Teach me Orisa! (Please!)

General Discussion
1

Simple as it sounds. I would like to learn Orisa.

If there are any Orisa mains out there who’d like to give me some advice on what to do and where she works best, that’d be much appreciated.

Just in case any of this is helpful to you:

  • I main Symmetra, Sombra, Moira and Wrecking Ball
  • I am low Plat, high Gold rank
  • I cannot play Reinhardt, no matter how much I try.
  • My aim is subpar but steadily improving.
  • I play on Console, specifically Xbox One.

Orisa Specifically:

  • I have some playtime with her, a little in Comp
  • I have a hard time knowing when to use Supercharger and Fortify
  • I am unsure when to put up a new barrier
  • Halt! usually fails to connect, despite the connecting line saying otherwise.

So please, any tips would be helpful.

2

Fortify uses

  1. Use it when your shield breaks and you cant put a new one down, when this happens quickly turn around look down a bit to lower the chances of getting hit in the head and get to the nearest hard surface until you can throw a shield out again.

  2. when the constant presence of a flanker is harassing you from the sides and behind but never focus on them you dont have the weapon nor dmg to deal with them. pull back if the flanker is killing your back line.

  3. stop rein charges, basically any CC you are expecting

Aim
dont worry too much about it the way her gun is you will naturally miss hundreds of shots and getting even 30% can be difficult just burn down shields tanks and SUPPRESSING FIRE!!

Super charger
sometimes i dont use it as I dont like the ult really take too long to get, orisa herself gets very little out of it, its too easily killed. am the worst person to ask honestly, put it behind corners or a sheild and yourself and hope to god a hanzo doesn’t quickly corner peak it in two arrows.

Sheild
be aggressive always plop one 15-20m in front of you in areas that you can run to and hide in case it break before a new on is up, this will be the only way youre going to gain space and push people.

should the shield breaks, again hide until you get a new one and play defensively until you feel confident you can start pushing again. dont be afraid to charge ahead without a sheild

2 Likes
3

Heya! I used to main Orisa in competitive for a period of months. Although I’ve been retired from the scene for almost a year now, I think I still have one or two tips to throw down which are still valid. I agree with a lot of what LftClickHero has to say, although I’d like to expand on a couple of his points a little bit.

Firstly, when it comes to Orisa’s aim, treat it like an artillery / suppression weapon. You can absolutely be accurate with it, but you have to couple it with tactical uses of HALT to guarantee reasonable damage. Here’s the maxim I used to play Orisa by:

Go for the Low Hanging Fruit

Orisa’s weapon has vast capacity and huge damage potential, but most of it is wasted if you try to shoot for difficult targets - if you have a choice between a slippery DPS running around your team, or a gigantic enemy tank barrelling towards them (hello Reinhardt!) shoot the big guy first. You want to maximise the potential of your weapon, and you can only do that if your shots are going into enemy bodies. For example, if you’re going to start shooting at Mercy, it should only be because you’re certain of closing the kill. If you’re in any doubt, don’t bother.

The same philosophy applies to HALT. Sure, you can use it on big clusters of enemies to help your team ulti into them - but most of the time you should be using it to bully and harass squishy targets and set them up for easy shots by you or by your teammates. With HALT, you can prevent retreating foes from completing their risky getaway, and since you only have one target to go for, landing the orb shouldn’t be so hard.

When it comes to Fortify, use it as your last resort to block incoming burst damage - it’s best used to block stuns like McCree’s flashbang or a Reinhardt charge, but it can also save you from a Tracer’s onslaught in a pinch - once it’s gone though, it’s gone, and you won’t be getting it back for a considerable amount of time. If you know you’re going to need to use it, the right time to pop it is just before you’re about to take a huge chunk of damage - anticipate it before it happens - ideally so you can hit shift while you still have plenty of Armour left in your health pool. This will stack up the damage reductions so you can shrug off otherwise-fatal blows and squeeze the absolute most mileage out of your fairly modest health pool.

I hope these tips help you!

[EDIT: One last thing - HALT lines can be deceptive because Favour The Shooter doesn’t work for them - you simply have to develop a feeling for when the right time to pop is - do it more by rhythm than by sight :slight_smile: ]

3 Likes
4

A thing I like to do as Orisa is shoot a barrier straight in the air before a team fight. This will allow the barrier cooldown to reduce a lot and keep its 20 second lifespan. Another thing you should do with the shield is attempt 9000 IQ Earthshatter blocks. The common signs for an Earthshatter occurring are:
-Lucio speedboosting Reinhardt past the barrier.
-Zarya bubbling him.
-Ana nanoing him.
-Aggressive Reinhardt actions.
-A long period of time since Earthshatter has been used.
When you see any of this happen, it would be wise to plop a barrier down right in front of your team and Fortify because they usually charge afterwards.

As for synergies, she works very well with immobile characters (Roadhog, Torbjorn, Bastion, etc.) in bunker comps. These comps work very well on defense 2CP, first point defense hybrid, some defense payload maps, and all attack payload matches (looking at you Junkertown). Orisa’s bunker comp is a bit weak on others modes like KotH since it lacks mobility, though a Symmetra or Lucio could make up for this. Finally, anytime you use an Orisa and Roadhog on the same team, you MUST call it pulled pork (you halt someone, then Roadhog hooks them).

5

I thought the title was touch me orisa

6

Not a high ranked player or a 100% Orisa main but she is my go to tank if I have to tank.

Shield use, generally use it to protect yourself first and your team second. While it seems like a great idea to toss it 20m away on the point to protect your team it’s a last ditch effort thing to do. Without her shield Orisa is a very easy kill. It doesn’t help that Orisa is inanely slow at getting back from spawn with zero mobility moves to help her get there faster.

Generally speaking your shield should last long enough for the CD to reset at mid to long range. The closer you are the easier it is for targets to burst your shield down. This is kind of why Orisa’s 2nd tank on the team really should be the one contesting the Objective more and allowing her to stay off point. Sadly this rarely happens and you’ll find yourself sitting on the point just asking to be killed. In general though picking Orisa demands at least a few people on your team stand behind it. If your team is all flankers and the only person behind your shield is the healer your probably wasting your time.

Halt: Is by and large an iffy ability. It can be amazing but it’s very hard to judge and the CD is fairly long. For the most effect you need a team mate who can capitalize on your pulls as your own dmg is unlikely to kill anything you pull from cover. Calling out key halts in VC would be great if possible, so hopefully your RH or Hanzo can clean up the easy targets. As for getting them to stick and not break you have to tend to detonate the Halt earlier than you expect on moving targets. Both the Halt and the target are moving and there is a bit of a delay in activation. This means that what looks like a connected target can often go beyond maxim range before the effect goes off. This sadly limits the “big pulls” you can do most of the time and makes it far harder to just yank people off cliffs.

As for the SC I kind of treat it like other lack luster Ults in the game. Just use it when ever you have it and the situation looks half way decent. Aka you have at least 3 of your team around you and the enemy is within sight and hopefully not too close to cover. If on a payload map it helps a lot to put the SC down on the payload as it will move with your team. Obviously protect the SC with your shield if at all possible. DMG boosted isn’t always great but it’s a great distraction as people tend to either run away or rush the SC like it’s the most important thing in the world.

Depending on your ability to hit targets with your gun the SC fills up fairly fast imo, long as your not shooting barriers 90% of the time. By and large Orisa isn’t complicated imo. Just she relies a lot more on her team than Reinhart does. She needs a solid healer to have her back, and DPS behind her shield to make crossing it dangerous enough to keep people away.

As for Fortify it’s fairly simple. Use it when your taking dmg without a shield and to stop any CC moves you see coming that are dangerous. Mostly Mei Freezes, Rein Charges, Ashe’s TNT etc. One key thing to know however is if your not getting healed Fortify generally won’t save you in most 1v1’s as your own weapon dmg and accuracy is far to weak to kill most targets before they kill you. Also if you fortify after already taking dmg it’s even worse as once you run out of Armor Fortify barely does much of anything.

7

A good tip for super charger is to use it when your teammates do not have their ultimates ready as it will help them build ult charge faster. You can definitely use it to combo with things like tac visor or Genji blade, but if your entire team has their ultimates ready save yours until at least a few of them have been used.

For shield usage it depends on the type of map and situation. I think it’s easier to know how to use your shield in a defensive position like 2CP or on a payload and more difficult when pushing in since it’s stationary. I would recommend to try and use your barrier to take as much space as you can with each use. I like to put it right in front of the enemy team if possible and use halt to pull them out of it if they try to run through and you’ll have fortify if they come back. Especially if there is an enemy Orisa you want to put your barrier behind hers and bully her out of her position. I find that’s really effective and a lot better than the normal stand off that happens between two Orisas trying to shoot each other’s barrier down just to refresh it and repeat.

1 Like
8

Just jumping in to say I understand where you’re coming from and why you might think that, but Orisa’s damage is anything but lacklustre - she outpowers all other tanks in terms of actual DPS - what’s more, I think her damage is actually better because you can actually use it to spam down barriers and give your team room to move in on the enemy (as opposed to tanks like Rein and Wrecking Ball who barely touch barriers at all, or D.va who can’t spam and shield at the same time)

In duels, the main problem is actually connecting shots with enemy heads - which is where the fact that her bullets have a tracing effect can be really handy - don’t look at your crosshair, watch the stream of bullets, and try to douse the enemy in as many of them as you can. I personally used to win duels with DPS players all the time - I just had to make sure to precisely time my abilities to guarantee maximum value out of my health.

9

Oh I understand her potential dmg out put is fairly insane, just in practice it’s rarely that effective. That said up close to easy to hit targets she can shred people. Dva, enemy Orisa’s without a shield, Reinhart, Roadhog even Torb go down like a bad habit.

Any enemy you can unload into their Head for what ever reason without missing dies insanely fast. Firing into a Grav, a Mei freeze or just really dumb enemies that stand still and shoot can be very satisfying.

That said in most situations where Orisa is best at, mid to long range, more than half your shots will probably miss. Lowering that dmg significantly to the point where if you actually kill anything I’d be surprised without help.

10

Well, all I can say is that I found her weapon difficult but entirely usable, and I would often get golds from playing Orisa. So long as you’re using it for its strengths, it’s not just adequate, it’s exceptional. It sounds to me just like you don’t really have a feel for the weapon yet which is entirely possible if she’s your fallback hero choice, rather than your true main.

11

Though this is my smurf, I can play her pretty well at DIamond rank.

  1. If on PC, you need to start incorporating A+D strafing into your firing patterns, I’ve noticed that doing this helps leads targets ( often into headshots) to cause them to retreat behind cover.
  2. Awareness is key - make sure you are putting suppressing fire on reid/va advances, and on Sniper positions. Snipers you don’t have to hit but if you can arch your weapon a bit to compensate for the spread, you can get some sniper characters to retreat also.
  3. Fortify needs to be used when you can anticpate some CC coming your way and when your shield is down. Use it to reposition yourself to setup again.
  4. Supercharger to me isn’t bad - I use it when I block a rein shatter/charge to get a quick team wipe without using ult. I also use it to counter incoming pushes from enemys ( especially useful on KOTH and 2CP) , this is best used when you understand ult economy and the likelihood of incoming enemy ults. I also use it as soon as enemy/friendly brigitte uses rally too. and I know my teammates are still up.

The other two big things I would say is know your positioning and where your cover points are in the map. You don’t always need to shoot behind your shield. Often to help peel for backline, I’ll shoot the shield behind me as I try to ward off a genji/tracer/reaper trying to kill my backline ( here I’m aiming for a retreat 1st, kill 2nd as I need to be aware of enemies pushing in from behind me)

Use of Halt, Unless I can take advantage of an enemy’s bad positioning through environmental kills, I try to use this to bring squishies out of cover, or to bring them into my team’s line of fire ( hanzo dragon/Bastion/Junkrat spam/Bob).

Often times if I can convince my team to play with me and go shield break comp, we can usually counter goats pretty well.

12

Ooh! That reminds me, I play on Xbox. I’ll update the OP with this information.

And I have been reading all the replies. Though I can’t put any of it into practise until tomorrow now.

Thanks for all the help so far!

13

I don’t know if you would consider me an Orisa main, but I have over 400+ on her in all my accounts. She’s sweet, cute, and will crush everyone in her way if your team allows to do that. I said your team because Orisa and main tanks in general are as strong/weak as their own team allows to be, meaning if your team utilizes the barrier, push with you and shoo flankers away from annoying you, you would do decent and lead them to victory.

My general tip to anyone wants to play with Orisa is get comfortable with her kit. She has a lot of strong tools for you to use so it’s important to know what’s each ability is good for, and more importantly when it’s good to use.

Also her weapon is different and special compared to other characters because it’s a long ranged slow projectile rifle. It takes a loooot of practice to hit stuff with it and it actually pack a punch so it’s worth learning. (Orisa is in fact a strong counter to Bob, and she can melt him down from 12k hp to 0 before he disappears)

Lastly I want to point out that her ultimate is so powerful and useful, but it requires a good sense of when and where you need to put it, other wise it will get destroyed immediately and that’s why alot of folks here think it’s weak. I would suggest playin’ few games with her and focus more on the timing of your ultimate until you get a a good timing you’re comfortable with.

And also, I would suggest watching higher players picking Orisa and learn how you play and position yourself as her, it’s really useful and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

14

The shield + halt combo in a 1v1 situation is death for most squishies that can’t immediately escape. If you have good tracking of course. Drop your shield in front of you facing them, and aim your halt well above their head so they’re pulled up. Keep your mouse there and wait for the head to meet your cursor, then just zipper them down with shots as they fall back to the ground. If it’s a McRightclick, you can preemptively Fortify to anticipate any flashbang and FTH if he survives.
This works very well in deathmatch since every match guarantees at least one McRightclick, and mostly DPS otherwise. Also, good practice for halt is to play Orisa in Petra Deathmatch. Destroy the whole floor around the mega health pack, then hang around there to pull enemies into the pit with halt. Great fun!