@meddler Any plans on Elise atm?

1st of all you can't really give an opinion about a champions current state if you don't play them personally.

2nd, I didn't really mean to insult you i was just saying you don't play her so you don't know what you are talking about, I just put things bluntly sorry if you were hurt.

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I agree that she's not as strong as she needs to be to work, but I actually don't feel like she's too far off. What I do think, though, is that she is a highly situational choice. She is only strong in a team filled with lane bullies. If all of your lanes (ESPECIALLY bot and top) are able to push up and win lane independently, Elise is a good choice to work as a counter-gank oriented champion. Pair this with her ranged auto attack and the Krug buff bonus damage to towers and you have a jungler that is capable of neutralizing the enemy jungler while simultaneously helping to force down the outer towers faster.

All of that said, this method requires a highly coordinated team, a jungler who is very skilled at reading the enemy jungler's moves, and the specific type of comp that I mentioned. Even in that scenario, Rek'sai would be a better choice for the pure purpose of counterganking. It is only when the goal is to countergank AND help push the tower that Elise, theoretically, becomes a superior choice.

Even then, she's less than ideal. The dragon AoE attack greatly reduced the ease with which she can solo dragon, her clear speed in the jungle isn't as good as it could be, and her skirmish strength is only acceptable. Mid game she is reasonably strong, but her late game is extremely difficult to play effectively. Combine this with her difficulty in getting tenacity (no tenacity on cinderhulk, merc treads are less optimal than sorc shoes, no other realistic options) and you have a champion that's close to working, but just doesn't... quite... cut it.

Of course, if you get an enemy team with either very low CC or exclusively unreduceable cc (all knockups), the tenacity issue becomes moot.

Agreed with a lot of this but the biggest thing for me is "her skirmish strength is only acceptable". She's a terrible team fighter with mostly single-target damage but she can't duel and is a lliability in 2v2s. There's no type of combat she excels in, no champion should be like that.

The problem is with how they chose to nerf her, it affected her lane capabilities which made her into a jungler and the nerfs didn't stop there. They changed her identity to the point where she doesn't really have one anymore.

Is she a mage? is she a tank? is she a fighter? She doesn't excel in any of the 3 roles that is appointed to her by the meta.

As a mage she is lacking because of how she is required to be in melee form with no solid defense/protection and her spiderlings(which is 1/3 of her main damage) dies faster than she can ready them. Both of these make it hard to use her as mage in team fights.

So than we have to take the fighter/tank route which is part ap, part defense, or full defense. But she also is lacking in these roles because it falls off late game because she cant deal enough damage and she cant really be tanky enough to stay within the fight as long as the other tanks.