This was a thread made by Squ4tch on Reddit about Ornn and I think people should see this
Please Riot, you're going the wrong direction with all of these changes
by Squ4tch
It's a long shot but I desperately don't want to see Ornn continue down the path Riot has him on. I know it's beating a dead horse at this point but just in case it helps i will plead my case.
Ornn came out as one of the only high skill cap tanks we have seen. There was a lot of unreliability baked into his kit and through that unreliability we had skill expression. Even in a short time frame you could see the people that had picked him up and really practiced him vs the people that were just starting on him. However as a new champ with a learning curve, he was weak. People kept complaining on how he was hard, he didn't do enough and he was over all not any good. So Riot eventually caved and buffed him. But they didn't stop with small buffs, they did sweeping buffs that slowly changed into this now reliable and easy tank but kept the numbers of someone who was made to be unreliable.
A comparison of this that popped up a lot in the early days was Sion. If you just look at Sion's base numbers and pretend that he is Mao levels of point and click, the dude is busted. To save time just looking at his Q and R: Q is giant AEO, 60-300(+1.8) damage, and 2.25 second knock up R is a mid sized AOE, 400-1200(+0.8) damage, and 1.75 second stun.
Q and R alone at max rank are 1500(+1.8 base AD)(+0.8 bonus AD) and 4 second hard CC combo. And that's just two abilities. All that said though, Sion is far from broken, in fact he has been pretty healthy for a long time. This is because he is unreliable and has counter play. This is where Ornn seemed to be made for. Someone with base values that are really high but when put to practice fall at a nice healthy level due to that unreliability and counter play.
Now not all the Ornn changes were a bad thing, there were a lot of bug fixes and tweaks that just felt nice but didn't touch that unreliability too much (like the level 13 lock out on his items, TY Rito). So I'll just touch on the changes that i think made him too reliable. We could also debate numbers all day so i'm going to avoid the base stat, CD, base damage, and mana changes even though these did play a decent role.
Patch 7.18
R - Call of the Forge God NEW MAXIMUM RAM TRAVEL SPEED TOWARD ORNN 1050 ⇒ 1200
Q - Volcanic Rupture PILLAR SPAWN TIME 1.25 ⇒ 1.125 seconds
W - Bellows' Breath LENGTH 500 ⇒ 550
Was That really needed? yes it's nice but now you have the usain bolt of Rams running at you making it damn near impossible to miss his ult. His ult should not just be a better nami ult, it should have pros and cons. Making it slow enough to dodge at some point should be pretty key to its balance.
Sure the Q change feels nice with the QWE combo and it's only 0.125 seconds, but damn did it have a big impact. Now there isn't that extra 0.125 seconds for someone to try and flash/dash/move out of the way. They are 0.125 seconds worth of movement closer to you still after the knock up and now you don't need to know the timing of your Q if you just QWE. It's a pretty small offender but it is still worth noting.
W length increase. Why? i get he was weak at the time but now his W outranges lucian. He is a melee tank, in what way does he need that much range on his primary damage? you can now hit everyone from the tank to the back line in one W during a teamfight.
Patch 7.20
W - Bellows Breath DAMAGE 15/17.5/20/22.5/25% target's current health ⇒ 12/14/16/18/20% target's maximum health
R - Call of the Forge God REMOVED REACTIVATION CAST TIME Headbutting the giant ram no longer has an 0.35 second cast time
W changed to max HP. Ok i know that one feels good for Ornn, but was it really needed? I'm a tank, why do i need that much kill pressure? im A-OK with just current HP damage to push people out of lane but not be able to kill them so easily.
Ok so this R change was when i knew this was all going to go south really soon for Ornn players. There was a cast time for a reason. His ult is crazy strong, but when it's slow and Ornn has to wind up for it you suddenly have far more counter play. You get to see where he is redirecting it and you get a bigger window to stop him from hitting his ult again. This change never should have gone live if any of them
In Summary Maybe i'm crazy because i just liked the guy a lot, but i really do feel like the changes i mentioned were unnecessary and have made Riot take power away from the places that make Ornn fun. Now that it's so easy to land everything and do everything you need to do as Ornn he is slowly losing things like his W's unstoppable, his cooldowns across the board are getting near dubled, damage is getting dropped across the board, and even little things like his E procking twice if you are good and can land the knock up while dashing through them. He has become a champ that went from unique and challenging with a solid skill expression to a bland, brain dead, subterranean skill floor champ just like almost every other tank. TheTL;DR is Ornn is going from high skill cap to brain dead and Riot is still on that track with current PBE changes. Just revert the changes i have quoted and give him back unstoppable and see what happens.