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Nerf Ahri? What?

Shirvallah··4 votes·1,014 views

Can anyone explain to me why I'm hearing ranting about Ahri needing nerfs lately?

This seems to be an unpopular opinion at the moment, but I believe she's perfectly balanced as she is. She basically needs to land her charm to do anything really to anyone pre-6. The charm is fairly skinny in width and length anyhow. You have to really screw up your positioning to be hit by that thing, imo, or the Ahri player has to go out of their way to surprise the enemy by flashing over minions and hitting a charm or something. Believe me — it's harder than it looks. Even after 6, the Ahri player still needs to land skillshots, otherwise she won't be able to do decent damage to anyone.

Are you a mid-laner, and you can't dodge a skillshot to save your life? There's this summoner spell called Cleanse that removes all cc/debuffs — excluding suppression. It helps. You're welcome. There's also the Barrier option that grants you a good sized shield in case Cleanse doesn't sound like your cup of tea.

Otherwise, if you got hit by that charm at level 3 (by an Ahri that took ignite, of course, but that's a common thing for Ahri players to take) and took a bit of poke prior, you probably deserve to die. She is an assassin, after all, that requires more than just facetanking people to delete. Yes, I am looking at you, LeBlanc (pre-nerf). She didn't even have to land her chains to kill back then... Anyways, Ahri requires good awareness of positioning of everyone (herself, allies, enemies), when to use her charm, etc., otherwise she's harmless and easy to kill because of her short range. So, what if she burns all 3 charges of her ultimate to get away. She's pretty much rendered useless at levels 6 and up without her ultimate, unless she has flash, of course.

I don't get it. Ziggs was in LCS suddenly? Oh, better nerf him. Miss Fortune? Yep. Azir? That poor champion. Suddenly, if anyone plays something new or off-meta in LCS, people are always going to say they need nerfs. I'll bet you if Urgot were ever played in LCS, people would complain how he's OP, and he'd be twice as dead as he is now.

17 Comments

LyingOnLine7 votes

Ahri's needed nerfs for the past two years.

Shirvallah2 votes

{quoted}

Ahri's needed nerfs for the past two years.

Okay, but why? I don't get it. I'm looking for an explanation — not for someone to tell me just straight up that she needs nerfs.

LyingOnLine4 votes

Because she was too strong.

Shirvallah2 votes

{quoted}

Because she was too strong.

That doesn't tell me anything.

LyingOnLine3 votes

It's everything you wanted to know.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Stop being purposefully unhelpful. You're wasting people's time.

Thebiggestpanda1 votes

I would say its a combination of her safety and higher end damage. If she finds herself in a bad matchup, its really easy for her to just toss out a q and clear the wave without ever really interacting with her opponent. She even gets free health sustain and a ms boost to back off quickly. On the other side of the coin, she has great mobility and picking power with enough damage to win 1v1 and help a lot in teamfights.

At the end of the day, the reason people are complaining is the same reason they complain about champs like fizz; lots of damage, mobility, and inherent safety. Granted ahri is far more skill based than a champ like fizz, she still probably offers too much in the hands of a decently skilled player.

Xozi1 votes

I'm bronze and I get what you're saying... ALL REWARD+NO RISK = Nurf I play Ahri low elo because it's pretty much a guaranteed win unless I have like, a 0/10 bot lane at 8:00. (its happened.)

Thebiggestpanda1 votes

Trust me that doesn't stop happening the higher you climb.

HalcyonDweller2 votes

People are upset because of how safe she is. She gets a powerspike at LvL 6 that is similarly good to Akali's Ultimate. She ought to pay for it early by being more punishable, but she's not. She can escape ganks, waveclear and sustain with relative ease.

At least that's the general sentiment.

I see too many people whine about her instead of actually analyze those problems though, so I've come to ignore most of them.

I like Ahri, but I can see how she would be more fair if her opponents could punish her a little more easily. She's a bit too forgiving to make mistakes with.

GrandpaTheGreat1 votes

It's kind of hard to explain, but basically she was just overturned overall. Nothing inherently broken, nothing like a Tank Ekko or release Camille happened, nothing that you can really single out. She has a ton of strengths that added up make her pretty good in many situations , and aside from maybe tapering off a bit lategame she doesn't have much in the way of a big exploitable weakness. I don't want to sound like I'm just repeating "She's op", but with how all these general traits just piled up (With her weaknesses not doing enough to dilute that), we ended up with just something that preformed too well on average rather than preforming to well in a specific way.

It's easier to see with the statistics sites such as champion.gg, she simply has a bloated success. For being the highest-pick rate champ in mid she also has a staggeringly high win rate, which tends to be a good indicator of "This champ's op"

Variks the Loyal2 votes

Ahri isn't an Assassin, she's a Burst Mage.

But the issue is that Ahri has early burst power, and also has a lot of safety. She can't have both.

The MS on Q and her ult at level 6 make her rarely worth it to gank. Her powerful burst damage don't help either, since, if she has Ignite, she can kill the jungler during the gank (Doesn't even need to land Charm; landing a point-blank Q with her Fox Fire and Ignite will do the trick for a jungler who's been clearing camps and isn't at full HP).

Instead of nerfing her safety, they're nerfing her early burst damage.

Shirvallah2 votes

{quoted}

Ahri isn't an Assassin, she's a Burst Mage.

But the issue is that Ahri has early burst power, and also has a lot of safety. She can't have both.

The MS on Q and her ult at level 6 make her rarely worth it to gank. Her powerful burst damage don't help either, since, if she has Ignite, she can kill the jungler during the gank (Doesn't even need to land Charm; landing a point-blank Q with her Fox Fire and Ignite will do the trick for a jungler who's been clearing camps and isn't at full HP).

Instead of nerfing her safety, they're nerfing her early burst damage.

Her secondary role is an assassin. She's still classified as such.

I guess the changes you mentioned ultimately seem fair, but I still don't think the nerfs are necessary. Oh, well.

Thanks for your proper response.

Variks the Loyal2 votes

Riot doesn't use those classifications anymore.

Take a look at this for their new class system.

Some of them are outdated (Skarner is a Juggernaut and Rek'Sai is a Diver, for example), but they said they're working on an updated list for this year.

Darth West2 votes

Ahri is already being nerfed, Riot has made the decision already.

Even Riot admitted she's not balanced.. So that tells you something.

Raxistaicho1 votes

Calm down, unless the numbers on her nerfs are excessive these won't hurt her noticeably. Riot's throwing a bone to the people crying about Ahri, nothing more.

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