Counter Guide

How to Beat Orianna

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Orianna is the only mid laner whose position tells you almost nothing. The dangerous thing is her ball, and it's frequently in a completely different place.

Everything she does happens at the ball rather than at her. That sounds like a detail and it's actually the whole champion. It means she can shove a wave and threaten you at the same time, that her shield lands on the person jumping on you rather than on herself, and that her fight ending ultimate can be waiting somewhere you have already stopped looking. Beating her is a matter of tracking one object instead of one champion, plus the ordinary business of punishing a mage who can't move.

Matchup Snapshot Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork

Where You Meet Her Mid lane

Damage Type Magic, and it lands wherever the ball is

Why She Is Frustrating The threat is not where she is standing

Mobility None whatsoever

Biggest Threat Command: Shockwave [R]

Hardest Counter Aurelion Sol

What a Counter Needs

A way to reach her, because she has no answer at all to arriving
Magic resistance, since the whole kit is one damage type
The habit of looking at where the ball is rather than where she is

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Orianna on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Orianna

Aurelion Sol601 games60.9%
Lux1,400 games58.3%
Xerath1,270 games57.7%
Veigar1,397 games57.7%
LeBlanc1,469 games56.6%

Picks Orianna Beats

Ryze933 games48.7%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Orianna. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 47,121 Orianna games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Orianna Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

Her threat and her body are in different places. She can farm safely and still cover the fight, which almost no other mage in the lane can do at the same time.
Her ultimate ends grouped fights. Command: Shockwave [R] doesn't need to catch everybody. It needs to catch two, and it does that from a position nobody was watching.
She protects the person you're trying to kill. Command: Protect [E] is a shield she gives away, so jumping her carry is a worse idea than the health bar suggests.
She scales without needing to win. A quiet lane is fine for her. Her value is in the team fight and it arrives whether or not she got a lead.
Her poke costs her nothing. She trades from a distance with no cooldown risk, which slowly makes a lane unplayable for anyone who has to walk forward.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

She can't move. No dash, no blink, no escape. Anything that reaches her wins, and there are a lot of champions in the mid lane that reach.
The ball gives her away. Its position tells you exactly what she's able to do for the next few seconds, and it's visible to everyone.
She's weak when the ball is on the wave. Shoving and threatening at once is her best trick, and it has a cost: for that moment she has nothing aimed at you.
Her early levels are unremarkable. Before items she's a mage with modest damage and no way to punish someone standing on her, and a lane that pressures her early gets a lot for it.
Magic resistance genuinely works. There's no physical damage and no true damage anywhere in the kit, so an early item stays useful for the whole game.

Countering Orianna

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Orianna comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Keep your eyes on the ball. This is the entire counterplay and it's a habit rather than a skill. Everything she can do in the next two seconds is written on the map.
Walk at her when the ball is on the wave. That's a real, repeatable window, it happens constantly, and for some reason almost nobody takes it.
Buy magic resistance before it feels urgent. By the time the ultimate is punishing you, the item is being bought after the death rather than instead of it.
Spread out before the fight starts. Her ultimate is worth what it catches, and the number it catches was decided while everyone was walking, well before it was cast.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Orianna Matchup

Farm under the tower and play for the map. She has no way to dive a mid laner alone, and a lane she can't end is a lane she has to keep spending time in.

Bring your jungler while the ball is out on the wave. A gank aimed at that window is a completely different gank from one that arrives at random.

Force fights in corridors rather than open ground. She's at her best against a group with somewhere obvious to stand and worst against people arriving one at a time.

Best Orianna Counters

Three ways to beat a mage who can't move: end the lane before she scales, reach her once fights start, or punish the moment her threat is somewhere else. One counter each.

Pantheon Ends The Early Lane

He wins the early levels outright against a mage with no escape and no way to punish someone standing next to her, and his stun doesn't have to be aimed.

He also leaves the lane whenever he wants (worse for her than the lane itself), since she has no way to follow or to punish him for going.

Diana Reaches Her Anyway

She closes the distance the whole matchup depends on, and she has the shield to survive the poke on the way in.

Once she's there, there's nothing on the other side that makes her leave. The fight ends where it started.

Irelia Punishes The Ball

Her damage arrives through the minion wave (precisely where the ball has to be for the enemy to shove and threaten at once).

That turns the one clever thing about the matchup into a liability, because every wave she pushes is a corridor Irelia is allowed to use.

Itemizing Against Orianna

The first two are the matchup and the last two are ordinary insurance:

Mercury's Treads shortens the ultimate (the only piece of crowd control in the matchup that decides fights on its own). Verdant Barrier is the early purchase almost nobody makes and the one that changes the lane, because a shield that eats the first ability breaks her whole trade pattern. Kaenic Rookern is the grown up version of the same idea for a front line that expects to eat everything she has. Zhonya's Hourglass is for whoever she keeps aiming at, since the fight ending moment has a duration and the item outlasts it.