Seriously, it works great! Sure, she has high mana costs, but so do Nami, Sona, and Lux (not sure if people play lux support anymore tho) and they're considered fairly viable. She has a decent peel, decent damage, a great shield, and very balanced. Just finished a victorious ranked game with her, my team was a little questionable at first, but we just stomped the enemy team. A good Orianna ult can be game-changing, as well. Thoughts?
I personally love orianna support. I think the main issue is what she doesn't bring to the table. she doesn't have the same safety as sona/nami/soraka, and she doesn't have the engage of a lux/morgana/blitz/thresh. she's sitting somewhere in the middle, and people like their polar picks, because it means you have a defined strength.
Nami is better cause of heals, hard cc outside of the ult, and many speed ups
Sona heals and shield strongest poke and still has a better AOE CC.
Lux can shield a whole team and has better range.
Sorka is the best healer in the game. Just cant argue around that
Anine is a better damage CC support.
Velkoz has better range and more CC.
Ending thoughts what ori does almost everyone else does better in the support role. Ori has a place mid only cause her ratios are not horrible but has great base stats. She does a ton of AOE damage with an AP build and then gives the utlity to the team afterwards. With AP she actually has good 1v1 potiental.
At low elo is does not matter.
Nami, Sona, and Lux aren't considered strong meta picks ATM. Orianna doesn't have good CC because all she has is a slow before 6. Thresh, Morgana, Annie, and Leona have been really strong and all of them but Morgana have a stun level 1 and all of them but Annie have 2 strong CC abilities.
Orianna is a lot squishier than most supports she has less peel and she is more mama hungry than the strongest supports (Sona isn't really classified as strong ATM). I mean there are just better choices when tanks are so highly valued and strong peel/AA buffs are more useful in a support than some damage heavy slow
It's mostly a matter of what she really brings.
As a support she has her shield. MS boost/slow. Limited hard CC(by limited I mean it can be avoided). Vision. All of this is comes at a high cost in mana. Often requiring her to repeatedly use her Q. If her Q is out, she has to use Q or E for her W. Making her abilities all come with a delay.
Her overall range isn't long enough to be considered a poke support. Her damage/burst isn't strong enough to be considered a kill lane like Annie. Her CC isn't fully reliable, although very strong. As a support, not having strong mana regen is very punishing.
Nami out classes her in almost every way in this area. W's range is actually fairly strong if you cast it on yourself or an ally first. Q's range isn't too bad either. QWREx3 does a fairly strong amount of damage. Nothing TOO impressive early game. She's not a kill lane either, but she'll get you kills easier without needing an ult. CC does have a delay to it, but Q can be used much more often and R is fairly easy to hit. Her mana can be a pain, but it is manageable with decent regen.
So why isn't Nami played mid? Because with items(regen+cdr) Orianna becomes a powerful utility mage. Nami doesn't become nearly as powerful. This is mainly because of Orainna's mana costs to keep using her abilities. Getting to a point of mananing that easily makes her a powerhouse. There's a reason she's top 5 in URF.
