EDIT(06/15/2011):PLEASE COMMENT WHEN YOU VOTE. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. IT IS THE ONLY WAY I CAN ATTEMPT TO IMPROVE THE BUILD, IF YOU GIVE ME NO FEEDBACK, HOW THE HELL DO I KNOW WHAT TO IMPROVE?

EDIT (06/14/2011): The main bulk of this guide refers only to build #1 as that was the original build I made and I am a lazy bastard who does not want to redo EVERYTHING. So keep in mind that when using build #2/3 different techinques may apply (for example in build 3 you DO NOT want to run into the middle of the enemies, common sense stuff like that)

This guide DOES NOT have much of the fancy stuff that most guides do. This is mainly because I have no idea how to add pictures of certain skills or champs. Do not downvote just because you like picture books. I would be glad to put more pictures in if only I knew how. Also, I see no point in randomly coloring the letters and sentences is this guide. I do not have a free video recording program so I can not post videos of my games; if you could tell me where to get such a program it would be appreciated with much thanks.

Also, Orianna can be built MANY different ways, please dont get angry just because I didnt build her the same way you like to. One of her strong points is the fact that she CAN be built so many ways xD

DO NOT DOWNVOTE WITHOUT FIRST READING THE GUIDE AND EXPLANATIONS OF WHY I CHOSE CERTAIN THINGS OVER MUCH MORE POPULAR CHOICES.

Also this build does get pretty lengthy and in depth, and it is pretty much all in white so you will just think "WALL OF TEXT." Just thought I should warn you.

EDIT(06/14/2011): This guide is meant for when you have idiot teammates that cannot hold their own in whatever role they are playing (you are mainly support, if you have idiots you turn into beefy off-tank support)

EDIT(06/14/2011): THE ITEM SECTION REFERS ONLY TO BUILD #1. INFO ON BUILD #2 CAN BE FOUND IN THE SECTION ENTITLED "edit: BUILD # 2 (06/14/2011)" INFO ON BUILD #3 CAN BE FOUND IN THE SECTION ENTITLED "edit: BUILD # 3"

EDIT(06/14/2011): There are now 3 different builds all focusing on different aspects of orianna play. The aspects are as follows:

Build # 1: Beefy LATE GAME durability with consistant magic damage. More of a FARMING focus. SUPPORT/OFF-TANK

Build # 2: Beefy MID GAME durability with limited mana late game. Same farming focus, but a much less dangerous build for mid game. SUPPORT/OFF-TANK

Build # 3: DOES NOT build much HP or armor/MR till mid/late game. Late game has a metric **** ton of Magic Resist. Also has around 500-600 AP. 39% CDR (with elixir). Less focus on farm and more on kills/assists(your mana pool is **** both early mid and late game so you have to be careful and save your mana for teamfights/kills)
ANTI-MAGIC DAMAGE CARRY

OK. So. Orianna is THE MOST FUN CHAMPION I HAVE EVER PLAYED. She is pretty much the ultimate combination of support and AP. However, she is neither AP nor support. If everyone remembers the Ryze revamp, he is no longer an AP nuke, but consistent durable damage. This is what people fail to see in Orianna. She is durable as hell, for 2 main reasons:

1.)She has a natural MR/Armor buffing shield (plus it is transferable)

2.)She has an amazing speed buff/debuff

My build capitalizes on this fact combining her natural harass ability, which stems from her "Q", and her durability. What you get is a support, that wards early-mid game, farms lanes extremely well, can literally save the ***es of teammateS (notice the plural, not just one teammate, but multiple) from across WALLS, kill people under towers, harass people out of exp and gold, disrupt an entire team fight, and actually off tank turrets if need be.

PS: I will not be making any BALL puns so enjoy this one givaway. BALL. There be my pun. If you are dissapointed: Get over it :P

PROS-
EXTREMELY BEEFY LATE GAME
Great mana regen early on
Great harass early on
Fun to play
Her ball has its own line of sight
This build produces 2 main auras that debuff the enemy team
She is fast, REALLY REALLY REALLY fast
Has a natural armor/MR buff that can be transfered to other players
Deals hefty damage in team fights
Disruptive champ in team fights
Can Carry in her own wierd sort of way
Can withstand a large amount of harassment in lane
Purchases wards throughout the game without significantly altering her build time
Deals consistent damage

Cons-
DOES NOT DEAL SUPER BURST DAMAGE (she is not a burst damager by any means)
Cannot withstand a large amount of burst early on in the game
No form of instant health regen like Vlad or Swain
Relies upon not having 4 idiotic teammates(maybe 2 or possibly even 3)
Relies upon armor and MR for durability(MUST build HP if enemies get penetration)
No super awesome damage blocking shiled as other pure AP builds have
Armor is just a bit overkill(having more armor couldnt hurt that bad xD)

Ehhh I am sure there are some more cons, but in all honesty I never really have problems with this build. If you run into any problems, post them and we can work on a way to solve them(may be as simple as swapping runes) :D

Ok, so despite the fact I am cheap and have to share a tank/jungler/AP carry/support rune page on one page, these were the runes I deemed best.

Magic Penetration Marks-The 9(8.5?) penetration combines perfectly with your sorc boots to put you at 29 Mpen. That is one less than the amount most champions start at. This makes for Epic Win harass. That's right. I used Epic Win as an adjective.

Flat Armor Seals-So late game these suck ***. HOWEVER, many many many many enemy AD carries stack armor Pen runes and mastery, so from the very begining they have 31 armor pen. That means that if you start with 31 or lower armor, they hit you for true damage. This means Miss Fortune will take you down 3/4 of a bar for every hit. That is VERY VERY VERY BAD. These runes in conjunction with Orianna's lvl 1 "E" and the armor utility give you about 28-ish armor. That's right, Miss Fortune can go to hell with her armor pen true damage **** shots.

EDIT(06/13/2011):I felt the need to stick in per level health seals as a viable option instead of the armor since late game your armor is soooooooo high that the extra 13 from seals is barely noticeable. At level 5 the per level health outdoes the flat health and your most dangerous moments are the begining of the mid game as that is when most serious tower dives or major ganks occur.

Magic Resist Per Level Glyphs-You could go with the flat MR glyphs but by lvl 7-ish the per level glyphs outrank the flat, and in all honesty the typical AP carries dont begin serious harass/instant kill combos till around lvl 6. Either way you go Magic Resist is what you want. Your AP ratios are low, you will typically have 36% Cooldown Reduction, and anything else just isnt WORTH IT.

Move Speed Quintessences-Thes give you lol-speed. Combined with the 3% movespeed from your masteries you start off with 7.5% extra movespeed. This means your lvl 1 boots make you as fast as people with lvl 2 boots. This means that your lvl 2 boots make you as fast as people with boots of swiftness. This is epic win. IN ADDITION, your "W" will push your move speed to around 510-ish whenever you activate it. That is fast. FAST. Throw in your ghost and you are gonna be booking it across the map, without actually buying into movespeed items. This aids in your escapes GREATLY. The other possible option is flat health. Flat health quints are amazing early game, until like lvl 6 when 60-ish extra health won't help as much as running fast will. HP does not have great synergy with your abilites, wehere as Move speed does. If you find you have a problem early on with surviving (OR IF THE ENEMY HAS A LOT OF HEAVY EARLY GAME HARASS) you should definitely go with the HP quints.

I run 0/9/21. "ZOMG WHY NO SPELL PIERCE/CD? YOU ARE AN IDIOT!!!!!1!!!1!!!" My response: "I am not the one that died 5 times becuase I couldnt take some harass and built no ealry game defense."

DEFENSE TREE

Having 6 armor and Magic Resist from the get-go is amazing. See my comments on flat armor seals, if you wish to know why.

THE MOST AWESOME MASTERY EVER. "Increases your champions health regeneration per 5 seconds by 1% of your maximum mana." Ok so let us calculate. Let us say you have a base mana of 300 at lvl 1(guess-timating), that means you have an extra 3 regen per 5 you didnt have before. Lanability FTW. Now let us say at lvl 18 you have 1300 mana. Your extra regen is now 13. Hey that is almost as much as a regrowth pendandt and it was FREE. But wait there is more, you archangel staff adds 1000 mana once maxed, Now you are talking about 2300 mana, 23 regen per 5. That is a LOT of regen. Oh look, lets add on 500 Mana from your Frozen heart and 800-ish mana from your Rod Of Ages. tahts around 3600 mana, 36 health regen. Yah. Best Mastery EVER.

UTILITY TREE

Ok so I used to be a newbie and thought, "Extra regen is better than time spent dead," until I watched a live stream of phreak showing off vayne, in which his nexus live with only 50 health and he won the match, because he spawned 6 seconds earlier because of this mastery. So yah, his mastery LITERALLY can be the difference between a WIN :D and a LOSSSSSSSSS :(

I shouldnt have to explain the ghost mastery.

4% experience gain vs. 4% extra mana. Ok put it this way: you have 3600 mana, 4% of that is 144. "WOO 144 mana at the end game! YAH!" Uhhhhhhhhhh, NO. Now lest see 4% EXP: you have 4% exp gain, the annie in your lane doesnt; you hit lvl 6 grab your ult and after previously getting her to 1/4 health you throw your ball, use your W and ult. Annie is now dead. "YAY DEAD ANNIE!!!! :D" Now lets pretend you didnt have that exp gain. You both get your ults at the same time. You move in to hit her with the ball. "OH **** TIBBERS!!!!1!11!!" Oh look now you are dead and annie just recalled with first blood money, off to go buy rapage penetration boots. In conlusion: EXPERIENCE>MANA

I choose 3 mana regen/5 because honestly Orianna is a mana wasting *****. The quicker you replenish it the more harass and farm you an get. Harass means more defensive enemies which means less dying(dieing?) for you.

I choose to have more buff duration because having the blue buff or baron buff for a minute longer means a minute more of tower pushing which will win you games. IPSO FACTO- UTILITY MASTERY WINS GAMES.

I grab 3% move speed becuase it synergizes well with orianna as a whole. If you want to review move speed stuff see my talk about Move Speed quintessences.

Flash Cooldown reduction. Having flash 15 seconds earlier wins games. Imagine for instance you are getting ganked. You reach for your flash button and then BAM. Oh **** it still had 4 seconds of cooldown. "@#$% YOU VLAD!!!!!! YOU AND YOUR NOOB #%$ GANKS!" Now you are raging because YOU were an idiot and got extra mana instead of cooldown for your flash.

6% Cooldown reduction. This is awesome. This puts your CD reduction end game to 41%(40% is max so you just barely covered it), without wasting valuable rune space for it. Yep I could say it wins games, but you would probably just say "Oh here they go again on why such and such mastery is so awesome"

15% summoner cooldown-reduction. Let us pretend our summoner spells have 300 second cooldowns. 15%off of that means 45 seconds less. Yep. If you wish to know why this is awesome go look at the flash mastery explanation. Now imagine the flash mastery cooled down 45 seconds earlier than it would have.

NOW. ITEMS. You use them. Here I will explain why I choose certain items and at what times I choose them.

LETS BEGIN.

To start the game I buy 2 Faerie Charm and 3 health pots. I do this for 4 main reasons:
1.)I do not use mana regen seals, so it is VITAL to have this early game mana regen to last hit/harass/get/out of ganks/stay in the lane
2.)You should never get in a bad enough position to get bursted down instantly. YOU HAVE A FRIGGIN BALL TO FACECHECK BUSHES FOR YOU.
3.)3 HP pots are the equivalent of 600 HP. That is a lot of early game laning endurance, especially since Orianna is meant to stay back out of enemy range.
4.)They build right into Philosopher stones which are your crutches early and mid game(and somewhat late game for the gold/sec).
This allows you to lane for a very very very long time before going back. The longer you lane the more you level and the less people are able to burst you down.

Now once you have around 1240 gold you can buy both philosopher stones. Ideally you should be at around 1700 gold before you go back, that way you can grab both stones, some boots of speed, and some WARDS. WARDS save your life, your lane partners life, your teams life, and more often than not set up fun ganks at Dragon or Baron or BLUE BUFF. Now you most likely will back before this however, whether it be because you are oom or if you got ninja ganked and escaped(like a boss). Just make sure to pace yourself to at least get one stone and a couple wards on your first back. The stone adds 7 mana regen to what you alreayd have. That is a **** load of regen relatively cheap. It also add 22.5 health regen. At low levels that=OMG SUPER LANING DURABILITY. Once you have 2 stones you are pretty much set to harass, lane, and farm nonstop. HOWEVER, your job is to support your entire team, not just your lane, so go help with random ganks and let your carries farm. Your ult is teh shiz when it comes to initiations. Use it wisely.

SO after laning for a while and ganking some people, you realize you now have around 2k gold. You tell your teammates "HEY, I need to go buy so don't do anything stupid for a bit." You recall and buy: A.)your sorcerer boots if you havent already B.)A meki pendant for that extra kick in mana regen C.)A Tear of the Goddess if you have enough gold to do so D.) More WARDS (always makes sure to have enough for at least 2 wards, typically you want 3-5). Being able to ward the enemies entire bot jungle allows you and that awesome teammate to keep pushing right up into their base keeping pressure off the other lanes. If you see enemies start to converge on you you RUN LIKE A MAD HIPPOPOTAMUS(and if you die oh well, at least your team was able to push the top down).

So you have been pushing bot (LIKE A BAOSS) up to their second turret, because you warded so much. Now you think hey, lets go help out our other lanes and stop being idiots. SO you tell your team: "I am going to buy then come gank <insert lane name here>." You go back, and after making sure to have around 2.5k gold you buy your archangel staff and some WARDS. This is when you start to damage enemies badly with harass without having to worry about mana(you have around 50ish mana regen at this point). This staff is very important and key to the build. Do not think "Hey, I can buy a needlessly large rod and some magic resist insetad!" You would make a fool out of yourself late game. Don't be that fool.

Now comes the hard part. You need to buy into some form of damage mitigation, and it sure as hell isnt going to be the large gold cost Rod of Ages. Typically you would be around the mid game at this point. You must LOOK AT THE ENEMY TEAM COMP and decide: "Are they Attack Damage based or Magic Damage based?" I say magic damage, because enemies like teemo or squishy oriannas use on hit magic damage as their main source of damage, without necessarily building straight AP. If the enemy team is high in Magic damage, you will want to build a Negatron cloak. This alone mitigates around 20% of their damage. Along with the cloak you buy some WARDS. If the enemy is high Attack Damage based then buy Glacial shroud for the extra armor and Cooldown reduction, along with some WARDS. This is still mid game, it is still your job to ward the map. I do not care if you think your teammates should, you should NEVER EXPECT YOUR TEAMMATES TO DO ANYTHING. NEVER. Believe it or not many people who play LoL are haughty idiots who only think about themselves when on a team. If your teammates are idiots that sucks, but be the one to carry the game because you forced your team to have map awareness.

Now after going back into the fray and wrecking the enemy team with your disruptive abilities, you decide to go back to base as a team and buy since many of you got low on health and just possibly a couple people died. So you say "hmmmmmmmmmmmm" while thinking of the general way team fights are going. Let us say your team is high in Magic Damage. You then proceed to finish your Abyssal Scepter thus allowing your entire team to hit harder, without making your AP carries deviate from their damage schemes, enabling them to buy more. Let us say the enemy AD carry is ripping you to shreds at the start of fights. You then proceed to finish your Frozen heart so you can laugh at the pathetic carry wondering why it is so hard to kill you. After this item you will buy your last round of WARDS. This is because after building this item you SHOULD only have 1 available space. NOW the tricky part is this: Most teams build an even amount of Attack Damage AND Magic Damage. If you decide that both the enemy magic carries and the enemy Attack carries are competant and gunning you down like mad you FOREGO THE WARDS. Instead you buy either negatron cloak or Glacial Shroud WHICHEVER YOU DIDNT BUY BEFORE. Make sure to warn your team that the ward output has stopped and someone else needs to pick up the slack (this should typically be your tank). THIS BUY USUALLY MARKS THE BEGINNING OF THE LATE GAME.

So now your team is traveling as a pack, the enemy has invested in Magic resistance, and eveyrone is starting to finish the core of their builds. After a couple teamfights and skirmishes over the dragon or Baron or a Tower, you are sitting on around 2k gold. Tell your teammates "Hey, I need to go back and buy, is that okay with you guys?" They will either say no or yes. If they say no it is likely because the enemy might soon make a push or go for the Baron Buff, in which case they need you in that teamfight. I they say yes, that means you have competant teammates who can watch a tower. So once they say yes, go back to base and finish BOTH your frozen heart and Abyssal Scepter. Now you may ask "WHY NO COOLDOWN BOOTS? THEY MAX YOUR COOLDOWN!" I am here to say "I got an elixer derp." So you only have 36% Cooldowns? If you are really that much of a stickler you want that extra 5% then by all means sell your penetration boots and buy the cooldown boots at this point. The penetration boots are mainly for early game play and conserve more mana than the Cooldown boots do.

Now You should be reaching the end of the game. If the game continues for this long it means the mathmaking system worked and the teams are pretty much even. You are sitting on a metric @#$% ton of Armor and Magic Resist. You do not have to worry about those stats anymore. Your new goal is HP. Save up 3300 Gold, go back ONLY IF THERE IS A STALEMATE. If your team can push or is pushing you need to be there. If your team is defending a tower, you need to be there. If your team is waiting to ambush baron, you need to be there. If your team is just having a massive poke heal war in the middle warn your teammates that you are going to back, that way they can fall back to a tower. Once you go back, buy Rod OF Ages. You may ask "Why would you get Rod of Ages now of all times? It's already 40 minutes into the game!" Well I will tell you. You need HP. Rod of ages gives aroound 680-ish(?). What ese do you need at this point? More damage. RoA gives you what 60-80 AP? "That is fair, but Ryali's crystal scepter does the same and SLOWS!" Well gee having a 15% slow is real nice when you have a skill that boosts your speed by 45% AND SLOWS ENEMIES by 45%."Yah well slow>mana!" In most cases you would be right. However in this case you are wrong. Remember your archangel staff? 3% of whatever mana you get from your RoA is instantly converted to AP. So 700-ish(?)mana that the RoA gives you is then converted into around 21 AP. That is as much as a 400 gold book. NOT TO MENTION your regen mastery gives you an extra 1% of your mana as regen. So 7 extra health regen. In conclusion:
Rod Of Ages: 101-ish AP, 680-ish health, 700-ish mana, 7 health regen.
Ryali's Crystal Scepter: 80 AP. 500-ish health, 15% slow.

Ultimately eother way you go will be benefical, and if your team really DOES need that extra bit of slow then go for it. It is end game itemization anyway. Sell your last philosopher stone and buy a stack for wards/an oracle.


THE LAST ITEM SLOT:
God forbid the game should be this long or you are fed to hell, but these things do happen. This last item slot is a game breaker. You want to buy any item to shut the opposing team down. Here are some examples:

Executioner's Calling: Yes it is not the ideal item for you. Again never expect your team to do ****. If your team does not have an ignite and you are going against a mundo or a vlad or a swain(OR ANYONE STACKING BLOODTHIRSTERS), this item is definitely going to win you the game.

Aegis of the Legion: If your tank has not built this, he is a failure. However don't blame him, just up and get it yourself, making you that much more durable and beefy, along with the rest of your team.

Shurelya's Reverie: If you find the enemy team is escaping just barely because your team can't catch up, build your last philosopher stone into this. This in conjunction with your "W" makes your team SUPER FAST. Also 15% Coolodwn maxes your Cooldown with sorc boots.

Banshee's Veil: Yep. End game item? You are beefy enough to not get shut down by ONE crowd control. However if the enemy team is CC heavy, it never hurts to have 50 extra MR, more health, more mana, and of course that crowd control deterrent.

Deathfire Grasp: High HP stacking enemies(like Jarv)? BOOM 1000 Hp damage to them. If you simply need another ZOMG nuke on those sacs of HP this is the item for you. Not to mention the 15% cooldown will max your cool down with sorc boots.

Hextech Gunblade/Will Of the ancients: This will make you sooooooooooooooooooo durable. If you find you are having a pissing contest with the enemy tank/off tank on who can survive in the 1v1/2 longer this makes you win. If your team is AP heavy go for will of the ancients if someone hasn't already. This will give "lolregen" to your entire team, not just you. If you don't have a lot of AP users, go for the gunblade. With it's awesome active that works like exhaust on steroids to catch people, it will definitely win you fights. The damage and life steal is also a plus, even though it is overkill.

Lichbane: 7% extra Movespeed. 30 extra Magic Resist. 100% of your ability power as damage every 2 seconds (and at max CD it is every 2 seconds). Extra mana. 80 AP. Yah this item is just a nice all round cap to your already awesome build.

Malady: If your team is AP heavy only. Not the best choice in the world, but if you want to troll the enemy team this is definitely the way to go.

Rabadon's deathcap: This will give you "loldamage" considering how beefy you are. Pushes your AP to around 300-400. Your shields now shield even more, you hurt for even more. Basically if your team just needs extra damage to win some fights then go for it.

Randuin's Omen/Sunfire Cape/Zhonya's Hourglass: if your team tank doesn't know how to tank a turret, good news: now you can. If you don't want to sacrifice damage for that extra regen and mass slow, go with sunfire cape. If you don't really care about extra HP go with Zhonya's for the awesome passive an dability power.

Soul Shroud: I am a firm believer in the idea "Auras win games." This one reduces your team's cooldowns, something many builds do not allow for. It also gives mana regen and a sizeable chunk of health.

Stark's Fervor: Only if your team is Attack Damage Based. This will allow them to live longer and do much more damage. Also makes sure that someone else has not already gotten it. No point in wasting space and gold

Warmog's Armor: Giant chunk of HP and regen. Not the best thing in the world, but it is sure good for staying alive.


ALWAYS HAVE AN ORACLE'S ELIXER AT THE END GAME. THERE IS NO REASON FOR YOU NOT TO HAVE IT. IF THE ENEMY HAS INVISIBLE UNITS OR JUST PLAIN WARDS IT IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT.


IF THE ENEMY TEAM HAS A LOT OF CROWD CONTROL, BUY MERCURY TREADS INSTEAD OF YOUR SORCERER BOOTS

OK. So by this point you are bored of this guide, however I still have a lot of info to get out there.

Your skill sequence is pretty much this:
Command:Shockwave>Command:Attack>Command:Dissonance>Command:Protect.

Let me explain before you go: "OMG she is a support, why th ehell arent you maxing her shield first?!?!?!?!?!?"

Her support relies not on the fact that she has a shield, but on the fact she can boost your movespeed to insane amounts while leaving a zone behind that slows enemies.If an enemy runs through it it slows them by 45%, if an ally goes through it speeds them by 45%. That is a speed difference between the champs of 90%. It is arguably the best getaway ability I have ever seen. While command protect is nice for the MR/Armor/shield, I feell it is more of a utility skill until late game.

Now the reasoning behind Command:Attack being better to level first than both the others is this: At level 5 the cooldown on it is about 3-4 seconds. It also does a decent amount of damage(nearly a bar and a half every time it hits an enemy champ, even through minions). It helps position the ball faster, net kills, harass, farm, check bushes, and generally rip through enemy teams. Command Protect does have the potential to farm and harass and net kills and keep you safe, however it is MUCH harder to use it in such a way. Not to mention it has around an 6-8 second cooldown even when maxed.

Command:dissonance is th eonly other really viable choice for early game power leveling. It will help you to get those kills and damage due to it's powerful slow/speed buff along with it's high base damage. However it does consume more mana with a longer cooldwon, so using it to harass, leaves you open to ganks.

Grabbing your ult whenever you can is a no brainer. I mean, being able to throw around and entire team while nuking off 1/4 of their health, who would want that?

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO POWER LEVEL JUST 1 SKILL. FEEL FREE TO MIX YOUR COMMAND:DISSONANCE AND YOUR COMMAND:ATTACK DEPENDING ON YOUR LANING SITUATION.

Possible Summoner Spells(in order of usefulness) are:

FLASH:this is the absolute best primary choice for orianna. Flash over a wall and use your dissonance and they will 90% of the time never ever catch you. This is needed to make her highly mobile and near ungankable. It is your ESCAPE TOOL. You are not Annie, and grabbing this does not make your zone control much more powerful at all.

GHOST: This is not so much needed as loved by me personally. Being able to outrun Master Yi with your dissonance and ghost and flash and movespeed quints/mastery is highly amusing.

IGNITE: If your team does not have an ignite, you should grab this instead of ghost, unless told by your teammates that someone is grabbing executioner's calling. Even then depending on the enemy team's comp you should grab this. Ignite LITERALLY shuts down mundo vlad and swain.

EXHAUST: If the enemy team has a lot of physical Attack Damage characters, you should grab this. This means 3 seconds of that enemy carry not doing anything while you burst them or their team down. If most of your teammates are grabbing this it is completely your own choice whether to grab this or ghost (or ignite)

CLAIRVOYANCE: Because you will be warding most the game (like a boss) you shouldn't really need this. However if you ware fighting a team that can easily gank your jungler or just gank period, it helps to know at what stage their jungler is at or where that roaming alistar is. It also helps for when you know you need to ward Baron, but you are afraid of getting jumped by the entire team when you go to place it.

CLEANSE: This is a free get rid of crowd control and escape spell. If the enemy team has a **** ton of crowd control you should DEFINITELY grab this(unless of course your team has no ignite/exhaust against Mundos/bloodthirster stacking champs). So GENERAL CROWD CONTROL, YES. TEAM OF PHYSICAL DPS OR TEAM OF ZOMG HEALS, NOOOOOOOOO.

TELEPORT: This is a last stitch measure. If your team does not have very good early game gank champions, you grab this. One moment you could be bot laning with your buddy, next you could be at the top in a warded bush ready to gank the hell out of an unsuspecting Nidalee. However, late game it's use dies down, mainly because you are NOT that great of a back door champion. This also allows for an easier time going back to buy and returnng to the tower before the enemy team tries to push when you are not there. If your team does have good early game ganking champs then dont even bother with this.

Other less viable spells:

Fortify: while nice in some cases, you do not have a taunt, therefore its use is greatly diminshed on you.

Clarity: When first starting to learn Orianna you may want to get this instead of ghost. Try to never use it. It is simply there so while you are learning her mana management if a teamfight breaks out while you have no mana, you can simply pull on this reserve pool. Try to get off of this crutch as soon as possible because late game it is COMPLETELY USELESS (unless you have an idiot teammate fiddle stick who is always "out of mana" because he spams his skills to much and didnt build any sort of regen/mana pool).

Heal: Just no.

Revive: Why are you dead? YOU ARE BEEFY AND SLIPPERY AS ALL HELL WHY IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DEAD?!?!?!?!??!

Rally: Honestly it was a good idea by riot to create a summoner spell that pwns teamfights, but in all honesty it needs some sort of buff before it is even worth it. It has WAYYYYYYY to long a cooldown to be of much use.

Smite: In a 5v5 this skill is completely useless to you, at least until someone can show me that orianna can jungle as fast as Warwick. In a 3v3, if no one else on your team grabbed this, it is a definite option. Imagine if you will, you warded the bottom left corner of the dragon on a 3v3 map. the enemy is attempting to kill it. You walk up to the wall, throw your ball across use dissonance and smite. You just stole their dragon.

This guide was pretty much designed for ranked play. Hopefully in ranked your teammates will be much less stupid and you will not have to ward as much(just because you don't have to, doesn't mean you should ward any less), meaning you build faster.

Pay attention to your team comp. If your team needs and Attack Damage character/tank/jungler, DON'T CHOOSE ORIANNA JUST BECAUSE SHE IS TEH SHIZ. Choose what your team needs.

If you can choose Orianna, remember to keep in mind your team comp during your last 2 item builds. Building Auras that buff your allies is much better than you trying to be an AP nuke or a tank. You are BEEFY SUPPORT/CONSITENT DAMAGE. Your damage stems from your base abilites while your support stems from auras and your speed boost/disruption. If you will notice, Frozen Heart and Abyssal Scepter both have auras debuffing the enemy team. Auras are there for a reason.

REMEMBER: Tailor your summoner spells to counter the enemy team. I can not tell you how many rounds I have lost because no one got an ignite or exhaust. Heck if you NEED to do it, GRAB BOTH. ALSO, keep in mind the enemy team composition as you build. If they have heavy eraly game harass, bring your quints of flat health. If they have a lot of Magic Damage build your abyssal scepter before your frozen heart.

NEVER STRINGENTLY FOLLOW A GUIDE AS THOUGH IT WERE LAW. It is a GUIDE. That means it can help you get on the right track to a synergized build, but ultimately you need to tailor your build to meet the game at hand.

Jungling, NO. I have tried to jungle orianna, and she just doesnt have enough lvl 1 damage/regen to make jungling fast. YOU CAN JUNGLE, but it sucks in comparison to what any dedicated jungler can do.

Now, once you reach lvl 7/8, you can obliterate entire neutral monster camps in a matter of seconds, and by this time your jungler should not be in the jungle any more, he should be constantly denying the enemy jungle and ganking like Harry Potter hellbent on killing Voldemort(Yes I am a Harry Potter fan :D).

So in between your farming and ganking, you should grab them whenever you can, or tell your carries to grab them before you do. Carries can use more farm. Yet, every second your jungle goes unfarmed your team minimizes the gold it could have.

TEAM FIGHTS:

Team fights revolve around you assisting in the movement of allies and reducing the speed of enemies.

Since you will most likely not be initiating throw your ball onto whoever is.(you do this for the armor/MR buff, not so much the shield)

After that is done, help them initate by using your W, then use your Q to add in some damage. Get in range to aut attack enemies, without cluster ing up near your team(clustering means the enemy Annie will kill you all).

Immediately find who the enemy team is targeting and throw your ball on them to mitigate as much damage as possible. You want to constantly be spamming your Q at the enemy, every Q does at least a bar, maybe 2 or 3. Do that 5 times hitting the entire enemy team each time and you do some nice hefty damage.

After your intitial "W" for initiation let your "W" recharge. DO NOT USE IT AGAIN FOR SOME EXTRA DAMAGE.

The moment you see you can get at least 3 enemies in range of your ult (with at least one of their carries, if not all of their carries) use it followed immediately by you "W". this results in some nice hefty damage, followed by a gamebreaking slow.This is why you let your "W" recharge. Now you can spam your W at them to your hearts content. NOT FOR DAMAGE, but for SPEED BUFFS/SLOW DEBUFFS.

Al the while you should be aut attacking SOMEONE on the enemy team, ideally the carries, but make sure to stay a somewhat safe distance away, you dont want to be in the middle of the deathfield that the enemy has created. Your auto attack passive DOES do decent damage. I mean an extra bar in on hit magic damage is nothing to scoff at. I guarentee that autattacks will net your team a kill. GUARENTEED.

REMEMBER TO FOCUS :ONE 1 ONE: ENEMY WITH YOUR AUTOATTACKS. WHEN YOU SWITCH ENEMIES YOUR PASSIVE RESETS.

So after your ult you team should have had time to focus their AoE on those 3-5 people you pulled and slowed. Hopefully by now you have killed of at least one of the enemy carries, while taking minimal losses. Find the other carry and focus your "Q" and auto attack onto them. The faster you kill their carries the faster you win.

NOTE: JUST BECAUSE AND ENEMY IS SAID TO BE A TANK BY RIOT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THE ENEMY IS BUILDING AND WHO IS ACTUALLY DOING THE DAMAGE FOR THEIR TEAM.

For example, they say Orianna is an AP nuke/support. I turned her into a beefy AP constant damage aura support. You do not focus their beef unless it is the one damaging you.

Now the team fight should be nearing its end. You have hopefully killed of both their carries while keeping your's alive by spamming your "E" onto them. Your new job is to speed up your teammates and slow down whoever is trying to run away. If you don't catch tem oh well, don't spend forever trying to chase them , when you could push down 3 towers and kill the Baron.


GANKING:

Believe it or not, Orianna is amazing at ganking enemies. There are three main ways you can do this.

1.) throw your ball at the enemy followed by dissonance and then a protect to your advancing ally. This focuses for on damaging the enemy so your ally can use their ranged damage to burst them to death (example: AKALI)

2.)throw your ball ONTO a FRIENDLY champion and speed them up with dissonance, immediately followed by throwing your ball to the enemy to damage them a bit. Hopefully your sped up ally will land his snare/stun so you can rip them to shreds a bit more. (eg: reneketon/sion)

3.)Throwing your dissonance BEHIND a pushed enemy in a lane. Then proceed to burst them. If they try to run they will most likely panic and run through your slow. If they dont they will still be walking around it, either way it is a win for you.

Keep in mind this is all without your ult. Your ult basically means you can for sure land your slow and burst the enemy down like mad. Remember, ult THEN dissonance. Also all of your skills damage, so tr4y to spam them as much as possible (even your shield, use it when the enemy is between a friendly champ and the ball).

REMEMBER: Your auto attack does sick damage if you focus a single enemy. Don't be afraid to get in there and have that auto attack start tearing your enemy down.

SHIELDING: Your shield may not do much until later levels but it does deo SOMETHING. Use it whenever you believe you rlaning partner or just teamate in general is about to take damage.

Team Fights("what if we look like we are about to lose one?"):

Now let us pretend you are losing a teamfight and your off-tank and a carry are being taken out. Don't be an idiot. Cut your losses and just hope for the best. Hopefully your other carry and tank will realize this as well. Take the chance you have to escape and defend your towers. Throw your ball in your team's escape route (always have an escape route ready)and run through it as fast as you possibly can. Shield("E") which ever one of you is closer to base and keep spamming that speed buff. Staying alive to prevent the enemy from pushing down any towers is the best thing you can do to help your team win the game even if you lost the fight. Hopefully your tank will have crowd control and fortify so the enemy will be too afraid to push into your tower range.


REMEMBER YOU ARE MORE DURABLE THAN YOU APPEAR. DON'T START RUNNING AWAY JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE GETTING FOCUSED. Kite the enemy into a bad position where they are clustered up and then hit them with that ult and slow.Your team should be glad they focused you instead of the carries :P

Mid game, if your teammates get caught in a bad positon in the jungle or are getting chased, run over to them shield them and speed them up. Do not fight unless you KNOW that the other enemies wont come to kill you. 1 kill for 0 deaths is ok. 0 kills for 2 deaths is not.

REMEMBER: Dragon killing and Baron Smashing are team efforts . Don't go in to kill them when you only have 3 people there, unless of course you just mauled the hell out of the enemy team in which case you know they won't come to kill you.

Your early/mid game depends on how much you farm and how much you harass.

Until you get your philosopher stones you will not be doing much harassing. Instead you will be using your ball to last hit. That's right, it isnt just for hitting enemies. "LE GASP!" Yah your ball makes last hitting creeps a breeze. In reality you should be able to last hit every minion with your aut attack. However you ball has a much larger range of effectiveness and can hit multiple enemies at a time. Do not miss a last hit.

Ideally you want to leave the major farming to your lane partner. They need the gold early on moreso than you do. However we all have those moments where we fail to last hit a minion and gold dissapears into thin air. this is what your ball is for. position your ball into the outside bush of your lane in line with the minions you want to last hit. If you know you attacked to early or just have some mana to waste send your "Q" across the minion wave. Congratulations you just learned how to farm: "LIKE A BOSS!"

Now once you get your philosopher stones you shouldbe maintaining lanes, whichever ones they be, and farming/ganking/harassing. Typically you want to keep your enemy at about 40% health. You use you "Q" to do this. Just spam them out of their gold/exp and if they slip up, use your ult "W" autoattacks to finish them off. you will be able to kill caster minions at around half HP with only your rank 4 "Q"; the little shield ones at about 1/3 HP. Yah great farming indeed.

Now since you have amazing harass and map control with your wards and your Q, farm your lane and push it up to the enemy tower, then head off to either score some jungle creeps or gank mid/bot. Also offer to take over another lane while someone goes back. You are literally AMAZING at holding lanes because of your god regens that the stones give you. However YOU MUST BE CAREFUL OF BEEFY ENEMIES (plural, because you can typically handle one, but when they have 2 they like to jump you). They WILL dive you to try to kill you. Don't let them. Preventing a little bit of damage on a tower is not worth a death.

Orianna is unique in MANY MANY ways. The most important I find, is the fact that the Ball has it's own line of sight. This means no more facechecking bushes. This means that your team will not end up in a 2v5 situation because they walked into a bush at lvl 1 to prevent enemies from ganking their jungler's blue.

ALWAYS CHECK BUSHES WITH YOUR BALL FIRST.

Another fun one I love is that she excels mid game at stealing buffs. SImply throw your ball across the wal and time your Q/W right and you have a free blue buff ^^ same thing goes for the dragon and the Baron although those are MUCH harder to steal.

Orianna's passive rewards focusing a single enemy with your autoattacks by increasing the damage output each time. It is basically like having a madred's bloodrazor passive at lvl 1 built into your character. It makes for some nice damage and scores kills.

This build in particular boast ENORMOUS durability. It means you can get in rang to auto attack without being burst down heavily. It means you can with stand an enemy anticarry AND KILL THEM. This build offers a great blend between defense offense and support. You wind up with decent AP and near max cooldowns, in tandem with some nice auras for your team to take advantage of. You are NOT MANA STARVED early game, the phase in which you harass is a its best. Best of all the build's core is 5 itmes, one of which (Rod of Ages) can easily be replaced, giving it the ability to easily adapt to counter the enemy team.

One of the BEST parts I love about this build, is that you can ward throughout the game. This means that the rest of your team saves SOOOOOO MUCH MONEY.

Build is durability, with support auras and consistent damage, focusing largely on warding all game. Overall works great, sort of like how Taric can build to off tank towers by simply having auras.

Again I am sorry for no fancy stuff any my guide, I have a feeling it won't get voted on much for exactly that reason. If you have any questions feel free to post them, I will do my best to answer.

EDIT: In addition, any edits I make will be posted in light green for your convenience. Major edits will simply be added after the summary.

Also here is a little theme song for this build: (is posted completely for fun, mainly 2:37 and on)
Play Video

I completely forgot about this, mainly because I figured everyone should know it by now (I know completely forgot that there are more newbies everyday). SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

SMARTCASTING. An explanation of what it is. Smartcasting allows you to instantaneously fire a skill toward the location your mouse is currently hovering over. This allows you to stay at maximum ranges because if you are out of range to cast the spell at the desired location you will automatically move to the maximum range. It also vastly improves reaction time while giving you the option of moving to avoid harass.

You may ask how this is done, and you are probably thinking it is super complicated. It is not.

SMARTCASTING IS DONE BY HOLDING DOWN THE <SHIFT> KEY AND PRESSING THE KEY CORRESPONDING TO THE SKILL YOU WANT TO USE (eg. <Q> <W> <E> <R>). THE SPELL IS THEN CAST TOWARD WHATEVER POSITION YOUR CURSOR IS ON AT THE MOMENT YOU PRESS THE SKILL KEY.

This means that for orianna's <Q> you may harass much faster and more accurately. Her <W> and <R> will simply activate upon pressing at the balls current location however, that does not change. ANY ALLY BUFFING SKILL, INCLUDING HEALS, CAN BE SMART CAST BY PLACING YOUR CURSOR UPON A TEAMMATE OR ONESELF.

HARD SHOTS (also known as taric stun, nasus slow, malzahar damage over time, SKILLS TARGETING PARTICULAR ENEMIES) ACT IN A SIMILAR FASHION, HOWEVER THE CURSOR MUST BE PLACED UPON AN ENEMY UNIT.

SKILL SHOTS ARE FIRED IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CURSOR.

Smartcasting is almost REQUIRED in order to play Orianna well. It isn't only for Orianna either. It works on ALL champs. I guarentee once you pick it up your overall gameplay will improve and you will have multiple wins because of it.

1.)

A: Honestly it depends on how well your game is going. I typically end up getting the tear around the begining of mid game. This is mainly cause I am purchasing wards so often ;-;

Now unlike most champs orianna pretty much spams her abilities nonstop. This means that rather than getting the tear purely for mana, you are grabbing it and the staff for mana regen at first. After a while of spamming then it transfers into more of an AP role/mana reserve, thus allowing you to get off the crutch of the philo stones later on in the game.

Now if you really wanted to you could grab a tear BEFORE your magic pen boots. This means you would definitely have it around the very start of the mid game, depending on how well you last hit. Your speed quints and masteries allow you to have some leeway as far as how much speed you need from your boots early on.

In conclusion: Get the tear around the begining or middle of mid game. If you don't have money for it, you:
A.)are buying too many wards
B.)are not farming well enough
C.)did not purchase the philo stones as soon as possible
These philo stones are AMAZING at BOOSTING her FARM. They are not a REPLACEMENT for her FARM.

Soo after a couple posts from people an idea hit me. Why not just forgo the Archangel's staff for the Rod of Ages first? It DOES give you mana regen mid game (not quite as much as the staff) and it DOES give you ability power and that health you need to be a bit more durable.

Instead of capping off your 5 item with the Rod of Ages which will take a while to build you can build it earlier and then build the death cap to make up for the AP deficit left by arch angel's.

Overall it results in a much less dangerous early mid game. Without affecting your late game damage output by much whatsoever. HOWEVER, it does mean you will have to be careful how much you spam late game because your mana REGEN will be ****.

WHEN USING BUILD #2 ALWAY BE SURE TO HAVE AT LEAST 600 MANA SAVED UP FOR RANDOM TEAMFIGHTS.(late game, earlier on , when you have the philo stones, feel free to spam)

Credit for this idea stems from: QuasarLeginan and Chazn2

SOOOOOO after some more comments people suggested morello's vs Frozen Heart. My view on that is simply this: If you are going to use Morello's you should simply make most of your items AP based. Realizing this you will get focused in team fights. A LOT. Most burst damagers tend to be AP based so I decided that building sizeable MR along the way was your best bet at survival.

So since you are more AP based instead of mana support based I decided to swap to a 9/0/21 mastery build rather than my standard 0/9/21 build. This allows for much more damage and near max cooldown late game.

The early game item buying is pretty straightforward. You need the mana regen and thew cooldowns at cheap prices.

Mid game you start to beef up your MR because this is when most AP carries start their reign of terror. Since you are still focused AP you want MR/AP items and lich bane and abyssal scepter solve all your needs.

Late game you cap it all off with a Rabadon's Deathcap. After this you turn your last philo stone into Eleisa's Miracle and a Cooldown elixir(this is because typically after you buy your deathcap, the game will end within 5-10 minutes). Following this you look at what is DAMAGING you most: AD enemies or MD(magic damage) enemies.

If you are still getting burst by AP through your "OMG" MR and shield it means the enemy built Magic Penetration. It will no longer be much use to build MR. So instead you go for Ryali's Crystal Scepter for the extra HP without sacrificing on AP and gaining a small Crowd Control for your team. Ig the damage is "OMG" extreme, buy a Warmog's Armor. 1.4k health is worth it if it will mitigate all of tehir major burst.

If you are getting burst by AD then you simply sell your Morello's and buy a Frozen Heart. You then proceed to buy your Rylai's Crystal Scepter. This allows you to have a **** ton of beef end game while making you super AP focused throughout the game.

YOUR MANA POOL IS **** FOR MOST THE GAME: BE CAREFUL TO SAVE AROUND 800 MANA LATE GAME FOR TEAM FIGHTS. Your mana regen is still fairly good early/mid game(up until whenever you sell your philo stones).