Orianna is a champion with a very high learning curve considering her mechanics. She is also very strong once you've grasped the basics of her kit. Even with the moderate difficulty, Orianna is still very forgiving in the mid lane. Her strength lies not only with her damage output but with the adaptability she possesses. She can be the control mage in mid or supportive depending on your playstyle.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

Orianna’s strengths include her high early damage and her ability to deal both burst and sustained damage. She also has the ability to create opportunities for her team with her buffs. Finally, she has an ultimate which can be used as an engagement tool that her team can follow up on. She also has pure multi-target abilities which makes it much easier to farm compared to many other mid lane champions.

Her weaknesses include the fact that her damage can be avoided easily if you are linear with your ball movement. Champions who are mobile will be harder to make contact with. She is heavily dependent on her ball for her defenses, since she has low baseline resistances. Also in the early game, she has a large window between ball movements and if you're not careful, you could be caught out in a bad situation.

Runes:

Keystone: Any as it can be interchangeable based on preference and build path as both Phase Rush and Summon Aery can be used if you follow the Q max progression method. Taking Arcane Comet will be more useful if you do the W max, as it guarantees a stronger burst and more likely to connect.

Her primary runes go by preference, but I found a lot of success taking the extra movement speed from Waterwalking and Celerity and mana regen from Manaflow Band. Her secondary runes can differ but what I find is taking Biscuit Delivery to increase her mana pool and early sustain and Approach Velocity to further increase your movement speed when chasing opponents down.

An alternative for those who max Q first would be to take Electrocute as a keystone along with Taste of Blood, Eyeball Collection, and Relentless Hunter. Following this tree, I would recommend Sorcery as a secondary tree with Manaflow Band and Waterwalking to maintain mana regeneration and movement speed advantages.

Summoner Spells:

The two spells I find success with are Flash and Teleport so that I can return to lane with Lost Chapter or other items to keep pressuring the enemy early. You can also take Ignite if you wish to play aggressively and get kills. You will just have to take into consideration the time between recalling and roaming to other lanes won’t be as quick and you could wind up wasting time.

Ability Progression:

Two ways to level abilities are the constant damage method or the high burst both methods have an impact on how the game progresses. The level progression also changes what your win conditions can be as it will depend on your playstyle and are as followed below.

R—Q—W—E Constant damage

R—W—Q—E High burst

Item build:

The core of this build is normal while the last two items can be interchangeable based on the needs of the game. My build stays the same for the most part except for Rabadon's being swapped for Liandry's in some cases. The premise of this build is to be the one to catch or set up kills with the slows from Rylai's and Twin Shadows also while having the speed to outrun enemies. If you have teams that can capitalize on enemies when they are slowed, the game will snowball in your favor.

These items are also interchangeable with Twin Shadows if the game isn’t going too fondly in your favor and you need to build defensively. These are viable options as they will keep you in the lane longer to farm up and catch up if you are falling behind.

Laning tips:

The basic of this lane is to focus on getting your Lost Chapter early and solely focusing on farming. Since I take the W-max route, you can clear caster minions with one Q/W combo at level 6. This keeps your opponent at the tower or in the lane and if they decide to roam you can take tower early. My usual first back is at 1100 gold if not 1300, this ensures you get boots and two amplifying tomes or a full lost chapter on first back. Your first rush should be on the Luden’s Echo into Rylai’s to ensure maximum damage and trade potential. The rest is based on your games and how they are progressing.

Orianna is a well-known farming monster when it comes to mid lane as her abilities are all AoE or multi-target abilities. One method that has been around since Season 2 would be to take the raptor camp from your jungle or the enemy jungle. Of course, let your jungler know of your intentions and, if applicable, don’t disrupt his Dark Harvest stacks. This is done with full confidence of not losing many if any at all CS from the lane. At level 6 and a full Lost Chapter, one Q/W combo will almost kill all the small raptors you will then have to Q once more to clear them. Return to lane as normal and continue to farm, as this shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds.

Flash Trick:

One of Orianna’s tricks includes the Flash ultimate. This is like the Lee Sin Insec play where you Flash and ult at the same time to set up plays for your team. You can also Flash and ult as Orianna in the same manner. The only trick is to be able to walk within Flash range with the ball over you and ult but, as soon as you hit the ultimate, you must immediately Flash after. This will allow you to ult when the ball is over you and you become the delivery system. This is only viable because it is faster than setting your ball to travel and then ulting which has a delay.

Conclusion:

Orianna is a highly versatile champion with her solo strength and the ability to compliment her team with her kit. She is a solid pick for mid lane and can potentially carry the game with her high damage output early on. The main thing to note is that she will be hard to understand at first with her ball mechanics but after a few games it will be easy to play. If you guys have any questions on this champion guide let me know via Twitter!

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