Moira Is Still the Best Designed Character in 'Overwatch 2'

Underneath all the bad decisions Blizzard has made with Overwatch remains the core of a great game with some great ideas. If you want proof, just look at Moira, a character who embodies some of the best design and play dynamics in Overwatch… and who is also an oddity within the lineup of characters.

Moira, unlike the vast majority of Overwatch and Overwatch 2’s cast, is almost wholly reliant on ability and resource management—in stark contrast to the FPS heavy roster she supports. Proper Moira play is unlike any other Overwatch 2 character. The basic verbs are consistent with the rest of the game’s characters. She shoots (and sucks), she is heavily dependent on movement and positioning, and she deploys damage and healing abilities. However, all of these relatively standard abilities are held together by the same core resource and set of system mechanics that are totally unique to Moira. 

Her primary healing is tied to how much damage she deals. To do damage, she has to be near the frontline or a flank. To heal, she has to be behind her tanks and DPS. This means that, depending on her objectives at any given moment, she has to radically alter her positioning, which is where her invulnerable dash comes into play. However, in either situation, losing damage output or her healing will severely undercut her team, so she has to rely on her active ability which can either heal or deal damage depending on what she needs at a given moment. Skillful Moira play becomes a violent dance, wholly unlike any other character in the game. 

Heal from the backline while using your damage orb to soften up enemies. Dash to their flank to finish off enemy supports, while leaving a healing orb with your teammates. Once the enemy realizes you’re there, your dash comes off cooldown and your healing ammunition is full. The cycle repeats until you’ve fully charged your Ultimate, at which point both aspects of your character collide. You fire a beam of consolidated soul through enemies and allies alike, healing and dealing damage in equal measure—taking care to position the beam so it goes through as many people as possible. It is a brilliant climax, one that can win teamfights, or keep a solo Moira alive while the rest of her allies regroup after a near team-wipe.

The amount of skill and decision making that goes into good Moira play is comparable to any of the game’s DPS heavy heroes, while providing a lower skill floor entry point into teamplay than flick-based DPS Heroes and Supports like Widowmaker, Hanzo, and Ana. She represents the promise of Overwatch at its best, a team based shooter that lets people unfamiliar with the genre have just as much fun as everyone else while still offering a high skill ceiling for those same characters. 

Sadly, she is nearly alone in Overwatch’s roster as a systems heavy, ability dependent character. The closest point of comparison is Zarya, who relies on her defensive bubbles to empower her weapon damage. Zarya, like Moira, is not particularly demanding of her player’s aim, while still requiring a lot of delicate ability management to be genuinely useful to her team. Torbjorn and Symmetra technically fall into this category, but highlevel Torbjorn play still requires you to hit your headshots and his turret feels like a supplement to his weapon damage, as opposed to a core aspect of his DPS output. Symmetra is interesting, but at high levels is almost exclusively used to quickly teleport her teammates across the map as opposed to a character unto herself.

Overwatch has a 32 character roster, including the newest hero, Sojourn. Of those 32 characters, four have recognizable and engaging mechanics unique to their characters. This is a fundamental failing of Overwatch’s character design, and part of my frustration with the reworks that have hit the game in recent months. The weird, messy, and unique aspects of characters have been filed away in favor of more FPS-style, twitch-dependent play. This is all in stark contrast to every other game in the surrounding, and related, genres.

In League of Legends, almost every ADC (Attack Damage Carry) has a wildly different central mechanic and play style despite fulfilling the same role on their respective team. Senna needs her allies to kill minions and enemy champions to acquire Black Mist, which allows her to scale her damage over time in contrast to every other ADC whose job is to kill minions to build damage. Quinn has to use her abilities to mark enemy characters, usually other ADCs, to quickly dash in and then obliterate them with devastating basic attacks. Even the game’s earliest ADCs like Ashe have recognizable mechanics. Even when characters have similar abilities, they are forced to play wildly differently based on these fundamental traits.

If comparing Overwatch to a MOBA feels unfair, then let me tell you about a hero from Paladins, Overwatch’s long forgotten and quietly excellent Hero-Shooter cousin. Vora is a flanker with multiple sources of damage over time, a self-heal, and an AOE burst damage ability that, if built in a certain way, can silence enemies. All of this is underpinned by stacks of Darkness. Every time she lands a basic attack, she stacks Darkness. At five stacks, she empowers her ranged ability or AOE burst, depending on which you choose to use in any given situation. Playing Vora requires you to deal damage over time from a distance, before dashing in with her movement ability to unleash a powerful burst, before healing herself and dashing back out. She is a menace if played well. She is also relatively easy to play from an aim-mechanics perspective. This is all to say that mechanics heavy characters are not only possible in FPS-skill heavy Hero Shooters, but actively exciting to play.

When given the chance to reinvent what Overwatch Heroes could be, Blizzard chose to release another DPS with an assault rifle and hit-scan sniper shot. If Overwatch wants to court both competitive and casual audiences, which is what it claimed to do upon its original release in 2016, it has to introduce characters with unique, non-aim dependent mechanics. This is not untread ground. It is standard practice in its genre for good reason. If only Blizzard still knew what genre that was.