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The tragedy of ornn

Veraska··3 votes·513 views

TLDR: passive is so cool but it sucks because it's on a tank and the masterwork items are boring, ornns real strengths are his CC and debuff, which are gold agnostic and reliant on teammates to matter, ornn is not self reliant

Ornn, the promised "self reliant" vanguard is a blacksmith forge god, burly and gruff, he breathes fire and cracks people over the head with his hammer and smaller hammer, he also has a mechanic entirely unique- to buy items outside of base. Unfortunately this passive is almost completely useless on him.

To make up for the fact that ornn can cash in on gold without losing the xp to back to base, ornn had completely trash base stats to ensure he HAS to back anyways, either because he can't itemize mana regen efficiently or his opponents straight up overpower him. This has been resolved somewhat with hotfix buffs but it's not his biggest issue with this passive

In addition to this passive being on a tank- a class thats meant to focus on the 5v5 and look passed laning phase, ornns scaling is all over the place. Ad, ap, and hp scalings stop him from ever benefiting from an item spike the way other top laners do, he can't do anything with his gold aside from build tank and continue to overlook laning phase

So riot made a passive that is perfect for aggressive laning and snowballing leads on your own and then did everything in their power to make that passive meaningless

Also there's the masterwork items- which seem to be ornns most beloved contribution to his team, something you should not ever buy until 6 items as their horribly gold inefficient, and when everyone's full build, an extra 30 ad or 10 armor isn't going to make a difference.

The tragedy or Ornn isn't that he's badly designed or weak, by design he's pretty fair, his numbers are always adjustable, and I don't think ornn is weak right now, I've seen some ornns do disgusting things. The tragedy or ornn is that riot made a champion that has a super powerful and unique space in the game, and watered it down so much that his presence became almost entirely inconsequential

You don't pick ornn to utilise his passive or to give your team masterwork items, you pick ornn because you need another tank to layer CC with, and that doesn't seem very self reliant to me

7 Comments

Miror B1 votes

Yeah, I heavily disagree with this idea entirely only because so many better tanks exist right now. Maokai has more cc and an ulti that is far more reliable than his, naut is basically the "god" of single-target cc, and even Sej brings a ton of durability. You take Ornn because he essentially gives your team a late-game win condy through his passive, not because the rest of his kit has anything special in it.

Veraska1 votes

Does a 5 k gold lead 60 minutes in really matter? Pro analysts stop tracking gold differences after 45 minutes because that's when everyone approaches 6 items so everyone's equal in power, adcs will melt tanks and adcs will get one shot by the Midlaner, an extra 30 ap or 10 armor doesn't change that game state

Miror B1 votes

Not referring to actual gold, but moreso the power of certain characters' kits. If an ahri and an ori both have 6 items, an ori will typically do more damage in teamfights as ahri's kit falls off massively as the game goes on. Ornn is and will be the "Grand equalizer" of sorts, enabling comps to run things like assassins (AD ones often running cleaver and AP ones having zhonyas as a near-mandatory item) and even triforce-bruisers like irelia. His kit will never be broken because of any of his b-tier abilities, but more because his passive literally says "unless you're running something with infi-scaling like nasus/veigar, my team will have more stats than yours will".

Drizzt171 votes

5k gold won't prevent your team getting outscaled. A couple of stats won't make talon be more effective than orianna in a late game teamfight. The funny thing about this passive is after ornns release I still havent reached a late game where i can use it, so it pretty laughable to have a passive for the 1% of the games that reach 50 minutes. Imo the minibuff he got this patch is laughable since it is still pretty easy to dodge his cc, and his damage is way too bad %current health on a tank at least they could have gone with %max health. I like that riot tries to give new champs counterplay but with ornn they went overboard.

Miror B1 votes

That being said, the direction they went with him is entirely correct even if his entire "schtick" would be better utilized in an actual item (something along the lines of a sightstone upgrade which when purchased would enable these things). The fact they released him ridiculously weak as opposed to ridiculously overpowered a la literally every other reworked/new character is a good thing, as it means they can better tune him to the state of the game as opposed to the opposite where they're forced to massively nerf him 2 patches in before we never see him again (RIP zac, your lcs play was short and sweet).

As for actual games, I have yet to see him used properly either mostly because everyone I see take him is either a troll who builds him full damage and proceeds to go 0-10-0 with 5 cs (which is like 90% of the games) or they do the smart thing and build him full tank but then don't group at all. The giant (going to consider it) nerf that makes it so that you can only build the items once he hits lv13 is probably going to see him see literally no play at all, as the one role he could theoretically be viable in (support) rarely hits that in competitive unless the team is JAG where their games go like 45-50mins.

Drizzt171 votes

I think even if you play properly all he really offers is his ult as "reliable" cc to initiate a fight, since his cc is pretty dodgeable I don't think its crazy to ask for decent damage even when you hit your already hard to hit abilities and if you are only looking for an engage why not play malphite. Imo they have 2 options too make Ornn a good champion rather than the Volibear tier champ he is right now. 1. Give him decent damage. 2. Make his abilities fast not clunky as they are right now (my 2 cents would be making his ult autocast when reaching him instead of you having to ram it, the second make his e fast). I don't know I have play my fair share of ornn and after a while people learn to move when you q and to move behind you when you w, after that point since you are so easily outplayable most competent players will try to kill you.

Miror B1 votes

See, I'd personally like to just see the items themselves get buffed up massively (or have different "tiers" for them that become unlockable once his ulti hits certain ranks). While characters with a single skew in their kit can often become problematic (malz's ulti ringing bells in tons of people's minds), with this one I'm kinda OK with it as his kit is and probably will be literal shite unless they drastically increase the damage on it (at which point people will just start using/complaining that he's the new tank fizz/ekko).

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