Hello there, Ladies and Gents.
My name is Randugun and today I present you a how-to for Orianna, the bursty Support.
Why might you ask? Because MOBAFire seems to be awkwardly void of such and I thought I'd try my hand at writing a comprehensive guide.
Now, please bear in mind that this is my first attempt at a half decent guide for a well decent Support, so I'd appreciate any and all constructive feedback.
Without further ado, let me introduce you to the hidden Support in League of Legends: Orianna.

Now most of you are probably wondering why anyone would play Orianna as a Support, she is rather well established as a good Mid Champion already and I can imagine that some of you can't see how she would even be able to support.
Let's list some points of strength for you as a player, your Carry and your team as a whole as to why Orianna makes a good Support.
And while we're at it, we'll list what she's lacking, too.

Pluses

Minuses

• No regenerative spells. (Heals, Energy gains)
• Often perceived as being unable to support.
• No hard Crowd Control.
• Requires the ability to land skillshots in order to be used effectively.
• Champion with a high skillcap.

The satisfaction of playing Support Orianna.

There are many reasons to enjoy Orianna as a Support.
Personally, I take joy in confusing enemy teams by showing them how viable she is as a Support and again late game when she starts dishing out decent amounts of damage.

The fun already starts in Champion Select, especially if you queued up for Ranked or Draft.
Either because you called Support or because you have been locked out of all other roles, you start to tentively pick your Champion. Orianna? Veigar? You stick around a bit on Mordekaiser before you switch to Orianna in the last few seconds.
Most of the times this will result in the enemy team counterpicking a Mid Orianna, but we're not going Mid now are we Ladies and Gents?

Another rather fine example of how you get ahead of the enemy is when you reach late game and the teamfights start to pick up. Many people will see you as a ''Support''. (What's the worst that could happen?) Use this underestimation to your advantage.

Why we didn't pick certain Masteries

Wanderer , Expanded Mind and Artificer are common picks while building a supportive Mastery page. We can keep these Masteries unused because we utilize different in-game mechanics to achieve the gains from Wanderer and Expanded Mind and because we don't build support based activated items.

Since Tear of the Goddess is an early buy in our build, it'd be silly to spend points on a Mastery that gives you even more Mana, we already have a surplus of it soon enough.
With Command: Dissonance we will be able to roam the map quite quickly, it is also suggested to use this abilty whenever you are on the road to ensure you'll farm up the mana on your Tear of the Goddess as fast as possible.

The Runes for our bursty Support are set up in such a manner that you are able to support decently enough early game, while enabling yourself to maintain a high amount of Ability Power for the endgame.
We build Orianna's runes as an AP caster, but since we won't be focussing on dealing damage until late game, we can easily choose scaling AP Glyphs and Quints over flat AP.

Runes

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration helps with Orianna's early pokes, and gives us a rather fine chunk of Magic Penetration throughout the game.
Greater Seal of Armor will make Orianna a bit beefier, since you will be taking risks with your Carry to secure kills and to break even in trades where you are being punished for poking.
Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power will give us an extra bit of AP as soon as we pass level 7, since from that point on out it will start giving us more AP than Greater Glyph of Ability Power
Greater Quintessence of Scaling Ability Power is chosen for the same reason as the Glyphs, starting from level 12 you will build up more AP than with flat AP Quintessences.

If, however, you want to focus on an aggressive early game with your Carry, flat AP Glyphs and Quints are a viable choice as well.

Support Orianna's Summoner Spells are very similar to most other Supports.
Taking at least Flash and a supportive Summoner Spell.
Here are the most viable choices.

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Flash is a must have for most squishy laners. It will provide you with a way to escape ganks, secure kills and reposition yourself in teamfights.

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Exhaust is a Summoner Spell I prefer to play with, it can be used both offensively and defensively and has great utility throughout the game.

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Heal is a great spell for if you find it difficult to time your shields. Since you don't have any regenerative abilities on Orianna, this spell will give a bit more in-lane sustain.
However, its utilty will diminish throughout the game, bear that in mind.

Now I reckon that at least some of you are familliar with Orianna playing in midlane.
So for the sake of not giving an overabundance of redundant information I shall keep to the supportive nature of her abilities and the shenanigans you can pull with them.


Clockwork Windup is a rather underestimated passive in the midlane already, but its value in its supportive nature is nearly entirely misplaced. Due to the bonus on-hit damage it proves to be an excellent poke at early levels. Try to keep the passive stacked up on a target of your choice, but don't go as far as to put yourself at risk.

Command: Attack is a little support wondertool. With its ability to scout brush, warding shouldn't prove to be a problem any longer. No more surprise Rengars jumping onto your frail robotic body as you attempt to ward that omnious river. Other than that it is of course used to position your Command: Dissonance and Command: Shockwave and, to top it all off, when used effectively it can zone out the enemy carry and support from the juicy, juicy farm.

Command: Dissonance is Support Orianna's playmaker. Enemy junglers will come to resent you for that pesky speed boost and the AoE slow makes chasing a whole lot easier. Try to use it as a way to escape or a way of securing a kill for your carry by slowing the unlucky target down.
If you position your ball correctly you can even use the AoE both to slow your target and speed yourselves up. Other than that, try to use it when your carry moves in for a poke to get in and out of range quickly and unscathed.

Command: Protect is your way to beef up your carry. Yes, the shield is rather nift with a base shielding value as high as Janna's Eye of the Storm (though the AP ratio is significantly lower), but what makes this spell so great is the passive Magic Resist and Armor it gives to the person the ball is attached to. Keeping your ball attached to your carry inbetween scouting and harassing guarantees instant tankyness for when your carry goes out for a poke or full on fight as well as already positioning the ball for a quick escape with Dissonance should any junglers interfere.

Command: Shockwave is an incredible ability when mastered to its full potential.
It can initiate, reel back fleeing targets, peel pesky brutes from your carries, cover your escapes, dislocate delicate enemy team formations, group up teams for some AoE fun times and set up early kills. Though this is a tremendously difficult skillshot to land, once you get the hang of it, it will spell doom for your enemies. Its versatile nature gives it utility in any situation.
Learn how to position the ball for every scenario that might occur and you will prove to be a rather deadly support.

The ability sequence as shown on the cheat sheet is the typical go-to Orianna Support sequence, however, different bot lane compositions ask for different sequences, so let's go through some.

Defensive Lane

This is the sequence as shown in the cheat sheet. By prioritizing your shield you will offer your carry a beefier early game to survive ganks and to win trades. Great with champions who simply just want to farm early game and keep in lane as long as they possibly can like dear ol' Vayne or Kog'Maw.

Offensive Lane

If you are either sided with an early game monster like, say, a Draven or the enemy botlane offers no real form of sustain you might want to consider going offensive early with Orianna.
The ball offers some great poke, though you will need to watch out not to hit too many minions, if any at all, as to not push the lane. Just poke the enemy carry and/or support out of lane early and settle the dominance straight from the start. Be wary of any pesky junglers trying to interfere with your fun, though, so ward away and don't ever look back!

Now that you knows the basic mechanics and builds, it's time to bring that scary robot into the lane and ball some faces. So grab your carry and joyfully hop into bottom lane.

Laning

During the laning phase you want to keep the ball on your carry using Command: Protect to have the passive resistances up as often as possible and to be able to instantly shield your lane buddy, as the ball needs to travel to its target before it can trigger the shield.
Poke your enemy laners where the damage will stick and, most importantly, ward properly.
Use your ball to scout out bushes before warding or facechecking them and utilize Command: Dissonance whenever you need to run or chase.
When your jungler comes in for a gank you might want to initiate with a Command: Shockwave or position the ball so that if they run, you can just reel them back in.

Roaming

Once you've pushed the tower and made your enemy laners weep at how your ''troll pick'' works, it's time to give mid lane a little visit and perhaps pick up a kill.
Whether you will roam or not is up to your carry, as he or she makes the call between roaming and farming.
Use Command: Dissonance to quickly traverse between lanes and jungles and scout out everything that looks suspicious (read: every unwarded bush) using Command: Attack.
Drops some wards along the way to ensure proper map control and vision and always stick to your carry.

Teamfights

Oh goodie, oh goodie, it's a teamfight! I hope your keyboard is in a good condition because teamfights with Support Orianna will require a lot of tapping the keys and managing the chaos that occurs on your screen.
The greatest playmaker you can throw into the equotation is your wonderful Command: Shockwave.
As said before, it can be used to engage, peel, disengage, group up the enemies for a nice Malphite or simply to wreck their formation. Discuss with your team how your ultimate will benefit your teamfights the most and make something beautiful happen.
Try to position your Command: Dissonance so that your carries can get out of a stingy situation while slowing their chasers and keep your Command: Protect on them whenever you can.
You need to realize that even when you can deal damage, it is not your job to do so, your job is to ensure your team lives long enough to come out on top of a fight.

Now, as with any other champion, Orianna's abilities can work wonders in certain teams while the same abilities are wasted on others. It's time to go through some champions who complement Support Orianna's playstyle, some who can't benefit at all from your skillset and some of the counters to your support.


Botlane Wombo Combos

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Varus is without a doubt my favourite carry whenever I play with Orianna Support. You make up for his initial slow movement speed with Command: Dissonance and you can use that same spell in combination with Varus' Hail of Arrows for a wonderful slow combo.
To wrap it all up you can pull the enemy laners together with Command: Shockwave so that Varus can follow with a Chain of Corruption which will grab them both and snuggle them tenderly.



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Even after the passive changed, Draven's Spinning Axe deals considerable amounts of the damages. Combine that with the speed increase from Command: Dissonance and he'll become a pesky, high damage, poke machine that speeds away before your enemy laner can even react.
Even if they do, he'll be beefy enough because of the passive resistances through Command: Protect to win any trade. On top of that, his chasing potential becomes even higher.
A scary thought indeed.



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The sneaky little rat himself is another wonderful laning partner for Orianna Support.
Apart from being able to stealth in close with the ball for a surprise poke, Command: Shockwave lines the enemy laners up perfectly for a shredding Spray and Pray

Botlane Boohoos

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There is absolutely nothing you can offer Ezreal that would benefit him a great deal. Arcane Shift makes him mobile enough without your help and because of his long range poke, the passive resistances are wasted on him. You bring no engage potential on which Ezreal could capitalize on either. All in all, there are much better supports for this dashing fellow.



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Quinn will spend a lot of her time dashing around the place using Vault and chasing after fleeing enemies with her tag team. Keeping track of her and keeping her within the range of your ball is an excruciating task.



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So, yea, then this bloke showed up. being all mobile and long range. acting like he doesn't need an Orianna Support. Lucian's long range and high mobility with Relentless Pursuit makes it hard for Orianna to offer him anything he doesn't already have.
As with lil' miss Ezreal, there are supports out there that synergize a whole lot better with Lucian.

Crushing Counters

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That's a lot mobility and resistances you have there, would be a shame if I didn't have to care about any of that. Seriously though, Vayne is the hardest counter to Orianna's skillset.
Her Silver Bolts render the passive resistances given through Command: Protect useless and Vayne's chasing potential outscales even the Command: Dissonance speed buff.



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Though not as hard a counter as Vayne, Kog'maw's resistance shred and long range will negate a lot of your support. Other than that he will slow down most of the engage attempts with his Void Ooze. Most of the time this little adorable muncher will remain out of range of your ball.
So no real surprise pokes.



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Because you offer no real peel other than your ultimate, an engage from Leona will end in a lot of stuns. Your shield and passive resistance might lower the damage a bit, but a decent carry that can follow up on a Leona engage will rend your carry. Since you offer no regenerative support, you will be on the losing end of such trades until you and your carry can get bursted down.

This concludes the guide of how to carry carries and turn teamfights in your favour with Orianna, the bursty support.
So dive into the store, buy yourself that shiny robot and start feeding your team.
As mentioned before: I'd love any and all constructive criticism to further improve this build.
And if I managed to let a typo slip through, please do let me know as well.

Have fun on the fields of Justice.
-Randugun