What Happened to Orianna? Why NO ONE Plays Her Anymore | League of Legends

Orianna used to be bar none one of the most popular mid laners in the entirety of League of Legends during the earlier years. Since then her presence has drastically diminished to the point where it's rare for one to come across her. Today we'll be discussing what happened to her in Why NO ONE Plays: Orianna.

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#Orianna #LoL #WhyNoOnePlays

[lillyie]

orianna's another victim of the mobility creep. during her days, dashes are rare so it was easy for her to use the ball to continually poke you. in today's league landscape. with the amount of champions(and items) with dashes, it's just too easy to just keep your distance from the ball as it doesn't have crowd control outside of her ultimate

[taleofsonata]

She became too hard to play not because of the champion but every single matchup against are different. There's just too many annoying assassin that you have to play differently.

[thebanished]

Oriana needs more love. She is one of the best designed champions

[Danny_B]

Something people usually don't talk about is her base stats being some of the lowest in the game. Usually is not noticed because she has passives that put them to other champions standards:

She has one of the lowest base ad, but her passive buffs her autos deal the same dmg any other mid laner would deal early game. This means that, at least early game, she doesnt have a passive, and when this passive actually makes her have some auto dmg compared to other mages, you're not gonna auto as orianna.

She has some of the lowest resistances early in the game (Yuumi level armor and mr), but her e has some passive resistances to help her match everyone. This means if u manage to trade with her when she can't get the ball on herself, she's taking close to 10% more dmg than any other mid laner would.


Add this to her q still having that 30% dmg reduction after the first collision, and u get a "scaling" champ whose only way to pressure early is aery spam that gets outscaled by every other dmg dealer.

[evangel]

She's objectively one of the most interesting and fair designed champions in the game, she fits her role perfectly, and that's the entire problem. When you picked Orianna in 2013 you feared facing an Assassin like Akali or Zed, maybe fizz at times and that was pretty scary. Now every champion in other lanes are gonna rush you down like crazy and she's always had problems with people being in her face. Look at the footage in this video and you'll just see it. Playing against Ahri with her 2 dashes, Akali with her multitude of dashes and in combat mobility with her invis, and that's just the midlaners. That doesn't account for all the mobility in other lanes now. These same characters are gonna do also insane amounts of burst that you just can't compete with. You have to manage your movement all the time and try to get out your abilities properly while everyone else is doing the equivalent of holding W at you and hitting you on the head with CC. She is a character that lives in the old league design, where there are still aspects of traditional MOBAS like HoN and DotA. There is some stuff that is fast paced but it's much more focused about the control and macro of a game. That's not the game now. Everyone wants to dash around and do a million damage and solo queue is people just coin flipping fights to get a lead or ff at 15. She's still awesome to watch and play. But man she is just playing a whole different game. But hopefully they don't try to "fix her" and add a bunch of stupid shit like resets or other such nonsense on her kit.

[FalcnPWNCH]

I'd consider Orianna's situation to be the very similar situation as what happened with Riven essentially - for the longest time what characterized Riven and made her a super powerful meta dominating champion who seemingly had it all - a.k.a. a resourceless champion with low cooldown moves with high early game damage, high burst damage, high mobility, high dueling and outplay potential - all of these have over time become normalized and *_a baseline for much of the modern champions_* - Orianna and by example Riven itself haven't magically become worse over time, just that most champions around them *_can do the same thing they do_* and *_THAN some_*

[ethyeule]

As an Orianna main, this is too sad to be true. I hope she appears on Arcane Season 2, she needs more love from us.

[GuardianGrarl]

Am tempted to start playing her just because she is a mechanical ballerina with her body split in two but still connected by magical tech.

[Coffeesharkle]

Ori is too team reliable nowadays, this is her main "weakness" imo, if you don't win lane as her it's significantly harder to have an impact on the game without Seraph's + Luden or Liandry's - compared to other options, of course. But she's for sure one of the most rewarding and fun champions to play with till this day

[Sangraven]

I think what Orianna needs is a mid-scope update like Ahri. Her model is pretty dated, so giving her a visual update along with some QoL buffs should go a long way for her. Maybe have the ball accelerate as it travels so it can cross long distances faster. Or maybe they could tweak the secondary effects of her w and e to help her lean into support a bit more. I'm sure there's quite a bit of adjustments that they can do that aren't just buffing damage numbers.

[Ghosta]

League was significantly better when top 3 most played mids in pro were viktor ori Azir.

[henriquealves]

She suffers from mage obsolescence. They were supposed to be great zoning/siege tools with fair range and great damage potential, but we now have in one side a huge mobility creep, on the other very tanky guys and in the middle some crazy utility that never existed.

For me ori is suffering from (1) mana hunger and (2) not being a threat in terms of constant damage. I assume they'll give her the rumble treatment and give her some % max health damage on Q in the future

[ThunderBubbles]

Ori is a monster champ, you can play her into almost anything. only a small few exceptions. Most people just dont know how to properly use her Q. You can see who really knows Ari vs who doesn't simply by seeing how they clear wave. Most people would Q into it then use E to pull it back then Q again to finish it off, that's 3 spell casts and a ton of mana for 1 wave. what an experienced Ori knows is that the ball does damage to anything it passes though, meaning that you can clear a whole wave with just 2 Qs, its safer and costs way less mana, just you into the wave hit all 6, auto the casters once then q is back into the melee creeps. Or for example they're laning and want to pull the ball back onto of them, so they E right? Well that uses mana and you're down a defence spell, you can instead use Q to put it into range of you while also doing some damage to the enemy or the wave and just walk onto of it to pick it up, saves mana and doesn't cost a defence spell. Why this is important is lets say you have a bank coming, its easier to put the ball on the teammate but you can't bc no E. Lastly you never see unexperienced Ori players make use of her passive, it really hurts if you can maintain your position and play around the ball. People think you need to know where the ball is at all times, you don't, you just need to know your leash range, the ball will go where you tell it so as long as your're in leash range you dont need to know where the ball is bc you can just reposition it, you dont need to see it even just remember the general position of where you sent it last and where you are now. a lot of players will forget the ball is right onto of them, its more important for them to keep track of it than you. You just need to know that s long as you are within leash range, the ball will move where you tell it. Keeping an eye on your leash range means you can snap the ball back to you instantly if you need to without using E or if E is on CD, just walk out of leash range for a sec and it'll come back in an instant. OR even just simply using Q and keep the ball in one spot, the enemy has to constantly keep track of it but you dont really need to, so just use it to zone, inexperienced ori ori players think they need to keep the ball in motion all the time, the ball is most effective when you can utilize its mere presence to create space and zone; for example if you're taking a tower and you know the direction the enemy is coming from, place the ball in-between their path and you, so either they go around or are forced to walk through it. Ori has so many tiny mechanics that make her one of the Best picks in the game if you know how to properly use her kit. sorry for long comment lol I just like Ori

[Stroukyy]

Orianna is my most played champ in soloq, I've used her for many seasons to climb to gold, but now I play other champs in rank because I feel like Ori is lacking. Yes she can still be very oppressive, and powerful, but most of the time you are out ranged or out damaged by other champs, and feel useless. I used to blind pick her, and feel confident about almost any matchup, but now she is situational at best.

[successfulsomewhat]

she’s so fun to play, i just wish she had an ASU or a legendary skin. then i’d play her waaaayyyy more.

[rei]

One of the biggest things Riot could do to help Orianna is improve Ball visibility for herself. As the game progresses, it gets increasingly harder to keep track of her Ball with so much more new things to keep track of and how VFXs (especially on skins) keep getting more flashy and similar looking.

Something like an icon / healthbar highlighting on attached allies (only visible to Orianna and maybe that attached ally) and a more visible range indicator would be an amazing QoL.

[bigsmoke]

it might sound weird but i think at least in lower elos the splash art is really important. when i was new to the game i always thought that skarner and orianna must be really old and outdated because of how crude their portraits looked. the crucial detail being that because of the portrait cut out i couldn't even tell that skarner was a scorpion and orianna a mechanical puppet rather than poorly drawn humans.

[SpookSkellington]

It'd be interesting to go over why so many classic mages are just... gone from the midlane.

I used to play a ton of Karthus, Brand, Vel'koz, and Ziggs mid, but nowadays you never see them outside of support/jungle.

[bohomazdesign]

The biggest problem with Ori in modern day League of Legends is the fact that everything she does is honest, telegraphed and kind of slow leaving room for counterplay. With the rise of the new 200 years champs we experienced an increase in non-counterplay gimmicky abilities and therefore Orianna, even tho I believe she is alongside Jhin one of Riots best designs (in both cases, gameplay and visual / concept design / lore), cant function in such environment unless Riots gives her a 200 years no counterplay mechanic (like for example cut her slow on her W from 2 seconds to 1.25 seconds and in return give it the grounding effect / or let here ball deal constantly a tiny amount of damage in a small radius so she can apply spell effects without casting abilities beside positioning her ball properly with Q or E - lets be honest, if Riot would ship such changes they would probably ship both ideas at the same time).

[MaliciousMallard]

After how much Sera was brought up in this vid I almost kind of want to see a dedicated video for her, how she fell from mid lane to APC/Support, etc