Moira reworked once again in Overwatch patch

Once again, Overwatch players can play a rework of Moira in the August 18 update of Experimental Mode. Her Biotic Grasp, Fade, and Damage Orb underwent some changes to let her make more clutch plays.

A few weeks before, the Overwatch community was in an uproar about Moira. The recent Moira rework was too strong and players disliked her game-breaking abilities. Thus, the Moira rework did not go live and was even reverted on Experimental Mode. However, Blizzard decided to go at it again and show fans that the studio learned from its mistakes.

Moira Rework

Moira’s Fade ability is seeing huge changes, even though they are less than last time. It can still prevent teammates from taking damage but doesn’t let them escape Zarya’s Graviton Surge or Sigma’s Gravitic Flux. Her Fade will not erase debuffs or crowd control either. To prevent players from spamming it for teammates, developers increased the cooldown from 6 seconds to 8.

Image credits to Blizzard

Biotic Orb is now completely different. Instead of area of effect damage as it bounces around, it now sticks to enemies. The orb will deal 60 damage to opponents per second when it hits a target. When the overall damage reaches 120 or after 3 seconds, the orb will unstick itself.  Hitting an enemy barrier now cancels Biotic Orb. Finally, the max number of bounces is reduced to one and projectile speed up to 25 from 20.

Biotic Grasp’s attach angle was also reduced to 37%.

Moira Becomes a Skill-Based Character

“With these changes, we’ve tried to reduce the overall power level of this new Fade ability, as it was just capable of doing too much in its last form,” Blizzard developers said. “Now, it cannot cleanse negative effects or easily allow people to escape Sigma or Zarya ultimates, but is still a powerful tool to reduce significant incoming damage if it is timed well. As for the Damage Orb changes, this is a totally new direction to try and accomplish the same goals as before: change the ability from an easy to use but low impact ability, to a more skillful and higher potential impact ability. Landing a Damage Orb is now much more challenging but the reward is also much higher.”

Even though the Overwatch August 18 update is only on Experimental Mode, fans can be sure that Blizzard is still looking to rework Moira. Overwatch fans should give feedback on how these changes affect the game.

Written by Charles FUSTER