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“There was a brief iteration where players could activate it by holding down primary and secondary fire simultaneously, but the key binding added a level of clunkiness to her kit. “We tried binding Pain Converter to the reload key, but this felt awkward since Moira wasn’t reloading a weapon,” Kwok explains. Lastly, Moira already has a complete kit, and we struggled to find room where we could add another ability. The ability also felt too situational because you got the most value from using it on the tank and not on teammates getting dove or flanked. This iteration didn’t stick because of a few issues: Pain Converter felt like other existing abilities, like Baptiste’s Immortality Field, that prevent teammates from dying. Pain Converter would cancel some of the damage an ally received while simultaneously allowing her to heal allies with Biotic Grasp, massively increasing her target’s survivability. This ability was a damage reduction that, when cast on allies, would enable Moira to convert the damage she mitigated to fill up her healing bar. One of the first changes the team thought to make was referred to as Pain Converter. If the ability makes it through that final test, it’s ready to share with the players.Īll the following iterations to Moira’s abilities are still in the early stages of the iteration process, meaning they haven’t been tested outside the Hero Balance and Design team. After the ability comes to life and gets polished, it goes into a wider internal test where anyone on Team 4 and extended support teams can play and share their thoughts. When an idea passes through an initial round of internal tests, it gets shared with leaders across the entire Overwatch team to turn this idea into an ability. Some of these ideas make it into an internal playtest, while others send the team back to the drawing board. New ideas are shared with the entire Hero Balance and Design Team, and they collaborate and iterate on these concepts to see what works best. The design process is multi-faceted and sometimes spontaneous. We have two goals for Moira’s kit: we wanted to give her more utility and the power to make game-changing plays.

Hero Balance and Design Iteration Process To improve the feel of her gameplay, we’re iterating on fresh changes that will give her kit more depth as we navigate toward this goal, we’re here to give you an inside look at how we ideate and iterate on hero design.

However, we believe she lacks the play-making ability and utility possessed by other supports on the roster. She’s an effective support-sometimes too effective in certain metas like GOATS.

#OVERWATCH HEROES HOW TO#

Led by Associate Hero Designer Alex Kwok, the Hero Balance and Design Team is looking at how to best update Moira’s kit for Overwatch 2. We’ve been cooking up some new ideas for Moira, and we’re considering how she will perform as we step into the future of the game. 'The true struggle is for the superiority of ideas.' Here’s a hint to one of the heroes we’ve been working on so far: The Overwatch team has been ideating and experimenting with a handful of heroes since the PvP Beta wrapped up.

Overwatch heroes