The newest hero for developer Blizzard’s hit FPS Overwatch is now available for everyone to enjoy. Named Moira, this support hero is capable of both leeching life from foes and restoring health to her team. She also has impressive mobility and Moira’s ultimate is capable of both healing and damaging foes at the same time. Moira is an extremely flexible and can work with a lot of different team compositions. However, she is also quite tricky to play given users will need to synergize her abilities to be truly effective on the battlefield.
Here are five tips to get you started on mastering Overwatch’s latest hero Moira:
1. Know Your Counters
One of the most important aspects of Overwatch is knowing who a character counters and which heroes your character has an advantage over. Moira’s damage output is not fantastic so anyone who has a self-healing ability like Bastion or Soldier: 76 can heal through her damage. Other characters like Pharah are quite potent against her if they are joined by a Mercy since that’s also nearly impossible for her to damage through. D.Va can also prove problematic since her Defense Matrix can eat Moira’s Biotic Orbs.
Where Moira is strongest is against flankers like Genji, Tracer, and Sombra. Her beam makes it easy to track and damage them, while her Fade allows Moira to chase down these heroes when they inevitably try to escape. Moira is also powerful against tanks like Reinhardt and Orisa since both her Biotic Orbs and Ultimate pierce barriers.
2. Geography is Key
One of, if not the most important aspect of mastering Moira is understanding how to use a level’s geography to your advantage. Since her Biotic Orb can bounce against walls indefinitely, a smart player can utilize a level’s geography to output a ton of damage. Moira is incredibly potent in closed spaces where her opponent’s movement abilities are limited. Before engaging make sure to always fire a damaging Biotic Orb towards your foes. Remember these can pierce barriers so it’s a great way to engage targets hiding by a Reinhardt or Orisa shield.
When actually firing a Biotic Orb try to not just launch it in a straight line. Instead, try to bounce the Biotic Orb between walls to maximize your damage. An orb traveling in a straight line will always go faster than one ricocheting, so try to bounce this energy ball whenever possible. For healing orbs, firing them at the ground directly in front of you will add some additional hang time to leech some life from this ability. The healing orb slows depending on how many players it’s affecting, so try to use it only when there is more than one person who needs help. However, we only recommend using the Biotic Orb to heal yourself when it’s absolutely necessary.
3. Manage Your Resources
Unlike other Support characters in Overwatch, Moira actually has a resource meter that manages her healing output. This can be seen in the bottom right corner of your screen and it’s vital to manage this so you always have the ability to heal players. To fill this meter you’ll need to do damage via herBiotic Grasp or Biotic Orb, but thankfully it’s not a ton. Only just fire off the healing version of Biotic Grasp unless you can absolutely hit the person. Since your healing beam can pierce allies, try to always hit more than one person at a time to make the most out of this finite resource. When you are playing Moira always be conservative with your healing.
4. When to Use Fade
Fade is Moira’s movement ability that lets her vanish and quickly dash in any horizontal direction. She will be invulnerable for this period of time and there is no way to spot her until she reappears. This skill has a rather short cooldown so it’s okay to get aggressive when you are attacking. However, do not use Fade to engage in a fight, instead, use it to catch up to foes so you can finish them off. Make sure to use Fade after characters like D.Va, Genji, and Winston use their mobile abilities. This ensures they cannot escape and that you can secure the elimination for your team.
Defensively, Fade is a great way to disengage if a fight gets out of hand. In most team fights you’ll want to save this ability as a way to run in case your side appears to be losing. Try to make your movements erratic so it’s harder for your foes to predict where your endpoint will be. Also, if possible try to break line of sight when using Fade so it becomes harder to track an escaping Moira down.
5. Coalescence Is Not a DPS Ultimate
A common mistake we typically see new Moira players make is trying to use Coalescence as a way to damage their enemies first. While the beam does penetrate all targets, the actual damage output is nothing spectacular. Instead, players should always focus on healing with this beam and then damage enemies that have lower health pools. It’s really hard to die when Moira is using Coalescence on them, so it’s a perfect ultimate for pushing objective. This ultimate also pierces barriers so using this beam to force Reinhardt’s away from chokepoints is a great way to initiate a fight.
Coalescence is both as support ultimate and one to help initiate team fights. Try to always stay behind the team when using it to maximize the healing and damage output. Moving the beam in a sweeping motion back and forth can also act as a nice way to zone enemies in a fight. Just focusing on killing enemies is a complete waste of Coalescence potential and power.
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