Backbiter chasing anti-synergy Backbiter chasing anti-synergy" chapter
Orphea. Orphea has fought long and hard to contain the Dark Nexus and wields her ancestral powers of the Abyss. She strides across the battlefield slaying her enemies with grace and precision. Every
Shadow Waltz aimed just right, using her powers to
Chomp everyone who dares approach her. Spreading
Dread to debilitate and devastating all who stand in her way.
Orphea is a lot like dancing.
En Pointe-
Backbiter-
Insatiable-
Crushing Jaws-
Abyssal Symbiosis-
Bond of Anguish-
Final Toccata Shadow Waltz and go in, auto attack dealing high damage with the
Overflowing Chaos bonus, then
Chomp and get out, followed by another empowered auto attack. Every 2 seconds. Constant, relentless, inevitable. The amount of mobility is insane. But hey
Genji needs a dance partner too after all. ;) Overflowing Chaos. If you are not using your stacks to heal, you can easily be deleted from the fight. Backbiter is the pillar that makes this build so good. It provides you with an easy way to get out of a dangerous positions, and evade counter engages, so you can play way more aggressive than usual, while being safer at the same time. Also
Backbiter is just as good as the dash from your
Shadow Waltz when you want to evade some slow skillshot coming your way, and due to the surface size of
Chomp, it is even better at disengaging from melee assassins, trying to stick to you. Backbiter chasing anti-synergy Backbiter can just deny you that possibility. You will get pushed back after hitting your
Chomp. But this can be both a curse and a blessing. There is a whole chapeter later dedicated to explaining this and how you can make the odds be forever in your favor. Orphea is surprisingly good solo laner and can 1v1 most solo laner heroes simply because the vast majority of them are bruisers. En Pointe is for extra poke damage and to provide you with better solo laneing ability if necessary. Don't worry if you are unable to land a hit with the end of
Shadow Waltz when you are doing your Double-Dash continuous combo. Managing to put yourself in proper position. Most of the time you probably will not land it in those situations and hit with the middle of the skillshot, because you have to keep certain distance for the Double-Dash combo. That is Ok.
Abyssal Symbiosis is there to provide you with even more damage in your Double-Dash combo, and more importantly extra sustain to stay alive.
Final Toccata is the pick at 20 as it is another playmaking ability that helps both offensively to chase and defensively to escape or chunk tanks fighting your frontline, which is especially effective thanks to
Bond of Anguish. For newer players at 20 you can instead opt for
Eldritch Conduit.
Bond of Anguish and
Eldritch Conduit are simply the most reliable talents in their respective tiers.
Eldritch Conduit is especially effective as it stacks really fast with this build and more than makes up for taking
Insatiable over
Ravenous Hunger in the late game. Ancestral Strength-Fright-
Insatiable-
Crushing Jaws-
Invasive Miasma-
Bond of Anguish-
Eldritch Conduit Orphea goes for a stroll you better not get in her way. At level 4 you are able to easily set your own CC with Fright to prock
Ancestral Strength for devastating AOE damage.
Insatiable lets you keep going in, and tearing enemies to bits, while
Invasive Miasma provide those clutch heals if you get dived on, and gives you even more burst damage, as long as you time it correctly.
Bond of Anguish provide that extra single target damage, and lets you poke into the frontline more reliably. And most of the time you will be doing just that, since with this build once you go in, you are all-in, no backing out. Finally
Eldritch Conduit is the most reliable talent at level 20 makeing you an unrelenting beast on the battlefield. What follows when
Orphea begins her assault is an unstoppable tide of destruction. You can't fight it, you can't evade it, you can't run away.
Orphea has both self sustain, and with
Backbiter coupled with
Insatiable she also has far superior mobility. When you get dived by a melee assassin, bruiser or even a tank that lacks hard CC, you can just do your normal double-dash combo (
Shadow Waltz-auto attack-
Chomp-auto attack) but use the
Shadow Waltz dash to move back instead of forward. This combo lines up perfectly and as soon as you finish it, it is up and ready to do again, so you can chain it as long as you have mana, relentlessly dashing back out of range from the diving heroes and shred them to pieces at the same time. And the best part is, when they eventually try to disengage you and run away, you can jsut use your
Shadow Waltz dashes to re-engage and kill them easily. Also keep your
Dread to use at that exact time, and aim it in front of the running enemy so they get slowed. The incredible amount of mobility and the healing from
Overflowing Chaos that constantly procs with each of your auto attacks is enough to negate any initial dive damage from melee assassins. I have been able to 1v1
Colossus Smash
Varian and then immediately after that kill the
Kerrigan, trying to gank me as I was finishing off the
Varian with no problem at all.
Artanis with hardly any issues, as long as you land your
Shadow Waltz and
Chomp so be careful with evasive abilities like
Blade Dash, or both of
Illidan's basic abilities
Sweeping Strike and
Dive. Wait those abilities to be used and then use your skillshots, because missing one puts your 2s cooldown to the default timings and you are left with only 1 mobility option.
The Butcher. Keep your
Crushing Jaws for his engage.
Ruthless Onslaught makes him unstoppable so he will stun you and if you get caught in
Lamb to the Slaughter he will slaughter you like a bloody goat indeed. But this is the one time when it is useful to have the delay on your abilities. Drop your
Crushing Jaws right next to yourself, where
The Butcher will stop and also cast your
Dread at that location. If you time it correctly he will be hit right as his
Ruthless Onslaught connects so he will be stunned and slowed. Sometimes he will not even be able to cast
Lamb to the Slaughter before you stun him. Sometimes he will manage it, but between the stun and the slow you will cut the time he can hack at you significantly and live through it, then be able to dash out. At this point you can ether run away if you are low on health or counter engage and murder the bastard.
Backbiter chasing anti-synergy Backbiter can just deny you that possibility. You will get pushed back after hitting your
Chomp. But this can be both a curse and a blessing. Remember
Backbiter pushes you backwards in relation to the direction you cast
Chomp. Also
Chomp has a peculiar shape. It hits slightly behind you and to the sides like a bloated oblong shape. So if you are close enough and
Chomp in the right direction (usually backwards) instead of being pushed back you can use
Backbiter to dash even further ahead of your enemy. And you can pass through heroes with it, so you can dash in a position to bodyblock on top of everything. With some practice you can use
Backbiter to further chase any hero that is close enough after you
Shadow Waltz and dash in. Shadow Waltz and dash in deeper, then
Chomp a different enemy hero, from the one you are chasing to get propelled even deeper. Your initial dash has to be behind that hero. Usually it is the tank you use to get deeper and finish off the running foe. But if you do try this combo, remember you must get the kill, or you can easily get stuck in the middle of the enemy team with no way out. This specific maneuver is pretty much straight from the
Genji playbook, so any long time
Genji player will know what I mean. Chomp and chain another
Shadow Waltz then use
Chomp as finisher. Sometimes you have to let the kill go. Remember that getting a hero out of the fight with near to no health is about as good as killing them, since they can no longer fight anyway. Don't get so focused on chasing a single kill that you miss the chance to win a teamfight and kill the other 4 enemy heroes, or worse get killed yourself. Know when to let go!
Orphea you are in a great position to dominate the global game and win the whole match for your team. As long as they don't decide to trow by fighting without you that is. ;) Orphea can clear waves in seconds. If you can intercept the waves before they meet and the minions are still in a lane, you can use
Shadow Waltz to hit all of them for a good amount of damage, then when the waves meet and spread use
Chomp to hit all the minions at the same time and this should do it. If you can't intercept the lane waves when they are approaching use
Dread on the range minions and the mage, then
Chomp the whole wave. This will kill all but the melee minions, but they do no damage and your wave will make quick work of them while you remount. You can optionally
Shadow Waltz the 3 melee minions if you have a lot of mana and need to rotate really fast. Chomp on all minions is to position correctly. As already discussed
Chomp has an unusual shape and hits slightly behind you as well. If the waves meet up and spread in the usual pattern, you can stand right behind the 3 melee minions and still reach the 3 range minions, while the part of the skillshot that hits behind you will land on the melee minions as well. Orphea is one of the very few assassins who can solo lane effectively. Solo laning is not about killing the minions or pushing. Those 2 help if you can do it, but solo laning is all about getting the XP in the lane for your team and denying XP for the enemy team. So for that self-sustain is paramount. This is also the reason most solo laners are bruisers not assassins. Orphea is really good at doing that since she can do lots of safe range damage and heal herself.
En Pointe is very useful in this case. So is
Backbiter and
Insatiable. At level 7 you can effectively damage the other solo laner to low health forcing him to back away. Or straight out kill him. Then push the wave under towers so it does some damage and denies the wave XP since the enemy hero will not get back in time to soak it. This last maneuver can be dangerous since the other team can gank you. But with
Shadow Waltz dash and
Backbiter you are surprisingly safe and if you get ganked by only one enemy you can counter engage and kill them with the 2s cooldowns on your abilities. I have managed to wipe forts this way on maps with very long travel distance like bot lane on
Blackheart's Bay. But if you can't see the enemy team on the minimap, it might be better to just go do something else and not risk it. Orphea is a great lane bully, but she is also a AOE damage dealer, so go to your towers and don't engage, then just blow up the minion waves under towers and soak the XP. You can do it so fast that there will be realistically no siege damage even with 2 heroes against you. And if the heroes you are facing are particularly aggressive and don't have a lot of damage they can dump on you, you can always kill both of them anyways. Say you are against a
Tassadar and a
Murky. Easy kills. Orphea struggles. You can solo lome camps, but the time needed to do it is long since your abilities don't get cooldown reduction. In most cases your time is better spent doing something else. but if your lanes are all soaked and there is no objective to go to in the next 30 seconds you can do it. Also you need to drop a lot of mana and health since you can't heal off of non-heroes. You can kill Siege giants, because you can avoid their damage entirely. Sappers are far harder to avoid because they attack faster and your abilities have very long cast times, but it's doable since they are 3, have less health and you do AOE damage. Impalers and Assault Troopers are also possible since they are 3 as well but the damage can not be avoided. The other camp's are not possible to do alone in any effective measure and should not be attempted to solo. An exception to this might be the vision camp on Hamanura. Also you are not terrible at helping teammates take the harder camps as long as they tank the damage so help out. ;)
En Pointe -[good]- 75% damage sure is a lot, however the actual tip of the skillshot is not very big and it's hard to land consistently with the
Shadow Waltz delay. Very effective at killing range minions from a far, doing damage to towers and poking heroes safely.
Growing Nightmare -[bad]- The problem with this talent is, that it only does anything if you manage to hit someone with the slow, telegraphed eruption on you
Dread which has a very long cooldown and for the talent to work you also need to hit a hero with the wave. It's too much setup, for too little benefit on too long cooldown. Also this is basically what
Ancestral Strength does, but limited to half of an ability. Ancestral Strength -[good]- 25% extra damage. It's that simple.
Orphea can self prock this very easily if she takes Fright at level 4. Also your combo damage is insane once you land
Crushing Jaws. The downside is that you need extra talents to proc yourself and to use effectively you should have a team that provided crowd control. If you will play a map with lots of rotations and split fights so you will be yourself or in small skirmishes better go for
En Pointe. Also useless against melee heavy and dive compositions since you will need
Backbiter to survive and can't take Fright.
Allegrissimo -[bad]- Just like
En Pointe, landing this is not reliable and it basically equates to 1s extra CD reduction of 1 ability only. Just not good. Not to mention that you can't even utilize it if you intend to use any abilities other than
Shadow Waltz. Backbiter -[great]- This is a very interesting talent. it allows you to use the combo
Shadow Waltz - blink in - auto attack -
Chomp - blink out - auto attack. This allows for very reliable poke damage that is also pretty safe. After taking
Insatiable at level 7 you are able to do this combo on 2 seconds cooldown, which essentially means you can rotate it non stop as long as you have mana. Sometimes when you want to chase it can be detrimental or it can be helpfull depending on your skill. Ancestral Strength for extra damage. The slow is an added bonus helping you to land
Chomp easier and helps when you need to chase. Backbiter and Fright determines what sort of playstile you will have for the rest of the game. If you go for
Backbiter you set yourself up for poke playstileand/or anti-dive play, while Fright is what you want with heavy CC teams and dive compositions and/or against multiple range damage dealers. I myself recommend
Backbiter since you can do about the same job when diving, once you practice enough with the talent, but at the same time you get lots of escape ability, mobility, anti dive and 1v1 potential. Insatiable -[great]- 80% cooldown reduction. How is this not OP? Well it is. There are 2 uses for this talent. First is to combine with
Shadow Waltz for a very strong damage combo every 2 seconds that can be used to poke or 1v1 nearly all heroes in the game. Seconds is to keep landing huge AOE damage on the enemy team once you go in a hard engagement. Ether way if used properly this is huge damage boost. To use properly though you must be quite aggressive in fights. Ravenous Hunger -[average]- The extra damage provided is very nice. And the healing is reminiscent of
Li-Ming's
Dominance. This is very powerful talent and definitely one that should be considered in a blow-up compositions. But if your team is not focused on destroying the enemy with one swift combo, then
Insatiable is superior.
Ravenous Hunger doesn't have an upper cap, however the damage provided is scaling linearly, which means it is a fixed damage, and getting value out of it when the heroes scale with level is hard, plus you need to stack it on minion waves, which is comes wiht it's own set of downsides. Lastly this is a talent that gets you value late game, while
Insatiable provides all it's benefits when you take it. And speaking of late game, once you get
Eldritch Conduit at 20, the damage will scale far faster with
Insatiable than with
Ravenous Hunger and will quickly make up the difference or even provide more damage. Especially if you take
Abyssal Symbiosis.
Mind Devourer -[average]- The talent is nice, however you are still left with the issue of
Dread being unreliable to land ability with very long coolodown. The stacking process is a pain as well if your enemies are half decent at dodging skillshots. Crushing Jaws -[good]-
Orphea can boost her own damage by 25% with
Ancestral Strength and self prock that boost. And now she can also create her own setup for devastating combo damage. On the other side the ability can be used to zone enemy dives, as momentum stopper to counter dive, deny escapes by dropping behind retreating enemy teams, to cancel channeled abilities like
Mosh Pit and
Pyroblast and so one and so on. The sheer use and flexibility of this heroic is great, and the damage boost is nothing to scorn at.
Eternal Feast -[good]- Despite the lack of upper cap on the damage you can get, usually the heroic will at most hit 2 or 3 times unless you have some insane set up like
Mosh Pit, but if you do the enemy is in enough trouble as is and the follow up and blow up potential of
Crushing Jaws might still be better.
Determination -[average]- The concept of this talent is very nice. After landing
Shadow Waltz you get spell armor so you can be safer when you blink in closer to the enemy to land
Chomp, and then you get extra damage from your auto attacks. However the issue with the talent is that it only protects from 1 ability. In a way it is a stack of
Block but for abilities. This makes the talent extremely niche, especially against teams that have a damage dealer with any form of poison or another ability with low damaging, but repeated procks. Also it is outclassed by
Abyssal Symbiosis when combined with
Insatiable both on self sustain and damage basis. Abyssal Symbiosis -[good]- Combining this with
Insatiable gives
Orphea full
Overflowing Chaos bonus every second attack. This is insane damage and healing boost. This talent is simply outclassing all other in the tier as long as you have
Insatiable. If you however decided for some reason not to get
Insatiable, then the other talents in the tier can be more useful. Invasive Miasma -[good]- This is really powerful talent. It is essentially another ability for AOE damage on relatively low cooldown of 10 seconds. If you have the extra speed to use additional ability and can time it well, this can be awesome in a blowup combo teams. Yet it is very hard to say how much use you will get from it, as it can be very inconsistent to land. It is quite good in a dive playstile when combined with
Ancestral Strength and Fright since you lack some escape talents and this can save you in a bad situation if the enemy team dives on you, but I advise against taking it with
Backbiter as there is no way to keep your repeated Double-Dash combo going and land
Invasive Miasma reliably. It is possible, but very hard to do and the extra sustain and damage from
Abyssal Symbiosis will provide you wiht about the same if not better benefits in that build. Bond of Anguish -[good]- The most consistent talent on the tier. It is really nice for poking play before you dive in, and it is very effective against tanks. And I do mean really effective against tanks. On top of that it gives you great self-sustain in addition to your
Overflowing Chaos healing.
Dead Magic -[bad]- - The area of effect is too small to hit more than 1 extra hero at most, and the damge bonus will not apply to the main target. Overall the damage bonus is very low too and this is outclassed by both other options on the talent tier. Do not take.
Lurking Terror -[bad]- Overall the extra
Chomp was very strong in blow up situations since you could land 2 Chomps at the same time, but now that the cooldowns of
Lurking Terror and
Chomp are no longer separate you are limited to 1. Also you are only allowed to use it in the area where your
Dread explodes, and heroes will avoid it easily. Which limits the usefulness even more. As is after the changes,
Lurking Terror is just underwhelming, despite being extremely cool to use.
Monster Within -[bad]- Let's be honest.
Orphea's attack damage is nothing to boost about. This talent counts on
Crushing Jaws to generate so many stacks of
Overflowing Chaos that she can't shoot fast enough to get rid of all of them. But that is just not likely to happen.
Engulfing Oblivion -[good]- Resets on
Crushing Jaws would be amazing. However this is a win more talent. As such it capitalizes on you already winning the game, but doesn't contribute much to actually provide the win in the first place. The reduced armor can help immensely with
Orphea's burst combo damage, but that combo already does an obscene amount of damage as is and there are just better options on this tier. Eldritch Conduit -[good]- Very standard ability damage increasing talent. It is passive and works very well if you manage to cast
Dread on multiple enemies. That said if you can muster a bit extra skill you can do more damage with
Final Toccata. Final Toccata -[good]- For the duration of 6 seconds you can land 2-3 extra
Shadow Waltz casts for a good damage increase. The cooldown is short so you can use it generously. Also this is a great way to finish off running away heroes or to dump a ton of damage safely on the pesky enemy tank when he tries to engage with your frontline. But that is far from all this talent is about. If you happen to miss your
Shadow Waltz at the crucial moment you can now nullify the cooldown penalty, which can get you out of a lot of sticky situations with this new blink charge.
Final Toccata can be used to aggressively re-position during teamfights and get out of dangerous situations if you are being dived. Final Toccata and
Eldritch Conduit. While
Eldritch Conduit is very reliable and grants some value regardless of the situation, the value is limited as
Orphea is dealing damage with short bursts, kind of like
Nova. So when a hero doesn't die after a burst combo it doesn't matter if they had 100 health or 400. The result is the same - live hero. If the hero dies, the sheer amount of damage your abilities do will often overkill by far more than what bonus you will get from
Eldritch Conduit, so once again it doesn't matter. On the other hand
Final Toccata allows for a lot of playmaking both offensively and defensively, and a single kill past level 20 can end the game. However you might not get an opening to use this ability for a game changing play and it ends up being wasted entirely. I personally lean towards
Final Toccata and recommend it in my Elusive Waltz build since with the high damage your
Shadow Waltz does when coupled with
En Pointe there is great synergy. Also
Eldritch Conduit gets little value in that build due to the bursty way you do damage. However
Eldritch Conduit is by far the more reliable talent and with the Abyssal Stride build it actually amounts to meaningful damage as you are more of a sustain damage dealer and focus more on poke and prolonged fights. Also
Eldritch Conduit is what I recommend for newer players as
Orphea has a lot of things to master before you can incorporate
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