Orisa was introduced in Overwatch as a hero to counter Doomfist’s wild punching ability. Created by the child genius Efi Oladele, Orisa is an Omnic learning to protect the people of Numbani, but being so young, she makes mistakes. With Overwatch 2, we get to see how much progress she is making and what new upgrades she has acquired with her rework. Simply put, she will play a lot differently from the first Overwatch. Here are all of Orisa’s abilities and what you need to know about playing her going forward.
Related: Doomfist rework in Overwatch 2 explained – abilities, ultimate, how to play
How to play Orisa in Overwatch 2
Abilities and Ultimate
With Overwatch 2 losing a player on each team and moving to a 5v5 format, Blizzard says they focused on making her more viable at fighting in a one-on-one brawl. Because of that, she has lost three abilities she previously had, including her Ultimate, and she has a new primary fire, and more health and armor.
Orisa’s new main firing now relies on a heat gauge that will cool down when you don’t fire instead of ammo. She fires larger projectiles that shrink as they travel, so you are incentivized to get closer to enemies.
One of her new abilities replacing Halt, is a secondary fire called Energy Javelin. With this, she throws a javelin that will temporarily stun and knockback the first enemy it hits. Like Doomfist’s Rocket Punch, it is more effective if you knock them into a wall.
In place of her Protective Barrier, Javelin Spin is another new ability, but instead of throwing the javelin, she spins it to destroy incoming projectiles, increase her movement speed, and knockback and damage enemies. Essentially, it’s a new shield that also can hurt people, but it won’t be useful in bunkering down like her barrier was because it is only active for a couple of seconds.
Orisa still has her Fortify ability, but it has been changed up. When activating it, she gains 125 temporary health, and she will be slowed by 20%. This also reduces the heat in your gun by 50% so that you can get more shots off. This is still one of the best defensive abilities in the game.
As stated above, Supercharger is no longer Orisa’s Ultimate ability. Instead, it is called Terra Surge and, when activated, will instantly use Fortify and pull in enemies (like Halt used to do) for a charged-up attack that can be shot early with her primary fire. Unlike Zarya’s Graviton Surge Ultimate, the pull does not instantly bring all enemies into a center point together.
Orisa — Overwatch 2 vs Overwatch changes
Orisa is played completely differently in Overwatch 2 from her original iteration. There will be no more bunkering in a corner and hiding behind her shield because Javelin Spin is more useful charging into enemies and needs you to engage in a fight. She has become much more of a solo-centric player that tries to take the focus of the enemy team rather than protecting her allies.
Orisa’s primary fire will also require you to think more about when and where you are shooting. She had so much ammo in her gun before that you could spam her fire and not feel any negative effects. Now that her gun overheats for a few seconds, that is a significant amount of time not to have her participating in a fight. However, Fortify has gotten even stronger, giving her temporary health and more firing power, so look for that to be a lot of players’ main weapon to finish a fight. Orisa was already a slow character, so the speed reduction did not affect her too much.
Energy Javelin works very similarly to Rocket Punch. You want to aim this at enemies who are near walls or ledges to get the extra damage boost or easy boop kill. The difference is that you are not hurling yourself into the middle of a group to do it, so you can sit back and stun enemies from a distance.
Terra Surge as her new Ultimate is a change we think needed to happen. Supercharger did not feel like an ability that fit well in her kit because all it did was amplify your team’s damage. It felt like it came out of nowhere. With her new Ultimate, they incorporate a little of what you knew about Halt and Fortify to make an Ultimate that can throw off an enemy team and set your team up for some devastating combos.
