A lot of people in season one were complaining about most Moira players being trash healers, more focused on damage, or out damaging the dps. What some probably failed to realize was she NEEDS to do damage to heal with her spray that she needs to lead ahead of teammates with as close as 5 meters. She’s stuck with her orb otherwise, which relies on her knowing how best to use her current location and team momentum for maximum effectiveness for heals, which deplete faster based on # of teammates and missing health.
All this buff did is give her more utility for the benefit of her team, not herself. It doesn’t make her any more or less deadly, just gives her the ability to recharge her healing spray while she’s using it, meaning she’s healing more, which is what people wanted. What’s the issue? The closest she is to OP is, at least imo, she, like Lucio, didn’t need the support passive because she can already use 2-3 other forms of self healing at once (orb, beam, I think Coalescence heals on hit on top of the heal over time), which helps her immensely against certain characters.
They made her a better support, maybe not in a way those people wanted, but many of them probably had no ideas on how to rework/ buff her healing aspect. Simple as that.
My issue is that it reduces the amount of skill required to manage her heal resource well without really giving her any new options for skill expression, so far as I can tell. When they gave her the increased resource regen during ult, they specifically said that they didn’t want her to be able to completely refill her bar passively, but now she can if she uses the damage orb right before Coal with no resource left.
I agree, they also didn’t address her power-budget issues like coal being too expensive. The entire reason why Coal’s ult cost got nerfed was because of an OWL Zombie Comp strat that’s impossible now.
It was never hard to manage her resources regardless, you just cycled healing and damage. 4 seconds of healing, 2 seconds of damage was good enough to maintain her heal resources in any teamfight.
Now, they are just going to slowly powercreep Moira until she rotates into meta, then they will nerf her to a worse state than before any of her buffs.
Yep, thats my biggest issue with it, in paper it helps DPS Moiras actually heal the team more but in a very dumb and one dimensional way, taking away even more decision making from Moira.
Thankfully they are actually working on reworking her so this is only temporary (copium)
Now the only real reason to use heal orb is to heal 135 hp/s on a target. Otherwise damage orb provides way more value. Throwing damage orb at the enemy supports puts a lot of pressure on them and the chip damage might lead to them getting picked.
And burst healing overral, maybe long ranged healing, though usually its not really the best play nor does enough to actually save some1, but yeah, pretty much just takes away reasons to use the healing orb and diminishes decision making.
Shes also very survivable with some decent mobility but not survivable enough in high lvls and with too little skill-expression to be balanced, first thing they should do imo is actually requiring aiming on her then go from there.
Also Kiriko just does everything Moira does but better, only thing she doesnt have is strong aoe healing but more than compesates with no resource needed and other things.
Many people are also wasteful when healing with Moira. Just holding the heal button down is terribly inefficient. Forget who posted the video of it, but a quick spray of the heal with gaps in between is generally better as it has a HoT component to it, so it heals for the same during that tick, letting you through a quick drain in to recharge a bit before cycling back to it.
It doesn’t affect her survivability nor her potential damage, so no, just makes her a better healer. That’s like saying buffing Mercy’s damage boost makes her deadlier, it doesn’t, it makes her a better support.
There is definitely skill to using your resources efficiently enough to push damage orbs harder and use less heal orbs. And pushing your heal spray to the limit without running out and then having the gamesense and positioning to get in there to safely regen resources before the next fight. To me, this change seems like a buff to the passive ally-backline Moira who stands behind her tank and is always getting her damage beam blocked by a shield. And like, I’m not even sure how much of a problem that is anymore because there’s less shield in the game.
I dunno, I guess maybe the change is intended to make her more viable in pokier comps? Where she might have difficulty closing distance to succ on someone? I don’t know why she’d need that though, since she’s already strong with dive and brawl.
I just don’t even think it does though. A true DPS Moira don’t have issues running out of heal juice, do they? They’re damage-beaming all the time and not using much heal spray, right? Shouldn’t they be at full resource like basically always?
To me, this change benefits the Moira player who can’t reliably get into a safe position to succ on enemies but still throws primarily damage orbs. Like, that’s not even a playstyle, that’s just poor resource-management and positioning.
I’d love to be wrong. I’d love for there to be some aspect of this change that I hadn’t considered that adds skill expression in some way. But from where I’m sitting, it looks like it just makes it less punishing to waste your spray.
Honestly, it feels a bit like the necrotic orb compensatory changes, where the heal orb had its on individual cooldown, so there was basically no reason to not throw one every 10s. Hardly needed to use the spray for healing, and the only other thing to do was succ on things slowly, so you could be so sloppy with your heal spray and still never come close to running out. It’s not nearly the same magnitude, but it feels like a change that pushes in the same direction, but also without the addition of interesting utility.
If I’ve understood you correctly, this is not quite right. The spray does 70 HPS when held continuously onto a target. Once the spray stops, it apples a lingering HoT effect that heals for a total of 35 HP over 2s. The HoT effect is canceled if the spray is applied again, and then a new one is applied when the spray stops.
So, while using the HoT effect does get you more efficient use of the heal resource, the HPS is much lower. If you don’t need the full-strength 70 HPS, then cycling the spray on and off with your damage beam is a good way to heal and keep your resource topped up. You can also stop healing someone who isn’t currently taking damage a little early and let the HoT do the rest, and spritzing is good for healing allies up between fights when the orb isn’t enough. But if your ally is under heavy fire, then you should give them the full-strength spray so that they get the max HPS.
I haven’t seen anyone mention one of the reasons I consider this buff to be pretty huge: It significantly reduces Moiras weakness to Barriers, no longer have to worry about a shield stopping a Moira from getting resource from Grasp when she can toss a Damage Orb through them and get it. This sends her from a useless pick on Sigma Royal to pretty damn strong given how narrow the place is, making Orb bouncing very easy.
