Moira guide – Overwatch

Moira abilities and strategy tips

First things first, let’s do a quick overview of all Moira’s abilities. After that we’ll outline some tips for making the most out of each one.

• Biotic Grasp – “Using her left hand, Moira expends biotic energy to heal allies in front of her. Her right hand fires a long-range beam weapon that saps enemies’ health, healing Moira and replenishing her biotic energy.”
• Biotic Orb – “Moira launches a rebounding biotic sphere; she can choose between a regeneration effect that heals the allies it passes through, or a decay effect that deals damage to enemies.”
• Fade – “Moira quickly teleports a short distance.”
• Coalescence – “Moira channels a long-range beam that both heals allies and bypasses barriers to damage her enemies.”

A quick note on the mechanics of Biotic Grasp first:

Although your [LMB] and [RMB] skills don’t have cooldowns, they both work off a resource system. When healing your allies with [LMB], you’ll gradually use up biotic resources, to a point where you’ll either have to wait for it to recharge organically over time, or fill it back up yourself by using RMB on an enemy and siphoning their health.

Biotic Grasp tips

• It is absolutely vital that you continue dishing out damage with your right click whenever possible, so as to ensure you have healing resource available for when you need it the most. Take every opportunity to splash a little damage around if no-one on your team needs a top-up.
• It’s really important that you get to grips with the effective range of your Biotic Grasp. Before you hit up your first match, go to the Training Ground and mess around for ten minutes just getting a feel for range. You will be surprised at how much distance you can get away with here, and you don’t need to be right in the thick of battle to be effective.
• You can run out of healing juice extremely quickly with Moira. Her healing output operates at around 80 HPS (Health Per Second), and it’s easy to overkill and use up precious resources. The minute your target(s) are topped off, conserve.
• When you’re healing multiple teammates at once, it’s recommended that you immediately spray them in an arc in order to cover multiple targets with a little bit of healing – that’ll keep them in the game. As you continue sweeping, you’ll eventually get them all in tip-top condition, but again make sure you stop spending the resource the moment they’re all at maximum health.
• Moira’s damage-dealing beam is capable of pushing out around 50 DPS (Damage Per Second), but it also has a self-healing effect as well. Expect around 33 HPS to be returned to Moira for as long as your damage beam is making contact with an enemy target.

Biotic Orb tips

• Many beginner Moira players fall into the trap of bouncing her healing orb at their own feet thinking this will maximise self-healing. It is far more effective to use this ability as a team-healing effect, so throw it into the pack instead.
• You healing orb increases the health of your teammates by 75 HPS, but there’s a cap of 300 on the total amount of healing they can receive from it. That should be more than enough to top up the majority of your flimsier friends though!
• Although many pros feel that the Biotic Orb is best used as a damage-dealing device, don’t underestimate the power of throwing a healing orb into your team, then using Fade to zip in fast and start splashing some of your Biotic Grasp LMB healing around.
• As well as dishing out a decent amount of damage, your shadow orb actually slows down the enemies it comes into contact with. As long as it’s making contact with a target (indicated by a thin tendril connection), the enemy’s health will decline at a rate of 50 DPS. They can only take a maximum 200 damage overall though.
• The damage-dealing orb is particularly effective in closed spaces, of course, where it’s free to bounce around the room while remaining in close proximity to its targets. Think how annoying Hanzo’s scattered arrow shot is, for example, and then imagine a similar, longer-lasting effect. We’ve racked up plenty of multikills by sending opportune orbs in where we believe the team are approaching en-masse.

Fade tips

• Your movement ability – Fade – is on an exceptionally short timer when you consider how useful it is. Every six seconds you can use this skill to get away from a problematic situation, so start getting a feel for when its going to be on cooldown and remember to use it when a fight’s going south
• You can use Fade in any direction along the horizontal plane – including backwards for an element of surprise. You can use this to throw your opponent off their guard in a duel, and catch them unawares from a preferential angle. Just be careful not to waste this in a very uneven fight where you’d be better off saving this for the most effective escape to cover.
• Fade’s cooldown is short enough that you can use it to get back into battle quickly, but the closer you get to the action the less inclined you should be to use it for speed’s sake alone. Again, it’s a survival tool first and foremost, and you want to have it available when you really need it the most.

Coalescence tips

• Coalescence looks 100% awesome, but it’s best saved for when you’re pushing as a team and need an extra bit of juice to keep your team alive while pushing the enemy under.
• We feel it is far more effective when used with a focus on healing. We tend to only flick away from our team and onto an enemy target when that opponent is less than 15% health and ideally a little lower than that. The damage isn’t that impressive, and it’s far better to keep it channelled as health.
• Coalescence is particularly effective on maps like Hanamura, where you’re pushing to take control of a point and need to provide your team with a safety buffer for a big breakthrough.
• On that note, remember that Coalescence can actually penetrate shields such as those belonging to Reinhardt. This means you can not only focus your beam on teammates, but any near-death enemy Support heroes who might be taking shelter!

Moira counters

Until we have more experience with the hero – and how she fits into the meta and team comps – we don’t have our usual hard and fast list of Strong vs Weak counter lists.

For now, we’re adding notes here on a case by case basis as and when we gain more experience with Moira. Expect this section of our guide to be updated continuously over time.

Genji – As he can’t deflect her primary fire, Moira’s in good shape against Genji. Fade provides emergency escape and throws an element of mobility confusion right back at him as well.

Pharah – As reasonable as Moira’s damage range is, Pharah’s always going to have the upper hand in terms of rocket fire range and mobility.

Reinhardt / Orisa – Moira should prove very effective against these two, given that her damage penetrates shields. Note also that this will leave any Bastion’s tucked behind looking very exposed.

D.Va – As we understand it, D.Va can actually deflect your damage dealing orb with Defense Matrix, so you should be very careful about your angle of approach here. We’ll clarify this in the next update.

Tracer – Although you have a very welcome escape mechanism, you’ll struggle to keep up with Tracer in the mobility stakes, and if your opponent has even half an aim in them you’ll be picked off pretty cleanly.

Soldier: 76 / McCree / Reaper – All three of these Offense heroes have the means to finish Moira off pretty quickly. Reaper needs to get pretty close, but if he can flank in and catch Moira by surprise, life is going to be very difficult for the hero.

Roadhog – You’re going to struggle to out-DPS Roadhog’s self-healing and do so before he can hook you up and turn you into mincemeat. This is likely a survival game until back-up arrives, or Fade comes back off cooldown. Hopefully Roadhog missteps a couple of times while you’re dancing with him.

Ana – Oooof! If Ana can splat you with her Biotic Grenade then you’ll be locked out of healing both yourself and your teammates!

Video guides and gameplay

Here’s a really great video from Overwatch Central which features an interview with and gameplay footage of Custa from the Dallas Fuel Overwatch League team. Definitely watch the entirety of this video to get a handle on how the pros are planning to master Moira. There’s also some important thoughts on the danger of maining Moira for all maps.

Key points:

– Moira’s strength lies in her sheer versatility. She can put out a lot of damage but also a lot of healing and her kit is very subtle overall.

– D.Va is very much the counter to Moira as her right-click can effectively shut down the damage orb if it manages to eat the whole thing.

– Custa believes that her Ult charge may be nerfed at some point as it simply builds up too quickly. It’s not game-breaking in and of itself though, and is comparable to the impact provided by an Ultimate like Earthshatter.

Next up we’ve got Unit Lost’s video. This is quite an interesting one as it’s exhibition footage from BlizzCon, with commentary from Stylosa. This provides a nice perspective on the impact Moira’s capable of having in a very fluid battle.

Moira Skins and Cosmetic Unlocks

Now that Moira is actually live on the Overwatch servers we’ve been able to grab screenshots of all of her incredible skins. Take a look at what you can unlock in the gallery below:

So you can get a look at all of Moira’s goodies straight out of the game, here’s a video which features all of the major unlocks for the hero:

Moira: Origin Story

Moira’s full name is Moira O’Deorain, and in the context of Overwatch’s backstory she’s a scientist who worked for the Blackwatch division. As Overwatch demised, she found herself gravitating towards the Talon organisation, where she was free to conduct her genetic research without limitations.

That’s the rough lore snapshot, but if you’ve completed missed out on all of the Moira gossip that’s been taking place over the last few weeks, here are a couple of videos that were put out by Blizzard to announce the character.

First up we’ve got the Origins Story trailer, then we’ve followed that up with the gameplay preview.

As we gain more experience with Moira on the live servers, we’ll be expanding on this guide considerably. Stay tuned for another update in the very near future!