Orisa is Overwatch’s latest tank, and her implementation has not exactly been super successful. She failed to be a competitive pick, and despite Blizzard’s best intentions Orisa was largely pushed to the wayside in competitive play. The main complaint of Orisa’s toolkit was the immobility of her shield that didn’t allow her to compete with everyone’s favorite tank – Reinhardt. A recent PTR build had decreased the cooldown of Orisa’s shield to 8 seconds but also packed a 15% damage nerf that had many players reeling. Overwatch developers have confirmed that they aren’t happy with Orisa’s changes currently and that the PTR changes are not set to hit live without adjustments.

It’s interesting that the Overwatch development team would nerf Orisa’s damage. While the lower cooldown of the shield definitely allows the robotic tank to adopt a more mobile playstyle, the main thing keeping Orisa somewhat viable was her incredible damage and decent range. With the 15% damage nerf, her dps is no longer exceptional and the tradeoff for a more mobile shield has only resulted in more stalled games rather than meaningful fixes.

Overwatch director tweeted about the changes:

“Nothing is going live today. We’re still testing on the PTR. We constantly evaluate changes — so yes, we’re looking at them closely. Right now, we’re mostly ok with things minus a few bugs. We are looking at the change to Orisa’s damage, however, and will likely make changes to the tuning on the PTR.”

Though they’re obviously not happy with Orisa’s current tuning, it’s looking like a lot of other changes from the PTR could make it into the game as is. The most significant of these changes are the changes to Reinhardt’s ultimate that no longer give it a crazy vertical range. While may Reinhardt players are upset at the apparent nerf to one of their most iconic abilities, you have to admit that it was a little ridiculous to knock Pharahs that were several feet in the air to the ground with Earthshatter. Another big change is the nerf to Soldier 76’s damage, which while disappointing was pretty necessary to close the huge gap between Soldier and other damage characters’ dps.

We’ll have to see what exactly will change with Orisa’s “nerf”, but the fact that the Overwatch development team is aware there’s an issue, and the fact that they’ll somehow be addressing it is encouraging for players of Overwatch’s newest robot tank.