Ahri post compared to lee
Pretty much gonna copy and paste all relevant quotes that can be applied to lee and have been applicable to lee for over a year:
"If the only weakness you can point out is, "Well, for 6 minutes you could kill her, but for the other 35 she could do whatever she wanted" that's stupid."
- Pretty much directly applies to Lee, If not counterjungled early Lee is free to dominate the early game to such a degree that comebacks in mid-late are nearly insurmountable until extremely late where Lee's "weakness" finally rears its head and the gold difference matters much less.
For what it's worth, a lot of the reason LeBlanc is frustrating is because of this - She just sort of does whatever she wants all game and you just have to deal with it.
- Can easily just switch LeBlanc out for Lee and the sentence doesnt change feeling.
And Ahri already IS squishy. She's one of the frailest champions in the game. Even Annie has an Armor/MR shield. Cassiopeia builds fairly tanky with (RoA/Seraph + Rylai's). The point of the changes is to actually EXPOSE the squishiness. Her W puts her in Equilibrium Strike range. GOOD.
- Ah i see now, to be a mobile champion with good damage output, the champion should be squishy. Now if only there was some way to apply this to Lee...
See, here's the thing about Ahri now. She's really mobile. She has medium-speed medium-range skillshots. She also has non-skillshots with very short range. You know what's cool about that? She can skirt around medium range poking with skillshots. She can also use her high mobility to get into close range and put herself at actual risk to land her reliable damage. Sounds like an actual weakness! She's in range of Equilibrium Strike if she wants to do more than poke. And then skillfully use her movement speed buffs and dashes (with long cooldowns after) in order to succeed.
- There comparison here between Lee and Ahri is pretty striking except where Ahri's weakness is exposed above and detailed here, Lee has most of these same/similar things without the aforementioned weakness.
Also, increasing the mana cost of Q DOES affect her early game: If she can't simply spam Q on cooldown for immense sustain and easy wave clear, she's going to have less overall sustain and forced to walk into autoattack range to last hit more often.
- Lee is able to spam all abilities on cool down due to his energy mechanic for immense sustain, jungle clear and has more overall sustain such that he isn't forced to back unless he really wants to and is only forced into any kind of exposed position immediately after qq
Final Thoughts: Lee is the Jack of all trades, king of everything else. Until he gets a set direction of "Yes this is the role/direction Lee is supposed to be in" He will never be balanced. All too often i'm reminded of this.