I dont even really know where to begin, but ill just start at the point that makes the most sense.
Overwatch is generally recognised as being one of the most approachable FPS shooters, due to its character designs, and how they play, and its been that way since 2016.
Aim skill is not, and should not be paramount in a game like this, i think its 100% valid for everyone to have a character that doesnt require high precision aim, that still feels competitively viable from low rank to high rank to top 500.
Reinhardt and Mercy have been the primary examples of this, but we’ll focus on Mercy.
Mercy’s kit is predominantly based around you almost never actually having to shoot someone. Its a HEAVY support character, focused on healing and damage boosting, and a very simple control scheme thats easy to do.
However, Mercy has a lot of lessons and tricks and tech that you learn as you play.
How to move. How to move your camera and know where your team is, and places to escape to. How to GA (Guardian Angel). When to rez safely, and rezzing at the right time to swing a losing fight. How to position to keep yourself out of danger and still maintain LOS and tether on your teammate. How to use the map geometry to stand even behind cover, and juke the enemy team, yet still maintaining damage/healing.
How to slingshot yourself to advantageous position out of GA. How to Super Jump. How to combine the two. How to make effective use of Valkyrie. Knowing when to boost or heal, or boosting a teammate at the right time ie. during their Ult, or if theyre applying pressure. When to actually pull out the pistol and get shots in yourself.
The point is, she is a very simple, easy to use character with a low skill floor, making her easy to jump in and play as regardless of FPS skill or experience, but also a pretty respectable skill ceiling.
Moira has neither. You do not learn anything new 3 hours or 3000 hours into playing Moira.
You point your camera at a teammate or an enemy, and that it, or you shoot a ball out in the direction of an enemy or team. You point your Ult and your team or enemy or both. At best you can figure out uses of Fade to gain high ground advantages.
But thats it.
She has a completely non-existent skill floor and skill ceiling, and that is not how you design a good character. Mercy isnt even meta, Moira isnt meta, at the moment. But a Mercy player has a significant amount to learn and improve upon, to be a better player. Moira does not.
And so we end up in this situation.
A character so dull, and borderline pointless in any content where youre applying significant knowledge to the game, and would be better playing another Support, or against people who arent even going to think twice about just shutting her down completely.
Or, in low rank, and even mid rank and specifically for NEW PLAYERS, a character who can just vaguely point the camera in someones direction, at a range of TWENTY. METERS. and kill anyone and heal during it even if they were contested.
You are clowning with this design. There is nothing here.
I dont want to see excuses of “well for new players”, but i already mentioned Mercy.
Mercy is the perfect new player Support character.
And ive seen some atrociously stupid takes, like her “being an anti-dive character”, as if Moira isnt being played aggressively, because of her range, self healing and escape tool.
As if there already aren’t “anti-dive” characters, who dont have this problem, aka Brigitte or Winston, who most people accept as well balanced and fair characters.
You need to step up on putting some skill floor and ceiling into this character. This is not an acceptable design, by the standard YOU SET back in 2016.
You set the standard with Mercy and Reinhardt, and other low skill floor characters that still had a TON of nuance and counter play and interesting tech, and the ability to “get better and show why youre the better Reinhardt”.
Edit:
I also want to point out that shes one of, or the only character actively abusing the current state of the stat screen to seem like “shes doing more” than she actually is.
Specifically, on “Eliminations” and “Healing”, since just tagging enough damage on a target before they die counts towards elims, which is nothing. This is why DVA also ends games with high elims, if theyre playing well, and a team kill will end in every players getting 2-5 elims each.
And then healing is counted as well on her grasp.
