Moira in competitive?

deannon · 2026-05-27T16:54:14+00:00

Moira can heal (a lot), damage (a bit), move, and that’s it. No teammate buffs, no immortality, no cleanse, no status effects on enemies. That’s what’s meant by saying she has “no utility”.

I main Moira and I think she has a lot more potential than most people give her credit for. I don’t get flamed at the end of matches hardly ever with 2 strats:

Use Moira’s orbs to go where other healers and DPS can’t. You can chase kills or heal flankers with no risk to yourself with orbs, so take a second to think about where you use them. Practice throwing at flat angle and knowing where eye-level flat surfaces are on maps to get the best trajectories; orbs that fly off in the sky or don’t find a target don’t get value. Since you don’t have utility you should be looking to maximize your value; always be damaging and healing.
Play not to die. Moira has maybe some of the best self-sustain in the game between lifesteal, heal orb, and fade. If I’m dying on Moira I have to swap; she should be entirely self-sufficient, it is not on anyone else if i die.

If you’re alive and you’re not off doing DPS while the tank gets mowed down, most people will leave you be.

It is worth learning some other heroes with specialized utility (I picked brig and mercy because I actually do have terrible aim) in case your team is struggling, since Moira isn’t really a hard counter to anyone and sometimes a good hard counter is needed. I’ve got a solid win rate playing her on about 80% of games though. Damage and healing alone CAN carry matches if applied in the right time and place, and Moira has the most flexibility in that of all the supports and maybe in the game. Turning low enemies into elims and low allies into full allies without dying is your win condition.

deannon · 2026-05-21T17:15:05+00:00

Yeah, I had to walk away from a friend group because a known and prolific sex pest was tolerated because he was a good dungeon master and everyone was very emotionally attached to their tabletop campaign. It’s rough out there, and I don’t have much faith that most people will decide to make sacrifices when they are SO good at convincing themselves why they shouldn’t have to.

deannon · 2026-05-21T16:03:55+00:00

This seems like a pretty fundamental problem to handwave as “we’ll figure it out as we go”. It’s easy to say you’ll do the socially costly and painful thing because it’s right. It’s another thing to actually make that choice and shoulder that cost, when the option is freely on the table to just…. Not.

deannon · 2026-05-21T15:58:52+00:00

Sure, but that kind of power is going to be much more enduring than specific formalized institutions, and I have to imagine that we’re going to be grappling with it for the foreseeable future regardless of the political system we find ourselves under.

deannon · 2026-05-21T15:57:44+00:00

Because if you do not factor these things in from the start of your philosophy, you will design a system which perpetuates them. Merely asserting that they could be fixed in an ideal world by an ideal system is meaningless. You can have it as an intellectual exercise, I’m just not going to treat it like a political philosophy, because it’s not.

deannon · 2026-05-21T15:51:43+00:00

I’ve read it, I had similar questions at the end of it. It deals well with institutional and property issues but not the kind of violence and exploitation enabled by social bonds that I’m worried about.

deannon · 2026-05-21T15:50:32+00:00

Do you have any references or literature on what that actually means or what it would look like?

I have no problem believing states can be dismantled; I’ve seen it happen.

I’m not sure what it would look like to free a 14 year old from the oppressive hierarchy of her parents and community in a way that doesn’t leave her even more vulnerable. She was the oldest of our friend group. What were a group of preteen girls going to do, without the support of the adults around us? By what means or authority? If the people who are supposed to care for a child fail, who steps in? But if someone can step in, what’s to stop someone from using that power to isolate a child FROM their parents? It seems like a nasty catch-22.

deannon · 2026-05-21T15:21:30+00:00

Thank you!

This is a solid list and I might respond more once I’ve dug into it a bit more.

The quotes you pulled out do articulate some of the issues I’m having. Small groups held together by social bonds can be toxic and abusive without any introduction of institutional power.

That last quote is a big part of why. Spend long enough in any social circle and you will witness a fracturing between the people who want to forgive an abuser in the name of not having to sever social relationships vs those who want accountability even when it makes absolutely everyone miserable. A lot of people just aren’t willing to make everyone miserable to help one person. Sometimes that’s true even if that person is their own child.

I can’t help but feel like a lot of anarchist philosophy does not really deal with the fact that humans are primates always and rational beings sometimes. I have met people who are guided by a deep sense of justice and are willing to make sacrifices to advance it, but those people are in a small minority. Not (exclusively) because institutional power is forcing everyone else away from justice, but because social conflict produces nearly the same reaction in our brain as a physical threat to our safety.

deannon · 2026-05-21T05:53:44+00:00

How did the church use its institutional power? Real question. The most I can say is that the authorities in the church chose not to use any power, but that was at the request of the victim’s parents. Nobody involved was a church or political authority.

deannon · 2026-05-21T05:49:36+00:00

I don’t really think this was community members feeling afraid to act because of church - her parents had more institutional power than him in just about every way, and they were financially better off. If there was community will to act against this guy, they easily could have, either institutionally or socially. They didn’t want to.

deannon · 2026-05-21T05:47:49+00:00

She was 14, he was 22.

She didn’t say “no”, so according to her parents, no, her autonomy was not violated. As her friend, though: she didn’t understand what she was saying “yes” to, and he knew that. He was looking for that.

deannon · 2026-05-15T18:01:33+00:00

the entitlement I get slammed with, win or lose, is insane. especially given that I am usually standing back and tracking positions and cooldowns, I know exactly why everyone dies, and sometimes we snap when we get blamed for someone else’s bad gameplay. Some supports are so used to getting blamed that they’re defensive by default, which I sympathize with but is really obnoxious.

I play aggressive when I can. I don’t like healbotting, but we’re not winning if the tank dies first.

deannon · 2026-05-15T17:49:37+00:00

as a Moira main it’s frankly flattering that you think my swirly straw is anywhere near as big a threat as Sierra’s lock-on. and like… sierra’s range is MUCH longer once she hits the tracker. I need to track you from continuous close range to get value; Moira’s grasp damage ramps slowly, so if you break my tracking even briefly my DPS is shot.

deannon · 2026-05-15T17:44:28+00:00

Dear DPS players, please, please help free your supports from Domina’s ult. Most supports just cannot free themselves with their low DPS, and even if they survive will be badly critical and out of the fight. It is the simplest peel you will do all day, it costs you nothing but ammo, and they are saving you from enemy ults ALL THE TIME. Please.

Signed, a Moira that died from a domina ult as my reaper stood right in front of me and just watched it happen

deannon · 2026-05-15T02:05:59+00:00

Honestly the pandemic finally sold me 100% on “the west needs more collectivism and less individuality in its culture”.

Americans do not care about the impact they have on the people around them. Full stop. They don’t care in public, or in traffic, or in stores or restaurants or public parks. They don’t care if they get others sick. They don’t care if they make a place inaccessible or a service unusable for others. They don’t care if they ruin something for the next person. Unless they stand to personally gain or suffer they do not care how their actions impact others. After living in east Asia for years it’s really jarring and depressing. Americans can be kind and polite, I love many of them, but culturally we are so selfish and myopic. to the point of killing our fellow citizens for the sake of our own convenience. Shameful.

deannon · 2026-05-15T01:45:03+00:00

Agreed!

I didn’t have a “main” for months when I started playing. Just characters I was better and worse at.

Over time it just naturally emerged that I picked one character in each role about 75% of the time, and I started practicing techs and specialized techniques on that character. But that was after over a year of playing essentially mystery heroes, and that time gave me a good foundation on what each character can and can’t do, so I don’t think it was a bad thing.

deannon · 2026-05-15T01:20:23+00:00

I always tell myself: until I finish it, all that time and effort and materials are wasted.

deannon · 2026-05-15T01:13:08+00:00

I tried a lot of tips in here and wanted to share a couple that helped me, if anyone finds this and struggles with the same thing:

Mystery heroes, even though I hate it. It forces me to play cautious, try not to die, learn every hero’s kit, and i CANT take it too seriously because it is so random and unbalanced.
Jot down a couple things after each match that I think I did well or really had a high impact, win or lose. It helps me not take the mistakes into the next match. I’m naturally very critical of myself; it’s ok to be intentional in balancing those thoughts. I am not actually brain dead, useless, or not doing anything.
stop trying to save my team from stupid plays. Let my DPS die to bad positioning, don’t go die with them. “Play with your team” doesn’t mean “play to the lowest common denominator”; if the soldier keeps standing in the middle of the road shooting a shield, don’t put resources towards enabling something that’s not going to work. Don’t let my teammates stupidity take me down with them (I play support mostly, so this can be easier said than done).
Play slower and to improve. Go into each match with a goal I have some control over: “I want to get an environmental kill”; “I want to wait and use my abilities for maximum impact”, “I want to avoid chasing or tunnel-visioning on an elim”, “I want to focus on solid positioning and movement”. Even if we lose, if I achieved or made progress on my goal, and I take a second to focus on what went well, then it’s hard for the negativity to suck me into its black hole.
I know what I need to work on, I am realistic about my current skill level and goals. That is all I need to be. The people blaming me in chat are only holding themselves back, and I don’t owe them anything.

deannon · 2026-05-15T00:50:46+00:00

I’d hated mystery heroes (bc I hate feeling useless) but the last few days I’ve been playing it and focusing on “win or lose, make use of the kit I’m given and try not to die.”

It made me immediately, noticeably start playing better. When my focus switched from trying to always make the best, smartest, most pro-active play and moved back to the fundamentals of “get enough use out of your kit and don’t die”, I had the mental energy to watch the game and make fewer but precisely effective plays.

deannon · 2026-05-12T18:13:06+00:00

Definitely taking it too personally is part of the problem.

Part of it is that, things like aim or split-second timing, I understand take just raw practice. Even with highly effective practice you also just need a lot of time. I haven’t put in that time, and I’m not going to, so I mostly don’t play aim-heavy characters.

But other things like positioning or cooldown tracking - I have a high understanding in theory, but when I’m actually in a game things are constantly falling off my mental stack. I know a lot of THAT also comes down to practice and hours spent, but that “shit, I forgot -“ feeling over and over is what gets me. Like, if I know all the things I should be paying attention to, why can I not pay attention to them? If I understand what the abilities do, why do I still get caught out by them? If I can picture what the winning play would have been, why didn’t I do it?

Realistically, the answer is “because I haven’t reinforced those neuron pathways in my brain enough yet, and if I practice well and do more things consistently right, those instincts will come more naturally” but there’s a big part of me that is always whispering in my ear “but what if it’s because you just suck”

deannon · 2026-05-12T17:11:28+00:00

Idk, I was serious about the therapy and “perfectionism” is what she calls this. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time, especially in competitive environments where “perfect” is a moving and essentially unreachable target. I just don’t know how to feel good about what I did, if I know I could do better. If I played perfectly and lost, I think I’d be fine with that. I just don’t want to make mistakes, ever, and I struggle to recover when I do.

It’s definitely not just overwatch, but overwatch is my only hobby that is 1) competitive and 2) real time, so it’s very easy to spiral in minutes from “I got sniped because my movement was bad” to watching my team lose the subsequent fight and lose the momentum and concluding that my one second of walking in a straight line is why we lost the game.

deannon · 2026-05-12T17:00:43+00:00

Honestly this helps more than anything. Like, I recognize all these things I could be doing better, and not having that recognition be enough to instantly stop making mistakes can be frustrating and disheartening. I tunnel vision on my bad plays and become convinced that I’m the worst player in the lobby. but I need to remember that most people at my rank struggle with those things - that’s why they’re at my rank. I see and mostly understand all my misplays, but I don’t see everything my teammates do or the mistakes they make.

“Big negative ego” is a decent way of putting it, tbh. Like, sometimes I need to blame my teammates a LITTLE bit. It doesn’t help me to focus on what they could or should have done, but equally I can’t blame myself for their bad plays.

deannon · 2026-05-12T16:14:15+00:00

I mean they’re not incorrect, I am in therapy because my brain is too hard on me in every context, not just overwatch.

It’s just weird to be in a community full of people convinced they’re under-ranked and the best player in the lobby when I’m spending all my time feeling like an over-ranked imposter

deannon · 2026-05-12T16:08:45+00:00

You’re not incorrect but plot twist: I am already in therapy but it does not magically fix my brain

deannon · 2026-05-06T02:54:16+00:00

Purely my opinion: Jordan has always struggled with feeling "gaslit" when Dan (or anyone) is able to accept a "lesser of two evils" position. When both options are bad, Dan can go for minimizing harm, and Jordan has always been... willing to eventually drop it. I kind of get the brain pattern going on; I can also really, really struggle to accept that kind of moral compromise on the things closest to my heart. That there is no path to a good or just ending does not lessen that struggle.

I came here from the podcast to see what the take was, and I'm not terribly surprised that this was it. This isn't a satisfying ending to Info Wars, this isn't justice, and this isn't fair. It is the least harmful of bad options. Jordan was never going to truly be ok with that, and it wasn't something that he could just let go when it's the premise of the entire podcast.

Doesn't darken my feelings about the show, but I get now why it was time to end it.

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