Immortals use Orisa in the OCS just one day after her release—and it actually works in their favor

Overwatch’s new quadrupedal hero went live on March 21, but she’s still absent in the game’s competitive ladder. That’s why it’s such a big surprise to see Orisa played in a professional Overwatch match—and have it actually work in the team’s favor.

After taking two maps away from compLexity Gaming on the final day of the Overwatch Carbon Series group stage, Immortals felt they had enough leeway to pull out Overwatch’s new anchor tank. When George “Hyped” Maganzini locked in as Orisa, many just sort of glazed over it: Plenty of players had initially chosen Orisa—a troll pick of sorts—but she’d only seen brief play by one other team earlier in the night.

Orisa proved successful on Nepal’s village stage, using her shield to section off portions of the capture point. And it likely threw off compLexity all together. Aiming their sights on Orisa, compLexity was left vulnerable to Immortals’ other players—namely, Christopher “GrimReality” Schaefer and Brady “Agilities” Girardi on DPS.

Hyped continued to play Orisa for long enough to fully charge her ultimate ability—but that’s where her journey ended. CompLexity set up a big push toward the capture point, crowding Orisa and the rest of Immortals on the point. Behind a shield, Hyped slammed down Orisa’s supercharger, but it got taken out almost instantly.

The momentum from a few early kills was enough to pick off Orisa and plenty of other Immortals heroes; compLexity then captured the point. That’s where Hyped dropped Orisa in favor of D.Va. It’s a smart choice by Hyped. With the switch to D.Va, Immortals are able to recapture the point almost instantly.

But despite Immortals 3-0’ing compLexity, both teams will move on to the Overwatch Carbon Series playoffs. They’ll see each other in battle once again on March 25. Joining them are Renegades and LG Evil—the latter of which had their series win-streak broken on the final day of the group stage in their match against Team Liquid. Though Team Liquid 3-0’ed LG Evil, their previous record wasn’t enough to push them through to the playoffs. LG Evil’s sister team LG Loyal will also not be moving on.

LG Evil versus Renegades will take place March 25. As professional teams get more practice on Orisa, it’s likely we’ll see her again, too.