts

Boy oh boy, this is gonna be a big section, here we go.

General thoughts
Overall I would say her talent tree is okay-ish. There are several talents I do believe would need changes but its not incredibly severe issues such as an entire talent tier being underwhelming and not giving her options.

Tier 1/Level 1 talents

Life support: Easily the best option in any situation, not because the talent is overpowered but because I feel like the other 2 options aren’t that useful as of now. I feel like this talent is simply solid and good use of it grants you rather consistent energy boosts.

Caduceus feedback: To be honest here, this talent isn’t as bad as I original thought. It has its niche uses here and there, particularly when you have strong frontlines and you’re really feeling spicy. The issue with this talent is that it doesn’t provide consistency. Most times you just don’t get enough space to be able to extend so much, especially as Morales, making it feel either insanely useful (when you do get space) or just impossible to get value out of.

Clear!: This quest feels like a missed opportunity. For starters, the quest is unnecessarily long, what I mean is, you don’t really need to be spamming grenades often but in order to complete it, you’re forced to do so and thus you miss actual potential opportunities to use nade as it’s now on cooldown. The rewards also feel… rather underwhelming as well. Both the cooldown reduction and the increased AOE help you get grenade snipes on low HP enemies or simply break deathballs but these are both possible by normal grenades, they just make it a bit easier. My personal idea, would he to simply give her a second charge of displacement grenade. Instead of having 2 separate rewards, how about reducing the quest requirement to 15 and when it completes you just gain another nade. It would be fun for damage builds too since Morales doesn’t really have one now. (Giving her 2 grenades would understandably require some level 13 re-balancing)

Tier 2/Level 4 talents

Cellular Reactor: I find myself choose this 90% of the time as well because it provides good sustain VS divers or burst damage. Again, I do not believe this talent is too good, it’s just the other options don’t feel that reliable.

Trauma Trigger: This talent is so close to being a viable alternative to cellular reactor, it just misses the reliability. The requirement to be below 40% HP is pretty risky but 40 armor isn’t that bad and the 30 second cooldown only feeds on the unreliability. An idea I’ve seen from people would be to make it work based on different HP percents. Example, while under 75% HP gain 20 Armor, while under 50% gain 30, while under 35% gain 40 armor. Or another idea, simply increase the current HP percentage requirement from 40% to 55%. The cooldown could also be halved to 15 seconds.

Blast Shield: This talent is okay with grenade builds… Yep not much else to say. You can consider it, if you’re really thirsty for energy and nobody dives you but usually it’s just for grenade builds. Would also be a very fun talent with 2 grenade charges and a more reliable sustain option to compete with cellular reactor.

Tier 3/Level 7 talents

Probably my personal favourite tier.

Prolonged Safeguard: A very versatile talent, great upgrade for a lot of situations and good synergy with Life Support at level 1.

Vanadium Plating: Another solid option VS stuns and roots. This talent is an insane playmaker if your teammates find themselves chain stunned or rooted as the follow-up damage can easily be negated by the 55 armor and the duration pause.

Physical Therapy: This talent is also very close to being good but its use is limited to a single slow removal. It’s really not that great against characters with slows, Vanadium plating protects allies from multiple stuns and roots, this talent just removes one slow, only for it to be re-applied again. It’s okay against single slows sure VS Varian for example or Zeratul but I think you’re almost always better off with Prolonged safeguard anyway as from my experience it’s the better option for the most part. My suggestion would be to make it so allies are completely immune to slows for the first 1.5 seconds of safeguard (half its duration) and remove the CD reduction. They can still be stunned, rooted, silenced etc. But are entirely immune to slows for 1.5 seconds.

Tier 4/Level 10 talents

Stim Drone: Not a lot to say about this heroic, very powerful buff to allies who rely on basic attacks. The sound effect is also very satisfying to hear :smiley:

Medivac Dropship: Pretty powerful as well, you can also use it as a personal stasis sometimes. I would like to recommend reducing the cooldown for the manual takeoff a little bit more but it’s a good heroic with coordinated teams.

Tier 5/Level 13 talents

EMP Grenade: Once again, another close to viable talent, it does have niche uses against heroes like Fenix or Lucio where shields play a big role in their gameplay but the extra 96 damage is pretty negligible. Personally, I would like see the damage being increased slightly but the shield damage lowered, to make damage Morales viable.

System Shock: Fantastic option that I use for most of my games yet again. 30% less damage is an insane debuff to enemies chasing you down or most importantly during team fights.

Second Opinion: Mostly used against deathballs. The cooldown reduction can prove to be good. I believe you’re always better off choosing System Shock for the insane utility, though. I wouldn’t say this talent needs tuning, I’m just not a fan of it.

Tier 6/Level 16 talents

Extended Care: Easily the most popular choice, as it provides much needed range for your healing beam. This talent gives Morales the power to help teammates who tend to dive in up close and personal with enemies while also increasing her own survivability. I’m not sure if this is too much of a must pick though.

Shield Sequencer: Very powerful and underappreciated talent in my opinion. Sure, it does not grant the luxury that Extended Care provides but it is a big playmaker if you don’t feel like you need the extra range as it can save allies and yourself pretty reliably.

First Responder: Never really found a use out of this one. Heavily overshadowed by other options. Technically you can use it to sustain allies against heavy burst damage but why not pick Shield Sequencer for that? Another use for it is to sustain allies against dives (AKA burst damage) which again, you don’t need this talent to do so, as it doesn’t protect Morales herself in case she is the dive target. It’s also pointless during a team fight in general, as you’re usually always using healing beam which makes staying above 70 energy difficult and it also heavily discourages you from using Cellular Reactor as well, which is a tremendous downside. Not sure what should be done about this talent unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with ideas to give feedback, I would like to say it may need a replacement talent entirely compared to simple number tweaks.

Tier 7/Level 20 talents

Hyperactivity: Huge buff to Stim Drone and always recommended if you’re not the enemies’ prime target and you’re getting value out of stim drone to begin with.

One question… WHY, WHY BLIZZARD… did you remove self stim drone as well? :sob: I never played old Morales but from the videos I watched, while it wasn’t an optimal upgrade considering Morales was very mana draining, it made you feel like using Medics Ubercharge and it looked super fun :frowning:
(Obviously joking here but come on bring this back)

Caduceus Reactor 2.0: Very solid option if you’re taking a lot of damage and need to survive. Not much else to say the talent is cool.

Safe Zone: Decent upgrade to Medivac, especially if you want to make risky plays and fly into enemy territory. Also, why isn’t this merged with Reinforcements?

Reinforcements: Why isn’t this merged with Safe Zone? :thinking: It just feels pointless to have them separated. I don’t believe it would be too strong if both were combined and maybe she gained a new talent for damage Morales? You know, like how Anduin has Varian’s Legacy :wink:

Final thoughts
Whew, this took a while to make. I really hope the feedback was worth something at least. Obviously, I don’t claim to be some god Morales, I just wanted to get my thoughts out there as I really want to see some improvements to my favourite medic especially some kind of damage build that she currently lacks.

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Not a Morales main here, but I pick her every now and then.

I generaly agree that she could use talent tree updates.

On the other hand, I think Morales is the last healer that would need dmg build. Something that isn’t very common after supportcalypse.

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I’m alway out of energy with morales :frowning:

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I understand that the character that is purely there to heal may follow the classic principle of “Pure healer means defenseless or deals very low damage” but I think Morales is cool enough as a personality that a damage build would fit her. Thats just me though.

Choose talents wisely and try not to heal much during poke phases unless very necessary. Also when the fight is over, press your trait key to cancel the beam even if teammates are hurt and regenerate a bit of energy before going back to healing again.

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It isn’t so much about personality and more about her kit. She is very defensivly oriented compared even to other healers. I will however admit, that AA build combined with self Stim could be interesting :joy:

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Well I mean she used to have that self stim along side her ally which is something I would reaaaally like to see return. It sounds hella fun eheh. Yes I do understand that about her kit. As I said, she does follow the classic medic principle of healing a lot and providing single target sustain while being an easy target to divers and flankers. I honestly dont think it would be a big deal, I consider Anduin relatively defense oriented as well but he does have damage builds :face_with_monocle:

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Well Anduin has 1 dmg talent tier and 1 dmg talent on 20. Plus both of those provide more healing either directly or indirectely.

Anyways, how would you imagine dmg build for Morales to look like? I’m interested in that.

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In a perfect world pretty much the same as anduin. I would rework her quest at level 1 to reduce the grenade spam and the reward would be a second charge of grenade. Then, probably rebalance level 13 because all of these are grenade upgrades and some of them would be insane with 2 grenade charges and then merge her 2 medivac upgrades at level 20 to make space for a level 20 damage talent. All of this would essentially give her level 1 damage option and level 20.

OR

We can give her something entirely different for level 20, not related to damage and just keep level 13 and level 1 for damage builds.

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Tell that to the teammates who spend their entire out-of-combat existence pinging me while around 30 energy and we’re sitting safely behind a wall. Although it’s inefficient to heal under such circumstances, even more inefficient would be trying to explain energy management to those people. -.-

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Tell me about it :joy: I like how I ping my energy being low and they still dive into enemies expecting heals.

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Thanks for the good read.

As for First Responder I usually take it combined with Caduceus feedback for insane sustain if there are at least 2 easy to AA targets.

On the second tier, Blast Shield energy reward is just a nice bonus, the shield is where it’s counted. It’s the best defensive talent on that tier.

Cellular Reactor is countered by healing reduction and it costs energy, Trauma Trigger hp to proc it too low, similar to Raynor healing stim pre-rework. Blast Shield gives you a good 30% max HP if you farm it before major team fight. However taking it will force you to take Second Opinion at 13 to get the most benefit, so I’m not really a fan.

At level 13 EMP Grenade is a niche talent much like Shattering Throw for Varian so I’m fine as where they are. I don’t think what Morales needs is more damage but more cc, increase her grenade knock back or slow targets ~40% after finish grenade quest at level 1 might be a good start.

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Glad you liked it. Personally I think her CC is fine. Increasing it might make her a bit too annoying to deal with, which is another reason why I would like a damage build considering she doesn’t have one. But that’s just my opinion, of course.

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Very well said Stavros, I agree with some of the points you made

and damage build :smirk:

Things I found for Morales would be her lack of reliable talents, such as Physical Therapy, Trauma Trigger, First Responder and EMP Grenade.

Though EMP Grenade makes Displacement Grenade into a more ‘Shield’ Shattering ability, the ability itself has a long cooldown, and using it on Fenix or Zarya would waste her only defensive and offensive tool, thus opening her from oncoming Divers or preventing her from peeling for an ally.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, though EMP Grenade may be useful, if there’s only one Hero that’s mostly shielded, it’s a pretty waste of a talent as it only works on one target.

and lack of Medivac description :anduinbabyrage:

1 Like
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Wow, I think I disagree with a majority of the main post.

I consider Clear to be the go to level 1, as it allows you to manipulate enemy positioning more often and more effectively.
Her Grenades are almost an Alarak Shove, and as long as you are using it to knock enemies into your allies aoes instead of out of skill shots, it’s quite good.
Life Support is a great pick, especially if the enemy has repeating damage that will feed you lots of energy, though Caduceus Feedback is kind of niche as her damage output isn’t high so unless the enemy team is excessively melee heavy the risk seems to outweigh the reward.

At 4 my go to is Blast Shield. It works with the level 1 talent I usually go for, grants some survivability, and the energy generation I missed at 1.
Then I usually go for Trauma Trigger, as its just passive defenses, even though it is vulnerable to burst.
Cellular Reactor ALSO leaves you vulnerable to burst since it is active, and heals you over 4 seconds, but the real thing that makes me avoid it is the 30 energy cost. I’d only take it if I were attempting to body block enemy skill shots to spare my team.

Level 7 is really good, they’re all situational.

System Shock is a great pick.
EMP is great against shields, but even when not against shields while the bonus damage isn’t going to win you any awards it does add up especially with the level 1 grenade quest completed, and lets her effectively clear waves if your team has been hurting for it.
Second Opinion is good in some maps and situations, in the best case scenario it makes her actually capable of doing damage.

Extended Care I only take if my team is dive heavy.
Shield Sequencer is a great choice.
First Responder helps you keep allies alive through burst, but it also helps you keep your energy high since you don’t need to keep your beam active as long to bring someone up. Its very strong against poke comps, since you get to turn your beam off more often for regen.

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That’s what you say.
One well placed grenade on Fenix → Fenix shoved toward your team with like 1,173 shields destroyed (at 13, when he has 1266 max at 13)-> Fenix stunned and instantly killed.

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My apologies, I’ll re-write that better.

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I used to think exactly like that however I quickly realised that I really need the extra energy from Life Support. Clear! Forces you to spam grenades for no reason to get and the reward only makes it easier to do what already was possible with normal grenades. I consider Life Support very valuable and the go-to choice because you will almost always get value out of it and manage to heal even more. It also synergizes super well with shield sequencer.

Blast shield is very situational and mostly used with the grenade quest. Its survivability relies heavily on grenade which makes it rather unreliable. Cellular reactor costs energy sure, but said energy can easily be negated with a good use of Life Support + well timed safeguard and with shield sequencer its negatives can be negated completely. Trauma trigger just puts you to great risks and the cooldown is just as big as Cellular reactor.

The rest about first responder I explained already in the post.

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One of the reasons to pick Morales is to spam grenades.
Like I said, it’s like an Alarak shove, if you can do it decently you can save allies, disrupt enemies, its like picking Malfurion for roots.

Why? The shields don’t go away over time, it’s an effective max health boost.
Maybe I should say it’s best against poke teams rather than dive teams?

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if i play morales which is rarely and my team is the type that love to dive in. if i want to keep healing their suicidal self’s… i got life support at (1) since as they take dmg i get energy which means i can heal for a bit longer.

and of course at (4) i got Cellular Reactor for my self if i get attacked by genji or some !@#$. to have some heals for my own since getting heals as i heal a teammate isn’t really that big so the Reactor is very helpful.

as for (7) i pick Prolonged Safeguard for increase duration so it lasts longer on my teammates and gives me more energy to stay longer and heal these poor souls!

(10) situational depends on what’s the plan or what my team needs.

(13) System Shock mostly for my self to reduce the damage being dealt to me if i got ganked by any type of hero like genji zera or whatever. combining it with Reactor = perfect.

(16) Shield Sequencer for double Safeguard charges so i can use it on my self and my target that i’m healing “if i was being attacked as my teammate is being attacked” if i’m not being attacked i can use it on 2 teammates that are in the teamfight and taking damage that means tons of energy returned to me and can heal forever!

(20) also situational just like 10 depends on the plan!

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I think this is the part that makes me disagree and honestly tells me you don’t play Morales much. You never pick Morales to spam grenades. You pick her because of her great single target healing and ability to make small plays by saving teammates with safeguard as well as Stim Drone working well with heroes like Valla, Greymane, Illidan etc. If this playstyle somehow works for you then I don’t even know, good for you I guess, it doesn’t make the talent any less underwhelming when we are talking about serious builds.

The shield is permanent but by the time you build it, you may as well be dead. This talent only works well when again, you pick the quest talent at lvl 1, which is something you specifically do. This doesn’t mean the talent isn’t potentially situational.