Orianna is a staple of the League of Legends professional drama meta and has existed for ages. She falls from favour for a long time, and that she always seems to return every couple of seasons. Throughout the 2021 Summer Season and also above the course of this World Championship, Orianna was among the most picked winners at the middle street.
And while virtually all our midlaners have played Orianna on point, MAD Lions' Marek"Humanoid" Brázda and Rogue's Emil"Larssen" Larsson had the most experience on the Clockwork Lady across the 2020 Summer Season.
Abilities
Orianna's passive, Clockwork Windup, comes in two parts. The first part is called The Ball, which allows Orianna to control her ball with her abilities. The second part, Clockwork Winding, increases the damage of Orianna's auto-attacks, gaining potency if she uses subsequent attacks on a specific target. This gives her an easier time farming minions with auto-attacks early on and allows her to win out in most auto-attack trades in lane.
Command: Attack is Orianna's Q. Orianna commands her ball to move to the chosen location, damaging anything it passes through. This is an amazing poke tool in lane, and it's Orianna's main way of controlling her ball position in fights. Command: Attack doesn't draw minion aggro, making it a very oppressive way of chipping your lane opponent down without the downside of the minions attacking you.
Command: Dissonance causes the ball to emit a pulse around its location, damaging anyone caught in the blast and leaving a lingering field on the ground that slows enemies and speeds up allies. This is not only another strong poke tool, as it doesn't draw minion aggro, but is also quite a potent team fighting and lane pushing tool since it's an area of effect (AoE) ability.
Command: Protect causes the ball to attach to the chosen ally, shielding them while granting magic resist and armor for as long as the ball stays on them. This is a great way to get your ball into the fray of a teamfight. By using Command: Protect onto an engaging ally, Orianna is able to aid in soaking up some of the initial damage while also getting her ball into the fight easily, allowing her to control the fight from the beginning.
Command: Shockwave causes the ball to erupt, pulling all enemies in the area towards the ball and dealing huge damage to them. This is what makes Orianna's team fighting ability so scary for her opponents. They always have to be wary of the positioning of her ball and what range she is able to move it to, or be prone to taking huge damage or even outright killed if they misstep. This is one of the most iconic abilities in League of Legends and there have been many incredible plays made with Command: Shockwave that are considered some of the best plays of all time.
Skill Max Order
Command: Attack is the first skill our players prioritise. As mentioned before, it's a strong laning tool that excels at zoning and pushing the opponent with few downsides. It can also be an effective wave clearing tool with how often it can be used, and with the fact that it's an AoE ability. Follow up with Command: Dissonance for team fight and lane pushing potency. The extra damage is definitely noticeable when Orianna has a couple of core items. Command: Protect is left to last as, generally, Orianna Build prefers to be dealing damage over granting shields. Points in Command: Shockwave are at level 6, 11, and 16 as per usual.
Ori Runes
There's one particular set of runes that is the clear favourite for players and pros alike. This setup uses Phase Rush as the keystone rune. Phase Rush, upon landing three separate attacks or abilities onto an enemy champion, grants the user a burst of movement speed. This is a great way of weaving in and out of danger during full scale fights, as well as giving your opponent less of an opportunity to trade damage back onto you in smaller skirmishes.
Following up, our players like to take Manaflow Band for additional mana and sustain, Transcendence for a chunk of cooldown reduction upon reaching level 10, and Scorch or Gathering Storm for either early game control or late game scaling. This page offers strong sustain and scaling, while granting the ability to better weave in and out of danger during fights via Phase Rush.
The secondary page has a few variants, the most popular being Inspiration with Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight. The former allows you to focus on your core items while getting your 300 gold boots for free. It's a great value rune that is often taken in the mid lane. Cosmic Insight, meanwhile, grants additional cooldown reduction on everything from abilities to active items, and even summoner spells. The added cooldown from Cosmic Insight ignores the 40 percent cap, making the maximum cooldown reduction 45 percent.
Item Build on Orianna
Humanoid shows us a great example of a final build for Orianna Build in MAD Lions' match against Origen in Week 3 of the LEC 2020 Summer Season.
He starts off with a Doran's Ring and two Health Potions for laning, also follows up with a historical remember to get a Tear of this Goddess. He has an early lead within Erlend"Nukeduck" Holm and catches himself an Archangel Staff to Spellbinder as his ancient core things. He buys Sorcerer's Shoes and functions towards his Rabadon's Deathcap then. He rounds out his construct with a Void Staff along with a Stopwatch, he probably would have turned to some Zhonya's Hourglass.
This construct offers ancient mana sustain, allowing Orianna to command the lane simpler, a wholesome mixture of skill power, cooldown loss, and powerful passives, making her a staff battling along with zoning machine, able to undermine the whole enemy group with powerful positioning of the ball. The combination of busy things enables Orianna to obtain a lot of security in the kind of a defense and stasis, while others enable her to decimate the tankiest of goals in a rather brief quantity of time.
Laning as Orianna
In lane, you will come across Humanoid zoning his opponents from the minions, threatening harm onto them whenever they walk into Command: Attack array. Orianna has entire charge of the lane from a massive bulk of the current high picks in the middle lane, forcing them to play with her rules or request help in their group. As a result of her ability to restrain the mid lane, playing the jungler to prepare ganks either in mid or drifting to additional lanes is generally the most best thing to do, because the opposing midlaner should not be in a position to follow Orianna's roam. This may create a powerful gap in map management and let Orianna and her staff to take over the match.
Team combating
Orianna excels in staff fights. She has the capability to completely tip the scales in her group's favour with great placement of herself along with the chunk, and during appropriate use of her skills. The majority of the time, you are going to grab Larssen zoning off the enemy group from goals like Dragon or even Baron together with the chunk, threatening to severely harm the competitions when they misstep. Orianna has the capacity to prepare a comprehensive team wipe with powerful use of Command: Shockwave.
Here's an example of a struggle between Schalke 04 and Rogue. See Larssen zones out several associates of Schalke 04, maintaining them far enough off, purchasing his group sufficient time to affix the dragon before unlocking a lovely four guy Command: Shockwave and entirely altering the results of the struggle because of his team, amassing an ace with only a single casualty.
Conclusion on Orianna Build
Orianna is a standard, staple choice for mid lane, and always seems to find her way back in the meta. Look at picking up Orianna Build in case you're trying to find a controller mage with the capability to dictate the results of a team struggle through smart use of your skills.