Hey guys,
I browse the forums a lot and I see a lot of players find Moira to be a somewhat frustrating character.
My suggestion here is not intended to be a nerf or a buff but rather address how she can feel difficult to handle in the lower skill brackets and not provide enough options for expressing skill at the higher skill brackets.
I have made many considerations toward this problem, please click the triangle next to ‘Considerations’ to see the reasoning - If you disagree please do check the considerations list before replying as I may already have provided a good reason there that you may otherwise miss.
Considerations:...
Why not just make it harder for Moira to hit with her beam?
Her beam is her primary method of restoring Biotic energy, if we make it harder for hit to hit targets then it will directly affect Moira’s primary role of healing.
If we make it too hard to restore her Energy then she will become less viable as a healer which is not the intention of my recommendation.
Won't this just leave us with DPS Moira?
Despite this being a recommendation to improve her DPS potential, the majority of players would see damage output be about the same or even slightly reduced (depending on player skill).
Players who are not particularly great at tracking should keep the same level of Biotic energy for healing available so her primary role as healer should be unaffected however players who have been using Moira primarily to output reliable damage will now see Moira’s damage more accurately reflect their ability to track.
I believe this will make her nonviable as a primary DPS for many players which forces her to fallback to her intended role of healer.
While some players will probably still try to run her a DPS (just as people sometimes play battlemercy or dps ana), many players who have been doing this will see it as less valuable because her opponents will now be able to attempt to move awkwardly in order to lower her damage on them.
Why not use head hitbox for a crit zone?
Beam tracking is an extremely difficult task in Overwatch, player ability to strafe quickly would make hitting her opponents heads unrealistic outside of very situational moments (such as when they are stunned or frozen).
Even the absolutely best players in the world are going to struggle to track a head with a beam weapon so I believe she needs to be a bit more reliable. I don’t think we want to reduce her general power in order to give her situational power, we want her to have power all the time but have it linked slightly more closely to the players ability to track targets.
Why 'souls'?
Moira and Reaper share a lot of technology, Reaper used to be using Soul stealing technology before his lifesteal changes so I think it’s fitting that Moira starts using the soul stealing technology, she probably pioneered it after all.
Won't this cause visual clutter?
Potentially, I think Moira is the only person who needs to see the visual so if it is a problem then it would not be team-wide.
I think they can probably make a fairly decent spell effect that shows the area without obscuring the face or animations. It’s certainly a concern but I believe a decent effect could probably be produced that made this a very minimal issue.
Moira is fine, why change her?
I’ve read a lot of the forums and other places, one bit of feedback I always see when players talking about Moira is how her beam and damage orb can feel frustrating. Sometimes balance changes get made not because the character is inherently overpower or underpowered but because their gameplay is perceived as unfair or unrewarding.
Moira seems to be in a mix of both, players fighting her often find her extremely difficult to handle in a 1v1 because of how lenient her beam is but at the same time higher level players are finding her unrewarding - She provides basically the same level of utility at high level regardless of who is playing her and she offers very little in the way of rewarding mechanical skill.
Clearly you are bias for/against Moira?
If I was here talking about her damage Biotic orb then I’d probably be a bit bias against, I very much dislike the damage orb because I feel like any kills after 4 seconds of it being out are unintentional most of the time.
Her Biotic grasp is a bit different, I don’t really see it as a problem ability. She does have to aim it and it’s low damage gives me a fairly decent chance of killing her (character dependant). I think when I play Moira I sometimes get away with a little more than I should but nothing outrageous.
I really wanted to bring this up as an idea because I feel that it would provide me with more value when playing Moria while simultaneously making her less frustrating at lower skill brackets without reducing her ability to heal her team. (which is the main reason people should bring her)
The devs aren't going to listen to you, why make this post?
Well partly because I wanted to find out what the community thought of the idea. I’ve read a lot of things and would like to know how close I’ve come to a decent recommendation.
There is also a chance that the devs can read this, even if they don’t decide to take this idea it might help them identify how some players feel about Biotic grasp and draft their own solution.
Why provide no numbers, How can we know this would be balanced?
If I make a recommendation for the numbers then people will focus very much on the numbers instead of the idea.
I want people to focus on whether they like or dislike the idea and I leave it up to them to imagine the most balanced implementation.
The suggestion: Moira is given a unique ‘soul’ hitbox that appears at the centre of mass of her target when she uses Biotic Grasp (Right Click).
When she aims directly at the ‘soul’ she will be provided with bonus damage but in exchange her damage is lower than live values when she is hitting her target but not aiming inside the ‘soul’.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you guys think.