Moira is OP! And more!

htt ps://youtu.be/3d-lavfQSXs?t=507

The author of this video is absolutely right when he says that Blizzard are hellbent on FORCING a performance out of certain heroes on higher ranks.
They just increase their damage/hp/healing, decrease cooldowns to make them viable on the highest level, but it makes those same heroes overpowered on lower levels (where the vast majority of players are).

Moira, Reaper, Mei, Hanzo, Junkrat, Torborn, Symmetra, McCree, Roadhog and so on are such heroes.

My opinion is that it’s a fundamental design problem. You can’t make those heroes viable on high level without making them OP on all other levels. And if you keep them reasonable for lower level, they’ll be useless for extremely skilled players.

The problem here is with extremely low skill requirements of those heroes, but low potential in relation to other heroes. IMO, a well-designed hero is a hero that requires skills that players gradually develop. i.e. NOT a junkrat riptire/reaper ult aka “press Q to win anywhere below diamond”, NOT Hanzo’s storm arrows which are genuinely harder to miss with than hit etc etc.

For example, hitscan heroes - they require aim, and it’s a skill that will naturally put hitscan players on levels where they belong. Or, say, Reinhardt and Hammond require a lot of spefic mechanical skills and gamesense, and it’s very easy to tell a good one from a bad one. Same for supports like Ana, Bap, Zen and even Mercy.

And now, to Moira as a prime example of poorly designed heroes.
Moira is just a crazy amalgamation of no-skill abilities, all extremely effective and extremely easy:

  • aimlock primary fire (YES, I know it’s techincally not aimlock, but it’s effectively the same)
  • infinite ammo
  • AOE healing
  • healing and damage orbs

There’s no room for growth as Moira in terms of mechanical skill. You can only improve on your gamesense (positioning, timing of abilities etc).
And she just so happens to not be perfectly balanced to have exactly the same impact on pro and casual levels (just like every other low-skill hero. (coincidence?)).

She’s :

  • either viable on pro level and OP on casual level
  • or useless on pro level and alright on casual level.

Right now it’s not rare to have players with 250 hours on Widow/Tracer/Genji on the same level as players with >50 hours on Reaper/Junkrat/Moira etc, and it’s just ridiculous.

I think the SOLUTION to that would be making heroes like Moira, Reaper, Mei, Hanzo, Junkrat, Torborn, Symmetra, McCree, Roadhog less easy to play in exachange for much higher potential.

FOR EXAMPLE, remove Moira’s aimlock and infinite “ammo”, but give her higher damage. Remove the damage orbs or make them harder to use in exchange for more damage/more healing juice gain from them.
Just do that and you will have a hero that is suddenly less OP on lower level, but stronger on higher level. Because these simple changes will give her more potential, but players will need skill to realize that potential.

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So take away from people that don’t want to play mechanically skilled heroes to now invest a lot of time getting really good with them?

Games like this need pick-up and play heroes or a lot of players will just not want to play.

We just need to get rid of hard-counters and reduce the amount of CC in the game and there will be so many heroes that you could just play without worrying too much about what the other team have that hard counters you or getting CC’d into oblivion.

There should always be counter-play no matter what hero you’re and the hero you’re against.

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Of course, not. Nothing would be taken away from them - they would just move to an appropriate level, matched which equally-skilled players.

Nobody in CS:GO complains that gold novas don’t get to play on Faceit lvl 10, in Starcraft it’d be ridiculous to match a 300 APM Master League player against a Silver of a different race, in soccer nobody’s upset that children don’t get to play in adult leagues. Every competitive discipline has skill levels that roughly correspond to levels of effort put in and commitment.

So, to me, it makes perfect sense that players who spend little time on the game would be matched with players who spend little time on the game.

Most of good and skill-dependent heroes are actually pretty easy to pick up. For example, Reinhardt, Zarya, Winston, Widowmaker, Tracer, Pharah, Soldier, Ashe, Ana, Baptiste, Mercy, Zen. All simple conceptually, but have a lot of room for improvement in multiple areas.

Couldn’t agree more.

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Since when is Moira overpowered? LOL

Also the youtuber who made that video is extremely bias towards Moira and hates her and if she was getting a nerf they would be praising it, despite her being the worst support in the game right now. He and that other streamer/youtuber who dislikes damage orb are very close friends. So not a surprise it’s either one of those users.

Won’t be watching the video, I saw the name and immediately clicked off

Seems like you’ve never watched a Nolan/Arx/Tesla stream who are T500 Moira Players, highly suggest checking them out as you think a bronze Moira = same as T500 Moira

all 3 of them are/were T500 Widow/Hanzo main before changing to play Moira btw.

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Moira is barely played on ladder and almost never played in OWL. She’s not OP. Moira is borderline useless.

The last time she was even close to viable was during deathball and GOATS.

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Read the whole post, would you?? Moira is OP in lower ranks, because of reasons you’ll find in the first post.

He said in the video that he enjoys playing Moira a lot.

I mean, TBH, damage orb is just a terrible ability.

Read the post, please. I’m not saying that bronze Moira=T500 Moira. I’m saying that because of her design, she requires no effort to be effective in low ranks, but doesn’t provide a skill ceiling sufficiently high for her to be viable without inflating her raw numbers. And increasing her raw numbers to make her viable on the T500 level leads to her being OP on low level.

Read the post! Moira is OP in low ranks, but useless in on high level. I’m not disputing her viability on the top level, I’m saying that she is the epitome of awful design: OP in low ranks, useless on high level.

In the post I’m explaining why she is that way and how to fix it. Have a read if you like

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Meanwhile she’s the 3rd most picked support and Ana and Mercy are both picked more than her in every rank lol

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I’ve played in Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Moira is mediocre at best there. Moira has her niche but the meta doesn’t currently support her play style, especially at low ranks. She’s not designed badly and has had her place when the game has supported it.

I’ll put this a better and more descriptive way: Moira is good when a team is grouped up and she can hit multiple people with her healing cone.

You go on and on about her DPS but it’s mediocre at BEST. Her TTK (Time-to-Kill) is quite high compared to others, even other healers. Ana and Mercy have higher single-target sustain while Lucio and Baptiste have higher multi-target output as well as better options for escape and sustain during team fights.

Low rank support players aren’t able to focus on team suitability due to the nature of fights in that area, long drawn out fights between children flailing their arms. Moira isn’t conductive to that environment.

How DARE you try to say that she’s OP in low ranks just by looking through the lens of a high rank’s perspective.

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Weird, before he was saying Moira OP etc, guess he’s saying that because she’s AWFUL to play now

Meanwhile this apparent “no effort” doesn’t seem to be working well for them, so how comes plat etc isn’t where a lot of them reside as she’s so easy in very low ranks?

Oh yeah, because she doesn’t get value from simply just “existing” that’s just something a streamer said in the past cause he hates her lol.

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I should make it clear that, when a certain hero is called OP, it’s not an attack on people who play that hero. You can play whatever you want, and it’s totally okay. It shouldn’t affect the discussion.

Hating a hero, thinking that a hero is OP and enjoying to play the hero are 3 different things.

Pickrate doesn’t directly reflect how strong a hero is. Genji, for example, is garbage on every level, but his pickrate will always be high, because he’s a fun hero. In case of Ana and Mercy, IMO, both of them are more fun to play, while Ana is more skill-dependent and versatile and Mercy is just simpler and more relaxed.

Her TTK is one of the reasons she’s bad at high ranks, but good at low ranks. High TTK means at high ranks, where everybody is skilled enough to kill her fast, she will not be dangerous. On low ranks, however, nobody, except easy one-shot heroes (Cree, Junk, Hanzo, Reaper) can contest Moira, because her TTK, while high, will still be significantly less than anyone else’s (especially under pressure of your HP being constantly drained and Moira’s HP replenished).

Mercy doesn’t have higher single target “sustain”. Moira has the best AOE healing in the game. We can argue about this, but it’s irrelevant, really, nobody complains about her healing, it’s the offensive abilities that make her OP in low ranks.

Moira’s design is abysmal, and, as long as it stays the same, she will always be overpowered in low ranks, just like bastion, torb, hog, reaper and all other low-skill high reward heroes. If you played Moira and think that she isn’t OP in your rank, you might want to try playing other heroes to see how high you’ll rank with them.

Try Tracer, for example. Chances are, you’ll spend 10x the time and effort to still end up lower than where you are as Moira.

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No he’s pretty decent in lower ranks because ppl don’t counter him, but in the high ranks he is countered cause ppl know how to play

Even many of the genji players in master who dropped from GM said he was playable in masters but when you get to GM he is unplayable in most situation.

Anyway, this is my last response to this specific thread as I already said what I needed to.

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Same proposal as in my last post. If you’re a Moira player, try switching to Genji for a while and see how much time and effort it takes you to get to the same rank. Not to report in this thread or argue, but just see for yourself if you’re right or wrong.

While Moira can heal 70hps she has limited resources, Mercy can continuously heal 50hps. Moira will run out of steam to heal anyone in roughly 11 seconds; once she’s done - she’s done. That’s what I meant by sustain in terms of Mercy vs Moira. If an engagement lasts longer than 12 seconds, which in bronze and silver it almost always does, Mercy is better to have around than Moira any day.

You say that it’s irrelevant because you’re under the impression that she’s some kind of God in low ranks due to her dps. 33dps is literally nothing and even when you add her damage orb it’s barely enough to take out a single hero in under 5 seconds. Soldier can literally outheal her dps (Biotic Field heals 40hps).

Ana on the other hand can take out a 200hp hero with 3 shots and that’s not counting her granade or sleep dart.

I have 42 hours played on Tracer. Tracer and Moira require vastly different skillsets. A much better, but still poor, example would be with Winston as they are both “low aim, high positioning” heroes and I’d disagree with your assessment.

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Moira is only op when your dps are low and your supports afk

Healbot moira is dealt with nade or burst dmg

Its litteraly supports unable to react to moira and the dps not hitting her.

Thats atleast my take on her.
Yes it is a nightmare to die to her as she didn’t really try but she’s easily stopped if tried.
Making it rather fair imho

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I would be in the camp of… making different characters viable for different elos?

Lets grant that Moira is extensively limited in her mechanical build. Ok.

At lower elos, she’s totally fine and works well. At higher elos she becomes less and less usable. Ok.

At higher elos, more technical / difficult heroes SHOULD become more viable as the skill required to use them begins to match the players using them.

People often think Brigitte was nerfed to hell and back, when in actuality they simply increased her skill cap so that top players found her utility more useful than average players. This way there isn’t too much confusion as to which players you should expect to see at your skill level, and when you do see “off meta” characters you should have a good idea of what to expect.

I genuinely think it’s tough to make either side truly happy here. But I also think that if a character is becoming a problem at lower levels, then at the very least there should be some consideration for countermeasures. Which I have to give credit where it’s due. The devs are trying, but they don’t have prescience. They can’t predict the future! :sweat_smile:

The answer is to give moira an utility skillshot, that scales with player mechanics/experience. make it hard to hit like sleep arrow.

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moira is good but not op

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Moira against golds = Profit?

Free-value is something a lot of games struggle with, it’s certainly not unique to Overwatch. While it’s probably okay in moderation, it should be limited. An important thing to take into consideration though; some things appear as free-value because the enemy has made such a grievous error, this is fair. Some ideas just aren’t compatible with a competitive playspace.

Honestly, I really can’t agree. Aiming should be consistent and easy for a support, their job there is to made decisions, not test aim. If the game is going to have burst-damage heroes, Supports need to be able to make consistent-outcome choices. Mechanical aim is an inconsistent mistress, and should not be relied upon as a core-concept for a supporting role. I’d honestly say that Ana is probably the worst-designed support we’ve had.

When you consider Moira’s aiming to be an assistive tool more than a primary weapon, it makes a lot more sense. Let’s not forget, too, that counter-picking is one of the biggest skills in the game. If you’re running Genji into Moira, you’ve likely made a grievous error, and should be punished for that.

I certainly do have my gripes with Moira. With hundreds of hours with her, there’s many ways she needs to be made more “intentional”. Giving some sort of “recall orb” action would be a good start there, as well as removing it’s duration, increasing it’s capacity and splitting it’s healing/second per-player. “Muh aim-skill” isn’t the answer here though. As much as people love to herald mechanical-aim as the god-given-perfection of skill-demonstration, statistically; it’s far from it.

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If you can sell tears definitely

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