Orianna Pickup Guide with DIG Palafox
Learn one of Palafox’s favorite Champions, Orianna, in this quick Champion pick up guide!
As one of League’s iconic mid lane Champions, Orianna fits in the role of a sort of flexible fundamental mid lane Champion that always perpetually remains viable in the metagame. Rather than spend too much time prefacing, we talk with Cristian “Palafox” Palafox on one of his favorite mid lane Champions, optimizing item starts, and improving your Orianna gameplay!
So Why Orianna?
Honestly, it's the fact that Orianna is the most versatile Champion in League. I feel like she just has like a great Champion design. If Ori's weak, something's wrong, she should be like a 50-50 champ no matter what. Even if Ori is like really strong for pro play, even for non-pro play, she should be around like a 50 or hovering like 49 max. What made Orianna a staple for me, at least when I was first playing the game, was just like Season 2 Worlds watching like Toyz play it, and Season 3 Faker playing it. It just always such a game changing Champion with her ult, I don't think it's much the case anymore, but back in the day she's was such an impactful Champion.
As a selling point, Palafox’s feeling of Orianna should be maintaining a perpetual 50% winrate range has a lot of basis from a pretty common sentiment among the League community. Many people appreciate her rather straightforward design that comes from the older days of League of Legends.
Her kit is one of the simpler to understand but versatile in its uses and she is oftentimes is used as a Champion recommendation to new mid laners to learn good fundamentals. For most players, she isn’t as frustrating as a lot of modern Champion designs that generally puts her in the range where people are content with her being decently strong. Many big plays in both old and modern-day League came from mid laners popping off big Orianna ultimates that catch multiple key targets, making it a rather exciting Champion to watch in spite of her simple kit.
Skill Max Order
So right now, I think the default for a lot of players is Q max because W max got nerfed. I would say that you're right, she is pretty flexible on the skills you level up, I think right now sometimes at level three, especially like if you're stomping your lane, putting two points into your W is pretty decent if you think you can get a kill. I don't think I would ever go E max because you're useless if you do that. I think you would just go Q max.
At a baseline, Q max will increase the damage and lower the cooldown, which gives Orianna more windows where she can reposition the ball and continually deal damage. The time where your Q cooldown is on is oftentimes when your opponent will try to position away from where the ball currently is to avoid a W and punish you because a significant portion of your trading ability is Q-W.
W max I would only ever consider if your opponent is a melee champ and they're getting hit by all your Qs. So they'll put you in the least amount of threat while outputting a good amount of damage, because you don't have to keep walking up to put up your Qs, you can just slam your first Q-W and walk away, then wait to slam your next Q-W.
W max is a situational kind of pick, where if you can consistently hit your W on your opponent (as Palafox notes, melee Champions are especially vulnerable), you’ll consistently get damage while they’re constantly stuck in vulnerable positions trying to farm. The ball, especially sitting where your opponent wants to farm a minion, makes it easy for you to get free W hits, while not being punished for not moving your ball around as much with maxing W first.
One way to explain it is that your ball is basically a zone where your opponent generally will try to avoid, but melee Champions in particular will always have to run into it eventually because you can position it in places where they want to stand. Melee Champions don’t have the same luxury as a ranged champ in farming often, especially if they lack ranged abilities for farming. It’s free damage, basically, that is hard for melee Champions to punish Orianna because they also get slowed if they’re hit by the W.
An example from a Palafox game on his build max order on Orianna. Image Source - Pros.lol
Rune Options
Aery is generally better at like if you're buffing your team a bit more, so I would say that if you are playing to something like Xin Zhao and kind of want to play more Enchanter style Ori, where you're just buffing your team and letting them go forward, you should go Aery
Aery’s strength is primarily consistency and versatility, where you’ll get damage from hitting abilities similar to Arcane Comet, but also extra shielding on your E. It consistently comes up in continuous trading where you might find yourself in a longer trade with both your abilities and autoattacks.
As an extra, it can be slightly helpful in the situations where the shield from Aery might matter in cases where you’re giving the ball to a diver to help them engage slightly safer. Palafox mentions Xin Zhao as an option, but also consider other divers like Nocturne, Lee Sin, and Assassins who will usually reach their main target for you to get a free ultimate.
If you're playing for lane dominance and you know you're going to beat them, you go Comet. Sure you can still win with Aery, but it's just not as strong as it would be with Comet.
For Arcane Comet, it’s simply more damage that can win you trades from having slightly higher numbers. In particular, it’s particularly stronger in burstier trades, especially in cases where you might not want to take an extended trade but want to retreat immediately after trading with your opponent. Comet does have a downside in being able to potentially miss its damage, but Orianna usually can consistently hit it due to her trading combo often being Q-W, which slows the target enough for Comet to land. It also has a small AoE radius, which in some hypothetical dream scenarios hits multiple targets at once (a very possible occurrence with her ultimate grouping targets together).
Melee matchups are the ones where I would consider Phase Rush a bit more. You have more chances to get more autos in and dodge their abilities, and that's pretty crucial in a lot of matchups.
Picking Phase Rush is straightforward, as there will be situations where it can help you maintain distance from melee Champions. It is generally the weaker of the three because it provides nothing but movement speed and slow resistance, but you can’t undervalue how good it is to be able to quickly run away after making a trade.
Items
Here are various tidbits from Palafox discussing first items for Orianna. We’ll explain anything that may need an example or more context.
Luden's is really good if you have a lot of burst and you aren't under a lot of threat, like you're not going to die, and you can survive their threat. Blackfire is really good for damage, but Blackfire is definitely like you have a lot more ability haste, you're going to be able to cast more ultis in the game, and you're just playing a slower game, especially against tankier or melee Champions where Blackfire Torch is a bit better.
The idea with Blackfire is that while it lacks the burst of Luden's Echo, it comes with a scaling passive (increased %AP for everyone under the effect of the DoT from Blackfire) that is mostly effective if you can consistently hit multiple targets. This is far easier in scenarios with multiple melee Champions that may often clump together trying to dive a singular target.
Rod of Ages and Archangels [are good] if they do not have a lot of dive, but they have enough dive so [that those items make it] so you can live. RoA is useless if you die no matter how much health you have, so if they don't deal enough damage to dive onto you, going RoA is good if you need it to survive. It's honestly a niche case. There's also, like, if you go Catalyst, your laning phase while having Catalyst against no Catalyst in Mage matchups is really OP, so if you want to win lane harder against a Viktor or Syndra, you should go Catalyst, but I don't think it's great for winning the game oftentimes.
Two things to take from Palafox’s explanation. For one, try to consider if Rod of Ages/Archangel's are actually going to keep you alive, and whether or not staying alive is going to help in the situation. Sometimes, the most useful thing you can do as a mid laner is throw all your cooldowns and blow up the carry, but with Rod of Ages you may lose the exact damage needed to put a carry into kill range. Consider Rod of Ages if, say, you’re being dove by Champions and it can narrowly keep you in the fight to use your spells, or if you can’t enter your opponents’ threat range to do anything without the bulk from Rod of Ages and absolutely need it to be useful.
The second is the Catalyst of Aeons rush, which I think is very notorious during certain patches where nearly every mid laner rushed Catalyst. It’s a really defensively statted item that gives you both lane sustain and mana sustain if you take damage, letting you take a lot of shorter trades continually and slowly grinding out your opponent. It also cheaply builds into Rod of Ages immediately after, letting you spike a little faster than your opponent who often go the more expensive mana items like Luden's or Blackfire. It does fall off. Rod of Ages deceptively seems like a scaling option, but you don’t get the same damage output especially later into the mid/late game as the other AP items.
Yeah, with Archangel's, you want to be semi-tanky, and you want CDR and a good amount of AP. It's an in-between for all the items, because [with] RoA you have no damage and no burst. Archangel's just gives you a little bit of tankiness in the mid game because it pops the shield.
Same logic as Rod of Ages, consider Archangel's when the shield has value. You may also consider things like Zhonya's in situations where the shield isn’t enough to keep you alive and stasis can prevent key abilities from hitting.
Taken directly from a Palafox solo queue game, Arcane Comet/Ludens Echo into Shadowflame is a very high burst kind of build aimed at squishier targets as an example of where you would go Comet. Item Builder Source - Shyv.net
Most Important Thing to Do When Learning to Play Orianna?
For a new player, always consider your own positioning. Don't get too sucked in on trying to hit your skillshots, focus on, "Am I going to be able to dodge this spell, am I going to be able to..." Just focus on dodging and being in a good position over like punishing and moving your ball around, because I think like for newer players, you honestly think too much about your positioning on your ball. Honestly, when I was new to playing the game, there was a lot of times where I was like, ‘Ok, I need to move my ball here,' and I would just kill myself because I'm overcommitting my body, I'm trying too hard to hit them with that spell.
One way to describe it is that players often get fixated on making a big play, even at the risk of taking a lot of damage or dying pointlessly. While making a cool play can be a deciding factor, oftentimes you might end up just making your opponent get leads that were otherwise entirely preventable. Consider the following from Palafox.
The concept of Control Mages is they control areas, so the most important way to like play around that is you just have to understand that as a player, the enemy Champion must go into a certain point to deal damage, otherwise the other enemy Champion is not dealing damage, right. So you would just have to know where they would have to step, or otherwise, they can't, it's honestly that simple. Zoning is literally just like, if they step in this area, then if you think they're going to step in a dangerous area, you just keep your ball positioned there. You're just going to get free damage. If they're not damaging, then that's good.
As a Control Mage, one way of playing effectively is simply just punishing your opponent who positions poorly. You might consider Champions like Aurelion Sol or Viktor, who similarly make zones that your opponent must step in eventually if they want to make certain plays, and oftentimes both Champions do just enough of their damage before retreating. Control Mages have the flexibility of not being a full commit kind of Champion, but rather being able to continually create pressure just by having their abilities ready to zone off opponents rather than purposely pushing into their zone.
For Orianna, you can simply play around the zone that your ball creates, and focus on avoiding abilities and timing when your opponent will use certain things. This will let you react with your own abilities accordingly, which oftentimes is more than enough for them to eventually hand you a good position to make a big play without forcing it.
Conclusion
When we first brought up Orianna to Palafox, he was already quite ready to give us the rundown about Orianna, speaking a lot to his love for the Champion.
Interesting, honestly, I think I've written a guide on Orianna before (laughs). I used to be an Ori one trick, so uh, yeah.
While we’re not entirely sure if his Orianna guide is still out there, we hopefully brought you some up to date information on playing Orianna effectively and picking her up, especially if you’re new to the Champion. Advice from one trick players especially who have gone through the grind of playing the Champion into numerous matchups is really valuable, especially because they know exactly what made them good at improving at the Champion.
We thank Palafox for his time, if you would like to check out his socials, click on the following.
