My take on a moira rework

General Discussion
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My take on a rework for Moira, to increase the skill-floor and the skill-ceiling and too make her playstyle more engaging.

Overal changes

  • All damage emitting abilities are stopped by shields (or bounces off in case of damage orb)

  • Tighten the hitbox on her biotic gasp (damage) and make it more in line with Symmetras beam

  • Added new passive: Biotic weave

All her healing abilities now go through shields, but the damage abilities will not penetrate shields. This removes the inconsistency with her kit today (Biotic grasp doesn’t go through shields but orb does). Changed her aiming style for biotic grasp (damage) to increase the skill-floor, thus making it harder for Moira players to alright squash some other duelist by just spamming an orb and flailing her arm around.

Biotic Grasp (Primary fire)

  • Max. range 20 meters (increased with 5 meters)

Increasing her healing range to make her viable as a healer who can support divers in her team through the enemy teams shields. Her niche is being the healer who supports through shields.

Biotic Grasp (Secondary fire)

  • 20 biotic energy per second (increase from 18.75)

  • 65 dps (increase from 50 dps) (with perfect tracking)

  • Replaced current truck-sized beam with a smaller beam

The smaller hitbox on her biotic grasp makes her healing generation harder, therefore buffing the gathering of healing through damage. This is also true with her damage output, therefore the buff. Ana has 70 dmg per shot over 0.6 for reference.

Biotic Orb (Primary fire)

No changes. Changes to biotic orb only affects the damaging orb.

Biotic Orb (Secondary fire)

  • Duration changed from 7 to 5 seconds, or until depleted

  • Tethered damage orb range change to 2m (from 4m)

  • Gets deflected by shields (only tethers to players)

She now longer cant just throw the damaging orb how she chooses, because it is not certain it will give any value because of shields. This incentivises the player to think what is the best orb for the right situation. Should I help my frontline with an orb that will reach them through the shields giving me a lot of ultimate charge, or should I throw one to peel for my support, only damaging one person? The duration change and the tethered range will also help with random orbs killing people in weird places.

Fade

  • Remove fade from grav or flux

Moira already has one of the best escapes in the game. Players who avoids (using fade at the right time) or repositions before a grav/flux should be rewarded, instead of just having a “get out of jail”-free card with the fade.

Coalescence

  • Increase healing to 160 hps (from 140)

  • Doesn’t go through shields (damage them though)

  • Tighten the cone of the beam

The removal of having coalescence go through shields changes the ultimate to be a tool for supporting and setting up plays for tanks and dps instead of a fragging laser. It will heal through shields still. It also helps with the cracking of shields and pushing a choke. The hitbox of the laser is also currently too wide therefore I want it tightened.

New Passive - Biotic weave

  • When healing a certain amount of damage using biotic orb or grasp under a specific time limit (not herself included) she triggers Biotic weave (Do not really know a number for the amount of healing that is required or the time limit)

  • Biotic weave triggered: Overcharges Biotic Grasp and increases damage to 80 dps for 3 seconds of usage (time will not stack, max 3 seconds. When a biotic weave has been triggered it can be stored until used)

This passive gives players who uses her kit to heal a large group of player a way to defend themself when the get attacked by flankers and such.

These changes would add a more of an ebb and flow to the character. To balance your healing and damage, which I think was the intended character design from the beginning. Instead of being an aim-locking freak that orbs and grasp flankers in low elo games.

The numbers might be of here and there so don´t roast me in the comments. You get the gist I hope.

1 Like
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I’m gonna stop here :joy:

3 Likes
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Thanks for reading :wink:

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This is now a thread arguing about “lock-on”.

And no, it’s not lock on.

2 Likes
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I find it really sad how if someone just says the word lock-on once in a 600 word post their whole post is now invalid and he is trolling

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For one, the constant mention of “lock on mechanics” will highly distract people.

The beam isn’t a lock-on. At all.

Second, the concept for her passive is too convoluted and leans to encouraging focusing on damage more often, not less.

Because in heavy team fights. If she heals, and players see those Weave ticks pop up, they don’t want to miss out on using them, players who like doing damage as Moira will seek to take advantage of them whenever they are available.

players aren’t going to store them for player, they will farm for them to keep using them.

Meanwhile, her survival through Fade being nerfed along with her ability tours orbs and ult through shields removes her tiny amount of utility, and no utility in return.

All for potential damage buffs she doesn’t need.

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I know that the hitbox for biotic grasp is a big cylinder and the animation makes it look like its a lock-on ability. But why does it matter in the end if its not “lock-on”. The result is exactly the same. She can have her crosshair off an enemy player and still hit him/her. Blizzard cant have a character who shoots a giant cylinder that obstructs the user and the enemy each time she shoots.

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They read that post in the same way that Moira has a lock on!

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Thanks :wink: I don’t understand why people are getting so tense about her aim. It’s a extremely easy to track with that ability. Look at symmetra, she got buffed by changing her aimstyle and kit around it.

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There are big differences between lock-on weapons and ones that aren’t lock on but have huge hitboxes. For example, if Sym had her old beam on someone and another enemy ran in between, that other enemy wouldn’t be damaged and her weapon wouldn’t switch targets. In Moira’s case, the enemy that ran past would be damaged. This can change things like ‘body blocking’ or picking off low health targets that run in front of you etc.

Lock-on is also generally much more forgiving. Mercy’s heal/damage for example lets her 360 turn without losing her lock. Sym’s old beam was far, far more forgiving that Moira’s.

Does Moira take good aim? No, no one’s disputing that, but you’re mixing terms for things that are strictly different, and perpetuating misunderstandings about how she works. I’ve heard people complaining that her beam killed them through walls before, and having to explain that ‘no, that doesn’t happen, have you heard of something called lag?’ every time is a pain.

Also in regards to the rest of your post, it’s a net nerf. You say increase her damage and tighten her beam, but you never specify by how much. That makes it hard to tell if it’s actually to her benefit or not at all. Buffing heal recharge by 1.25 per second is… not much of a buff. At all. Especially when it will be harder to recharge. (Ana can scope in as a hitscan with no fall-off/range limit, and fires faster than 1per second, making it about 87.5 dps, so I don’t think comparing them is valid).

Huge nerf to damage orb. It takes time to actually reach targets that aren’t right in front of you, and shaving its duration down to 5 seconds is a big nerf, on top of nerfing its range, making it super easy to just side step, and now also gets deflected by shields, stopping you from picking off low hp targets seeking cover or building ult charge.

Removing fade from grav is also obviously a nerf, although lets be fair, if your team is caught in grav and the enemy is smart enough to follow up, you’d probably just be walking back to spawn. Her and Reaper can escape because their abilities work differently than other heroes, essentially ‘removing them from existence’ so they cannot be effected by anything. If I remember correctly, they can’t contest objectives while in this state either.

Preventing her ult from going through barriers is a huge nerf, and makes it instantly one of the worst ults in the game, topped off by the fact that you want it to be smaller.

Like other people have said, your ‘weave’ idea just encourages dps. They heal a bit, then decide to go dps mode and ignore the teammates still in need of healing. Bad idea. Plus ‘defend themselves from flankers’ relies on them having a charge stored, which won’t happen, trust me.

Overall your ideas just turn her into garbage. I appreciate the though you put into it, but this is absolutely not the way to go with her.

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Thanks for the response :wink:

My numbers might be way off as you said.

The core thing I wanted to combat with these changes was to pivot her kit. The problem I see is that in OWL or higher elo:s she is just a healbot that no one really likes to play because she has zero abilities that has a high skill-ceiling. On lower elos and in quickplay she is often the dreaded “DPS-moira”, that get some kills here and there but ultimately don’t empowers and plays with her team and support them.

I wanted to increase the skill-celling by:

  • Firstly having to aim properly (increase skill-ceiling)
  • Not encourage random damage orbs thrown whenever (i can’t count how many damage orbs gets thrown when the enemy team is full hp and our team is rather low) . Instead use the damage orb for peeling and the healing orb as the primary use.
  • Consistent kit (why does orb and col go through barriers but not grasp?)
  • Damage abilities doesn’t go through shields - There is no damage dealer that shoots through shields, why should a support be able too? This encourage a playstyle where you for example jump through your entire team when you ult trying to get the supports in the other team, standing 1m from the tanks of the enemy team, instead of ulting from the back healing your team and damaging your enemies.
  • Passive - Giving her something new that is inline with the vision of the character (light/darkness) that is not a new ability.
  • Fade - I don’t believe reaper show be able to escape grav or flux either. They should be able to use their abilities in the ult, but not to escape, only to mitigate damage. Its the best escape in the game hands down.
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Then configure her reticle to be a circe as big as her actual range.

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I think to encourage better use of the orbs, and maybe help Moira’s kit overall, you could add buff/de-buff effects to them, but maybe lower the damage output. That would mean less ‘random damage orb’ kills, and encourage a more tactical use of the orbs. I do think it should still go through barriers though, because otherwise they become infinitely less useful.

Maybe her damage orb does less dps, but halves the amount of healing people can receive while it’s on them? Given that it runs out pretty quick when spread over a team and can be sidestepped so long as you’re not in a confined room, I don’t think it’d be op, but would still discourage flankers. No as strong as anti-nade, but it’s something. Just an idea. It could be anything, and you could add a buff to her healing orb while reducing the hps to balance. Suddenly Moira has utility.

I think narrowing her beam slightly is okay, but she’s still a beam hero, so I don’t think it’s fair to make her need pinpoint accuracy. Not all heroes need that.

Going through barriers is part of her ults appeal. Without it, it’s a pretty lame ult. I don’t think everything has to be consistent to be balanced. For example, they removed Junkrat’s self damage, but left Pharah’s/Soldiers etc. This is because they way Junkrat plays makes him much more vulnerable to self-damage, while Pharah is up in the sky and has to be dumb to kill herself with a rocket.

Thrown turrets go through shields, so it’s not the only thing that can pass through them. Dragon goes through them too, and that’s an ult, and the arrow itself is a projectile. Personally when I ult as Moira, I try to get my team to push forward in front of me. That way they get free heals, and I’m less likely to be stunned out of it. If you’re ulting as Moira in front of the enemy tanks, prepare to get shattered.

As I said, getting out of grav is something I won’t be torn up about if it’s changed, since it normally signals a team wipe anyway, and the times getting out of it and ulting are actually any use are next to none (it’s no trance), but there’s a reason it is that way.