When the latest Public Test Realm update for Blizzard’s Overwatch went live, players were happy to explore Blizzard World for the first time. However, as more players tried out Moira, the most recent Support hero, they realized that she was “nerfed” in a way.
Moira’s Biotic Grasp servers two functions – healing and draining energy from foes – but the latter seemingly required much more precise aiming than before. At times, it had to be downright perfect. No slightly grazing the target or anything like that. As per Blizzard’s lead engineer Tim Ford on the official forums, this is a case of a new system that’s not working properly instead of a nerf.
“On the PTR, we made a number of improvements to the mechanism that Moira uses to select a target. Now players can more accurately select a target when multiple targets are in the field of view (which resolves issues like this), and the new system can better discern which target is closest to the player’s reticle when multiple targets are valid.
“When we made this change, we did our best to make the everything feel as close to her original system as possible, but since the new mechanism uses a different functionality, it didn’t convert perfectly for a number of heroes. Generally, the larger heroes are a little harder to target, while the smaller heroes are much closer to her original behavior. The training bots also need to be adjusted, as they are by far the worst offender in the new system.” So if you’ve been traumatized by how hard it is to target bots, then rest assured that they’re the worst case scenario rather than the norm.
Ford notes that the intention was to improve Moira’s targeting and that a new configuration will be available on the PTR later this week or early next week. “Thank you so much for surfacing the issue for us; these reports are incredibly useful for us when it comes to tracking down bugs,” said Ford.
As for Blizzard World, it won’t be hitting live servers until early 2018 so if you’re on Xbox One or PS4, it’ll be a long wait. PC players can simply download the PTR via the Battle.net launcher and try out Blizzard World today.
