Orisa Pro Tips – Tanking Effectively in Overwatch Competitive Matches

Orisa is one of the two main shield tanks (the other one is Reinhardt) in Overwatch. In most competitive games, each team will have either Orisa or Rein as their main shield tank. Orisa has always been one of the top picks regardless the meta as she has been useful in all kind of situation as a main tank. If you want to climb the rank with Orisa, below are a few tips that may help you be a better Orisa in competitive plays.

A simple to-do list as an Orisa

1. You must be at the forefront and in front of all your teammates. You decide when to push forward, when to hold and when to stay back.
2. Your shield should always be on cooldown, meaning you should use your shield whenever it’s available (more about this in the tips below).
3. When your shield broke or you started taking heavy damages from the opponent team, use Fortify to tank the damages while getting heal up by your support.
4. Use your Halt to suck enemy above their shield so that your teammates can hit / hook them, to the cliff or holes for environmental kill, or on the ground to pull flanker or any target to kill them (more about this later).
5. Use your Ult / Supercharger when it’s up and when you think there’s going to be a full fight.
6. At any other time, just shoot exposing enemy or keep breaking enemy team’s shield.

Protective Barrier should always be on cooldown

Yes, even if your shield is still up and undamaged, shoot your barrier up to the sky to start the cd. The cool down starts when you shoot the barrier, not when it lands. By the time your current shield got destroyed, you will have another shield comes from the sky, and your barrier should also nearly off cooldown at this time. Keep repeat to maximize the number of shields you can possibly deploy.

How to use Orisa’s Halt

Most of the time, you should only be using your halt to pull enemy out of their shields, or away from elevated area so that your teammates can land shots on them or your Roadhog can hook them.

When there is an opportunity, you can use halt to pull a support or DPS for easy kill. Target pulled by your halt is like immovable for like 1 second. It is more than enough time for your team to kill the target.

When your support or back line is engaged by an enemy flanker, you can launch your halt on the ground near the flanker to quickly pull him to the ground and your team should be able to kill him easily. It is especially useful for catching heroes such as Genji, Lucio and Hammond.

You can also use your halt to pull enemy who attempt to go past your shield out of the shield.

Shooting barrier from spawn into choke points

You can search for how to shoot barrier from far away into the choke points in some maps on YouTube and practice them. This is to allow you to have another shield ready by the time you reach to the objective. If you do this correctly, your team should be able to win the shield fight most of the time.

Walk in and out of your shield

When you are engaged sideway or from behind by a flanker, try to walk in and out of your shield while the flanker tries to land shots on you. You will be surprised how good this can turn out to be. It’s not surprising that by doing this, you can kill a Reaper all by yourself with the help of Halt (use your halt on the ground to pull him out of or in the shield).

Deploy Supercharger out of enemy’s sight

Always try to deploy your ult out of your enemy’s line of sight in places such as a doorway behind a wall or in a room where basically your enemy team has to dive in and turn their back before they can reach the supercharger.

Summary

Orisa is relatively easier to use compared to other tanks but it takes time to master the hero. If you do the things right and apply the tips above correctly, you should be able to see huge difference in game and start to climb the ladder.