Blizzard has graced us with their 24th Hero for Overwatch, Orisa! While many have had time to explore her strengths and weaknesses, we at GosuGamers would like to take you through some deeper analysis. Let's get right to it!

Fusion Driver

Clocking in at 144 DPS, this 12 shots per second weapon feels powerful to fire. The projectile nature of the weapon makes it harder to land the shots. In practice, this weapon is meant to be constantly fired to keep pressure - not to 1v1. The “spray-n-pray” projectile design will allow almost any hero with mobility to choose to escape the fight on their terms. That said, once one is accustomed to the projectile speed, you can do significant damage to flankers and force them to back off before they kill you.

The Fusion Driver is best at damaging tanks and barriers. Despite the large clip size and feeling of power, Orisa is not a strong brawler by herself due to her relatively low health. Her Fusion Driver is best thought of as constant suppressing fire. The projectile nature makes it difficult to hit successive shots on thin and fast moving targets. It's best to try and stay alive rather that try to secure kills against these troublesome enemies. While the clip size has fallen from 200 on introduction to 150 in the most recent patch, Orisa's fusion cannon does not feel any different.

Halt!

This mini Graviton Surge is perhaps the ability with the highest skill cap in Orisa’s arsenal. Halt! will certainly give rise to many unique environmental kills. The green orb operates with alternate fire, and will show a faint green tether to targets that would be affected upon activation. Use alternate fire to activate the orb and have it pull enemies. There is a lot of potential synergy with other Heroes where Orisa brings key targets into position for, say, Pharah rockets to hit a cluster. Initial testing shows that it isn’t as effective as a full Graviton Surge for wombo combos, but with professional teams being able to practice timing and precision it can be used with Pulse Bombs and Barrages to make them more impactful.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this ability is its cooldown. The 8 second cooldown allows Orisa to nearly spam this ability and continuously irritate the opponents. Is your Pharah going to be using barrage? Pull fleeing enemies back into the rain of fire. Is your Genji going to Dragonblade? Give him a fleshpile to swipe at. This ability can be used to pull fleeing enemies back into range of fire, pull enemies off of high ground, and disrupt the enemy - every 8 seconds.

Fortify

This ability is quite simple in its nature. As its very easy for enemies to switch targets, this ability is best viewed as a survivability tool for Orisa.

The secondary function for this would be to bait enemy abilities. Reinhardt games are already intense, but adding Orisa to the mix allows for a whole new level of mindgames. Earthshatter won’t affect Orisa while she’s Fortified, and Fortify is also especially useful for tanking Symmetra’s primary fire while a teammate helps finish her off, as well as taking Torbjorn turret aggro while your team finishes it off.

Fortify has been covered extensively in this article previously featured on GosuGamers. The most important thing to remember is that Fortify is a damage reduction ability, not invulnerability. It's very easy to get shredded with focus fire from multiple enemies. Use it as a tool to temporarily take the worst of an attack while making your way to safety and/or your healers. Using Fortify and receiving focused healing is very powerful, as it can turn you into a Raid Boss that can take quite a bit of damage. If you get low or your healers can't keep up, drop down the next ability - Protective Barrier - to let your healers help you or to make your escape.

Protective Barrier

Due to the 900 HP and unique shape, the Protective Barrier puts Orisa’s primary advantage at chokes and maps with small paths. King’s Row shows Orisa’s barrier having significant impact in the streets phase. It is not as effective on KotH type maps where the engagements don’t necessarily have a linear direction: when the fight breaks out, damage comes from all sides. You can use the Protective Barrier to dodge damage like Winston does with his shield, but remember: Orisa has no mobility. If your backline is being dived upon, the Barrier can help your healers kite the damage.

The protective barrier should be treated as a moveable, temporary bunker. It is not good at being a team shield, as it is small and grouping behind it would leave the team extremely vulnerable. Enemy dive compositions also make the barrier near useless. Remember that you can use the barrier as Winston can use his bubble to dodge in and out of it to kite out damage. It is possible to kite and even kill Reaper by dancing around your shield. Be wary of your decreased movement speed while firing, and stop firing to readjust if needed. Use Halt! orbs to keep enemies from walking onto your side of the barrier when needed.

The protective barrier can create a bunker and allow snipers to work safely and even Ultimates to be used in otherwise risky situations. A small safe zone would allow Soldier:76 to pull off a tactical visor, or McCree to Deadeye, in relative safety from otherwise unwise locations. Orisa can cycle Foritfy and step in front of her barrier to trade damage between herself and her barrier. Since it only has 900 HP, Orisa can use herself to take some damage for the barrier and bide her time until its next cooldown.

Supercharger

Orisa’s ultimate is best placed in a corner with her barrier protecting it. The ideal situation has Orisa guarding the Supercharger while her team runs around on steroids. Since Orisa doesn’t need to be super close range to be effective, she can guard her nest while contributing the best way she can: supplemental damage spam and Halt! orbs.

If you are facing an enemy Orisa, remember that there will potentially be 6 enemies with 50% more damage output than you. That's an entire team that's Nanoboosted, albeit without the damage reduction component. It is absolutely crucial that CC ultimates like Graviton Surge and Earthshatter are saved to deal with a Supercharged team. You will need to dedicate resources to destroying the Supercharger or quickly killing a significant portion of the enemy team's damage sources.

When an enemy Supercharger is used, the primary target should be enemies with ultimates that will greatly benefit from the Supercharger (Deadeye, Tactical Visor, DragonBlade) or enemies that benefit greatly from a 50% damage boost (Pharah, Winston, Soldier: 76, etc). It is absolutely worth trading a life for the Supercharger. Winston normally does 60 DPS, but with the Supercharger he will do 90 DPS. Each of Genji's Swift Strikes will deal 75 damage. McCree's revolver will basically be a portable cannon. While it's not a guaranteed instant-win card, a team-wide Nanoboost doesn't sound like fun to deal with at the professional level.

While this ultimate probably can’t fully replace Nanoboost, it could be another version of it. Staggering the Nanoboost and Supercharger could allow for many more damage boosted engagements. The ultimate has quite a bit of potential utility, considering that each hero will have a 50% increase in damage. This means a sleep dart hitting your Supercharged, DragonBlading Genji isn't a huge loss since you still have 5 teammates with a 50% damage increase. That's much better compared to your Nanoboosted, Dragonblading Genji getting slept. The Supercharger particularly benefits Winston’s AOE Tesla Cannon and Genji’s Swift Strike. With Ana nerfs on the horizon, the Supercharger may offer an alternative solution if Ana falls out of favor.

Conclusion

Orisa's abilities certainly have a lot of variety. Her Halt! and Supercharger look to be extremely strong. Blizzard has already tweaked her primary fire clip size by decreasing it from 200 to 150. Using Fortify and placing your Protective Barrier just as Fortify expires or you lose your armor results in significant damage tanking. Orisa thus far seems to be a very well rounded addition to the Tank lineup. She offers protection, survivability, crowd control, and a very strong ultimate, and her design offers clues as to what her role might work out to be. In Part Two, we'll explore her strengths and weaknesses. Stay tuned!

Shoutout to Patrick Snipes for helping with the GIFs.

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