Blizzard has graced us with their 24th Hero for Overwatch, Orisa! While many have had time to explore her basic strengths and weaknesses, we at Gosugamers would like to take you through some deeper analysis. Let's get right to it!
If you haven't read Part One of this spotlight yet, you can find it here.
Strengths
Orisa synergizes very well with Reinhardt. She excels at defending chokes against a ground force. She is great for maps with environmental kill potential. Her damage spam is good for helping divers from a distance by providing a continuous stream of suppressing fire. Her Fortify has a high skill cap on timing and prediction to keep Orisa on the battlefield. The deployable barrier can create a nest or can provide a temporary bunker for Ana, Zenyatta, and other squishy teammates. In fact, the barrier is extremely useful for Widowmaker and Hanzo. She can be effective at handling defense heroes like Bastion and Torbjorn due to her barrier as well.
While Orisa’s primary weapon is not well suited to most 1v1 encounters, in a team environment her damage output is ridiculously good for finishing off enemies or getting them low for divers and flankers to finish. It also adds a considerable amount of shield pressure. Since her weapon is projectile based, it is good for spamming down narrow corridors and chokes long range to pressure large and/or slow targets and barriers. The constant fire also creates a feeling of nervousness for enemies. If you’re not behind cover, you’ll likely take some spam due to the high rate of fire and massive clip size. This makes Orisa good for putting forward pressure, as her mobile barrier allows her team to push up to it and create space. It’s a similar effect to having a Winston offtank that creates some forward pressure, but Orisa is simply ground based. For teams that do not have a strong dive composition, I believe Orisa will offer a different kind of forward pressure. While Reinhardt creates the main anchor for the team, Orisa can provide temporary anchors for the team to operate around.
Her secondary fire, Halt, adds a whole new dimension to the game since it can constantly reposition the enemy. Pulling Mercy out of a corner, pulling a fleeing enemy back into firing range, and so on - the utility is extreme. If anything will make Orisa a montage worthy champion, it will be this ability. Through playtesting, I’ve found that using this ability on cooldown results in a jarring experience for the other team. Using this on cooldown whenever appropriate is an absolute must to fully utilize Orisa. Halt also synergizes extremely well with Pharah rockets, Genji’s Swift Strike, and Reinhardt’s Firestrike. Do not underestimate its utility!
Pulling fleeing enemies back into fire range and finishing them was happening much more often than I expected, as you can see at the end of this Orisa vs Pharah engagement. You can pre-fire your primary and use the Halt to pull an enemy into the stream of bullets.
Orisa, like her origin story would have you believe, does well as a bodyguard. The deployable barrier and Fortify allow a squishy support like Zenyatta or Ana to use Orisa as a body shield. While Orisa herself probably can’t easily kill a talented Tracer or Genji, she can buy time for her supports to start firing back.
Essentially, Orisa is an archetypal offtank that provides a large amount of utility to the team. She excels at creating a type of bunker zone that the team can operate around for offensive pushes or defensive holds in linear engagements. However, this is a temporary bunker as the shield will not last long at high level play. This is why I believe she fits the role of offtank, and not necessarily Main Tank. Perhaps triple DPS and Orisa will become a thing: Orisa is a welcome addition due to her bunker ability to assist supports. The Supercharger would be a one ultimate team fight win tool with three DPS to power up as well.
Weaknesses
Unfortunately, her 900 HP barrier and Fortify aren’t enough to make her a viable replacement for Reinhardt in most cases. She’s too easy to kill as the Main Tank and requires a lot more healing focus. Reinhardt’s barrier is repositionable, quick to deploy, and has more than twice the hitpoints.
Orisa has 200 armor and 200 HP. She also isn't well equipped to handle divers and flankers. This is because she can only deploy her barrier in one direction and then has to wait out the 12 second cooldown. Her primary fire is not meant to easily deal with thin framed, mobile heroes like Genji and Tracer. While she doesn't have a difficult time with Winston alone due to his low damage output, Winston's Tesla cannon goes through Barriers and his accompanying flankers will overwhelm her. Her purpose as an anchor tank can be more severely negated by a dive composition than Reinhardt. Reinhardt still has the hammer swing, and can turn/re-deploy his barrier to block damage.
Orisa's main weakness is her survivability. Orisa doesn't handle divers very well and a good Pharah is an absolute menance to her. Time should reveal if she has any other glaring weaknesses, but thus far she seems well suited for an Offtank role. Orisa faces a difficult journey if she wants to fill the Main Tank shoes. Perhaps Zarya and Orisa will be strong enough as a pair, but I believe an enemy team with Reinhardt over Orisa will still have the advantage if they engage quickly. As professional teams undoubtedly have a high level of coordination, I believe Orisa will not be rampaging her way through the meta. I believe she can be shut down and countered with proper response by focusing her down. Simply rushing Orisa is usually enough to overwhelm her due to her burstable health pool, immovable barrier, and projectile primary fire.
Conclusion
Orisa comes in as a great supplemental hero. She does not, in her current iteration, seem to provide a strong alternative to Reinhardt (or Winston) as a Main Tank in every case. She could certainly be used in place of Reinhardt, but would be at a significant disadvantage if the enemy team does use a Reinhardt. The enemy team simply chooses to engage quickly while they maintain a shield advantage.
Orisa can excel as a supplement to many popular compositions. Orisa provides great synergy with Reinhardt. Halt can be used to pull an enemy Reinhardt up off the ground, allowing your Reinhardt to Earthshatter the enemy team. Orisa's damage pressure and extra barrier will help your Reinhardt keep the shield advantage. Using Halt to pull enemies into your Reinhardt’s Charge or Firestrike is easy with practice and highly effective.
Orisa could take the role of offtank in a dive composition. The suppressing fire she can provide will definitely annoy Tracer, Genji, and other heros that have small health pools while Orisa’s teammates dive them. Orisa and Zenyatta combinations could provide the extra bit of damage their divers need to win the fight with the Fusion Driver, Halt, and Orb of Discord.
With additional nerfs to Roadhog’s hook, the minor Zarya bubble tweak, and other recent and upcoming changes to the Tank lineup (except old Hammerhardt) I believe Orisa could fit into the role of offtank quite nicely - once the pros warm up to her.
Shoutout to Patrick Snipes for helping with the GIFs.
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