Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Orianna's strengths are as follows:
1. Zone control/reach - mostly due to Q range of 850 and leash of 1125.
2. High base values - Total base damage of 1000 at 18.
3. Scaling - Total ratios of 2.0 at 18 - (AKA, this is the baseline for burst AP mages.)
4. Utility - Slow, Speed, Shield, Vacuum, Defense Bonus, Scout - (AKA, this is the baseline for most utility support kits.)
5. Harassment potential - 550 AR + Decent AA damage.
Sure, she's hard to use and land, but in the hands of competitive players who have mastered her, she's currently paying off way too easily. I didn't quite expect her to be that dominating in competitive play.
Although I'm not on live balance, I'm pushing for steady nerfs until she's in an acceptable state at high-tier play and then I will try to push on Quality of Life fixes that would make her easier to play in the hands of new players. (Although, I note, I have comparatively very little say on actual balancing.)
My intent was that an Orianna player would never be able to use her toolset all at once effectively and that there would be trade-offs between the various modes of mage or support, but in the end, competitive players have figured out how to use all her tools at once. Orianna has the tools to do everything your support player can do and everything your burst mage can do, while making your tank a better tank.
So yeah... she's crazy. My bad on that, I fully admit that I was completely off on her power to skill scaling ratio.
I think if we hit her laning zone control along with some more ratio/range tweaks, she'll still be completely insane once mastered but far less frustrating / crazy OP to face at high elo - Then we can push some quality of life stuff to make it easier for mid elo players to use her.
Orianna has to be changed and fixed to make sure that higher-tier play is still competitive and that she's not warping the game at that skill level. Her skill cap is high but right now, it is ridiculously overpoweredly high at competitive play.
I know there's a general perception that we 'cater to low skill' - but Orianna (and before, Ezreal) proves just the opposite is true. If a champion is problematic at any skill level, it's completely unacceptable.
My reasoning that she will need further adjustments in mid-elo to bring her up is that if her power level gets nerfed to make her relatively in lane with the other competitive picks, then in general, no one besides the top 10% or so will be able to use her effectively - and so she'd be problematic at mid-elo because she'd be really frustrating to play *as* - but I could be wrong on that.
My desire to make quality of life buffs to her has to wait until after we fix her zoning/poke problem with other changes.
Again, I reiterate that I'm not on live balance. I would love to make quality of life buffs to her but I am 100% behind on live that we need to fix her zoning/poke problem first.
lowering skill cap is not a way to make your game competetive. huge fail
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
This isn't an instance of lowering skill cap. Lowering the skill cap would mean that Orianna takes less skill to be good at in the end.
The problem with her, at the moment, is that she is completely broken when mastered. This isn't an instance of 'she takes too much skill so we need to reduce the amount of skill required to play her', this is an instance of 'this character is broken OP.'
Skill cap *is not* theoretical maximum power level of a character. Skill cap is how much maximum skill you can pour into a character to make him better. That won't change, just payoff shouldn't be 'broken OP.' It should just be 'very very strong.'
She's fine as is...further nerfing her will make me not want to play this original and unique champion ever.
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
I guess this is where we disagree. She's one of the most problematic and warping champions in competitive play at the moment, to the point of 'pick her or ban her, or else we lose.'
Unfortunately, while I can appreciate the fact that people do enjoy how different she is and how she can be learned or mastered, any champion that warps the competitive game that much has to be adjusted and changed so that it's no longer a problem.
Easier to play?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Let me put it this way, there is no humanly way possible to make her easier to play without massive changes to her skill sets, just due to how her targetting, etc. works.
What I would push for is things like reduced mana cost/cooldowns on utility spells (like 'E' and 'R'), slightly higher base stats, etc - so that messing up is less of a total earflick. It wouldn't be stuff like 'Hai! Now Q is targetted and autoaims' etc.
Again though, I'm not on live balance. I actually have comparatively little say about how she gets changed. These are just my hopes.
TLDR: Her damage is average at best, her laning ability isn't any better with other strong AP mages and she's extremely mana inefficient. She has really high utility to make up for her damage... so what's the problem?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
She is, the best AP mage in the game, at the moment. She completely outclasses Brand and Annie in terms of damage and range. At the competitive level, Orianna's current status is 'pick/ban or lose.' It's not acceptable when *any* champion gets to that state in *any* skill tier.
This isn't just internal analysis. This is the generally agreed consensus among all the top competitive teams at the moment. I think Fanatic put it something like 'If the 2nd most OP champion is a 3, Orianna would be a 5.'
Outclasses Brand and Annie in terms of damage? Am I missing something here?
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
Orianna has a 2.1 AoE AP ratio with 950 total base damage. To put that into context, Annie has a 2.15 AP ratio with 925 total base damage. The reason why Orianna is favored here is because of range, given that she outranges Annie's threat range by 250 or so.
Brand has something like a potential 2100 base damage with a 4.0 AP ratio but it is done at 675 and the majority of it is either single target or two targets maximum. While that looks insane, that's because 1050 and 1.5 AP ratio of that is hoping you get lucky with his ultimate. The reason why Orianna is favored here, isn't because of raw damage, it's because of consistency because she never has to unload her full combo if she misses her lead Q, whereas Brand must commit to burning all his cooldowns to use his full pyroclasm/conflagarate/pillar.
In any event, as I've said many times before, I'm not on live balance. These are what I *hope* we can do to tune her down in competitive play and bring up her in general play but ultimately it's up to Classick, et al, who have a better view of competitive balance overall.
why did they not change her until now
Xypherous - Associate Technical Designer
To be fair, we've been steadily nerfing her for quite some time. I think it's been 4 or so patches in a row now.
We didn't initially nerf her on release because it was unclear then whether or not she was overpowered. It wasn't until people really got a handle on her strengths that her problems became clear.