Overwatch concept artwork for Genji

[Update #2]: Overwatch devs are working on two experimental updates, the first of which bring some Genji nerfs.

[Update]: The Genji buffs have now gone live alongside a 'priority requeue' system for canceled games!

Overwatch's most recent experimental update has brought in some rather nice buffs for Genji, all aimed at decreasing his reliance on Dragonblade and making him more of a consistent duelist. They've done this by increasing the damage of his primary fire, decreasing the spread of his secondary fire, and perhaps most importantly of all, giving him the ability to cancel deflect at will. Needless to say, these changes were received quite positively and will be making their way into the game alongside the next update.

On the other hand, the update has also added some rather strange tweaks for Moira. It reduced the damage of her primary fire by 10, while increasing the amount of healing she dishes out by 5. And for a hero that already struggles with having an identity besides being a heal-bot, this in my eyes was definitely a step in the wrong direction. Thankfully, it would appear that Blizzard agrees as their recent comments have confirmed that these changes will be getting reverted.

"We’ve been having a lot of internal discussion and playtesting to find the right place for Moira," reads the brief update. "Moira’s damage is especially powerful because it heals her and is fairly easy to use. In this test, we were looking for ways to decrease Moira’s damage while maintaining her overall power level by increasing her healing per second on Primary Fire."

"From the start we were pretty hesitant about these changes, but we wanted to give players a chance to play and provide opinions as well – that’s the beauty of Experimental Card! We’re glad we did the experiment, but we feel that this test still doesn’t hit our goals for Moira overall. We’ll be reverting these changes for now, but will continue iterating on changes for Moira - so you may see more experiments for her in the near future."

Overwatch screenshot of Moira and her orbs

What I personally believe Moira needs is far more complexity, and not just in terms of aiming like some people are suggesting. She can remain a fairly easy hero to play in terms of mechanics, but there needs to be a certain amount of 'risk vs reward gameplay' to her skills in order to let the really good Moiras separate themselves from the really bad ones. Right now there's very little she needs to think about, and that makes her kinda boring of a hero, so spicing up her abilities and nerfing the healing output could be a solid direction to take her in.

As for what exactly Blizzard will do, that we'll just have to wait and see. I'll make sure to let you know once the update goes live, but until then you can read a little bit more about Blizzard's reasoning behind the changes over at the Overwatch forums.