// Orianna provides a team with a high-damage and high-utility caster. She has high mobility, strong crowd control, and can deal large amounts of magic damage with the help of her ball. She was once considered the most powerful champion in the game due to her very well-rounded toolkit, but after recent balance changes, Orianna finds herself more in line with other casters. All of Orianna’s spells revolve around the use of her ball, which gives her a very active playstyle while maintaining distance from her opponents.

Why Orianna is Fun

All of Orianna’s skills are skillshots, making her gameplay very fast-paced, and very high-risk/high-reward. You’ll feel deadly when you manage to land all of your abilities. Conversely, if you continuously miss your skillshots, you will feel weak. Orianna has the potential to deal strong damage as well as support your allies, so she can fit into both roles.

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Pros + // Strong harrass + // Lots of AoE + // Strong AoE CC + // AoE speed buff + // Ball can gain vision of an area +

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Cons - // Mana problems - // Most abilities are skill shots - // Hard to land good ultimate - - -

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• : // Standard starting AP middle caster items. You can harass easily and dodge spells and ganks with higher MS.
  
• : // Great for providing extra burst and extra damage to your auto attacks as well.
  
• : // This build supplies you with necessary MR to be able to withstand burst from characters such as Orianna and Annie, as well as giving you mana regen to spam your skills in lane. Beware - this build severely lacks AP, if you want to have Magic Resistance without sacrificing too much of your burst, you can forego the Chalice of Harmony and only get Mercury's Treads, or play safe early on and pick up a Negatron Cape early on to build into an Abyssal Mask or Quicksilver Sash (if they have Suppression and are focusing you). Since you are not going ROA, you need to get Chalice of Harmony so that you can farm appropriately in lane.
  
• : // Adds a large amount of damage and utility to your kit with the damage absorbtion with her shield and overall just makes her really strong. I feel you can rush this item because Orianna is naturally pretty hard to kill and kinda tanky with her shield too.
  
• : // Gives you a good amount of magic pen to kill tanky foes quicker.
  
• : // Finishing off her tankyness with dual armor and MR stats combined with her ball allow her to be very tank. She'll have lifesteal, dual resistances and a lot of damage so that she can utilize her passive auto attacks and not have to fear dying instantly.

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• : // Late game items are highly dependent on how the game is going and where the main damage source is on the enemy team, alternatively if you are doing really well then you want to get additional damage by getting Rylias.

• Greater Quintessence of Magic Resist
  
• Greater Quintessence of Health: // On Orianna, I play her differently than I would most casters. The reason to play Orianna is late and mid game when you can use your ultimate to chain with your team composition. That is why I play a safer early game and go for defensive quints. Ive played with aggressive quints, but since the nerf, I've found its not worth it. Just play safe, farm and then wreck mid game.
  
• Greater Mark of Magic Penetration: // The vast majority of Orianna's damage is magic. You will want magic penetration marks for the best damage output. Even Orianna's auto attack has majority magical damage attached to it.
  
• Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration: // With Orianna, I prefer taking mana regen so you can just farm in lane early game. As I mentioned before; I dont play Orianna aggressive in lane. The only reason to take her is to synergize with her ultimate and go for late game. So I take runes that are for late game, not early game - the mana regen helps you farm easily if your being zoned. If you are going to build Chalice of Harmony early on in the game, you can sub these out for HP/level runes to be tanky or for AP/level runes for more damage (or even Armor if you're up against a Gangplank, Pantheon, or just a heavy AD team overall).
  
• Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: // If you are new to Orianna and want to play safe, play with magic resist and just farm and play safe in lane.
  
  If you are an expert Orianna player - As with your seals, ability power per level is a pretty significant damage boost once you start reaching higher levels, especially once you’ve bought your Rabadon's Deathcap (12 ability power at max level with the Rabadon's Deathcap). We take the two magic penetration glyphs in order to give you a value of 9.7 magic penetration, which rounds up to 10. Once you have your Sorcerer's Shoes, you'll have 30 magic penetration, which is the base value on every champion. Taking defensive glyphs such as flat magic resistance is again an option to make your laning phase much easier, as you'll typically lane against another caster as Orianna.

// I opt to go 21 utility as the cooldown reduction on her skills and summoner skills are vital for positioning correctly. 21 utility is better than 21 offense on Orianna as Orianna has shifted to a utility caster from a heavy burst caster from her nerfs long, long ago. The movement speed, mana regen, etc. will benefit you more greatly than heavier damage as when playing Orianna you will most likely have characters such as Jarvan IV, Rumble, and Corki who will deal the brunt of the damage while the enemy team is packed together from your ultimate.

Ignite: // Ignite supplements Orianna’s early game and burst damage with Command: Dissonance (W), Command: Shockwave (R), and Command: Attack (Q). Because you will often be more utility based than damage on Orianna, Ignite can make the difference between an opponent escaping or dying.

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Flash: // Flash feels significantly weaker, however, I don't think taking Ghost on Orianna is worthwhile for the reason that diminishing returns on movement speed make it less useful than a 400 instant burst of position change.

Orianna has two focal points: her character and her ball. Every one of Orianna's skills is based upon commanding the ball. While laning, her Command: Attack (Q) is used frequently to farm minions for gold, as well as prevent your opponent from pushing, to farm and to harass in conjunction with Command: Dissonance (W). Two primary things about Orianna's gameplay needed to be understood when you start playing her. Firstly, Command: Attack and Command: Protect (E) are the best damage per mana abilities. Secondly, Command: Dissonance is amazing in tandem with Command: Protect for maintaining range to auto attack. Because you'll be shielded with this combo, few opponents will actually attempt to fight back. Command: Shockwave (R), Orianna's ultimate, is used as a finisher in conjunction with Command: Dissonance and your Ignite once you've poked your opponent down to about half. Most combos Orianna does start with a Command: Attack, unless you have a dive jungler ( Nocturne, Lee Sin) in which you can shield them with the ball as they dive in with their gap closers and then get a Command: Dissonance on the opponent.

Orianna's farming is actually incredibly easy, one of the easiest for an AP carry. She has one of the highest auto attack damages because of her passive which makes last hitting incredibly easy. She can also wave clear with Command: Attack (Q) and Command: Protect (E). If the wave is lined up, it will deal a tremendous amount of damage to the full wave, leaving them easy auto attacks to farm, it also shields you in the process so that you could physically tank creeps.

Orianna really shines when she gets the Golem Buff as then she can actually use her Command: Dissonance without fear of running out of mana and being susceptible to pushes. Command: Attack (Q) and Command: Dissonance (W) will instantly kill the ranged minion wave and you can try to zone with Command: Protect and your auto attack.

With proper leveling, Orianna can instantly kill the wraith camp with Command: Attack and Command: Dissonance simply by throwing the ball over the wall and using Command: Dissonance.

Orianna's ball is a zone in itself due to the ability to use Command: Dissonance, Command: Protect, and Command: Shockwave upon its center. Therefore, if you are near the ball the chance of you taking damage is quite high as there are multiple skills Orianna can use when you're standing very close to it.

Due to Orianna's strong range and actually leash range of the ball (1125), she can actually throw out her ball and move quite some distance from it and the ball is still a threat to the enemy team. A Command: Attack and Command: Dissonance combo on a well-grouped team can be incredibly devastating and as they're now all slowed, can lead into a very deadly follow-up. Just think of the situation where Gragas is the follow up on full Orianna Combo.

What really made Orianna so overpowered when she was in her prime was a mix of these things: Long range, shielding, mobility boosters and crowd control. She has pushing and farming.. Command: Dissonance (W) speeds you up while also slowing your enemies. Command: Protect (E) provides a shield that gives a target armor and magic resistance in addition to absorbing damage. Command: Shockwave (R), her ultimate, is an area of effect hard crowd control that clumps up enemies into a tight area to deal more damage.

Orianna should inherently take up a defensive position. You can always poke at the max range of Command: Attack (Q) (825), then skirt around the edges of the fight to be able to get away with a Command: Protect (E) and Command: Dissonance (W).. If you see an amazing opportunity to catch carries with your Command: Shockwave (R), do not pass it up – it can really lead into devastating results for the enemy team. Most enemies will have to Flash onto you to actually crowd control you, so be very wary of this and always be ready with your own Flash.

Orianna has a playstyle similar to Ezreal's in that she has an annoying amount of poke and harass while maintaining very high mobility. Orianna however, has better tools that make her much better for a team. Orianna generally stays far back being ranged, but don't be scared to throw out your spells for potential pokes; they are very low cooldown.


Orianna generally stays behind your tanks that corral your opponent's into tight areas usually around buffs, dragon, turrets or baron. That's really where Orianna shines, when she has a lot of open space to kite and poke in. She's still incredibly strong in hard engages due to her massive burst if enemies group too hard with Command: Attack (Q), Command: Shockwave (R), and Command: Dissonance (W). Command: Shockwave (R) can honestly make any of your tanks feel like you have a Galio on your team. If your tank gets Command: Protect (E) and runs into the center of a group of enemy champions, you can get a free Command: Shockwave (R) into Command: Dissonance (W).

In lane, aim skillshot abilities where champions will stand where they farm. This will guarantee you land Command: Attack (Q) and Command: Dissonance (W) combos with consistency.

Don't be afraid to be aggressive with your auto attack when you have Command: Protect (E) available. If you dodge any crowd control effects, you'll almost always win the trade in lane.

Using Command: Protect (E) on an allied champion with a gap closer ensures you'll land very strong Command: Shockwaves (R). The strongest situations I've seen created are with Jarvan IV and Galio. Another underlooked usage of Command: Shockwave's is to Flash in when the enemy team is severely out of position and clumped up. Doing so is much more reliable than using your Q to travel the ball over as it is instant and the enemy team won't expect it. Be careful of being bursted down instantly afterwards if your team doesn't have the burst to back up your surprise ultimate, however.

Command: Dissonance (W) when used on an opponent will slow them so you can maintain auto attack distance, and if you walk through it shortly after, you'll get the speed buff to continue auto attacking.

Try to react with your opponent's burst damage spells with Command: Protect (E). It's one of the strongest burst dampening spells in the game.

// Orianna, even when she was considered incredibly overpowered, was actually fairly weak in lane. Champions like Brand and Cassiopeia dealt very well against her then, and still continue to now. Currently, I could see Xerath, Kassadin, LeBlanc, Brand, Cassiopeia, and Zilean outright smashing her in lane – and this is Orianna's only real weakness. All of her damage is reliant on her skillshots and being in her 525 autoattack range. She can be outplayed into missing her skillshots and killed in lane fairly easily. Orianna also can't defend herself easily against Irelia as the slow from Command: Dissonance (W) lasts almost no time on her.