The Real Reason Overwatch 2 Reversed Course On Moira
It's been a bit of a rocky road to release for "Overwatch 2," especially considering how popular "Overwatch" was. For starters, the game getting delayed was a big disappointment. On top of the development cycle getting extended long enough to test fans' patience, Twitch viewership imploded after a series of marketing missteps. Namely, the team behind "Overwatch 2" gave out codes during the first beta and saw a huge dropoff after the codes were gone, only to not offer any Twitch drops in the second beta.
Though things haven't been easy ahead of release, there's still plenty of reason to be hopeful about "Overwatch 2." The devs seem committed to fix fans' biggest concerns, and even admitted that they're frustrated with their own game and how everything has gone down.
There are also some exciting new characters and updates to existing characters on the way. One of these involves Moira, known best for her healing abilities, cybergoth style, and Irish accent, provided by Genevieve O'Reilly. In the second "Overwatch 2" beta, the devs played around with her abilities, adding in a Necrotic Orb with debuffing powers so strong they just didn't make sense. Here's more on why the devs are now reversing course on Moira's impactful debuff attack and going back to the drawing board.
Moira's Necrotic Orb took away from fast-paced gameplay
On July 28, 2022, Blizzard posted a blog outlining post-beta updates for Mercy and Moira. As the post stated, "we've been hard at work reviewing player feedback, internal data, and gameplay to help direct our next decisions." There's going to be a statistics update next week, but the news about these specific tweaks was important enough that Blizzard decided to share it ahead of time.
Regarding Moira's changes, her Necrotic Orb is getting the boot. Why? Apparently, it was more passive than players could stand. Explaining further, Blizzard wrote, "The power that Necrotic Orb brought to the table necessitated a long cooldown to make the effect impactful but not overly frustrating to play against. However, this meant many players would just hold the ability for the perfect moment, which had the side effect of decreasing the amount of 'cool stuff happening' in moment-to-moment gameplay and shifting too much of it into healing."
When Overwatch League kicks off August 11, Necrotic Orb and compensation nerfs will be no more for Moira. The post once again made it clear that the change to Moira, as well as those to Mercy, was rooted in community feedback. It'll be interesting to see how Moira performs moving forward.