The Double Barrier meta

Orisa is undeniably the best pick of the actual Double Barrier meta, but Sigma achieved a higher pick rate in September. I believe that many players at GrandMaster prefer the latter because Orisa is too plain to play: you just place barriers, keep shooting the enemy’s shields with Fusion Driver, and launch Halt! whenever necessary.

The Sigma mirror matchup (mirror = both teams have the same hero) is quite fun due to his skillset, but the Orisa one is very repetitive. She usually stands behind her barrier, shooting at the approaching enemies, and if they get too close, the best strategy is retreating at a distance and placing a new barrier.

Honestly, I hope Reinhardt will become a popular choice in the future as the mind games among Reinhardts were very entertaining for a main tank.

There is no reason to pick other tanks if you wish to rank up

You can decide to not play Orisa and Sigma in this meta, but you are basically soft-throwing the match because all the other tanks are weaker if compared to them.

For example, playing Winston/D.Va could rank you at a lower SR than a meta tank at the same skill level (of course, it also depends on the rank range considered, as meta picks are less impactful at lower ranks).

With the double barrier meta, the game is certainly not as fun as in the past, especially for a DPS character as you end spending most of the time shooting at a barrier. Sigma and Orisa are not a problem individually, but their total shield uptime is very boring to deal with.

How to play against dual barriers

I must underline that trying to break shields against a team that has two redeployable barriers is pretty much meaningless.

The situation was different years ago when each team had only one shield-tank (Reinhardt), but nowadays Sigma can protect his team whenever Orisa is on cooldown, so they are impenetrable with just a sole DPS hero focusing them.

There are a few strategies that work well against the double barrier:

Rush in. You must advance past the barriers quickly, so the team needs to cooperate and move together exploiting Lucio’s speed boost.

Dive. It looks like people forgot about the existence of the Dive strategy after an entire year with GOATS, but this the best method to counter static shields.

The options above do work, but they require a certain level of teamplay that is often missing in pubs, so attempting them with a random party might cause a defeat most of the time.

Shield war. Mirroring the enemy team is the simplest and safest strategy. Both the teams will end fighting with a double shield in their lineup, so the final outcome will depend on the skill of the individual players.

About Sigma himself, he is not very hard to deal with. Many players believe they have to take him down in order to advance, but this is not strictly necessary: as a solo player, you need to monopolize his attention (and his shield) for as long as necessary to weaken the enemy’s formation and give your teammates the chance to react, acquire a few kill, and gain an advantage.