orianna's another victim of the mobility creep. during her days, dashes are rare so it was easy for her to use the ball to continually poke you. in today's league landscape. with the amount of champions(and items) with dashes, it's just too easy to just keep your distance from the ball as it doesn't have crowd control outside of her ultimate

She became too hard to play not because of the champion but every single matchup against are different. There's just too many annoying assassin that you have to play differently.

She's objectively one of the most interesting and fair designed champions in the game, she fits her role perfectly, and that's the entire problem. When you picked Orianna in 2013 you feared facing an Assassin like Akali or Zed, maybe fizz at times and that was pretty scary. Now every champion in other lanes are gonna rush you down like crazy and she's always had problems with people being in her face. Look at the footage in this video and you'll just see it. Playing against Ahri with her 2 dashes, Akali with her multitude of dashes and in combat mobility with her invis, and that's just the midlaners. That doesn't account for all the mobility in other lanes now. These same characters are gonna do also insane amounts of burst that you just can't compete with. You have to manage your movement all the time and try to get out your abilities properly while everyone else is doing the equivalent of holding W at you and hitting you on the head with CC. She is a character that lives in the old league design, where there are still aspects of traditional MOBAS like HoN and DotA. There is some stuff that is fast paced but it's much more focused about the control and macro of a game. That's not the game now. Everyone wants to dash around and do a million damage and solo queue is people just coin flipping fights to get a lead or ff at 15. She's still awesome to watch and play. But man she is just playing a whole different game. But hopefully they don't try to "fix her" and add a bunch of stupid shit like resets or other such nonsense on her kit.

Oriana needs more love. She is one of the best designed champions

Something people usually don't talk about is her base stats being some of the lowest in the game. Usually is not noticed because she has passives that put them to other champions standards: She has one of the lowest base ad, but her passive buffs her autos deal the same dmg any other mid laner would deal early game. This means that, at least early game, she doesnt have a passive, and when this passive actually makes her have some auto dmg compared to other mages, you're not gonna auto as orianna. She has some of the lowest resistances early in the game (Yuumi level armor and mr), but her e has some passive resistances to help her match everyone. This means if u manage to trade with her when she can't get the ball on herself, she's taking close to 10% more dmg than any other mid laner would. Add this to her q still having that 30% dmg reduction after the first collision, and u get a "scaling" champ whose only way to pressure early is aery spam that gets outscaled by every other dmg dealer.

As an Orianna main, this is too sad to be true. I hope she appears on Arcane Season 2, she needs more love from us.

I'd consider Orianna's situation to be the very similar situation as what happened with Riven essentially - for the longest time what characterized Riven and made her a super powerful meta dominating champion who seemingly had it all - a.k.a. a resourceless champion with low cooldown moves with high early game damage, high burst damage, high mobility, high dueling and outplay potential - all of these have over time become normalized and *_a baseline for much of the modern champions_* - Orianna and by example Riven itself haven't magically become worse over time, just that most champions around them *_can do the same thing they do_* and *_THAN some_*

One of the biggest things Riot could do to help Orianna is improve Ball visibility for herself. As the game progresses, it gets increasingly harder to keep track of her Ball with so much more new things to keep track of and how VFXs (especially on skins) keep getting more flashy and similar looking. Something like an icon / healthbar highlighting on attached allies (only visible to Orianna and maybe that attached ally) and a more visible range indicator would be an amazing QoL.

Ori is too team reliable nowadays, this is her main "weakness" imo, if you don't win lane as her it's significantly harder to have an impact on the game without Seraph's + Luden or Liandry's - compared to other options , of course. But she's for sure one of the most rewarding and fun champions to play with till this day

Am tempted to start playing her just because she is a mechanical ballerina with her body split in two but still connected by magical tech.

she’s so fun to play, i just wish she had an ASU or a legendary skin. then i’d play her waaaayyyy more.

She suffers from mage obsolescence. They were supposed to be great zoning/siege tools with fair range and great damage potential, but we now have in one side a huge mobility creep, on the other very tanky guys and in the middle some crazy utility that never existed. For me ori is suffering from (1) mana hunger and (2) not being a threat in terms of constant damage. I assume they'll give her the rumble treatment and give her some % max health damage on Q in the future

I think what Orianna needs is a mid-scope update like Ahri. Her model is pretty dated, so giving her a visual update along with some QoL buffs should go a long way for her. Maybe have the ball accelerate as it travels so it can cross long distances faster. Or maybe they could tweak the secondary effects of her w and e to help her lean into support a bit more. I'm sure there's quite a bit of adjustments that they can do that aren't just buffing damage numbers.

Love the uploads Vars. When the Soul Fighter event ends would you consider making a video about how this summer's League content measured up against the last 3?

Fantastic video. I watch alot of your stuff but this one is a gem. Good one Vars!!

It'd be interesting to go over why so many classic mages are just... gone from the midlane. I used to play a ton of Karthus, Brand, Vel'koz, and Ziggs mid, but nowadays you never see them outside of support/jungle.

The biggest problem with Ori in modern day League of Legends is the fact that everything she does is honest, telegraphed and kind of slow leaving room for counterplay. With the rise of the new 200 years champs we experienced an increase in non-counterplay gimmicky abilities and therefore Orianna, even tho I believe she is alongside Jhin one of Riots best designs (in both cases, gameplay and visual / concept design / lore), cant function in such environment unless Riots gives her a 200 years no counterplay mechanic (like for example cut her slow on her W from 2 seconds to 1.25 seconds and in return give it the grounding effect / or let here ball deal constantly a tiny amount of damage in a small radius so she can apply spell effects without casting abilities beside positioning her ball properly with Q or E - lets be honest, if Riot would ship such changes they would probably ship both ideas at the same time).

it might sound weird but i think at least in lower elos the splash art is really important. when i was new to the game i always thought that skarner and orianna must be really old and outdated because of how crude their portraits looked. the crucial detail being that because of the portrait cut out i couldn't even tell that skarner was a scorpion and orianna a mechanical puppet rather than poorly drawn humans.

League was significantly better when top 3 most played mids in pro were viktor ori Azir.

After how much Sera was brought up in this vid I almost kind of want to see a dedicated video for her, how she fell from mid lane to APC/Support, etc

Orianna is my most played champ in soloq, I've used her for many seasons to climb to gold, but now I play other champs in rank because I feel like Ori is lacking. Yes she can still be very oppressive, and powerful, but most of the time you are out ranged or out damaged by other champs, and feel useless. I used to blind pick her, and feel confident about almost any matchup, but now she is situational at best.

Lol 2 months after this video and she s tier in pro.

For me the biggest problem about her is no mobility These days everyone has a dahs and a lot of damage I played against and as Orianna, the moment you tell your jungler she has no flash, she is dead She is so easy to shut down of all the mobile high damage champs that are the most popular champions to pick and play I also feel a link between Ori and pre-mid-scope Ahri, jack of all traits and master of none

that "wretched weaponry" in the background hits hard

One thing I feel like you didn't mention is mobility creep at on point in league Orianna was popular because of there wasn't as many threats now every champ seems to have some crazy dash to close the gap or get out of your ultimate the mobility creep is crazy

She's a "perfectly balanced" champion. Feels smooth to play, can engage, support, zone, poke, consistent damage etc without feeling too complicated. Sadly, with loads of BS's in champion design, she can feel a little rough to play (It's hard to zone properly when Yone can engage her from 2 miles away.

Ori is a monster champ, you can play her into almost anything. only a small few exceptions. Most people just dont know how to properly use her Q. You can see who really knows Ari vs who doesn't simply by seeing how they clear wave. Most people would Q into it then use E to pull it back then Q again to finish it off, that's 3 spell casts and a ton of mana for 1 wave. what an experienced Ori knows is that the ball does damage to anything it passes though, meaning that you can clear a whole wave with just 2 Qs, its safer and costs way less mana, just you into the wave hit all 6, auto the casters once then q is back into the melee creeps. Or for example they're laning and want to pull the ball back onto of them, so they E right? Well that uses mana and you're down a defence spell, you can instead use Q to put it into range of you while also doing some damage to the enemy or the wave and just walk onto of it to pick it up, saves mana and doesn't cost a defence spell. Why this is important is lets say you have a bank coming, its easier to put the ball on the teammate but you can't bc no E. Lastly you never see unexperienced Ori players make use of her passive, it really hurts if you can maintain your position and play around the ball. People think you need to know where the ball is at all times, you don't, you just need to know your leash range, the ball will go where you tell it so as long as your're in leash range you dont need to know where the ball is bc you can just reposition it, you dont need to see it even just remember the general position of where you sent it last and where you are now. a lot of players will forget the ball is right onto of them, its more important for them to keep track of it than you. You just need to know that s long as you are within leash range, the ball will move where you tell it. Keeping an eye on your leash range means you can snap the ball back to you instantly if you need to without using E or if E is on CD, just walk out of leash range for a sec and it'll come back in an instant. OR even just simply using Q and keep the ball in one spot, the enemy has to constantly keep track of it but you dont really need to, so just use it to zone, inexperienced ori ori players think they need to keep the ball in motion all the time, the ball is most effective when you can utilize its mere presence to create space and zone; for example if you're taking a tower and you know the direction the enemy is coming from, place the ball in-between their path and you, so either they go around or are forced to walk through it. Ori has so many tiny mechanics that make her one of the Best picks in the game if you know how to properly use her kit. sorry for long comment lol I just like Ori

I really wish we had more carry mages that aren’t assassins in the jungle and I think, with some changes/buffs Ori could fit that role and maybe increase her playability.

One change that might be broken but interesting is to give her two charges on her E, but make the cd a bit longer. This would help in burst survivability against assassins who all in her, and makes her midgame more interesting by having the ball zooming around due to the 2 e's. Plus she could flex into supp more and tgat could be interesting given the amount of resists a fully upgraded e could give, and gives her order max flexibility.

Great vid. Orianna got me to gold for the first time this season, so no complaints here!

I think she is really good as a support. The low cd and really good range on her E is amazing! Also constant speed/slow varieties. The most annoying thing is her mana though, until almost the late game.

I suggest a video on the Lazer nexus tower that has been reverted! I had good memories of them, and would love to know more about their departure. :)

An Ori tries to get in range to poke the enemy champ. Gets fricking 1 shot by a blue kayn coming from behind a wall.

this did not age well shes picked or banned in every game at worlds atm

Off topic but fine choice for backround music

r/agedlikemilk

Nice Video, at 7:09 you spelled "Availability" wrong though :) Just to edit it for future watchers

A good change imo would be to have her W give more speed, ground enemies (cancel dashes) and execute minions at a small percentage

No way! I started playing orianna 4 days ago and he does that video? What a coïncidence.

Orianna is one of my favorite champions, but it really feels like she has fallen behind more modern champions, since her damage is low but her aoe control is still super good i like to play her as a support, both in midlane and in botlane

ok when you said there are 3 houses being made outside i was expecting yelling, pipes falling and engines running in the background. it would be extremely funny if after that announcement all we could hear was the construction site with you yelling into the mic

Just played with an Orianna a few games back for the first time. I have no idea what she does but i could feel the impact of the barriers and the gravity thingy in every teamfight.

Not sure if mentioned in video, but one of reasons is definitely her audiovisual design. Balerine robot with metal ball, definitely isn't as mainstream as Aurelion Sol, Ahri, or other so called "cool" champs, it just isn't in the power fantasy of teenage boys. Personally, I wouldn't play Seraphine for example, just because her audiovisual design repels me so much.

Orianna and zyra were my first real mains in season 2. To this day she’s still my comfort pick when I’m picking early or just not familiar with a match up

Seraphine currently does everything orianna used to do but better, poor girl

Good man putting respeck on The Forklift Certified Able.

I can't belive there is not video about Zac in this playlist.

And that is why I play her support now because she doesn't do as much damage as other midlaners but has great supportive abilities with her movespeed/slow on w, great poke, a fantastic shield and the ult as a get off me tool usually

Waiting for a video on syndra :)

Why everyone plays Kayn = 6.27 Pickrate Why NO one plays Orianna = 16.09 Pickrate

honestly she still can be played, but it became alot harder, because of too many nuke champs. You often arent able to follow on roams in the early game and have to stay mid, because you stand no chance in a pure 1v1. Though if you are able to gain a small lead or once you can join skirmishes around baron or herald, she can still bring significant value if you play her relatively defensively

I’m shocked 😭💀 I love playing her plus she’s so easy to play with considering how you can easily adapt your playing style in regards to who you’re playing against

its just cool knnowing that vars just uploaded a new video and then you see its a video about qyiana after you just got demolished by one

I feel like she is very broken in the right hands especially when i watch dopa play her, her team fighting is crazy good and ger laning is insane.

0:44 Wait Lillia was actually in the spotlight at one time? 💀

Not "Wretched Weaponry" from NieR: Automata playing in the background while you talk about a Wretched Weaponry herself such as Orianna. You sir, never cease to amaze me in your videos

Lmao love the Nier Automata music in the background. The track that plays when you return to the factory. Kinda does fit an Orianna video I guess.

man, i actually shed a tear when you showed galio taunt flashing, that one hurt on a personal level.

Hey Vars have you tried recording with Krisp

The only way to FIX Orianna and all other grandfather champs is to ADD dash to them!! Anyway, I still enjoy playing her in ARAM, especially initiating crazy teamfights 😂

Would you do a list of Puppet master champion lists and what they excell at and do really bad at???

The "and teemo" at 8:18 got me

This season ive been taking her support. With the recent buffs reducing mana cost on her w and e means you dont run out of mana super quick and maxing shield gives you stats to throw on your adc. 30 armor and mr at max rank for whoever has the ball on them plus a 500 hp shield is nothing to scoff at.

Music in the background: NieR Automata - Wretched Weaponry

IMO, if Orianna doesn't wind up getting reworked into a support role or mid-scoped back into relevance... the best way Riot could bring Orianna back to the modern par is simply by buffing the range of her Q. 50 units perhaps? While the wombo-combo potential of her ultimate gets a lot of the spotlight, Orianna's secret strength in the old days USED to be her zoning and area-control in lane. At the peak of her popularity, the 825 cast range on her Q was pretty close to being on par with what most ranged characters could pull off consistently with their abilities, save for artillery casters. And with less low-cooldown dashes and dives in League's roster overall, the slow and speed-boost on her W was a bit more relevant in stopping approaches or making quick getaways. Heck, the range she had was potentially even GENEROUS sometimes when you considered that she also had her potential "leash" range to utilize, allowing her to drop the ball in her opponent's usual safe zones, walk back to her own safe areas, and then start creating momentary trigonometric threats against the opponent. However, over time that cast range was slowly crept up on. Not just by the obvious dash and dive mobility, but by the average ability range of new characters on the roster. More artillery champions were added, more piercing skillshots with the range of the usual poke abilities were available, more spammable snipe pokes and more pokes in kits overall, led to Orianna getting punished for trying to place her ball forward. Her extra threat zones went from a moderately generous bonus she could utilize on the regular to something you had to risk yourself for to get your hands on, and her normal cast's range went from going roughly toe-to-toe with her opponents to always being too small to claim initiative with. And her buffs over the years? Looking at them, they almost exclusively seem to focus on her wombo-combo value, as opposed to her deteriorating laning phase where she's been subtly falling behind the curve more and more. Thus, she has gone from her former position as a popular control burst mage, one who would tactically shift into enchanter tactics late-game due to her middling range and lower total ability scaling, to a lackluster enchanter mage who relies on teammates at all stages of the game to enable the surprisingly high amount of burst they have locked away.

It's crazy how mobility is so valuable in LoL. Orianna's ult is like Dark Seer's Vacuum but a whole lot weaker. And somehow the context of LoL makes it a high power ult.

This video made me wonder as to her potential viability in the champ rosters of mage support players. She doesn't really have pre 6 cc the same way Brand and Lux do, but to make up for that she has a shield for her carry as well as a ms buff and slow. She has just as easily accessed poke, the versatility you mentioned in the video makes me think she'd have fairly consistent matchups, and her ult makes mid/jg ganks basically free as well as being a very powerful tool for drake fights. Just some food for thought, maybe worth trying.

I appreciate the clash of ninja footage. That was my childhood

I'll never forget matching up with an oriana way back when and she would just leave her ball to zone me out of the wave while she autos the creeps. That ball scared the life out of me 😂

When she finally gets her much needed visual update they should definitely give her P & W some new features. Her kit is great but needs just a little bit *more* to exist in the current meta.

The only way I can think of to make her more viable against the midlaners of today without completely changing her would be to increase the range of her abilities and speed up the ball's movement speed, maybe based on ability level

She has an interesting design and kit, which got me to play mid lane for the first time but her kit is pretty underwhelming when handling against other mid laners... ; A;

I recently started playing ori support for fun, and honestly speaking it works really well. You get a turbo fat ADC and really slow enemies.

I loved Orianna support back in the day. Just equip the ball on my ADC and poke with clockwork. Give speed boosts and ult engages.

probably pivoting orianna into a more support role, buffing the shield and making the ball movement speed ability give attk spd too and maybe making the ball give her passive on hit damage to nearby allies. i think buffing damage on her ult and w is scary and just makes for degen gameplay, maybe q buffs but that ability is as bad to try and dodge as lux e

Var's neighbor has to be getting gentrified with how often building is happening there.

i wish her e had charges and the resistances would stay longer after the ball leaves, her w gives an insane ms buff, would be nice if the slow/speed up field moved with the ball for a certain duration, maybe even reduce the w burst and add a continous damage effect, maybe make q refund cd if it doesn't hit, her passive could be a time based enhance effect, get boni by game lenght, after all she is the clockwork doll, she even has a spin up mechanism in her model, maybe increase cast speed? or ball velocity?

I believe that she can teach you a lot about laning phase, late game macro and teamfights and is very simple to learn so she is great for new players but after that there are a lot of OTPs who play braindead broken champions and Orianna isnt broken ,she is perfectly balanced so when you play her in Solo Queue you struggle against those OTPs

Name of song used in video please?

Showing this to my friend who plays ori and asking her if shes alright

Hey Vars, I have a question. How do you statistically account for the fact that more champions being available naturally creeps down pick rates in general? Is that a thing that you look at? How do you account for that in long time statistics like for Orianna? I am sorry for putting you on the spot, but it kinda came to mind while watching that video. As a small sidenote in terms of power I think what works against her a little bit nowadays is her passive. It works amazing in lane of course, but in teamfights it becomes a liability and could be used for something else that might work better in the long term

I cannot focus on the video because of feelings this music is giving to me xd

I think I nice quality of life buff would be to let her E allied minions, it’s would allow different angles and movement on her lane poke rather than her obvious self E

I love that teemo is his own category!

returning orianna otp, became cass otp as ori didn't have the solo carry power to claw out victories when i deserved them. recent buffs to ult damage have changed that though. previously a 4 man ult might halve enemy hp for team to follow up on, but if they're all completely worthless and it's 1v9 your huge ult makes no difference. now that same ult can near one shot a team (or ohko the carries) and even underfarmed allies can capitalise. it's made a massive difference. only thing that needs updating imo is her passive. literally anything would be better.

My thoughts going into this as a mid lane assassin main: Orianna from my experience likes to harass a lot and bully in lane, then transition into teamfights. Where I think she can struggle is that she doesn't really have the high snowball potential or later game hyper scaling that most mid picks have right now. Ori tends to have a steady level of power throughout the course of the game while other champs have one point of really high pressure.

I think they need to extend the distance she can have with her ball when she uses command protect. That would make her more usefull since the ball reset wouldn't be so finiky

Would love to see a video explaining why exactly is Zed the most banned champion for years now sitting at 30% + ban rate almost the whole time.

I used to play Ori a lot and to me she feels like the game got to fast for her. You kinda need 3 Items to really do the things you wanna do. If you get to this point you will probably take over the game but nowadays most games are already kinda decided when you get towards your third item

She's amazing in the new arena mode. I've been playing her nonstop all day yesterday and nearly won every match i played with her.

What's the animation at the start?

I really enjoy playing her as an enchanter support now :) 30 armor and Mr is really good at level 9 for your adc ❤

Ori weakness is that in early you don't have enough damage to oneshot anyone and you depend a lot of times on your team help, and later in late game even fed you can't carry your team because you depend too much on the cooldown of your habilities and good positioning and the need of a tank or sup or someone to protect you if you position badly, as a main ori I love pkaying with her, its very fun but you need to be really precise. At lesst you have more mana than before, it was horrible not making damage and running out of mana super fast.

I've tried playing Orianna in Arena lately, and it made a problem very obvious to me. Many modern melee champs are above 125 range, and have can have large champ sizes because of items like heartsteel. It's very easy to find yourself in a situation where the melee your ball's attached to is too far from their auto attack target for W to hit anything. So, uh, personally, If I were to buff Orianna, I'd up Command: Dissonance's radius from 225 to 250, or make the radius scale with the attached champion's size.

Improved AOE range and slow duration on her W is what's needed. So players are slowed for longer and the slow covers more ground. Make her W a mini Anivia ult. Then she can still actually zone when her ult is on CD and not just be useless. It would also enable her to set up her own ult sometimes and break up the mandatory R>W combo.

imagine simply adding "Enemies affected by the Ball can't use movement abilities for 1.0-3.0 seconds based on level", she would be instant meta

I love mages, except Sylas/Kassadin/etc (I don't even consider them as mages tbh), but I just couldn't play Orianna, she felt strange and uncomfortable. Then I played her in Wild Rift and it was wonderful, I climbed with her and enjoyed our journey. So when I came back to League, I tried her again and... well, that was really frustrating again. May be I'm not skilled enough to control her, but the sad part is that she doesn't even feels good to bother actually to learn her there. Unlike WR where I could do almost everything with her depending on the team comp and the situation.

I feel it's the same with Zoe, I used to climb with her because of her early game strength but then all the slows and dashes caused me to play safer and not snowball

I know you mostly comment on the gameplay itself but I'd like to at least know what your thoughts are on emerald rank

She's definetely suffering from the pace/mobility creep. Personally, I find it quite hard to handle hybrid champions which target allies and enemies with different abilities in uncoordinated teams, which can make the champ feel very clunky if you have to walk into different ranges and switch targets. That said, I think she still has the potential for a "comeback" without requiring a rework. What I'd change about her would be the innate getting transferred to a ally if it has the ball on them as well as a reduced cd for dissonance if the ball is on a ally. This would allow her to keep up with other champs by proxy of a high mobility champion (jungler?).