Hi there. Orianna has been my default support for a while now as she to me is like an inversed Janna. Inversed ult, defensive shield, AOE slow/speed vs. nock up....

I always start with 2 faire charms, a potion, a ward, and a vision ward.
Magic pen marks, mana regen seals, Flat CDR gliphs, 4/5/21 masteries. Get to the front lines with 17.5% CDR

I then spend all my games far away from the enemy if I can, rushing locket and spamming my heal and CV. Trying to talk my carry out of intentionally pushing lane.

My question is if you have such crazy range with Ori, why are you tanking? I get the core items and want to try banshee's veil, but something has gone wrong if the enemy is in range for frozen heart or Randuin's omen. Hell. In my book something went wrong if I'm in range for exhaust/ignite.

Thanks for your positive feedback Cubby! I'm glad the guide finally updated, so the guide doesn't look so terrible. I have been thinking about why this playstyle has worked great for me, while others have alternative approaches - I think this build is worthwhile in Normal games, where you don't know if your carry is good or not, it allows you to give them a hefty shield and escape if they mess up, and punishes the other team for coming into your range. Once again thanks, its great to have some positive feedback.

Regards
redpathcc

Hey there,

I personally hate playing Ori as a support, but if I were to do it, I actually think you've chosen a pretty effective play style. You do a decent amount of early damage while keeping yourself safe and keeping your carry tanky enough to withstand quite a bit of damage. Also by keeping your ball on the carry it gives them an immediate shield if you are quick enough in order to negate an incoming attack.

Just from reading through the comments I can tell that your guide has already come a long way and I hope you continue to improve it. The way I try to look at it is this, if I like to play a champion a certain way then chances are there are other people out there that would also enjoy playing the champion that same way and those are the people you are writing this guide for.

Don't get discouraged by downvotes, just understand that your playstyle isn't for everyone and unfortunately not everyone can understand that just because something doesn't work for them, doesn't mean it doesn't work at all.

Keep it up, be open to suggestions, and most importantly, Have Fun. If you have any questions about coding or theory crafting then feel free to ask :)

Did you press 'Save' before pressing 'Publish'? If the problem still persists, try mailing Matt or Mowen.

Since Orianna is so diverse, I don't think focusing on a single playstyle is correct, I agree with you there. Sometimes I build Orianna full support and sometimes I go support-AP hybrid and sometimes even just go full out AP if I'm doing well. All are perfectly viable.

The thing is that Orianna is an extremely high skill-cap champion, so I wouldn't say that new players can easily pick her up, even with a guide. The best way to learn Orianna is just to play her.

Thanks for your extensive comments Sirell, it's clear you love playing Ori as much as anyone. firstly I wanna say that I have fixed many of the issues in the guide in relation to format and BBcoding, but even though I click PUBLISH, the guide won't update!! If you have any suggestions to fix that, then let me know!

Secondly, many of your suggestions are extremely valid, but I feel they lend to a hybrid AP/Support Ori, while this guide is aimed at a particular playstyle of tanky/utility Ori. I don't think that the style described in this guide is the only way to play, in fact I often change it up, but I hoped to create a clear and easy guide for those learning.

I'm presently indisposed and will incorporate many of your critiques later on tonight

Best regards
redpathcc

Oh, and turn on 'Comment to vote'.

Okay, I've played quite a bit of Orianna support and I love her, so I can see that I know at least a bit more about Orianna support than you do. Rather than giving a customary -1 and leaving at that, I'm going to take the effort to actually lay out a lot of your errors and give extra suggestions.

Runes:

There are actually a flexible set of rune sets you can take on Orianna. However, Greater Mark of Attack Damage is not usually one of them. They can work, but there are better options that are more useful for all of the game.

Marks should be either Armor or Magic Penetration.
Seals should be either Armor or Mana Regen. Possibly Gold seals as well, although I don't recommend it.

You need to take armor in at least marks or seals. The other choice is up to you.

Quints are either Flat Ability Power, Movement Speed or Gold.

Glyphs should be magic resist, scaling ability power or flat ability power.

MRes is for when your lane or their jungler has a lot of magic damage, or alternatively when their mid laner is a roaming champ. If the enemy team runs an AD heavy team comp (as seems more common these days), then you can do without the magic resist and take AP glyphs.


Masteries:

Orianna is extremely flexible when it comes to the mastery pages. Taking the normal path as you have gives Orianna a lot of utility, but sadly subtracts from her damage. I would actually take the point out of Nimble and put it into Summoner's Wrath for a buffed Exhaust.

Another option is:

9/7/14, taking the CDR, AP, Magic Penetration and Exhaust buff in Offense tree, armor and hp in defense tree, and taking up to gold generation and cookie in utility. This will allow Orianna to maintain a healthy amount of defense whilst also maximising her offensive capabilities and also not subtracting from her gold generating abilities. This page is what I rune most times.

You can also run a full offensive tree when you're confident in lane or whatever with a 9/0/21 or something, but let's be honest, no one would seriously run that if they were playing smart.

Skill Sequence:

Now, this is the longest part to talk about, because technically speaking, Orianna can max any ability first; it's dependent on the matchup. So I'm just going to run through each of the options.

Command: Attack - Firstly, this should be taken first regardless of which ability you max first. It's invaluable for checking bushes and acts as an extra ward at level 1. Can be used as a deterrent against invade. Anyway, you would max this first for lower CDs so you can harass more. This is a powerful zoning tool. This should be maxed particularly if you took mana regen seals and managed to rush a Chalice of Harmony or Morellonomicon. This is for also if you miss your Command: Dissonance a lot. More attacks = more chances to hit. Also the easiest to farm the lane with if your ADC recalls. This is what should be commonly maxed first.

Command: Dissonance - You max this first if you can land Command: Attack easily. The slow makes it harder for them to counter-attack and also deals a lot of damage. Also great for countering momentum should the enemy try for a kill. This should be the most uncommon of the 3 to max first, because the enemy just isn't stupid enough to let all these Command: Dissonance hit them. If they are, it's Christmas come early.

Command: Protect - This is maxed first if you are against a heavy burst lane like Leona, Graves, Ezreal or Tristana. The reason should be self-explanatory. It shields and mitigates damage. Other reasons include when you're unable to poke and zone and have to play defensively and so on.

The general rule of thumb when deciding which one to max first is this: If you're ahead, go for damage. If you're behind, go for defense.

Items:

Same as the versatility of her skill sequence, the same is said of her items.

Item choices that you missed out are:

Zhonya's Hourglass - Seeker's Armguard is a decent and cheap item against an AD lane. Zhonya's Hourglass is good for baiting, when you're caught out, etc etc. Not a common pick, but a decent defensive item.

Liandry's Torment - Orianna won't have a lot of AP to deal damage. NP, get the item that does %hp damage. The Haunting Guise increases early game damage as well.

Mejai's Soulstealer - You can easily get a lot of assists at the expense of few deaths at all, which makes this item extremely gold efficient in terms of stats. A situational item to be sure, high-risk, high reward.

Abyssal Mask - A nice aura item, but a luxury to be sure. If you can afford it, it's a decent item.

Iceborn Gauntlet - Good defensive stats and moderate offensive stats. But the greatness is in the passive. It gives Orianna another AoE slow.

Shurelya's Battlesong - If ever you decide to build a philosopher's stone early, Shurelya's Battlesong is a logical upgrade. A decent active with decent sustain stats and CDR, this item can be worth a buy, but only if you got philosopher's stone to begin with, which I usually don't on Orianna.

Morellonomicon - Extremely gold efficient item. You get plenty of decent stats, but most notably is the 20% CDR. I would actually rush this instead of Chalice of Harmony if I could.

Locket of the Iron Solari - Amazing cheap defensive item with life-saving active. Enough said.

Now, the reason that Thornmail is not ever an item you get on Orianna is because Thornmail is only any good if you have the hp to back it up which, in Orianna's case, you don't. Hence, Frozen Heart and Randuin's Omen are 100% of the time better.

A comment on your start. Quite simply, it's rubbish. You don't get enough wards to cover anywhere and if they have a single Vision Ward at the start (which is what I usually do), then you're ****ed and have to play without vision. Take at least 3 wards (not including the Explorer's Ward). I usually start Faerie Charm, 2 sight wards and 1 Vision Ward.

Guide Format:

Is extremely poor. You don't use any coding whatsoever and you just end up with walls of text. However, the walls of text are at least paragraphed properly, so kudos to that. Either get someone to code everything for you, or learn how to do so yourself.

You do not have a proper explanation of any of your decisions, which makes your guide horribly bad. You barely explain your runes or your masteries.

You barely write anything useful in terms of the Teamplay section. Where's the suggestion of shielding your initiator and giving them a speed-boost followed by a lockdown with Command: Shockwave?

And believe me, you haven't written nearly as much as you should have. Feel honoured. I haven't written such a detailed critique of a guide since S2. You have a LOT of work to do.

I have done a lot of revisions and attempting to publish them but mobafire is being very slow. Apologies for the bad formatting in the present version... update should be on soon.

Thank you for your comments Oyooy, I am in the process of adding BBCode. Sorry, I am a noob for publishing it before it was ready. I agree about taking attack at level three, as mentioned I often do. Maybe I could revise that part to make it the default option.

Interesting point about getting more AP as opposed to defence in masteries, I will have a play around. The main reason I wrote this guide was my surprise at how tanky orianna could become while being a extremely versatile support.

problems:

While you did make a good point on AD runes, I think the slot could go to something better.
Twin shadows would be a good item on orianna support because of the kage's gold and AP.
I think you should get command: attack at level 3 to harass the opponents better.
Orianna support won't be getting hit very much and can stay back so your mastery points could be better used in AP than defence.
A large problem is the lack of BBCode. People will not want to read large amounts of text if it doesn't look interesting.

I couldn't find any horrible problems and you have some quite good reasoning behind everything. +1 because it has good content and doesn't deserve its low rating.

Also, thornmail is extremely context dependent. I would not say it fits Orianna specifically at all, but with Randuins, Aegis, Ninja Tabi and Ruby Sightstone, she can be quite tanky by that point.

Thanks for your comments. Sorry, I have corrected those errors. I guess I should have not published it early but didn't quite realise it would be rated so immediately!