Orisa Key Takeaways
- Orisa is best on maps with medium sightlines, allowing her to stay safe from short-range weapons and deal maximum damage with her medium-range primary fire.
- With a large overall hitbox, easy-to-hit headshot hitbox, and no shield, Orisa struggles on maps with longer sightlines where ranged characters can safely burn her health down.
- Orisa counters many heroes with movement abilities, such as Doomfist, thanks to her Energy Javelin’s CC (crowd control) effects. Fortify’s CC protection also allows her to counter important enemy CC abilities, such as Roadhog’s Chain Hook.
- Orisa is countered by heroes that can take advantage of her large headshot hitbox, such as Windowmaker, assuming the enemy Widowmaker has the necessary sightlines to stay away from her damage output.
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Orisa Quick Tips
- Orisa has 550 total health with 275 armor. Her armor makes her very tanky against weapons like Reaper’s and Winston’s primary fire abilities, but vulnerable to characters who do burst damage, such as Mcree.
- Similar to Reinhardt, a passive Orisa is an ineffective Orisa. Orisa needs to keep enemies backpedaling to create space for her team. If Orisa is on the defensive, her abilities are nowhere near as effective. Find your perfect teammates on the Z League app.
- Similar to Doomfist and Ramattra, Orisa relies on effective cycling of her abilities. An Orisa with all abilities on cooldown, especially if she’s out of position, is very easy to kill.
Orisa Abilities
Img via Blizzard Entertainment
Augmented Fusion Driver (Primary Fire)
Augmented Fusion Driver is a medium-range gun which deals between six to 12 damage per shot depending on distance, with a range of 15 to 25 meters. Augmented Fusion Driver is on a meter, meaning “reloading” is only necessary when you fire too often for too long. Recharging the meter is faster if it is not completely depleted, which means it’s optimal to stop firing right when the meter is almost out instead of completely out.
Energy Javelin
Energy Javelin is a fast displacement projectile with a large hurtbox that deals 60 damage upon impact and 40 additional damage if the enemy is knocked back into a wall. The cooldown for this ability is six seconds, but due to its playmaking ability, it shouldn’t necessarily always be used off cooldown to deal damage. For example, if you’re aware that an enemy Pharah has her ultimate, it makes sense to keep Energy Javelin off cooldown to quickly launch it at Pharah during her ultimate, which interrupts it. Energy Javelin can interrupt many ultimate abilities in the game, such as Reinhardt’s Earthshatter and Reaper’s Death Blossom, along with many standard abilities.
Fortify
Fortify grants Orisa 75 extra health, 40% damage reduction, and immunity to CC (crowd control) abilities like Junkrat’s Steel Trap. The ability can be used defensively in sticky situations; however, it also grants a 50% reduction on Augmented Fusion Driver’s meter buildup when it’s active. Therefore, it’s ideally used in an offensive capability, as it allows Orisa to confidently take space and deal additional damage while she does.
Javelin Spin
Javelin Spin is another displacement ability of Orisa’s. When active, Orisa can run into enemy players and bump them backwards. The ability deals 100 damage over 1.75 seconds over a series of hits, which means it can also be used to finish off enemies with low health. The ability can be used offensively or defensively; though, as with Orisa’s other abilities, the best use is usually in an offensive fashion. If Orisa plays too passively, both she and her teammates can easily get overwhelmed.
Terra Surge (Ultimate)
Upon activating Terra Surge, Orisa receives the same buffs as Fortify and loses the ability to move. She needs to charge up for at least one second before dealing damage to players within a radius of nine meters. The ultimate can be charged for up to four seconds, with a drastic difference in damage the more it is charged—60 damage if used as quickly as possible, and 500 if fully charged.
Since players know how deadly Terra Surge can be, activating your ultimate will cause the enemy team to flee. Terra Surge provides a small pull effect towards Orisa, but most characters can escape the radius of effect before the ability is primed to do a full 200+ damage. Therefore, Terra Surge is most effective when the enemy team is already damaged, or as a preliminary tool to deal damage before following up with Orisa’s other abilities, which, again, are best used offensively.
