you dismissing it along with every other disadvantage it has is far worse than me using diminishing returns as an arguement. If its so insignificant then why don't you try to discredit me using math or something. Or perhaps a side by side comparison.

"mana hungry" in this context refers to the freedom to do what you want without having to worry about mana. Chalice is nice but what if your team finds itself needing power. Your arguement seems to be that oriannas kit is too perfect afterall. Also what happens before chalice? Especially since orianna seems to be a champ that needs to chain her abilities to get some serious damage going or needs to spam 1 alot to make full use of her utiltiy.

Doesn't the ball have a slow move speed and not necessarily even launch from the same location constantly? And last I checked, that little distance beyond ahri's rather nice attack range is all ive ever needed. Also the longer the distance between you and the target the more likely you are to do additional damage. What do you call the opposite of diminishing returns? Increasing returns I guess.

thats twice over a 3 second gap. Level 9 at the earliest and thats if you max Q first. Assuming all non-burst ap mids rush athenes, its unlikely your harrass can even outrun a hextech revolver without comboing. That's if they don't dodge much.

and what if you can't rely on someone else? What if one of the threats I listed can waste them with ease even with your ball. (because they really can) It's not a secret who has the ball and anybody who's job it is to actually stay alive and dish out pain and knows what the ball is will probably treat it just like they would a skarner ult.

I do, but I would like to hear what you think she is since I don't seem to know ahri well enough xD

orianna is an easy gank if both the jungler and the non-mageassassin in mid are good for pinning down and bursting down champs.

If ori is OP, gragas needs to be deleted
Compare Q's, I'm pretty sure Gragas's is bigger but to give you the benefit of the doubt, they're the same. Assuming we're at level 18 gragas's Q does 285 + .9 of ability power. Assuming both gragas and Ori have 100 ap, that's 375 magic damage. Ori's does 180 + .5 of ap, 225 is comparatively small compared to gragas. You may argue "Oh, ori's Q has 3 second cooldown so by the time gragas's Q is up she does 450" Well, sure. Let me finish. Gragas's full combo burst with 100 ap is 1210. Ori's is 1135. That's not too much less, but that combo has to be set up. That's assuming you hit her W, and you don't hit anyone else with her Q. Now, since it has to be set up (because her shield comes back and you have to Q again to use her other abilities. If her W doesn't hit which it probably won't her burst drops down to 815) it will take longer, assuming Q has to get there, come back, come off cooldown, get in position again, and cast W + R, it would take around 10-11 seconds. Now, gragas can do his larger burst within 5 if you're good. Gragas's Q also slows atkspeed, crippling the ADC, but lets not talk about that. Gragas's R is a lot more detrimental that Ori's as gragas can hit everyone, and pick out one person to fly into his team ensuring the kill, assuming that the person he's focusing isn't dead from his other spells.

Orianna's limitation is that she's very team-dependent.
Almost every other AP carry is more capable of solo carrying games.
Orianna's initial burst isn't strong enough to assassinate anyone and her sustained damage isn't enough to win a fight on its own.