Overwatch update gives Orisa and Moira new passive abilities in Workshop
Blizzard Entertainment[jwplayer p9g5um21]A new Overwatch update on July 14 did a bit more than give players the option to turn heroes into gigantic freaks of nature – it also let Workshop gurus add their own passive abilities, and the results are awesome.
Passive abilities are unique in that they just “happen” and are largely out of the players’ control for if they kick in or not.
For instance, Mercy has a passive where she will automatically regenerate health and Junkrat will always drop grenades when he dies as part of Total Mayhem.
Others like Hanzo and Genji’s wall climb passives kick in when players hold the jump button by a wall. However, there’s no way to change these from being activated.
Blizzard EntertainmentWith that said, not all heroes have passives, such as Moira and Orisa – until now. Thanks to some new Workshop mode options, players were able to add their own unique touch on the characters.
In a post on the Competitive Overwatch subreddit, user samasaurus6 shared their work on designing abilities for the tank and support heroes. With Orisa, they decided to implement a speed buff called “Gallop.”
“After not firing or using any ability or ultimate for 3 seconds, Orisa begins to gallop with a 25% movement speed increase,” they explained in the comments.
Many players have found it weird for Orisa, a tank with four legs to move so slowly, so this change seems to finally make use of those extra appendages.
However, this doesn’t mean that the change would be good for the game as the user further detailed. “I’m not necessarily saying this is a good idea, but I wanted something to ‘problem-solve’ in the workshop!”
Meanwhile, with Moira, they added a passive called “Life Reserves” which allows the support to dip into her own HP pool to heal a teammate in the event the player is out of resources.
“I gave Moira a passive that I always wanted to make: If her resource meter is empty, holding primary fire will allow her to continue healing at the cost of her HP,” they said. “Originally I had it so Moira could actually do enough damage to herself to kill herself, but although funny, probably wouldn’t be a great user experience.”
It will be interesting to see if Blizzard ever decides to actually implement these passives in the actual game and with Overwatch 2 in development it’s possible that multiple heroes could be getting significant changes.