The devs have mentioned they want posts written with actual reasons outside of “it’s bad! Horrible change!” And I’ve been seeing a lot of that about moira.
Why the change to moira is good:
She has utility now that doesn’t feel good to use in most situations, and is incredibly frustrating for the person/people that get hit by it.
Why the change is bad:
It completely invalidates her old play style
Her ult charge is very slow now, even in a game where ults aren’t up as often
Her tickle beam doesn’t feel very impactful during teamfights
She’s very reliant on team follow up, whereas she could be more independent before
Her survivability and self healing are ~20% weaker
I think this change would have been fine in OW1 because she really needed the utility in that game. She felt perfectly fine in OW2, but these changes just make her feel really passive. I don’t feel like I have anything to do when necrotic orb is on cooldown. This really reenforces a healbot play style. Why take a character that is known for more consistent damage output and drastically reduce her ability to output damage? How is she realistically supposed to get a kill on something with a max of 50 dps? Maybe if you’re already winning the team fight, sure, I guess. However, part of Moira’s fun was being able to quickly take someone down if they didn’t have any healing via orb + succ beam, and now she doesn’t have that at all.
I understand the devs want her to feel more unique, but completely changing her play style was not the way to do it imo. Personally, I would’ve just reduced damage orb’s dps/max damage and added a 20% damage reduction to it. It would help with people feeling frustrated at dying to her, while also giving her some utility.
Give her a quicker Ult again and I think she might feel a lot better.
I also don’t think they needed to nerf her sustain as well as the healing passive and her healing orb. And her fade. Maybe some but not all.
The weird thing is Ana gets destroyed by Moira now. Hit her with necrotic and watch her try to kill you with bullets and Nade. If she hasn’t got sleep she’s just destroyed.
She needs to not be too impactful for the skill it takes to use the kit, there is a price to be paid for a simple kit employment, it means to get value you need to focus more on positioning and game sense to use the kit.
Her old playstyle was supposed to be invalidated…
Easily tunable, first iteration of changes.
She works best as a finisher or aid to someone else doing damage, not a primary source.
She was way, way too independent before.
Again, when you have it easy expect that to be taken away at some point.
Moira was conceived as a soft counter to Dive, in a period for OQ meaning often she’d be the lone Support with likely 1 tank 4 DPS to contend with. Her kit made sense then, but as designed no longer made sense, and Moira mains have asked for a utility power too forever. While this new direction will need tweaking, it’s for the better overall.
Personally I’d prefer a shorter c/d to evoke the old kit somewhat, with a bit more damage area but far less damage debuff, maybe 50%.
I would say just reverse some of the changes to indirect affects here ultimate charge rate.
Decrease Biotic Orb back to 8 seconds while we are at it Max Biotic Orb is 300HP
This ability should have never been nerfed honestly.
Decrease Fade ability back to 6 seconds Again, this should have never been touched.
With her new ability Necrotic Orb reduce it to 50% but also reduce the cooldown to 10 seconds Honestly 16 seconds is too long honestly and overall just makes her less fluid in which original Moira was very fluid…
I am fine with the self-healing nerf as that was one justified nerf honestly.
I am all for changes if it is needed, but I just remember how fluid she was before all these changes, now she just feels clunky even with the adjustments.
There are times when I use to ability to activate (choose between which orb to throw out) and I always get stuck in the animation due to the fact that I thought her Necrotic Orb is available and then I look down and see it still had 8 more seconds of cooldown.
Vice versa where I would use Biotic Orb and I am so used to the 8 seconds that I will perform the activation to choose the orb, and realize that I still have 2 more seconds.
Overall the new ability is powerful, but not worth the nerfs and the 16 seconds.
I even go further and say separate the cooldown for both the orb both share a cooldown of 8 seconds, but have her reload cleanse like they did and have that on a 10-second cooldown within 5m.
Or just play around with the numbers. I found the cleanse on Moira to be very good and what the game really needs.