Ornn was given an emergency buff on Friday by Riot’s balance team, according to the official patch notes. The reason for the buff was simple—he sucked.
It’s not rare for a new champion to need some tweaks to fit them neatly into the rest of the League of Legends meta. For example, Kayn needed a buff to his ultimate in the patch following his release, and now he’s in a pretty healthy spot. Likewise, after their release, Xayah and Rakan needed a small nerf and buff respectively to be put on track.
Ornn, however, was so underwhelming following his release that unlike most new champions, almost no one wanted to pick him. Many players started banning him just so their teammates wouldn’t pick him. He’s played in three positions including jungle, support, and top. In each of those role he has one of the lowest playrates and the absolute lowest winrate, sitting at around 33 percent winrate for each role according to League stats site OP.gg.
Most new champions or newly reworked champions suffer from an abnormally low winrate while players figure out how to play them. Ornn’s was still way too low. To put it into perspective, Kayn’s was 43 percent in the week following his release, a full 10 percent higher than Ornn’s.
The buff that was dished out to Ornn doesn’t raise his damage by any crazy amount, but it does hit his base stats. His health, health regen, attack speed, and health regen growth were all buffed. The cooldown on his ultimate, Call of the Forge God, was also lowered. This should help Ornn’s absolutely abysmal performance at least a little bit, it’s a flat buff across the board. It’s not as if something else is being nerfed to compensate for his new strength.
Only time will tell if these buffs can help Ornn enough. But with performance as horrid as his expect to see some additional buffs in upcoming patches as well.
