x

Did this guide help you? If so please give them a vote or leave a comment.
You can even win prizes by doing so!
Vote
Comment
I liked this Guide

I didn't like this Guide




Your votes and comments encourage our guide authors to continue
creating helpful guides for the League of Legends community.
Recommended Items
Runes: Early Game Ori
1
2
3
Sorcery
Inspiration
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+15-140 HP (lvls 1-18)
Spells:
1
2
Solo Q
Flash
Teleport
Items
Ability Order Standard Leveling
Clockwork Windup (PASSIVE)
Orianna Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Extreme
Major
Even
Minor
Tiny
None
Low
Ok
Strong
Ideal
Nocturne
Can't side lane, can't lane. You can die though, try to break spellshield before using ult off his ult otherwise you're dead. If he can't use fear tether, you have a good chance of turning it but post 2 items he's just unkillable due to lifesteal.
Ideal
Strong
Ok
Low
None
Champion Build Guide
Spreadsheet
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
https://zianni.lol/matchups
Introduction
![]() |
Hey there, I'm Zianni. I'm a challenger mid laner and ![]() ![]() I pick ![]() S10 was reasonably ok for ![]() ![]() If you enjoy technical gameplay, ![]() Check out my livestream at https://www.twitch.tv/zianni so you can become a challenger ![]() |
![]() |
Why Orianna?
While

She's ideal for competitive 5s or group play due to her overwhelming team fight presence, but is equally as capable in Solo Q due to the lack of communication making it very easy to catch people off guard in team fights.
Versatility is her biggest strength, offensive and defensive come naturally to

Runes
Phase Rush is the ultimate utility tool for Orianna as it's extremely versatile allowing her to be aggressive or defensive in lane. Her biggest short coming as a champion is a lack of mobility in the form of dashes, while her W offers movespeed its difficult to use to full effect. This will make your laning phase extremely consistent and offer protection from front line carries in the mid game.
This is why Phase Rush is currently the number one rune for Orianna, there are some variations where Aery is taken or Spellbook but are ultimately unpopular.
![]() ![]() Activating ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
AP/AP and Armor/Magic Resist shards based on match up.
Alternatively -
If you don't see a need for additional lane power from the inspiration tree, it's also acceptable to run:


If you're in a melee match up, Attack Speed is beneficial for your passive and last hitting efficiency. Otherwise double AP is the most optimal for early control. Haste is also a good option if you're committing to a scaling match up where you're outranged.
Itemization
Items are always going to be situational and based on the game state.
As of right now, if you're hoping to have an immediate impact on the game then

If you're hoping to scale as opposed to having an early impact, then




Flat Magic Pen is more valuable earlier in the game for snowballing while Ability Haste picks up steam the more items you have.



Boot choice is usually dependent on the game as



Once you finish a Legendary item, the Mythic bonus will put you up to 29.
Most low elo players even up until masters will ego and refuse to buy early magic resist making double Magic Pen an extremely strong combination. (Due to the magic pen formula, flat pen can never bring MR below 0.)
Once our core is completed, we're essentially purchasing items based on the situation. If the enemy is building MR you can instead opt to build % Magic pen in a




Pre-Game
To be impactful, you need a strong foundation.
Nothing in history has been achieved without the necessary conditions, League of Legends is no different. To carry a game, you need to make an impact. There are many ways you can do this, but it all begins in the same spot. Everything in the game can be traced back to the beginning, every decision you make will change the course of the game. This can be described as the flow, the flow can be influenced by every player and controlling the flow is your objective.
Before you worry about things outside your sphere of influence, your primary focus should be setting yourself up for success. Before anything else, we must identify our match up, our composition, and finally our win condition. While the game starts with champion select, the reality is that you’re only capable of defining your own actions. There is no value in putting emphasis on variables we can’t control; therefore, we must also pursue a playstyle that enables any possibility.
There are a lot of factors that contribute to the match up, this can be broken down into three categories.
The Champion
Keystone + Runes
Summoner Spells
While the champion is self-explanatory, we must ask ourselves what contributes to the champion. It’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. The most common things we take notice of are the difference between ranged and melee. This is valuable information that will change the way you trade depending on your champion. A ranged champion will always have the advantage over melee in the early levels, often this will be your only window to create an advantage vs an assassin.
The next step is their keystone, players will typically enhance their champions strengths or make up for weaknesses with their keystone. This can drastically change a lane as there is a big difference between
Arcane Comet and
Electrocute. Your goal is to identify what their plan is and play around it.
A burst mage will often take
Electrocute; the benefit is larger trades at the cost of being infrequent. You can choose to either avoid trading in small skirmishes, poke, or extend trades to take advantage of their cooldowns.
While keystones have less variety for mid than other roles like
Press the Attack,
Lethal Tempo or
Conqueror, it’s still something to keep in mind. The second portion of keystones are the supporting runes that accompany it.
The secondary tree is used to augment your strength or to cover your weaknesses. An example would be the difference between taking domination second to improve your damage potential or taking insight for extra lane sustain. While most champions are locked into some keystones, secondary trees are extremely flexible and should be changed depending on the match up. Identify where you struggle and take precautions to solve it.
Biscuit Delivery is a popular rune because it can help with difficult match ups, whereas
Eyeball Collection will give you a stronger spike. Make a decision based on your match up.
Remember to check armor/mr to see if they're weaker than usual, not taking the right defensive stats can change a match up!
Summoner spells are often disregarded until they **** us over. I’m sure we’ve all had that moment where we tower dive someone and we didn’t realize they had barrier.
Mid lane has three dominant summoner spells.
Consider the summoner spells of your enemy and consider where you have an advantage. Do you benefit from trading to look for a kill opportunity with
Ignite, or do you benefit more from scaling with the safety of
Teleport?
To properly identify the conditions of our victory, is to identify our win condition. While this term is often used on a larger scope (I.E Winning the game) we can apply this to both the laning phase and the macro phase.
Nothing in history has been achieved without the necessary conditions, League of Legends is no different. To carry a game, you need to make an impact. There are many ways you can do this, but it all begins in the same spot. Everything in the game can be traced back to the beginning, every decision you make will change the course of the game. This can be described as the flow, the flow can be influenced by every player and controlling the flow is your objective.
Before you worry about things outside your sphere of influence, your primary focus should be setting yourself up for success. Before anything else, we must identify our match up, our composition, and finally our win condition. While the game starts with champion select, the reality is that you’re only capable of defining your own actions. There is no value in putting emphasis on variables we can’t control; therefore, we must also pursue a playstyle that enables any possibility.
There are a lot of factors that contribute to the match up, this can be broken down into three categories.
The Champion
Keystone + Runes
Summoner Spells
While the champion is self-explanatory, we must ask ourselves what contributes to the champion. It’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. The most common things we take notice of are the difference between ranged and melee. This is valuable information that will change the way you trade depending on your champion. A ranged champion will always have the advantage over melee in the early levels, often this will be your only window to create an advantage vs an assassin.
The next step is their keystone, players will typically enhance their champions strengths or make up for weaknesses with their keystone. This can drastically change a lane as there is a big difference between


A burst mage will often take

While keystones have less variety for mid than other roles like



The secondary tree is used to augment your strength or to cover your weaknesses. An example would be the difference between taking domination second to improve your damage potential or taking insight for extra lane sustain. While most champions are locked into some keystones, secondary trees are extremely flexible and should be changed depending on the match up. Identify where you struggle and take precautions to solve it.


Remember to check armor/mr to see if they're weaker than usual, not taking the right defensive stats can change a match up!
Summoner spells are often disregarded until they **** us over. I’m sure we’ve all had that moment where we tower dive someone and we didn’t realize they had barrier.
Mid lane has three dominant summoner spells.
|
| |
Consider the summoner spells of your enemy and consider where you have an advantage. Do you benefit from trading to look for a kill opportunity with


To properly identify the conditions of our victory, is to identify our win condition. While this term is often used on a larger scope (I.E Winning the game) we can apply this to both the laning phase and the macro phase.
Early Game
We’ve considered the aspects of our lane and our win condition. All that remains is ensuring our ability to have an impact on the game. There are core tenets that I advise for any mid lane player.
If you want to control the game, you always start from the middle lane. Your sphere of influence will expand as you grow stronger and enable more opportunities around the map. To grow stronger, we must ensure our survival and that our gold generation is adequate.
The middle lane is your base of operations, your Fortress. You must properly defend your Fortress by setting up Ward Control to prevent enemy ganks and gain vision of your lands. Your wards will act as a spy network keeping you, The General, informed. This will allow you to keep your Fortress safe and use its strategic positioning to punish troops trespassing in your lands. Acting without vision puts you at the mercy of your enemies.
While dying is acceptable, each death comes at the cost of valuable resources. (Gold and experience) No matter the match up or circumstances, your primary objective is to be consistent. To be undying is to exert pressure on the entire map.
To carry, you need resources. The most important building block of your game starts with last hitting, games are won by item advantages and the easiest way to build a lead without putting yourself at risk is by this basic mechanic. A gold lead translates to an item lead, and an item lead translates to presence on the map. This basic interaction is overlooked by many players but is the core of gameplay. For newer players, your goal is 7-8 cs per minute and for experienced players leaning towards 9 in solo Q.
Lane phase is a battle for resources.
Once you have secured your foundation in the middle lane, you can begin to extend your influence. Your wards that were originally defensive will begin to move into enemy lines and feed you information. Objective control and jungle skirmishes are yours to decide. While you can continue to stay mid lane and farm up safely, if you can’t translate your early game pressure into a lead it has no value.
Orianna's Laning Phase is based around the utilization of her
Command: Attack for poke damage and wave control. Utilizing
Manaflow Band will make trading more efficient and easier to play around. The ideal situation is to use your ball to contest each last hit making it extremely difficult for the enemy to trade back. Eventually this damage will accumulate and give you control over the enemy due to your advantage in resources. (Health/Mana/Potions)
While her mana pool is relatively stronger than other champions, it's extremely important to prioritize last hitting to keep it topped off with the
Doran's Ring's drain passive. Once you hit
Lost Chapter, you'll have minimal mana issues but it'll still be important to be conservatives to avoid losing priority.
Post level 4, depending on the match up you'll need to be more respectful as your range advantage diminishes or junglers come into play. If you were playing optimally, you'll be able to control the wave to prevent yourself being ganked easily while making it easier to punish the enemy.
Orianna has very few options to deal with junglers because of the use of the ball and the delay on pulling it back after using it aggressively. (If you're
Command: Attack/
Command: Dissonanceing on cooldown, you'll have no tools to disengage)
This is where
Phase Rush comes into play, if you're poking minimally without proccing your keystone it'll make it extremely difficult for the enemy to close the distance. All it takes is a simple combination Q/W/E or Q/W/AA to proc the movespeed portion taking you to freedom. If there's an abundance of Crowd Control there is nothing you can do after the distance has been closed making wave control and positioning extremely important to
Orianna laning.
Once you're level 6, you unlock your ultimate
Command: Shockwave making extended trades a possibility. Trading is extremely easy on
Orianna making it possible to lower the enemy's health pool before comitting to a max range initiation with the pull back effect on
Orianna's ultimate. Her short cooldowns make it possible to use a full combination twice which is a surprising amount of damage over time.
Once you hit level 9, your
Command: Attack will be maxed allowing you to reposition the ball consistently and at a fast pace. This is where the zone control comes into play as enemies will need to rapidly adapt to the ever changing position of your ball and its assumed threat.
Build your domain
If you want to control the game, you always start from the middle lane. Your sphere of influence will expand as you grow stronger and enable more opportunities around the map. To grow stronger, we must ensure our survival and that our gold generation is adequate.
Survival
The middle lane is your base of operations, your Fortress. You must properly defend your Fortress by setting up Ward Control to prevent enemy ganks and gain vision of your lands. Your wards will act as a spy network keeping you, The General, informed. This will allow you to keep your Fortress safe and use its strategic positioning to punish troops trespassing in your lands. Acting without vision puts you at the mercy of your enemies.
While dying is acceptable, each death comes at the cost of valuable resources. (Gold and experience) No matter the match up or circumstances, your primary objective is to be consistent. To be undying is to exert pressure on the entire map.
Gold Generation
To carry, you need resources. The most important building block of your game starts with last hitting, games are won by item advantages and the easiest way to build a lead without putting yourself at risk is by this basic mechanic. A gold lead translates to an item lead, and an item lead translates to presence on the map. This basic interaction is overlooked by many players but is the core of gameplay. For newer players, your goal is 7-8 cs per minute and for experienced players leaning towards 9 in solo Q.
Lane phase is a battle for resources.
Once you have secured your foundation in the middle lane, you can begin to extend your influence. Your wards that were originally defensive will begin to move into enemy lines and feed you information. Objective control and jungle skirmishes are yours to decide. While you can continue to stay mid lane and farm up safely, if you can’t translate your early game pressure into a lead it has no value.



While her mana pool is relatively stronger than other champions, it's extremely important to prioritize last hitting to keep it topped off with the


Post level 4, depending on the match up you'll need to be more respectful as your range advantage diminishes or junglers come into play. If you were playing optimally, you'll be able to control the wave to prevent yourself being ganked easily while making it easier to punish the enemy.



This is where


Once you're level 6, you unlock your ultimate



Once you hit level 9, your

Mid Game
Mid Game is where
Orianna truly prospers as your range denies a lot of champions the ability to play while also dominating team fights in chokes or enemies over commiting. Your utility enables you to play offensively and defensively in a front to back play style, or augmenting your team's initiation with well timed
Command: Dissonance or adding an ultimate on top of the engaging champion's combo.
Depending on your build or the enemy composition,
Orianna also has very good lane side potential because of this utility. If you're in a favorable mid match up, it's nearly unplayable for the opposing mid if you're ahead in the side lane unless their shadowing jungle is strong.
You want to contest every objective while ahead or even to make use of your champion's kit, otherwise absorbing resources is your job to continue scaling.
Teleport allows you to commit to farming without putting your team at a disadvantage and pressuring the enemy if they're unable to deal with your presence on the map.
It's important to recognize that
Orianna is vulnerable despite her utility to hard engage making positioning important, playing front to back is the most consistent playstyle since it forces them to deal with the ball's position. (Casting while moving!) If you're initiating or creating plays with
Orianna you have to remember that your ball has to consistently move forward making it harder to land than on an enemy running into your team.


Depending on your build or the enemy composition,

You want to contest every objective while ahead or even to make use of your champion's kit, otherwise absorbing resources is your job to continue scaling.

It's important to recognize that


Late Game
You'll be playing nearly identical with the caveat of having some of the strongest teamfight potential and utility available in the game.
Command: Shockwave will decide whether plays go in your favor or not making it one of the most important keys to the game.
Its important to use ultimate while denying outplay potential. This means casting your ultimate on stunned targets, taking advantage of
Flash cooldowns or mobility spells to ensure landing the spell.
There is one thing that every
Orianna should know and that is the power of fear.
The longer you hold your ultimate, the more pressure it generates. If you immediately cast
Command: Shockwave and miss you'll lose control over a fight completely. If you opt to hold onto it, the enemy won't be able to move through your ball without being at risk of dying. This creates dead zones that the enemy can't move through, if they forget about it they die. I'd like to note that timing is a valuable skill set for
Orianna since not ulting has the potential of losing your team a fight as well. Teammates will love to spam ping your ultimate if they feel like you using it on a singular target with
Flash up is more valuable.

Its important to use ultimate while denying outplay potential. This means casting your ultimate on stunned targets, taking advantage of

There is one thing that every

The longer you hold your ultimate, the more pressure it generates. If you immediately cast



You must be logged in to comment. Please login or register.