If you want to play a balanced support hero who can dish out pain while healing teammates, Moira is an all-around solid pick.
Despite having limited range and a relatively small health pool, Moira is an extremely versatile healer who will feel right at home in most team comps.
In this Overwatch Moira guide, we’ll be highlighting the best tips, tricks, and strategies for playing as the brilliant mad scientist.
If you would like more tips and tricks, check out our Overwatch Beginner’s Guide, where we dive into hero roles, team composition, and best practices for winning.
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Moira Abilities and Role Explained
Moira is a hybrid support DPS character with an interesting kit themed around duality, specifically giving and taking away life.
While she has a high skill ceiling, she’s quite squishy and, therefore, should remain behind the enemy team or, at the very least, avoid spending too much time in the frontline.
Moira is most effective on close-quarters maps with plenty of narrow hallways and rooms to maximize her healing/damage orbs.
Her high mobility, powerful heals, and reliable damage abilities make her a top-tier support hero, and below, we’ll show you how to use them all in battle.
How To Use Biotic Grasp
The first weapon in Moira’s kit is Biotic Grasp, which is comprised of a primary healing cone with a range of 15 meters and a secondary life-draining beam with a range of 20 meters.
While new players may be inclined to heal by hovering over their target, you can get a lot more value by healing in an arc and covering as many teammates as possible in a single burst.
Biotic Grasp has limited healing reserves that can only be replenished by waiting or dealing damage via her life-drain beam or damage orbs.
Therefore, you should be actively trying to get chip damage off enemies without exposing yourself or straying too far from your team.
How To Use Biotic Orb
Similar to Biotic Grasp, Moira’s Biotic Orb can be used for both healing and dealing damage depending on what your team needs at any given moment.
Orbs will ricochet off surfaces based on the angle they come in contact, and damage orbs, in particular, will slow down any enemies it touches.
The decision of whether to send out a healing or damage orb will vary based on your team’s needs, but in most cases, you’re better off using damage orbs to restore Moira’s healing meter more quickly.
With that said, a healing orb should be your last resort for keeping your team alive while your healing spray recharges or until the enemy gets within range of your life-drain beam.
How To Use Fade
Fade is Moira’s best mobility option for escaping dangerous situations and catching up to her teammates after respawning.
It operates on a six-second cooldown and provides a 250% speed buff while also rendering Moira invulnerable to damage for its duration.
One of the worst situations to be in as Moira is getting flanked or trapped by an enemy Ult while Fade is still on cooldown.
It’s recommended you try to use Fade as defensively as possible to minimize damage taken, escape enemy Ultimates, and close the gap between you and your allies.
How To Use Coalescence (Ultimate)
Moira’s Ultimate provides a long-range beam that heals allies (and herself) as well as damage enemies within 30 meters for a total of 8 seconds.
Like the rest of Moira’s kit, it’s most effective when used defensively to see your team through a big push by keeping them alive.
However, it can also be used to finish off enemies at less than half health, assuming they’re not being healed by enemy supports.
Try to position yourself so that both your team and the enemy are within your line of sight, allowing you to heal and deal damage simultaneously.
Moira Strengths
You’ll find that Moira is an exceedingly viable healer that can excel in just about any map, mode, or team makeup, namely Death Ball comps.
She thrives when accompanied by tanks that can take the enemy’s focus off her, giving her ample time to set-up shop and keep the team in the fight.
Moira also benefits from a secondary healer and certain DPS heroes who can compensate for her flaws; below, we’ve provided a list of the most relevant ones.
Which Heroes Combo Best With Moira?
- Reinhardt – Provides a shield for Moira to operate from behind and provide healing bursts.
- Lucio – Increases Moira’s mobility and provides additional heals.
- Brigitte – Can match Moira’s offensive capabilities and keep flankers at bay.
- Zarya – Protective barriers allow Moira to play more offensively.
- Reaper- Can use Moira’s heals to safely get close to enemies for a devastating attack.
Moira Weaknesses
Like all heroes, Moira has a handful of weaknesses that can be exploited by enemy players who know what they’re doing.
While her small health pool benefits from life drain, she’s still a squishy support hero who becomes exponentially more vulnerable while Fade is on cooldown.
Below, we’ve provided a detailed list of heroes with one or more advantages over Moira either during team fights or 1v1 matchups.
Which Heroes Does Moira Struggle Against?
- D.Va – Can destroy Moira’s damage orb by using Defense Matrix.
- Roadhog – Can easily hook and kill Moira while out-healing her life-drain beam.
- Pharah – Is often too far away for Moira to reach; can bait Moira into using Fade.
- Bastion – Is practically invulnerable to Moira’s attacks while in turret form.
- Ana – Can use her Biotic Grenade to lock Moira out of healing.
- McCree – Can stun Moira and deal significant damage before she can cast Fade.
- Hanzo – Can OHKO Moira from long-range using just his primary weapon.
General Tips for Playing Moira
If it wasn’t clear by now, Moira should be one of your go-to support heroes, especially at the competitive level due to her high skill ceiling.
However, if you find you’re always dying due to hard counters or teammates failing to protect you from flankers, consider switching off to Mercy, Ana, or another support depending on your team’s needs.
Below, you’ll find some more miscellaneous tips to help guide you along your way to becoming the kind of Moira player enemy teams run from.
- Moira can use Fade to escape certain Ults (Zarya’s Graviton Surge, Sigma’s Gravitic Flux, Mei’s Blizzard)
- Using Fade will cleanse Moira of both status and damage over time effects from enemy attacks.
- You can heal yourself much quicker by using life-drain on enemies and casting a healing orb in the direction you’re moving.
- Remember that healing allies provides more Ultimate charge than dealing damage as Moira, so your top priority should be healing.
- You have one of the fastest charging Ultimates in the game, so don’t be afraid to use Coalescence should your team need it.
