Orphea made her way into the Nexus accompanied by the comics of lore that evolved around the evil of her father, the Raven Lord. Orphea carries a coffin on her back and is being chased around the realm for the powers that the coffin contains. She has learned to master the powers that come from her ancestors and, with them, takes on the heroes of the Nexus that stand in her way.

General playstyle

Orphea is an aggressive mage with short ranged abilities. Hitting her abilities will give her the benefit of short cooldowns and mobility, so she can cast rapidly them in succession to provide burst for the team.

The short range she has means she is quite often found in the front of the teamfights. This is where her trait comes in. Overflowing Chaos will heal Orphea for the amount of stacks she has when she autoattacks a hero after using her abilities. Her trait can be talented to do other things as well, such as slow enemies, do damage in an area, decrease armor or be activated to heal Orphea.

There are three different builds you can focus on as Orphea. He Q build is good into mid-ranged or melee heroes, gives mobility to keep dashing around. The Q, Shadow Waltz is easy to hit if enemies are close. Because you are constantly hitting your abilities, especially, your Q you will have constant chaos to heal from and become quite sustainable in fights.

Chomp (W) build gives good burst, you want to be in their face and your team should have enough CC to set up for you. This is a build that greatly benefits from the CC of your teammates, as it will make your abilities do more damage with the trait talents.

With her E build, you want to stay in the back and only come in to finish a kill. Completing the level 7 quest sets the cooldown of Dread to 6 seconds, which gives you a lot more poke from a distance.

Talents

Level 1

For all Orphea’s level 1 talents you have to look at your team composition and what the plan behind that comp is.

En Pointe: Shadow Waltz deals an increased 90% damage to enemies hit by its end. You already want to hit your Q at the end, and it's a significant damage increase. If there are big hitboxes on the enemy team, this talent will give you a lot of value.

Growing Nightmare: Increases Dread's eruption damage by 40%. Gives you a quest, where if you hit 4 heroes with Dread's Eruption, it permanently increases the damage of Dread by 25% and its slow by 15%. You want to take this talent if you decide to focus on a more poke-oriented playstyle. This is good if you want to stay in the backline or do not have a tank that has hard engage.

Ancestral Strength: Orphea's basic abilities deal 15% more damage to disabled targets. Enemy heroes hit with Overflowing Chaos are slowed by 20% for 2.5 seconds. This is a great talent if you have other heroes on your team that can provide hard CC.

Level 4

Allegrismo: Hitting heroes with the end of Shadow Waltz sets the cooldown to 0.75 seconds. KEEP. PRESSING. Q!!!

Backbiter: If Chomp hits a hero, Orphea immediately dashes backwards. You also passively gain an additional 15% maximum health. While the 15% increase in health is nice, the backwards dash is a bit wonky in my opinion. As Orphea, you want to control where you’re going and most of the time you want to go forward.

Chaotic Assault: When Overflowing Chaos has 3 stacks, it deals an additional 75% damage to heroes when basic attacking them. This further builds on your trait. If you take this build, remember to weave in your auto attacks between throwing out your spells!

Level 7

Insatiable: Hitting a hero sets Chomp's cooldown to 1.5 seconds. This is a very good talent for constant damage output. This is the talent on this tier which you can get the easiest value of.

Ravenous Hunger: Minion and hero kills with Chomp increase its damage and give Orphea a heal on cast. Ravenous Hunger gives Orphea a bigger amount of burst, but takes a while to build up. Take this talent on maps where you are rotating lanes with your 4 man and have brawling potential. Tomb of the Spider Queen and Towers of Doom are good examples.

Mind Devourer: Hitting 30 heroes increases Dread's damage up to 150. After hitting 30 heroes, the cooldown is set to 6 seconds and returns 50 mana on hitting heroes. This talent gives an excellent reward upon completion. I would recommend this talent if you don’t feel safe constantly being in the face of the enemy.

Level 10 - Heroics

Eternal Feast: Deal 210 damage in an area, repeats itself every second as long as an enemy hero is in the area. This Heroic is fantastic for zoning and point control, but can also get paired with area CC such as Mosh Pit (ETC Heroic) or Warden's Cage (Maiev Heroic).

Crushing Jaws: Pull enemies in an area towards the center, dealing 250 damage and stunning them for 0.5 seconds. Great to pair with other CC, but mostly an opportunistic Heroic where Orphea can look to burst a single target by herself.

Level 13

Determination: After dashing, gain 50 Spell Armor, stacking up to 2 times. While Determination is active, Orphea's physical damage is increased by 15%. In my opinion, this is not a great talent. The passive damage increase is OK, but Spell Armor is something you want to have ready to press or use when you need it. This talent makes it not so in demand. For example as you see a huge Pyroblast coming your way you will have to look for a target to Q and actually wait with dashing until the pyro hits. My brain is already on 404 there.

Abyssal Symbiosis: Hitting a hero with Chomp automatically gives Orphea 3 stacks of Chaos and a 170 shield for 3 seconds. The reliability of this talent makes it, in my opinion, the best on the tier. The shield is quite big and combining it with the cooldown reset on level 7 would mean you have an almost permanent shield in teamfights.

Invasive Miasma: Activate Overflowing Chaos to deal 150 damage to all enemies in the area. Gain 1 Chaos and heal 182 for each enemy hero hit. This can lead to an unexpectedly big heal as it stacks for each enemy hit. If you can buy enough time or find a Q and dash into a few enemies while this talent is channeling you can get some very good heals from it. However, cooldown wise, I still think Abyssal Symbiosis is more valuable in teamfights.

Level 16

Bond of Anguish: Shadow Waltz deals 3% of the enemy's maximum health as bonus damage and heals Orphea for 50% of the damage dealt. This is a talent I would definitely take into a tanky composition with a melee assassin in the 4 man of the enemy team. Bond of Anguish makes it possible for Orphea to deal good damage to the frontline while sustaining herself at the same time.

Dead Magic: Overflowing Chaos ignores armor and deals 90 damage to the target and all enemies around them. This is a good choice if you have taken all the previous passive trait talents as well. The ignore armor part gives Orphea another good option for dealing with frontliners.

Lurking Terror: When Dread erupts (and for 2 seconds after), you can cast Chomp from the eruption. Enemy heroes hit by this Chomp are slowed for 70%. Lurking Terror gives yourself and your team opportunity to finish off enemies trying to flee. If you can’t confirm the kill with the Chomp spawning from Dread, the enemy will be so incredibly slowed that anyone else trying to pursue the target may be able to do it for you.

Level 20

Monster Within (Upgrades Eternal Feast): Eternal Feast grants 1 Chaos whenever it hits an enemy hero. While Eternal Feast is active, Orphea gains 50% attack speed. This is a fantastic damage buff if you have build into all the Overflowing Chaos talents, especially the level 16 which makes her basic attacks hit in an area.

Engulfing Oblivion (Upgrades Crushing Jaws): Crushing Jaws lowers the target's armor by 25. When a takedown is achieved, it sets the Heroic's cooldown to 5 seconds. Keep killing, keep chasing, keep up the crowd control! This is a very powerful upgrade, which will reward itself as the armor decrease will often contribute to securing the kill.

Eldritch Conduit: Consuming Chaos grants 3% spellpower, up to 30%. Upon reaching the maximum stacks, the spellpower is increased by an additional 30%. This effect lasts 10 seconds. Eldritch Conduit is a good option for longer sustained fighting maps. At level 20, always consider how the match has been going and how the fights have been looking. Are you looking for solo pickoffs? Are you in long sustain fights? If the last is your answer then this is your level 20 talent.

Final Toccata: For the next 6 seconds the cooldown of Shadow Waltz is reset after dashing. This is really good for chasing down a target or making sure you can get away as fast as possible, but only reliable if you can make sure you are going to hit that Q. Because if you activate it and miss the first one, it’s wasted.

Synergies and Counters

Orphea is a mage that can be picked with a lot of different characters and because of the diversity in talents you can make her work in almost any composition. The choice you make when drafting her is the team you pick her into, as she is very susceptible to CC herself and once locked down will die very fast.

Orphea wants to be paired with a dive squad that has CC at their disposal for optimal use of her kit. Heroes that fit with her are ETC, Varian, and Muradin. Fights tend to mainly go back and forth or only forward, which is the playstyle that Orphea's kit is optimal for. Heroes that are very good into Orphea are Garrosh, Lunara, Li-Ming, Tracer, Genji, and ETC. All these heroes have either reliable CC in their kit to shut Orphea down with such as Garrosh and ETC or are high mobility assassins which makes it hard for Orphea to hit them, while they can still hit her.

I hope you have fun trying out her different talents and have great success with them. As always, enjoy yourself in the Nexus!