The League of Legends world championships are genuinely amazing to watch. The kinds of things some of the world’s greatest players can pull off are sometimes hard to believe, and Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork, is a champion capable of some of the most impressive.
For those summoners just now noticing her, however, she actually has a fairly high learning curve, so here are a few things to remember if you want to show your skill.
Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Never lose track of Orianna’s ball. This is much simpler in words than in practice, but knowing instinctively where her ball is at any given point in time is essential to making the most of her spells. Command: Dissonance and Command: Shockwave are both centered on her ball rather than her, and both of her other abilities involve the ball traveling from it’s current location. This can provide some very tricky angles of attack, but can also lead to wasted ults and lost fights.
Another part of this is getting a good idea of exactly how far you can get from your ball before it jumps back to you. Planning an ability based on where the ball is while backing off and having it jump to you right as you ult or use Dissonance can be hugely frustrating.
Learn the Ball’s Speed
Even trickier to get used to than keeping track of where the ball is, getting used to how fast it travels is just as important. Those weird attack angles and unusual possibilities are only possible if you can time the abilities correctly, and throwing Command: Protect on someone only matters if the ball can get to them in time.
Another reason learning the speed of the ball intuitively is important is that Orianna cannot use another ability while the ball is carrying out her last command. This means if you order a ball behind you to attack someone in front of you, you can’t change your mind halfway through to have it instead protect you. As short as Orianna’s cooldowns are, it can still leave you painfully exposed for a vital second or two if you give a command that takes longer to complete than you expected.
Don’t Forget Your Passive
Orianna’s passive is not something often mentioned when people talk about her, but it is definitely not something you ever want to forget. It scales with AP, something very few passive abilities do, but it is an even bigger bonus during her laning phase. There are exceptionally few AP champions who can exchange auto-attacks and expect to come out even against Orianna as a direct result of this passive.
This can combine very well with Orianna’s ball in lane. It lets Orianna herself keep closer to the enemy laner than most others can keep to her, allowing her to keep the ball well behind where they can be confident in avoiding it.
This is not a fun place for Lux to be.
Practice Your Positioning
Once you have figured out exactly how far you can be from your ball, you need to learn to keep within that range of wherever you need to be throwing your damage. The tricky part about this is keeping out of range of the enemy.
Throwing the ball on a Malphite just before he ults in order to catch everyone in his ult as they land with yours is awesome and easily capable of winning teamfights all on its own. You need to be sure you are going to be close enough that the ball does not just jump back to you as soon as your teammate reaches the enemy, however. Be aware of how effectively the other team can snare or grab you, but learn to keep just close enough to always be a threat.
Orianna is one of the more difficult champions in the game to truly master, but she can be extremely rewarding once you do, as the world championships have displayed for the entire world to see. Take your time learning her intricacies and quirks, and she will serve well on the Fields of Justice.
