I hear she's supposed to be this pretty good mid, but I think I've played her too much in the support role because I just can't figure it out, and just end up playing her as a shielder/disrupter anyway. This isn't really working out for me, so I could use some tips
oSEXYPLATYPUSo3 votesas far as 
she is considered a zone/control mage, due to meta shifts and other champs being buffed or nerfed she kinda fell by the wayside. her match ups that she is typically are good against arent always there. but where shines is in team fights in enclosed areas like in river near dragon or baron buffs where people are packed as a group. so you can ult a whole team. also you can use your ball/shield on your engage champ to "have ball delivery" into the enemy and with your ball getting there via champ they kinda dont see it as well and it shields him a bit for the engage andthen you can ult you get the picture. she is good at a support too if you can play her properly. as a defensive zoning support. the biggest thing to know about is the mechanics of her ball placement and how to micro manage that through out the game.
Tikail2 votesUse your ball to zone the enemy and work on last hitting with her. Her early game is practically non-existent until you start getting AP. So your goal is to survive until 6 and rely on ganks to make up whatever gold difference you will most likely have from lane phase. After that your passive becomes stupidly strong.
Ori actually translates well between supp and mid, once your teammate ganks for you, your focus should shift from offense to defense. Throw your W onto whomever needs it and go through your rotation while keeping just enough distance to keep the ball on them.
A basic summary of your abilities when mid-laning:
Passive: Early game and laning phase is really tough for Ori, to maximize your damage output pre-6, you need to land 3 AAs on your target within 4 seconds of each respective attack. The damage of your passive scales by 20% for each stack (max of 2), 40% additional magic damage is a lot early game, so you can make up a lot of your early game weakness by getting yourself into positions where you can trade your opponent pre-6.
Q: Bread and butter skill obviously. Use it to poke, zone your enemy, and even grab cs if you need to. Try to move your ball in paths that'll let you catch it while moving so that you can W, E, and R faster if you get ganked, all-inned, or tower-dived. The ball should basically be ping ponging back and forth between you and your target unless you're sticking it to an ally for the shield or a wombo.
W: AOE dmaage with a free MS buff. Use it to keep yourself moving early game, during ganks throw your shield and drop W to help your ally close faster and stick to secure the kill.
E: Everyone remembers the shield, but forgets that the skill grants passive armor and MR AND deals damage to enemies it passes through. During laning phase and ganks, Q out past your target, W to hit them and then E back to you or an ally for the third hit (and the Thunderlord's proc), and someone gets a shield.
R: Two major dick moves to use your ult for:
TL;DR Offensive Ori is basically support Ori with more AP and a focus on landing multiple AAs on a single target to max DPS potential.
Lapis1 votesWow, I wasn't expecting such an in-depth response! Thank you for the tips, I'll be sure to try them out!
Tikail1 votesNo problem. Ori was my first mid lane mage champ back when I started playing on my original account. I still use her when I need to blow off some steam in mid lane. She's a sleeper carry is what we used to call them. Carries who thrived off of assists rather than kills to establish their dominance way back before running mages as a supp was a thing.
DoktorKaiser1 votesJust never forget, Orianna has never in her history been a weak champion. She is the most perfectly balanced champion according to 95% of those kind of lists. So dont forget, Ori is as good as you are on her, practice, practice and then do it some more, I have over 2000 Ori games since season 1 and I am still learning and if you invest your time into understanding her, you will always have a champ to fall back to, no matter the meta. I wont explain the mechanics, others already did. Good luck :)