We got hands on with Overwatch‘s new hero Moira at Blizzcon. Like many characters in Overwatch, you instantly feel how fun she is to control and within a few minutes you can see yourself having a lot of fun with her.
Naturally, it was everyone’s first chance to play as Moira, so we ended up with about ten Moiras in the game. It’s an odd spectacle, two teams of Moiras constantly draining each other and healing each other.
But eventually people got curious about how other heroes stack up against the new geneticist.
That was good to see, because it’s clear that Moira might need some protecting. A Reaper that gets right onto her is going to make some short work of her, as we saw in the play session. She can even have a hard time dealing with a Tracer one-on-one, as every time Tracer blinks resets the wind-up on Moira’s drain.
Moira is very fun to control. Her ricochet orb creates problems for teams bunching up behind shields/corners. But def counterable. #Blizzcon
— Jeremy Ray (@TheJunglist) November 4, 2017
She’s powerful, she has her counters.
It gets the most interesting when Moira comes into a setting with two established teams. As a hero swap, she has the potential to disrupt the norm. A team defending a corner or balcony, hiding behind its shields, will have to solve the problem of Moira when she’s picked.
In that sense, she could be a very good stalemate breaker. The change won’t be instant. The enemy team will still have a fair bit of time to react. But all of a sudden, those orbs are going to go through shields, and there’s a bit more sustain healing on the other side.
In the context of the wider meta, that’s exactly what Moira is doing. Coming into an established setting, and potentially disrupting everything. Could we see less reliance overall on clumping up behind shields in esports? That could make for a more exciting game. Time will tell.
