Orianna’s playstyle is engaging enough that I’ve been spending a decent amount of time with her, enough to have some additional thoughts about her just a day after my impressions post. It’s tough to help myself – she’s just so much fun. The ball mechanic makes for an active and powerful lane phase that I find much more interesting than most of the characters in the game.

Orianna is a return to the poke style metagame, and I’ve actually had the most success with her when I can zone an enemy back to his turret. You’ll definitely need to have some regen, but using the ball to basically sweep the lane can keep an opponent at his turret while you stand outside the turret’s range. There is one limiting factor: mana.

I have huge mana problems on Orianna, which is why I think you pretty much have to run with RoA/Archangel’s. That build also has the added benefit of being very consistent. I’ve tried rolling with Soulstealer and it just doesn’t feel as good. Because Orianna’s base damage is a little on the low side, I feel like it’s necessary to do everything I possibly can to make sure she scales consistently.

This morning, the servers came up, bringing Orianna to live play. I certainly wasn’t expecting a patch, though it didn’t include anything other than her release. I haven’t really had a chance to play her much, so I’ll give some basic impressions and instead point you to the spotlight above.

I think Riot did an amazing job with her animations. She looks good, her spells all look fairly different (though I wouldn’t mind a bit more fanfare for her shield), and the animations are spot on for her basic movement. The voice acting is also excellent (definitely a little Portal-esque as a friend pointed out). To this point, though, I haven’t seen a lot from her in terms of damage.

The problem mostly seems to be with the base damage on her abilities. Granted, a portion of her damage has been allocated to her passive, but even with a load of AP, her auto attacks don’t seem to hit particularly hard. I think a good point of comparison is Lux, who deals significant damage with her abilities and then procs a nice chunk of damage if she can land one auto attack. Orianna might be great in situations where she is overfarmed and can stand and auto attack an enemy to stack up her passive, but with just an attack or two, it doesn’t feel like it does much.

The real joy of Orianna is her support skills. Dissonance is an awesome speed buff for allies and adds a nice slow to opponents, and her ult has that perfect reward feeling when it’s played right. Hopefully I have the time for a few more games with her today. Check back either today or tomorrow for my full impressions.

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Orianna’s “Champion Approaches” thread is up, which presumably means we’ll have another patch on Tuesday to bring her live. The thread also included the skill list, which looks significantly less like a pet class than may have been suggested in earlier threads. I’m actually glad for that. The other pet characters currently in League of Legends feel clumsy and unresponsive. Let’s put that aside for a moment and dig into the skills.

Passive – Clockwork Windup: Orianna’s autoattacks deal additional magic damage every hit, subsequent attacks on the same target within a few seconds will add more damage per hit. This bonus stacks up to three times.

Command – Attack: Orianna commands her ball to fly towards target location, dealing damage to targets hit but doing reduced damage for each additional target hit. Her ball remains behind at that location afterwards.

Command – Dissonance: Orianna commands her ball to emit a magnetic pulse, dealing damage to units around it. Afterwards, the ball leaves a field behind for a few seconds that speeds up allies and slows enemies.

Command – Protect
(Passive): The allied champion the ball is attached to gains bonus Armor and Magic Resistance.
(Active): Orianna commands her ball to fly to and attach onto an allied champion, dealing damage to enemies it passes through and shielding the allied champion when it arrives.

Command – Shockwave: Orianna commands her ball to emit a shockwave after a short delay, flinging affected enemies in the vicinity into the air a set distance towards, and possibly over, her ball.

I’ll start by saying I’m going to need a video to understand how her skills work. The Q is clear enough, and the W sounds like a version of Lux’s AoE slow, but in reverse – it slows after dealing damage. I’m not sure why her E is split into an active and passive component unless the ball just stays on the target indefinitely, which seems odd. Her ultimate sounds interesting, though I think its effectiveness will depend entirely on the size of the AoE and how easy it is to get the ball into position.

While I understand the idea behind her passive, I have to wonder how its going to work out. Few damage dealing passives really incentivize players to do things that are counterintuitive to the champion. Jarvan, for instance, has a damage modifier, but he also has a skillset designed around getting close to and staying close to the enemy. This passive sounds less like an imposed skill ceiling and more like a source of frustration. If it is too easy to use, she’ll have absolutely wild burst, but if it’s too tough there will be endless complaints that she is underpowered. Here’s hoping Riot struck a balance.