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Diana is literally a badly optimized Orianna, yet you call her toxic, but Orianna a marvel of design

Baned by Snu Snu·8/16/2014, 3:25:43 AM·19 votes·13,249 views

Diana has worse base damages and ratios than Orianna in every single of her spells.

Diana's E is literally the utility portion of Orianna's ultimate and Dissonance. Only that she doesn't have the luxury of being able to do it from a safe 825 distance that Orianna's Q allows. The slow also lasts 1 second less and the knock-in effect is a bit weaker.

Diana doesn't have an AoE MS boost for her team.

Diana's shield is restricted primarily on herself and doesn't provide armor/MR. In fact, it even has a similar built-in function that allows her to do damage with the shield as well, bringing the total skills that can do damage to 4 instead of 3. (5-4 respectively if passives are included)

At level 18, Diana's passive equals to 83+0.27/AP on each hit. Orianna's passive equals to 70+0.18/AP when stacked. Diana's passive is the ONLY thing that slightly goes ahead due to being AoE and having a small AS boost. (close to irrelevant due to Diana having bad base AS, because somehow you enjoy giving a champion a specific power and then taking it away from base stats, like what you similarly did to Lissandra with her passive and base mana regen.)

Even then, let's not forget that Orianna has the benefit of being ranged over Diana being melee, so her passive is arguably better in the end, if relative safety of applying it is taken into account. It also has immediate impact from the first hit, which is always bonus points.

And after all of these, you have nerfed Diana a total of 5 times, whereas at the same time you have continuously promoted Orianna as a marvel of character design, despite Diana having MUCH more expoitable weaknesses, like having to commit to a teamfight or die, being melee, etc.

This is pure favoritism and hypocrisy.

64 Comments

RiotPhreak8/16/2014, 10:59:23 PM22 votes

Just as food for thought, devil's advocate, and whatever:

Reliability is actually a really big part of that. Orianna Q-R'ing you versus Diana R-E'ing are very different, and Diana's is much more reliable. I can Valkyrie away from Ori's combo. I have to Flash away from Diana's. Additionally, the cooldown on that combo is significantly better for Diana as well.

To address random other points you put in:

The number of times a champion has been nerfed is irrelevant. The history really doesn't matter. If Caitlyn got nerfed by 8 AD one patch, versus being nerfed by 1 AD eight patches in a row, the end result is the same. I'd urge you to not include things like that in the future: It clutters your message.

Base stats vs. passives, siphoning power, etc.: It's a gameplay thing. We're not trying to say, "Yo guys, Diana is THE attack speed champion!" We're not saying, "Lissandra is THE manaless mana champion."

Rather, we're saying, "Hey, Diana should feel like she attacks pretty fast all the time. Her passive should always feel useful." So rather than say, "Okay, you start pretty fast, and then go SUPERSPEED" we flattened it instead and say, "You start as literally the fastest-attacking champion in the game, and get a little bit faster in the end, pretty close to everyone else too." Now you could make the argument that Diana should be a more AS-focused champion, but taking out base stats and placing an equivalent in an ability is not about cheekily nerfing and buffing a champion, it's about crafting a specialized experience.

As another, really clean example, Miss Fortune has incredibly low base movement speed, but the highest out-of-combat movement speed in the game. There's a real sense of power in Strut.

In the end what it comes down to is that reliability is a really powerful stat. In the past Diana was basically one-shotting people with no recourse. How do you outplay RWEQ from Diana? It literally can't miss, and she casts it from out of range of anyone's basic attack. My understanding of our eventual direction for Diana is to make her more about the Passive/W. Make her the tankier moon-knight, less of an assassin. It was her being a "I one-shot you assassin + great team fight engager + really good bruiser" that just seemed to give her no real weakness. I believe we will be shifting her to maybe 1.5 of those.

Best answer I can really give you. I'm not a designer. Hope it was helpful though!

ShadowKnight12248/16/2014, 3:34:49 AM7 votes

Orianna doesn't have a resetting, damage-dealing gap-closer, though. She's fairly immobile and her only mobility boost is her Dissonance speed boost. Diana is far more mobile, and mobility is a skill-dependant attribute in League. The more skilled a player is, the more they shine with a highly mobile champion. Orianna is probably still better than Diana, but that's simply a matter of waiting until Worlds gets dominated by her again. Then Riot will get the hint and nerf her insane range.

Fisk8/16/2014, 5:00:44 AM6 votes

Diana's burst is easier to land if you are alone. Also her burst WHEN she gets ahead is (well maybe was) ridiculous. She could in a very literal sense, one shot your carry. she hit Q+R+R zhonya bai bai carry. Also she scales relatively well with tank so you can just be the invincible carry one shotter was a vacuum on her E. Also her FULL combo can come up 2 times during a fight if you build cdr so you can now delete TWO people. That WAS diana. Very toxic anti fun carry raper that when ahead destroyed you and when behind (as if old diana got behind LOL) you get one shot when diving since you have no defense. Now since her nerfs she is mostly just a champ that gets insta killed whenever she tries to kill someone BUT she is much more toxic than ori (when she wins) because she just kills your carries, vacuums your team (cc train time) then instantly the zhonya's and lets her team follow up. Ori I agree is over powered but her game mechanics aren't toxic. Her scalings are all somewhat meh so she will never kill you flat out without follow up, she depends on good team work pretty heavily, she can't engage or sustain so you can poke her down. She's squishy and vulnerable to cc and all in since she has no real escape besides a movement speed buff, her ult is easy to dodge and hard to land. While she is op because she just wrecks you from afar, her ult is stupidly strong if their team uses it correctly, her utility is INSANE, her roaming ability is great and her burst damage mid game and late game (even tho it won't kill you out right its easy to chain her entire combo and its ALL AoE so your team will feel it hard). She will most likely get a nerf somewhere but I wouldn't expect it to be to major honestly. Probably just a little tweak to her damage on her W I would imagine.

Hiphoppopatomus8/17/2014, 6:22:33 AM5 votes

If the only argument is that Diana is not toxic if Ori is not, then I can somewhat hop on this idea. I won't argue that Diana does more or less damage, since she is a burst assassin while Ori is a much more rounded damager (low cooldowns with moderate damage). I simply believe Diana needs adjustments to her kit.

Orianna definitely lacks a strong sense of counter play, in that she does almost everything (Shields, Hard CC, ranged poke, strong wave clear, decent pick potential), and with her movespeed buff, decent shielding (240 + .4 AP), and ranged attacks, she definitely seems like a top-tier pick for the mid lane. I am not an avid Orianna player, but from an outside perspective** I can't really name a glaring weakness** that she has.

Diana , as has been mentioned in a lot of other posts, seems to lack a solid healthy identity. A lot of her damage is almost guaranteed if she is able to ult to you, her dash is much faster than an Orianna ball (I don't have exact numbers on Diana's ult projectile speed but it seems faster), and her burst scales better with AP. Meanwhile, she is melee, she does not gain defensive stats (WHICH ORIANNA DOES!?), and her combo is interruptible (Thresh could flay her mid Ult and theoretically nullify almost all of her damage). Because Diana's initiation is interruptible and requires her to go all in, it means she is not a reliable initiator for teamfights or picks, and since she has no reliable escapes (she requires a target in her escape direction) unlike Lee Sin who also has an escape that can be used on wards, she lacks a strong tank presence because once her ult is nullified she can almost be ignored or easily kited. Most currently viable initiators have either a relatively safe ranged pick potential (Elise, Morg, Orianna, Syndra, Lee Sin, Ryze, Mundo?, Rengar?) , or unstoppable/highly reliable initiation with decent beef (Vi, Maokai, Alistar, Evelynn) .

As a tank Diana is unreliable and lacks the inherent beef (No passive defensive stats other than her decent base stats) given to most tank-like champions, in addition, her shield at max rank costs 100 mana (Which is a lot because she has borderline Sion levels of mana); and without putting herself in danger, only blocks 100 + .3 AP (200 + .6 when able to proc the second half). It's hard to compare her shield to others since she is the only melee tank/assassin where the shield itself does damage, unlike Nautilus and Sion where the shield must be maintained to do damage, Diana's damage comes with the act of activating the shield. But generally, this move is used as an attack spell rather than a defense spell, because when comparable defensive shields are nearly free (Rumble, Shen, Lee Sin, Riven) or scale with health in some form (Vi, Malphite, Nautilus), hers seems to be a mismatch of ideas, causing a mediocre spell with only one viable use case: to attempt to kill someone with it. With such a high cost and low shielding without going in, Diana is forced to engage to gain a reasonable shield or simply forgo wasting the large amounts of mana and take harass. As a melee champion I feel this severely handicaps her abilities in lane and limits her decision making. I understand this may be the type of character Riot was originally designing Diana as (Hyper all in), but in terms of balance I feel it doesn't work as well as it could.

Maybe Diana's shield could start with the max shield, and if the bubbles pop give her an Armor/MR bonus? Possibly lowering the base damage on it and tweaking the scaling while lowering the mana cost to make it more usable in lane.

As an Assassin, Diana's damage is uncounterable without a displacement, meaning if she is ahead, you will die, similar to fizz, akali, or talon, but fizz, akali and talon have an escape for trades and losing situations in lane. I really don't have much else to say on Assassins because to be honest, melee assassins are unreliable in nature.

I'm no pro on either of these champs, I'm just sorta rambling for fun.