League of Legends champion profile: Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork

Lanes Orianna players love

• Twisted Fate: His animations and projectiles are so slow that you can easily shield to block most of his damage. Just self-cast E – Command: Protect when you see his gold card flying at you! You will still get CC’ed, but at least you’ll have the shield to mitigate some of the damage.
• Cassiopeia: This matchup is rough for the first few levels when she can machine-gun you down, but once you make it to level 3-4 you’ll win easily. Her trading pattern is fairly obvious and her spells are short-ranged, so just Q her whenever she walks up to trade or CS.
• Sylas: If you’re frustrated playing against the Unchained, Orianna is a great pick for you! She outranges all of his abilities, allowing her to poke him down with impunity. The only downside is that if Sylas steals your ult it can be kind of a bad spot.

Lanes Orinna players hate

• Katarina: Orianna’s cooldowns are so long early and have such a high mana cost she hates assassins who can get on top of her with ease. Katarina fits that bill. She can dodge your poke fairly easily, match your wave clear with her passive, and do tons of damage.
• Yasuo: Similar to Katarina, Yasuo has the mobility to dodge Orianna’s poke or ultimate. In addition, his W – Windwall is godly at blocking her damage because it blocks all projectiles, including The Ball. That means that he can block Orianna from trying to get her ultimate off unless she changes her angle of approach.
• Leblanc: Take everything that was said about Katarina and Yasuo in terms of mobility and damage and amp it up to eleven.

Tips for playing Orianna

• The ball moves slowly, so calling it back to use Q – Command: Attack is inefficient. Instead, use  Q – Command: Attack to position the ball near the enemy (perhaps to clear minions) and then use it again to harass.
• Remember that The Ball deals damage to any enemies it passes through, so combo your Q – Command: Attack and E – Command: Protect to get extra damage on enemies.
• Use E – Command: Protect on an initiator so they can get into a fight with those bonus armor and magic resistance buffs, a shield, and bring the ball into the middle of the enemy team. However, you need to make sure that you stay within range of your diver so The Ball doesn’t automatically return to you.

Tips for playing against Orianna

• Stand behind minions to lower the damage from Q – Command: Attack. Note, this does not work on her E – Command: Protect, which deals flat damage to everything it hits on returning to Orianna.
• Play around her Ball! Even if you dodge the Q, she can still hit you with her W – Command: Dissonance or R – Command: Shockwave if you’re standing too close to her Ball.
• Trade against her whenever The Ball is not on her. Once she sends it out, she loses those passive resistances.

Champion Difficulty: 7/10

Orianna’s kit is simple in principle, but it has an incredibly high skill cap. Learning how to manipulate The Ball in lane and in team fights is going to be crucial, as is your positioning. Stand too far from the fight and your ball might snap back to you, but stand too close and you could get blown up quickly.

Similar to champions

Lux, Karma, Annie.

Got any tips for players who are looking to learn Orianna? Leave them for us in the comments!in the comments!