I'm not an Orphea player, but I've played quite a few games as Orphea's teammate (in QM).  Even if some games are the usual slogs where nothing works, a lot of matches with her are tense, exciting, and full of clutch moments. I enjoy both playing with and against Orphea. Sadly, comparing to more meta-heroes, there aren’t many Orphea players out there, and even fewer good ones.
 
Some quick thoughts about the hero.
## Dancing

The main design idea behind Orphea is the playstyle of a dancer. She is meant to dance around enemy heroes. But here's the catch: in reality, the opportunity to "dance" around heroes for more than 2-3 dashes is very rare. It usually happens in the early game and against low-mobility compositions.

And, you know, when Orphea’s dance works, it’s fascinating. She seems to flow through enemies. The gameplay in this case feels somewhat similar to Illidan or Malthael, but with its own unique rhythm.  

Spells are beautifully animated and look especially cool when they are chained in quick succession.

In addition I enjoy it when Orphea uses **Shadow Waltz** on one opponent (or on Nova/Samuro clones) and then quickly shifts to another. In the best case, this effectively doubles her Q range - and such rapid target switching often comes as a big surprise to the enemy hero, especially when combined with [some CC](https://streamable.com/91x82x).  
## Auto-attacks

Although you might want to classify Orphea as a mage, she is very dependent on auto-attacks. They are her sustain and a significant part of her damage. Orphea's auto-attacks hurt and when I say hurt they do [hurt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8xC_Ksj4z8&t=1174s). This makes Orphea unusually vulnerable, for a mage, to blinds and evasion effects. Team compositions with a lot of blind could be very difficult to play against.
## Sustain

Speaking of sustain, this is another great feature of Orphea. It very often happens that she is left with just a sliver of health and it seems like all is lost, when she suddenly heals up and wipes everyone nearby. This creates very tense gameplay on the verge of failure.

## Burst

Orphea has one of the best burst in the game. 
		
## Punishing Gameplay

Sometimes, when Orphea is carrying a teamfight, killing enemies in seconds, it might seem that the hero is too strong. But you should try playing her yourself...

Her casts are delayed and interruptible, so even if you react first, you can still lose the exchange. Alarak or Qhira, for example, can stop your spells mid-cast, and Jaina can outright kill you during Chomp’s wind-up. 

Hesitated with Chomp? Say goodbye to a significant portion of your damage and sustain.  
Missed Shadow Waltz? No mobility.
Got blinded or hit evasion? No sustain.
In some games you will be just permanently kited.

The latter is, by the way, the best way to play against Orphea if you are a ranged hero.

And then there are your teammates, who usually [don't care about your spells](https://streamable.com/qfyprv), and any random displacement can decide the outcome of a teamfight not in your favor. 

Even on Tyrael, whom I've been playing the most, it's easy to ruin a cast of Crushing Jaws or Shadow Waltz by using Holy Ground.

## What if

The paragraph above made me think: what if Orphea had been released as a launch hero? I didn't really follow the game closely back then, but I know that in the early years the approach to hero design was different. Spells were much snappier and mostly instant. Movement abilities, like Illidan's Q, Valla's Vault, Muradin's Jump, often had unstoppable frames. Had Orphea been created back then, her delays would likely have been shorter. It's clear that for balance, her damage would have to be reduced, but still. I would really want to see what Orphea would have looked like if she had been developed in 2015-2015.