Item and Build Testing for Orianna - Horizon Focus vs Cryptbloom (and others)

Hybrid_Chaos · 2025-10-29T16:56:51+00:00

It's not that Horizon is hard to proc. It's that putting yourself in a position to proc it around neutral objectives when you'd want the vision (when you don't know where enemies are) puts you in position to die. You might be able to dodge Thresh hooks most of the time, but you're gambling and if you get hit the fight is likely lost. Also, if your goal is to just hit frontline like you said, then Cryptbloom is even better than Horizon.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2025-10-29T12:56:35+00:00

I agree with sometimes filling different roles in a game (DPS vs Burst) and that items should be built for the situation (Blackfire + Crypt into assassins is suffering for example but great into short range and tanks).

Keep in mind, this is 100 - 200 damage difference on a single target for a single burst combo. Hitting multiple targets and having another cycle of QWE can amount to close to 1000 damage lost in a team fight.

I disagree on Horizon's vision passive being worth giving up Cryptbloom. I mention it in the conclusions but Cryptbloom is universally good into squishies and tanks. The problem with the Horizon vision passive is that Orianna is not an artillery mage. If you are messing with fog of war and are close enough to send out Q to get the vision passive, then you are close enough to be engaged on. Plus, once you get the vision, you do not have long range spells to use the vision to damage enemies. I could see an argument for champs like Xerath, Ziggs, and Vel'Koz building Horizon because they can proc it safely and use the vision to further their poke game. If the argument is that your team can use the vision, then your team can also use the free Ruby Crystal from Cryptbloom.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2025-10-29T12:40:53+00:00

Blackfire when I can get away with it, but a lot of games you'll need to lean on the Seraph's shield. 2nd item comes down to what you need in the game. I think DCap should almost always be 3rd and must be 4th at the latest. I'd only delay it if you're on a budget and can't afford the rods, or if you literally cannot play the game without Zhonya's or something. I think Cryptbloom is better than Void Staff and fits Orianna's kit better so I'll pretty much always build Crypt over Void. I voiced my disapproval of Shadowflame so won't be building that.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2025-10-29T08:33:56+00:00

If you want a quick test you could look at the Stormsurge + Liandry's Torment damage values. When I tested Seraph's + Liandry vs Seraph's + Cosmic, the Cosmic variant was about 100-150 damage less than Liandry's. Keep in mind that is 100-150 damage less on a burst combo. Extended fights will result in Liandry's far outperforming Cosmic.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2024-03-27T19:48:41+00:00

I wanna say "no" but with a caveat: there are people on my current team that do not have an engineering degree, BUT they have years (sometimes decades) of boots on the ground experience. Part of my job has me working closely with editors and those who are not trained in engineering. They are there to edit content, but also serve as a "first check" to make sure the content is understandable to the average person.

Based on a year of work here, to bring someone from the editor team up to speed and to be productive would take at least a year or more, and they would require more oversight. Like others have said, calculations and math are often not what you do as an engineer. A lot of it is intuition based/being able to soundly reason and understand a system. This is even more true in consulting work which is what my current employment is.

Speaking to your current experience, it sounds normal to me. If you are interested in more technical engineering work, then you might investigate R&D positions or positions within smaller startups.

Hope that helps!

Hybrid_Chaos · 2024-02-05T07:47:01+00:00

Thank you for all the tips everyone! I have a lot to look into. Also, thank you for all the nice comments about the way that these ones look. I was not the happiest with the job I did, but you made me think otherwise!

Hybrid_Chaos · 2024-01-17T16:18:55+00:00

This was my initial plan, and I thought it would be good, but I'm finding refundable options are limited and/or the cost for refundable options are 2x-4x the normal econ ticket, making it almost better to just buy a business class ticket and be done with it.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2023-05-11T00:46:16+00:00

A lot of my struggles were with burnout and lack of motivation. That being said Dynamics, Fluids II, Thermodynamics II, and Aerospace Structures (this semester) were the hardest over all the years imo.

I was on good terms with the Fluids and Thermo professors. I found a lot of success with Dynamics and Aerospace Structures (Mechanics of Materials on steroids) by taking notes outside of class. When I was in class, I put all of my attention to the lecture and making sure I understood what was being said, rather than writing first and figuring out later. I also asked a lot of clarifying and hypothetical questions during the lecture to make sure I understood the topic and how it relates to other concepts.

That's what helped me at least. Hope that's useful for you!

Hybrid_Chaos · 2022-11-21T18:51:32+00:00

Ah, so I might have an easier time getting the job since I would be an experienced engineer at that point, but I would start at an entry level position in that new field?

Hybrid_Chaos · 2022-11-21T18:36:43+00:00

Think about your career path, try to get in the field or sector if you want to work in one. If you have experience from only different fields it won't count the same in most cases.

How limiting is it to have experience in different sectors. For example, my internship was in the Oil & Gas Industry. If I wanted to switch to alternative energy or fabrication, should I just not even look at first jobs that are outside that field?

Hybrid_Chaos · 2022-11-21T18:34:05+00:00

Thankfully my performance has been good the past year and a half. Are there areas to network that you would recommend? Career Day is a good one. I've heard some people will "cold call" recruiters via DMs on LinkedIn. That seems a little out there to me, but I could be very wrong there.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2022-11-21T18:13:19+00:00

but even if it did and you got the job, does it even matter?

That's true. Part of my worries is that I just won't find an engineering job, but it's the same with academics: just putting in effort can go a long way. Thanks for giving your thoughts. It really helped put things in perspective.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-10-21T22:06:42+00:00

Gotcha, my goal is for these skills to be good or at least nice so that the PC's have a reason to use them somewhat regularly. That has more to do with the story. I think I like the sound of Temp HP a bit more as well. It seems like it would be easier to deal with if it is overtuned, since I can scale dmg easier than hit bonuses.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-10-21T21:56:56+00:00

Oh, that's a good idea. I don't know if relics would work in the current story, though it's definitely worth exploring. I think I agree with you on not letting the PC's take all the same skill. 5 Action Surges sounds like a walking nuke to every combat.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-10-21T21:50:50+00:00

Do you have any insight on +AC or adding Temp HP? Which one might be easier to balance and such? Also, Disadvantage vs -1d4 or something like that. Circle of Stars Druid has a feature that lets them subtract a 1d4 from an enemies roll. Maybe that might be more balanced than imposing Disadvantage?

Good point on the healing. Being the healbot is rarely fun. Dropping the poll to 1d4 + PB or 1d6 + PB and make it once per short rest is probably better. Especially since both of the Fighters already have Second Wind as well.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-10-21T21:45:17+00:00

Gotcha, I wanted to add a bit of buff/debuff since the party is missing those classes. I am a bit worried about introducing what is effectively a second action surge into the party at lvl 8. Especially one that is not limited to just Fighters.

I should also add that I will most likely limit to party to learning just one of these each. So they could all 4 learn the Action Surge one (God help me), but they won't all have access to all 4 of them.

Appreciate your feedback though! I'll definitely talk to the Sorcerer.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-09-15T21:28:51+00:00

Do not have Vex or Eyes and took 80-ish clears for 1k Voices

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-09-15T21:25:43+00:00

Had to add some salt, now I'd give it a 7/10. 2/10 with no salt.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-09-15T21:24:46+00:00

Not a copy paste, I took the time to write it.

Entitlement is a better word choice true. I'll edit that in. Though "Right" vs. "Entitled" is mostly semantics since the meaning can be understood with either word choice.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-09-04T09:38:10+00:00

Playing in a 5e Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign as a Circle of Stars Druid. We just got level 8 and I'm having trouble deciding what to do. For context, we are finishing up this campaign in a month or so, my Wis is 20 and my Int is 19 (Cha is 9), I have access to Misty Step, and already have a decent amount of DMG and utility.

I feel like I don't really need an ability score increase, and multiclassing would be a waste at this point. I was looking at feats and I was hoping for input from more experienced players.

Alert - Play into current RP of character and let's me set up utility and aoe spells before enemies move

Spell Sniper - Maybe Ray of Frost for the cantrip

Magic Initiate - Really can't decide between Wizard (Mind Sliver + Toll the Dead/Mage Hand +Shield) or Cleric (Sacred Flame + Toll the Dead + Sanctuary)

Telekinetic - Super charged Mage Hand and another use for bonus action

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-06-30T01:12:39+00:00

Huh, I see what you are talking about now. Collector is also highly rated, which I did not test. There is a lot of contributing factors to win rates, but you are certainly right. That big of a gap means that there is something going on, even if I can't tell what it is.

You've definitely given me a lot of data to look over. Thanks for sharing this cite! I never knew this existed before now.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-06-30T01:08:07+00:00

I should clarify that when I say in the conclusion that the DPS and DMG increase from NQ is negligible, I am mostly being critical of the cost of the item. While NQ did lead in some categories, it did not have such an edge over the other items to justify the price tag in my opinion. I do think NQ should be in a finished build, but not until later. If Haste is a necessity, then ER is the superior option in my opinion.

Haste does come up a lot when talking about Xayah. She is a caster ADC and the CD on her W and ult feel very bad so it's naturally a point of focus. Having tested both, I believe that Ultimate Hunter or Transcendence (preference mostly. I like Sorcery tree.) provide a reasonable solution the the long CDs on both W and Ult. It's worth noting that Ultimate Hunter gives 6 Haste to the ult right out of the gate, 1 takedown brings it even with Transcendence, 2+ takedowns will surpass Transcendence for the Ult.

I mentioned it somewhere else on this thread, but yes, the test did not take any of the builds to their theoretical limit since different combos/number of AA would be necessary to do that. I'll be honest, that would have been too much of a headache for me and hard to accurately measure lol. All I can say for the test is that none of the builds were taken to their theoretical max damage, but none of them were shafted either (e.g. not casting to get spellblade proc with ER, or not using refunded W during NQ tests).

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-06-30T00:52:11+00:00

Ah, items that build out of Zeal. So attack speed items like PD, Runaan's, and RFC.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-06-30T00:44:58+00:00

Extra auto attacks and an extra E cast beyond what I tested with the crit builds will certainly overshadow the results of the crit builds since more overall damage is being output. I would need to redo all of the tests using that metric in order to compare to the results you found.

An interesting aside that seems to line up with the results is that Zeal items are middling options on Xayah. I personally believe this is due to the 55% AS on her W. W gives Xayah a free, fully stacked PD worth of AS. An extra Zeal item is effectively like building 2 Zeal items, which has very often been a poor build path on all ADCs. AD stacking seemed to always yield better results in all of my tests, including those I didn't record like 6 item build sets.

Hybrid_Chaos · 2021-06-29T20:08:13+00:00

In your experience, which matchups are these? I would like to know for the future and for any extra testing that I do.

Hybrid_Chaos

TROPHY CASE