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Is there a reason Orianna hasn't been nerfed?

Snufferpuff··14 votes·4,582 views

I understand that she tends to be a higher skill-cap champion than most, but she has some crazy things going for her that I am unable to understand how she has gone so long without a nerf. I am not a mid-main, but I do look down on Orianna for what in my opinion makes her broken.

Note: I have rarely played Orianna, because when I have played her I felt she was broken as well and I don't enjoy playing overpowered champions.

Pros to Orianna

  • She has crazy low mana costs on her abilities, so she can use her spells freely to poke and farm without much worry of running out of mana.

  • She has crazy damage with thunderlords decree early game. (QWE / QWAuto)

  • She has good range on spells, allowing her to farm and harass from safe distances.

  • She has very low cooldowns on her abilities. (She can QWE, and 2 seconds later QWE again, harassing and protecting while still near full mana)

  • She has on-hit effects of her autos dealing bonus damage, and each auto applies a stack of Clockwork Winding which increases her damage even more.

  • She speedboosts her team with W while slowing down others. (This is fine but again, she's strong enough without it)

  • She has an ultimate that hits people in an AOE pulling them to the center. (This is fine)

Cons to Orianna

  • Can be squishy / Die quickly if you run into the center of the enemy team.

I don't think much should be changed about her, her kit pulls everything together really well. Get it? no.... ok :(

But what I do think needs to be done is a mana nerf. I feel with all she has going she needs some higher costing spells to help the opposite laner with the early game / mid game.

Any thoughts / opinions?

I tried not to be biased but all my perspectives are from the the opposite laner.

46 Comments

oSEXYPLATYPUSo5 votes

she has a 48.4% win rate currently which is 30th among mid laners

Snufferpuff2 votes

48.4% win rate as in late-game teamfighting end-game stuff. What about during the laning phase? Anyway to measure this? Typically if I am mid vs ori, I will lose lane unless decent ganks, and if someone else is vs Ori, they will lose unless good jg ganks. I feel like the laning phase it too strong. Must just be me, but she's picked a lot in the competitive scene.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo4 votes

ori is a champ that scales with the skill of the player... if they suck as a player then ori sucks if they are a god as a player she seems broken

she is fairly balanced if anything she needs a slight tweak to come up to 50% win rate

Spicy Rice2 votes

Low winrate doesn't mean it's balanced

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

so high win rate dont mean they are OP then right?

Ahri Ivern LucianNunu Lulu

Spicy Rice3 votes

not necessarily, which is what im getting at

oSEXYPLATYPUSo1 votes

but if these champs are played by all skill level of players and the champs maintain their win % across the player base regardless of skill then that would indicate what ?

Spicy Rice1 votes

A. The game environment (meta champs, items, etc) favor said champ.

B. The champion is strong

C. The champion is OP

oSEXYPLATYPUSo1 votes

ok and if a champ has a win % sub 50% and played across all skill levels would indicate what ?

Penns4 votes

The reason is that she is in the never-nerf club with Ahri Janna LeeSin and their newest member Caitlyn Keepo

FiddlesOnTheRoof2 votes

I think Ahri is the only champ you listed with an inflated win rate. Why in the world would Janna need nerfed? And Lee is fine. He falls off the face of the earth later in the game, and it becomes a 4 v 5. He has a sub-50% win rate as it is. I agree Ahri needs tuned bit. Cait is sitting at almost exactly a 50% win rate. I think she's the definition of balance in the marksman role. Lucian, on the otherhand, needs nerfs.

Penns1 votes

Janna does too and the only reason Ori and Lee dont is because they arent as simple yet everyone plays them since theyre always meta and strong. Lee falls of late game just that he basically becomes a tank that still has almost assassin level damage + a good insec can easily win a game.

Hawckey1 votes

Janna with her 52.6% wr with 11% pick rate is not alarming to you? Especially considering how braindead of a kit she has http://lolalytics.com/champion/Janna/ What's even more pathetic is that the supports that "counter" her have less than a 50% wr against her, absolute joke

FiddlesOnTheRoof1 votes

Fair enough. I didn't realize her win rate was that high. I guess her kit just doesn't seem conducive to dominating games. That win rate is nuts.

FiddlesOnTheRoof3 votes

If anything Ori needs a slight buff. She's in the dumpster on win rate right now. But I think she has one of the most balanced kits in the game myself. And clear windows of counterplay between ball movements. Much healthier than Syndra.

Spicy Rice2 votes

Yes she has moments of weakness, but when she gets that morello, it all but fades away.

The way only lasting weakness she has all game is her range.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo3 votes

orianna is a champ that does best in team fights and zone control. fighting in confined spaces

people tend to bunch together and try to fight in confined spaces and that is where she 5 man ults and you get aced

Miraweave3 votes

{quoted}

If anything Ori needs a slight buff. She's in the dumpster on win rate right now. But I think she has one of the most balanced kits in the game myself. And clear windows of counterplay between ball movements. Much healthier than Syndra.

Ori absolutely doesn't need a buff. She's totally fine as-is.

FiddlesOnTheRoof1 votes

I shouldn't have said I think she needs one. I should've said "if Ori were to get any work, I'd think i would be a buff." And I base that on her win rate alone. I agree with you on her being fine as-is. I personally think she's one of, if not THE, single most well designed and balanced champions they've ever released.

xJLx MCHammer3 votes

She tends to be pretty balanced. She has a high skill cap with plenty of room to make mistakes

It's only late game where he skill caps drops to being very easy because all she has to do is R+W

With that said, she is clearly a balanced mid lane champ with unique playstyle and nothing that's hard to counter

Stars Shaper3 votes

Because Orianna is a zoning mage that loses at her own game.

Se is extremely vulnerable to other zoning mages such as taliyah and Aurelion Sol and against long range ones as Xerath and Ziggs. Talon and Zed can also stomp her pretty hard if she doesn't get all the combo right.

Twisted Fate Bro2 votes

lol posts like these make me laugh

Lexyy2 votes

Yes she's getting new skin

StevenPlayZz II2 votes

Nerf Ori to the ground

DoktorKaiser1 votes

She was never hard nerfed or buffed since her release. That speaks enough of her balance and good design. If you have trouble against her maybe you need more practice because she is perfectly fine as she is.

Lugg1 votes

The problem is that she has a safe laning phase to farm up and she scales incredibly well. There isn't a single bad matchup for her in the game, so she is always a safe pick.

DoktorKaiser1 votes

So? She is as easy to kill late game as she is early game. Also she has terrible matchups vs high mobile champions and some assassins, yes she can turtle but she can get rekt hard if enemy is skilled. Also she doesnt scale THAT well, her scalling are average but her utility makes up for it. Please I dont think you can convince me, I have 5000 Ori games and I am pretty sure I know what I am talking about.

Lugg1 votes

Uh, no she isn't. Her shield is the last thing maxed in her build, so she is WAY harder to kill late game than early.

She doesn't have a single terrible matchup. She has the second highest playrate of any mid right now with a win rate over 50% if you discard the people who have have less than 50 games on her. That's a really high winrate for any champ played that much.

I have played thousands of games against her, I know what i'm talking about.

DoktorKaiser1 votes

Ok man I hate to pull this of, but you are a fucking silver/bronze scrub, so no, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Ori has been the same for last 6 years, no hard buffs or nerfs, nobody ever complains apart for some random idiots who just got rekt by a good Ori player and those posts are downvoted as you can see, she is extremely hard and requires time to put into learning her, she has tons of counterplay and will absolutely not get buffed or nerfed any time soon because there is no need to.

Lugg1 votes

I guess you are one of those people who think rank means game knowledge. There are bronze players who could beat you so badly that you would unistall. I have had people challenge me to a 1v1 and I let them pick my champion and I still usually beat them. So you need to first realize that someone's rank has very little to do with understanding the game. It's like saying the coach of the New England Patriots doesn't know shit about football because he was never a player. It's honestly laughable to assume something like that.

Back to Ori though. She has been in and out of meta a few times, but she has NEVER been a bad pick in any meta. You say she is extremely hard, but she is only s little harder than average. The only really hard part at all is timing the ult for best effect. Which is even easier if you have a champion on your team that can be a ball delivery system.

I don't think that she is a bad champ or even overly toxic, she's just too safe IMHO for what she can bring to the game. Kind of like Lux in that regard.

ChaddyFantome1 votes

You know, I used to think that the cycle of ""looking for things to nerf" was just a meme but now it seems more evident than every that it is completely and utterly true.

She has crazy low mana costs on her abilities, so she can use her spells freely to poke and farm without much worry of running out of mana.

this is false. Clearly you haven't played ori a day in your life since she is notoriously more likely to go oom than most every champ in midlane if she so much as uses anything but Q.

She has crazy damage with thunderlords decree early game. (QWE / QWAuto)

You just described every champ in the game.

She has good range on spells, allowing her to farm and harass from safe distances.

Ori is actually only midrange, and goes oom if she resorts to merely farming with Q and gets zoned out and has her ball reset by the enemy if they catch on to her even attempting to do this.

She has very low cooldowns on her abilities. (She can QWE, and 2 seconds later QWE again, harassing and protecting while still near full mana)

Literally her only low CD ability is he Q, and only once she has put points into the spell. its damage even with AP isn't even high as it is a DPS tool, and is gated by being mana consumptive if used too frequently while also essentially silencing her for its entire travel time on every cast.

QWE for the record costs ori roughly half her mana bar, and claiming she can do it every 2 seconds is simply un-true.

She has on-hit effects of her autos dealing bonus damage, and each auto applies a stack of Clockwork Winding which increases her damage even more.

....soooooo? its not like she itemises for it. Kassadin, Chogath, Diana and even Rumble have similar effects and they all use it better than her too. This is you just listing things she has at this point.

She speedboosts her team with W while slowing down others. (This is fine but again, she's strong enough without it)

you gonna explain why or just make a blank statement?


Cons to Orianna

How about how she lacks any form of hard disable on her basic spells? Literally her only hard CC is her ultimate, which she is forced to use defensively when she gets all in'd. Even Aurelion Sol who is notorious for getting jumped on and being helpless when jumped on has hard CC in his basic spells.

Her AoE outside of her ultimate is very low compared to most every mage as her only potent AoE is her ultimate. her Q and W AoE's are small.

She has less resistances than pretty much every champ in the game to compensate for her E resists, which means she is squishier whenever she isn't holding the ball..which is virtually everytime she is using it offensively or even defensively with an ally.

She is very mana hungry and has no in kit means of getting mana back unlike most midrange mages.

all of her spells have a cast time and or wined up (save her W which gets delayed cast from Q regardless) on top of her Q having a travel wined up, and her being unable to cast spells while the ball travels. this means more than most every mage, orianna has to take positioning and timing/prediction into account as the ball doesn't accomplish anything until it arrives at its location, and cant do anythign else until it arrives at its location.

this is a burden pretty much no other champ in the game has.


Listen, i get it. playing against a good Orianna can feel like you are a cog in her machine, but as someone who despised playing against her once upon a time, I can safely tell you that she is actually not only very balanced (imo she is the epitome of balanced and the most balanced champ in the game), but she has some of the most exploitable weaknesses of any mage.

My advice to you if you have any trouble with her is to do what i did and study up on the champion. Quite frankly, i feel most people lose to her more out of lack of knowledge and thus don't exploit her windows of vulnerability enough.( which was exactly what my initial problem was back when i struggled against her)

Lugg1 votes

Honestly, I have played this game for almost 5 years and 90% of champs right now need nerfs. Power creep has made the game horrible at this point.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo1 votes

so 90% of champs are above 50% win rates?

Lugg1 votes

What I'm talking about is the combination of mobility creep, power creep, and overloaded kits creep.

It would be much easier to balance the pool of champs if they were closer to being on even ground. Nothing is more frustrating and unfair than losing to a lane opponent who is obviously less skilled than you, but is winning simply because their champ is stronger than yours.

The biggest problem is rito intentionally releasing broken/OP champs because they want everyone having to buy them to compete.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

but you get champs for free. via IP and hextech so that argument is null n void

the balance everyone wants is impossible to have... if riot is constantly making sweeping changes but people dont things to stay status quo they cry and bitch nonstop so riot makes massive sweeping changes and just flips everything around and there is never will be balance with that. and it goes back to jungle changes, experience changes, gold, items, keystones, runes, and so on and new champs if riot just stop fuking changing things for a year a whole season to see how things played out then they would have hard data to know how to adjust instead of a biweekly bandaid bullshit

Lugg1 votes

Sorry, but you are wrong. You should be able to play any champ in the game and they be viable. This isn't the case at all in most matchups.

I know that the game will never be perfectly balanced, but Riot could do a WAY better job for sure. Just look at Ivern for example, everyone knows that he is OP right now and that the biggest problem is his shield. So why can't they just nerf the shield or increase the CD on it? It's a really simple fix that they could have done right off the bat and then seen if any other changes were needed.

It's the same with every patch, you know within 3-4 days which champs have been overbuffed or overtuned and could easily fix them the very next patch.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

hmm im wrong but i have all the champs and didnt buy them with RP

Lugg1 votes

I have them all as well and I only bought the starter pack plus I have the two new champs with enough IP to get the next one free as well.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo1 votes

so how is the game pay to play? if you get champs for free?

Lugg1 votes

That's not even the point we have been discussing.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo1 votes

Lugg (NA) - a day ago The biggest problem is rito intentionally releasing broken/OP champs because they want everyone having to buy them to compete.

that is how this point got brought up

Lugg1 votes

I understand that, what i'm saying is that the majority of players probably actually spending money to buy champs. Why else would Riot always release them so OP when the PBE community clearly states they are too strong to be released.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo1 votes

the pbe isnt enough data ... to truly determine the strength or weakness of a champ . once a champ is released the amount of times they get picked and played among all the players and skill levels with combinations of all team comps, items rules, all variables then can be gathered and from that they can have a true analyst of that champ ... and adjust from there. because in the pbe there alot of experimental changes and things going on so its not exactly as it would be on live servers

Lugg1 votes

I agree with you. That's why Riot should keep new champs on the PBE for more than one patch cycle, so they can better gauge where that champ actually is.

I would honestly rather have new champs and reworks released slightly underpowered and then given small buffs to get them to a good spot.

BBBINGBING1 votes

Ori does not require a nerf. As she is extremely squishy against a cancerous yasuo (whom deserve a huge nerf indeed), and all other melees (xin zhao, zed). Zed's ult kills ori at 1 shot. And yasuo wind wall is too op!

O for Orianna1 votes

As an Orianna main... I don't know what to say.

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