Thank you Riot for Ornn!

Hi Riot. I actually want to give a positive review on Ornn!.

Some background: -I own every champ, have played since Season 4 on 3 different accounts. My Primary favorites are Nami, Sona, Sion, Udyr, Evelynn, Leona, Rakan, Ahri, Caitlyn, Sivir, Jinx, Karma, Lux, Miss Fortune, Morganna, Taliyah, and a few others.

Something you'll notice about my favorites: Scant few are tanks, and I don't normally play the meta tanks (Sion, Udyr, Rakan) As tanks.

But as tradition goes, I try out every new champ, and was heavily disappointed in Kayn: Kayn can dish out damage, but unless you have a seriously good team early game, is one of those "luck" champs where you manage to 2v1 early and get a FB and a couple other picks, .... or you go 0/6 before finally evolving Kayn and starting to "occasionally" get a kills, or if you got those FB's you just start 2 hitting people. I'm not a clumsy player, but I found kayn too unreliable. I still do, every time I'm on a team with him.

Then, along came Ornn. Myself having a background as a blacksmith, I'm drawn to dirty obscure champs, and I find some of the chats to be quaint (I made this hammer, and it was so good, that I named it "Hammer").

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I decided to actually learn Ornn, instead of embracing the "35% win low elo 40% win high elo" banter.

Like others, I noticed that each skill scales off a different base, and kind of realized Ornn will never really scale high damage unless you have a very unprofessional opponent who just stands still and face tanks him. So, I decided to make the best of it. I saw that Nightblu3 trolled a video with crit, so I've played around with variants of that. I also played around with Tank builds and builds based around both physical damage and magic damage. Move speed builds vs slow but sure builds.

What I found is, that generally... Ornn has very few natural enemies. The only ones I can really think of off the top of my head is Yasuo, and Jhin: high output, little reliance on cc champs which either are too far away, or so fast they're hard to pin (and I can even manage to stop a Yasuo, if my team is willing to help)

I also found that, I think people are playing the wrong builds, and the wrong playstyles, which have been resulting in the notorious 0/11 Ornn games which are leading that that 10% ban rate.

Unless I have a really troll bot lane that feeds 0/6 by level 3, or a top feeding Yasuo 9/0 while I'm support, I've found Ornn performs solid on nearly every team, even S+ing losing games. He certainly doesn't have to die, face tank, or spam W to live. What he has to be is, smart with his skills.

So, I'm gonna give a few hints to perhaps get would be Ornn players thinking.

1. Ornn Dominates other tanks. This is especially true if all the tanks are of a Magic, of Physical damage allotment on the same team. He particularly dominates Mundo, Vladimir, Sion, Rammus, Blitz, and Shen. They simply do not have enough core damage to overpower a mid/late game Ornn's W Barrier in close brawls. Most also do not have enough peel to escape a well placed Q or a 2 sec later E knockup to proc Brittles. Also, if you get talented with your Ult, you can learn to actually use it in a melee fight, timing the ram's arrival to the end of a W, so you can 100% ensure that you aren't CC'd when the ram arrives.

Tanks are the ONLY type of fight where W is central as a FIGHTING skill; It's far better used to block or get out of short duration crowd control, like Panth's Stun, or Jax's Stun, or to walk through Veigar's Wall, or to get out of a Lux or Morganna Snare ( REALLY useful for Lux Snare, since you can sidestep her incoming ult while in W, or can avoid Morg's second ult proc with it timed right)

2. Ornn suffers only vs champs who have large burst not built around cc. But, build right, he can still play an important role versus those champs. For example, a 430 Armor Ornn can face tank/control a Yasuo while the team encapsulates him. It can also stop a fed Twitch or Tristana's tirade, by giving Ornn enough time in a close fight to get an ult off, cc, them and then double hit ult after controlling. If you have a strong team, Ornn can very successfully knock out a fed adc this way. If you are only 313 Armor, you're probably too squishy to do this once they have armor pen/lethality. At that point, stay back, and let YOUR adcs fight, and support them with long range ults or an occasional terrain based E (you shouldn't try to set up a Q >E, because you will die too fast)

3. Ornn is a versatile farmer. As jungler, It's not always wise to go full Armor on Ornn, because he's too darn slow. I actually prefer to put a Static Shiv, Trinity, and Phantom Dancer on Ornn jungler, because it clears super fast, offers a 1500 base damage hit after an engaging W, and because you can strongly pursue proccing those brittles, and crossing a map relatively fast. And, it won't diminish your HP too much, and you still have 3 slots to go tank.

4. Grasp of the Undying and Strength of the Collosus are arguably NOT the right keystones for Ornn. I find the 5% hp and team health benefit from Stoneborne Pact is far stronger, because it increases the size of your W barrier, adds higher HP, and heals your team in tough brawls, often allowing some to live by a few hp when they wouldn't have (nearly Ornn's entire kit procs Stonepact, so it's almost always active in a fight). You will never be in a fight close enough or often enough to use Grasp, and Collosus has a limited application considering Ornn only has 2 1/2 hard cc's ( his auto after brittle being the unreliable 1/2).

5. If your game has an Ocean Drake, demand your team grab it to ensure Ornn never has to recall. If not, a Support Ornn should consider a Salvation, and vs an AD team rush an Iceborn for more mana, and vs an AP team rush a Abyssal Mask. either or will solve MOST mana problems. If you have to recall, you will lose on average about 5-6 assists per game, which could be the difference between a win or a loss.

I personally think the reason there are bad ratings of Ornn is particulary because teams go into Queue and defeat themselves before the game loads. The very people who start accusing Ornn of "picking a 35% champ" end up level 1 feeding a heavy lead the team never comes out of. If I discounted the games where that happened, or where my adcs/junglers/mids had a vast skill assymetry versus the other team, I'd have about a 85% win rate. But, alas, those teams DO happen, and I have only a 54% win rate with Ornn atm, from a high that was about 67% when I got my rank 7 (vs a lot of Tristanas as my adc was Twitch, and seems Twitch always feeds Trist >.>)

All in all, if Ornn gets a buff, I am not going to complain. But I feel he's pretty reliable as is. I average a 3.08 KDA with him. trying to get closer to 4.0.