Following a massive uproar in the community, the Overwatch developers have pulled back the experimental changes from earlier this week. The slight nerfs to Genji still went through to the live server, but the Moira Fade and Orb changes have been taken back to the drawing board.
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Secondary Fire
These changes should tone down the prominence of Genji in the current meta. These changes roll back some previous buffs which have been exacerbated by the recent Secondary Fire spread decreases. In sum this made his Ultimate Ability of Dragonblade charge extremely fast, and that increased uptime made the character oppressive especially at higher levels. These slight nerfs should bring that down a bit to a more reasonable spot.
Also in the changes was a bug fix with the door animations on Watchpoint: Gibraltar and Route 66. This bug made it appear that the doors instantly opened when the payload reached the checkpoint, then immediately closed and the standard animation played. While not really influential to gameplay, this was even seen in some of the Overwatch League Broadcasts this past weekend.
The Moira changes that did not make it through were the reworks to the Fade and Damage Orb. On the Experimental Card, her fade cast an Area of Effect upon its exit which cleansed allies and made them intangible for one second. There was multitudinous community responses to this, noting its ability to negate impactful abilities and ultimates. Using this at the right time could let teams escape a Graviton Surge or avoid an Earthshatter entirely. While this would make Moira more engaging to play, having it on a six-second cooldown is too fast for what it allows teams to do.
Her other change which did not go through was an alteration to her Damage Orb. They decreased the radius the orb impacts and had damage scale in accordance to distance from the center. This maxed out at 150 damage per second within one meter. While this does make the Orb require more skill to aim and get value, it did not achieve the results the developers were hoping. Many felt it was not fun to play against, and it also did not feel dynamic or skillful.
They noted in the closing Experimental notes on the forum that they will be internally testing new changes to these abilities in the coming weeks. Expect to see more changes coming to Moira in the future, and TGH will stay updated with all the latest Overwatch news.
Featured image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.
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