OverwatchOverwatch Moira Guide and Overview

Widely considered to be the easiest hero in OW, Moira’s skill expression lies in resource management and decision making, as opposed to mechanical prowess. Biotic Grasp’s target tracking beam makes for an excellent choice for players who struggle with accurate aim tracking. Compared to all other non-tank heroes, Moira has the highest amount of self-sustain, which enables players to be self-reliant when teamwork is lacking.

The ability to have the highest damage, highest healing and most eliminations in every game often draws players to Moira. Instead of being built around utility abilities, her kit is focused on maxing out stats and raw healing/damage output. Moira doesn’t have any easily exploitable weaknesses, which makes her difficult to counterpick if a team has a Moira player dominating the match.

TLDR

Play As

• Prioritize healing resource management by consistantly finding opportunites to deal damage before critical teamfight moments.
• Use Fade reactively to escape crowd control abilities and enemy attacks. Reposition to a safer position where the enemy can't easily chase you.
• Throw Biotic Orbs with intention. Damage orbs are good for pressuring squishy targets during fights, but only use them when you have plenty of healing resources available.

Play Against

• Track her Fade cooldown and pressure her aggressively once it has been used, as she is highly vulnerable without mobility.
• Avoid giving her free resource generation by minimizing unnecessary poke damage and positioning outside of her Biotic Grasp range.
• Focus her during Coalescence with burst damage or crowd control, she'll either be forced to Fade away, or be vulnerable to elimination during the ult.

Strengths

Self-Reliant

Technically there are three ways for Moira to heal herself: Biotic Grasp damage, Biotic healing orb, and the Support heal passive.

Specifically for Moira, the heal passive becomes incredibly useful given that she can escape almost any encounter with Fade, and let the passive heal her up.

(After not taking damage for 2.5 seconds, heal 22.5 HP/sec)

Never need to rely on her other Support for healing.

When being attacked, Moira can easily disengage with Fade instead of needing to call for help.

Flexibility and Mobility

Fade's short cooldown gives Moira the opportunity to quickly approach a target either alone or with an ally, then just 6 seconds later, escape to safety.

Close range AoE healing of Biotic Grasp makes Moira great at playing behind her team and healing everyone together. Biotic Orb's infinite range allows her to provide support from any distance to teammates far away.

Also really strong in 1v1 duels. Moira basically never misses damage with Biotic Grasp’s auto tracking, simultaneously deals 60 Dmg and 24 HP of self-healing every second, and can output a burst of either damage or healing from Biotic Orb based on the situation.

Insanely high damage, healing, and elims

Very often you will see a Moira player have every top stat in a game. Biotic Orb is best used immediately off cooldown which has Moira sending out AoE damage or healing every 8 seconds!

A damage orb is also a great tool for confirming elims on low targets,

AoE heal and lingering heal over time of primary fire make Moira unmatched in healing numbers on a team that plays closely grouped up.

Weaknesses

Lacks any Utility Abilities

Other Supports have highly impactful utility abilities such as Protection Suzu, Anti-Nade, and Immortality Field. Compared to these abilities, Moira can only provide a moderate but consistent amount of help to her team at any given time whereas other Supports have single buttons that can save an entire team fight and game.

Predictability

Moira’s Fade use can become predictable to enemies, and when they catch her without Fade, she’s an easy pick.

Low DPS

While her total damage output is great, Moira can't critical hit and has no way to instantly apply huge damage to an enemy. If Moira’s target is being healed by an enemy Support, they often heal through any damage she can do.

Biotic Grasp

Tips for Biotic Grasp

• Spray Biotic Grasp healing onto allies and allow the lingering 3 seconds of healing over time to top them off instead of wasting Biotic Energy healing them to full HP.
• Position aggressively enough that you can constantly alternate between dealing damage and healing with Biotic Grasp. Maintaining this rhythm gives you near-endless resource uptime.
• A simple cycle to follow:
• • Spray heal → hold damage beam → spray heal → hold damage beam → repeat.
• Advanced tip: Healing spray is technically a slow-traveling projectile that has an on-hit healing and a healing over time. If you are walking toward your ally while healing them, you will effectively heal faster than the standard limit. Conversely, if you are walking away from your ally while healing, you will heal for less than normal due to the projectile travel time.

Biotic Orb

Tips for Biotic Orb

• Because Biotic Orb provides up to 300 HP of healing but only 200 total damage, Heal Orb generally generates more ultimate charge than Damage Orb.
• Use Damage Orb only when no allies require healing or when confirming eliminations on low-health targets.
• Use Heal Orb when you are low on Biotic Energy or when your team is grouped and actively taking damage.

Fade

Tips for Fade

• Take full advantage of Fade’s 6-second cooldown. Moira has excellent mobility, so you should constantly reposition to optimal angles and cover.
• Jumping at the end of Fade carries your momentum and increases travel distance.
• “Fade jumping” off a slanted surface allows Moira to gain significant vertical height, granting access to most high-ground areas.
• • To execute a Fade jump:
  • Activate Fade while moving into a slanted object, then press jump just as Fade ends. When performed correctly, Moira launches upward while still invisible.
• In general, avoid engaging alone by using Fade offensively. Instead, position without using Fade whenever possible so it remains available as an immediate escape tool.

Coalescence

Tips for Coalescence

• Contrary to what would seem to be popular belief, Coalescence only increases Moira’s damage from 65 to 85 damage per second. On its own, it is not an efficient killing tool. It would take nearly half of the ult’s duration to eliminate a standard 250 HP hero, assuming they receive no healing for over 3 seconds.
• Save Fade during Coalescence whenever possible, as enemies will often focus crowd control abilities on you while you are channeling.
• To maximize value, position your beam so it passes through as many allies and enemies as possible, simultaneously amplifying healing output and damage pressure.

Minor Perks

Destruction's Divide

• Good for optimizing her Ult’s purpose. Especially if you like to dive in and use Coalescence offensively. 

Ethical Nourishment

• Amazing for giving Moira burst healing. Much more consistent value than Destruction’s Divide.

Major Perks

Reversal

• Gives you control over orbs. Use this to keep enemies attached and damage, or give your allies healing for longer.

Phantom Step

• Good mobility. Best against dive comps to give you better escapes. 
• Also enables more aggressive dive playtsyle for yourself since you have better access to high ground areas.

Best maps

Lijiang Tower

• Control mode in general tends to have good maps for Moira since her AoE healing benefits from most of the team being on the objective. The Control point on Night Market in particular is the perfect Biotic Orb bouncing cage. The entire point is surrounded by the square walls where Moira’s damage and healing orbs can stay trapped in, maximizing their output.

Eichenwalde

• The majority of fighting on Eichenwalde usually occurs at one of the 4 main choke points. Every one of these choke points are great for Moira as she can choose to send a healing orb sideways into her team to bounce back to them off a wall or have a straight shot through the enemy team for a damage orb.

New Junk City

• Flashpoint maps favor horizontal mobility and mid-range combat. Moira is the queen of both of these. Every objective point has cover to play around that puts Moira in range for Biotic Grasp’s damage beam. The map layout also pairs well with offensive Biotic Orbs. Enemy backlines usually position around a wall behind the objective point where you can Fade in aggressively for the elimination.

Worst Maps

Watchpoint Gibraltar

• The high ground in Watchpoint Gibraltar is too high for Moira. There are a few fade jump spots for those with the skill and knowledge, but defenders on high ground are difficult for Moira to damage. On defense herself, the high ground also puts her out of range to attack most of the enemy team. Coalescence is also not particularly good on any of the three objective points.

Paraiso

• Attacking or defending the first point with Moira can be very difficult. You’ll often find that on Paraiso, it feels like you have to healbot your team and hope they get picks before getting eliminated. Breaking through each point on this map is much easier when playing one of the more utility-based supports. 

Havana

• Havana’s line of sights are way too long for Moira. She struggles to manage healing resources because her team will be taking way more poke damage if they have long-range support instead of Moira, and she won’t be able to find enough targets for Biotic Grasp. Fade’s movement is also too short to get across the wide open areas between cover. There are

The best team comps to play Moira in like to be grouped together as often as possible. This allows Moira to maximize healing output and farm her ult extremely quickly. The team also benefits from constantly receiving healing. On the other hand, Moira’s flexible kit also enables her to do well with dive comps since she can follow up on their aggression or survive on her own when the rest of the team spreads out.

Example of a team comp built around Moira:

• Zarya, Cassidy, Junkrat, Moira, Lucio

Individual synergies with other heroes

Zarya

• Zarya and Moira both play off of each other really well. Zarya team comps also tend to be grouped into rush or deathball styles. Both heroes also have similar range with their damage beams. Zarya Projected Barrier enables Moira to make aggressive plays and makes an offensive Coalescence very difficult to shut down.

Cassidy

• Cassidy’s larger HP pool means he can play up front with his tank. This puts him in the ideal position to receive healing from Moira. When Cassidy gets an enemy low who retreats behind cover, a damage orb is an excellent way to finish off the elimination.

Lúcio

• Due to Moira teams wanting to stay grouped together, Lucio’s speed boost is the secret ingredient to ensure you can move the entire team where they need to be. Moira’s high healing output allows Lucio to stay on speed boost more often and not have to worry about needing to use Amp it Up for healing.

When playing against a Moira, you want to take advantage of her lack of utility. This means making riskier, more aggressive plays. Moira is the strongest when team fights are slow and long because she provides massive amounts of sustain over a long period of time but she's unable to save her team from sudden bursts of damage. Tracking fade is the best way to shut down a Moira who keeps going for aggressive plays herself. If you’re using comms with your team, quickly calling out “No fade,” and pinging where the Moira went is a good way to signal when Moira can be killed.

When both teams have Moira, whichever one can out-stat the other typically wins. Moira diff, really just comes down to who can stay alive, deal more damage, and provide more healing. If two Moiras end up in a 1v1 situation, healing orb beats damage orb because of the 100 HP value difference and Moira’s slow damage per second.

Specific Hero Counters

D.Va

• The mech flying Pro Gamer is the hardest counter to Moira. Defense Matrix easily eats every damage orb sent to her team, and D.Va can also fly in, eat heal orbs, and fly out. Booster’s cooldown is even shorter than Fade, making D.Va one of the best Moira killers around.

Tracer

• Tracer's horizontal mobility far outclasses Moira’s. Three blinks can easily chase down Moira, no matter where she Fades to, and recall, let's Tracer get out after confirming the kill. At close range, Tracer melts Moira way faster than her Biotic Orb can heal her. Although Biotic Grasp makes damaging Tracer easy, Moira has no way to shut down Tracer or deal with Tracer harassing her allies.

Ana

• Anti-Nade is basically a death sentence against any ally that Moira is trying to keep alive. Moira has zero counterplay to Anti-Nade. Furthermore, you may be surprised at how often Ana players hit sleeps on an ulting Moira. Sleep Dart also makes it extremely dangerous for Moira to go in deep.