As someone who felt like they could carry almost any game as Morales back when she had mana, she deserved that nerf. She was incredibly powerful, but at the same time, Blizzard put in some major weaknesses for her like her inability to heal herself and her vulnerability to any kind of dive. Now that the nerf has come out she has even more weaknesses and even fewer strengths. Blizzard built her as a sustain healer, a role which she is no longer fulfilling with her high energy regen time and low energy pool. Other recently worked on healers designated as sustain healers have much stronger healing than her like Deckard, Tyrande, Whitemane, and Ana.
Let’s take a look at Ana more specifically in comparison. She shares the inability to heal herself and vulnerability to any kind of dive that Morales has. We can say that Ana’s healing buff matches up with Morales’ armor buff, even though the armor buff can’t get value outside of combat and the healing buff also prevents enemy healing. Now let’s look at their 2 cc spells in comparison. Ana has a sleep which is basically the exact same as a stun in almost every situation while Morales has a bump. I find it difficult to bump away people who are right on top of me. Before the change to the grenade bump, it would detonate on the first target hit which was great for bumping people away at point-blank range. Now that it is only detonated by activation I have trouble activating it the instant it comes out and half the time it bumps the person I’m running away from toward me to some degree. Even if I could land the bump perfectly every time at point-blank range then Ana stun would still be stronger because it prevents them from re-engaging after it lands. A good Butcher with quest complete can dominate Morales by himself without his ult so easily and quickly while all Ana has to do is land her sleep and run away. Let’s say Morales lands her nade perfectly on people like Butcher, Varian, Kerrigan, Genji, Illidan, Maiev, Thrall, and Zeratul. They all have gap closers and cc that can easily make up that distance while Ana sleep keeps them from chasing. Now that we have established Ana’s cc superiority, let’s compare their heal spells. You might think that Healing Dart is weaker than Morales’ healing beam because it can be blocked by other heroes but you would be wrong. The beam can sometimes be targeted on the wrong person too if the fighting is making people cluster together, just like Ana. Ana dart also has higher potential healing and doesn’t go on cooldown after being stunned. On top of that, completing the level 1 talent doubles ana’s potential healing and removes the problem of it being blocked by other heroes. Ana dart is also longer range, a range that is further improved at the end of that level 1 talent. Ana can also spec to remove roots, slows, and stuns, something that old Morales could do with cleanse but can’t anymore. The only way beam has any utility better than dart is that once you are on the right person you don’t have to keep landing the spell to continue healing like Ana. All of these strengths to healing dart come on top of the fact that healing dart uses mana and doesn’t become useless after 10 seconds of healing.
I can also understand why you changed Morales’ trait since the way it was before was just a copy of Muradin’s trait. However, that gives morales yet another new and big weakness. Before the nerf she never had to worry about being harassed by hit and run heroes like Nova because she could just back off and let her trait heal herself. Now instead the only choice Morales has to heal herself is to stay close to an ally hero and heal them, which takes much longer to regen health than the old trait and can sometimes prove fatal if that ally hero doesn’t want to stand by structures, or to pop her 30 second cooldown 50% heal, something that should really be saved for when you get dove and not used for out of combat regen.
I loved Morales and spent a lot of time trying to get used to her new changes, and even though I like that she has an activatable self-heal now, I just can’t stand her anymore. Like I said before she has too many weaknesses and not enough strengths. The only way I can see an easy change to bring her back in line is to increase her trait healing, make her beam not go on cooldown after being stunned, maybe give her back a cleanse, and make her energy regen faster somehow. For example, Blizzard could just flat increase the rate at which energy regens when not casting, or Blizzard could change the way it regens entirely like lowering the total energy pool but have it regen all at once after like 5 seconds of not casting. Morales is just not a sustain healer right now and sustain healers are the meta, a meta that Blizzard has reinforced by coming out with more sustain healers.
I’m sorry for writing a book. I just wanted to articulate my thoughts as best I could. I think Blizzard should make the first sustain healer back into a sustain healer.
![:slight_smile:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")