Looking Back on Ornn's Changes: The Loss of Skill Expression on a Road to Overbuffing a Tank

From the September hotfix:

"Bellows Breath Bellows Breath Range increased to 550 from 500. Width increased by 50. Unknown current value. Self-slow reduced to 50% from 65%. This increases how far he walks during the effect."

Result: Ornn W becomes a much more forgiving spell. It's lack of cast time for damage to start coming in, relatively short duration, and bigger area of effect just made the ability incredibly easy to land entirely. There is no impetus for Ornn to try and combo one of his many knock-ups into using his W while they're CC'd. This reduces counterplay and also reduces potential skill expression on the champion.

From patch 7.18:

"Call of the Forge God Call of the Forge God Maximum speed increased to 1200 from 1050."

Result: Ornn ultimate somewhat easier to hit. On it's own, this would have been fine, however, when paired with a future change, it leads to Ornn's ultimate being oppressively reliable for how devastating it really is.

From patch 7.20:

Author's note - This patch is most likely what really fucked Ornn as a champion the most

"Bellows Breath Bellows Breath Target's health ratio changed to 12 / 14 / 16 / 18 / 20% of target's maximum health from 15 / 17.5 / 20 / 22.5 / 25% of target's current health. Searing Charge Searing Charge Terrain collision range increased to 150 additional range from 100. Call of the Forge God Call of the Forge God REMOVED: Headbutting the giant ram having a 0.35-second cast time."

Result: In conjunction with the previous change to Ornn's ultimate, Ornn's ultimate now becomes 100% undodgeable without some form of mobility steroid or flash. Maokai's ultimate, which shares a similar feel and role as that of Ornn's, is massively outmatched as it is nowhere near guaranteed as Ornn's. Ornn doesn't even need to hit the slow portion of his ult as the instant redirect and enhanced speed of the ultimate along with it's width means certain hits in many scenarios without much timing or thought required. The searing charge range increase in isolation was a good change. Its use is perhaps the hardest of all of Ornn's abilities. The change to Bellows Breath was a gargantuan mistake. It allowed Ornn's to spam W all day long to kill or force people out of lane. His other abilities soon became irrelevant due to the sheer amount of reliable damage Ornn's W provided. Why waste time, effort, and mana to try and land an unreliable combo when you can just chunk people for up to 20% of their maximum health over and over with relatively little counterplay for most of League's non-artillery ranged roster?

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Conclusion: It's unwise to consistently buff a champion's reliability at the expense of both skill expression and balance. Tanks for a long time were complained about due to their massive amounts of rather easy to land CC. Riot spent much of their time in the tank update trying to: further niches for certain tanks while also removing some of the reliability of tanks in favor for more in-the-moment impactful plays. Strangely, this philosophy was thrown out for Ornn which Riot decided to consistently buff by giving him more damage and incredible amounts of reliability. Ornn soon became what Riot tried to avoid: a brainless tank that's better than all of the other tanks.

Alternative Solutions: There is a lot of promise in taking out power from W and putting it into both Q and E, skills which both require more skill expression from the Ornn as well as have more counterplayability for the opponents he face. Unfortunately, there is no set rule for how reliable a champion should be, and every champion should have a baseline amount of reliability. However, I would like to state that I believe Ornn's baseline level of reliability is much too high. Since an ultimate ability is a heavy investment, I would be fine in leaving his ultimate as reliable as it is in exchange for his base kit becoming less reliable but just as rewarding when he lands his combos. W should go back to current HP and E and Q should be empowered. An interesting notion can be tying in brittle passive with getting a successful knockup while breaking terrain (encouraging Ornn to combo E and Q successfully rather than spam W).

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Author's note: Just to make it fool-proof with some extra clarification, this isn't a comprehensive look at all of Ornn's changes. It looks at the decisions Riot made when they thought Ornn was weak and analyzes why those decisions were wrong.

Also, this is in no way shape or form to be misconstrued as a "ORNN OP" thread. Ornn is the opposite of OP because he had to be hammered so hard after all of the wrongful buffs he received.