Ahri is the most popular, safest, and one of the highest win rate mid laners.

I find these posts funny because they go to like +11, and then it's like all the ahri mains are connected like the geth from Mass Effect and come to downvote the thread.

Brace yourself. The Downvotes and Ahri mains are coming.

This is so true and it's bothersome that most people on G&B say that "just dodge skillshots" or "she's countered by a lot of picks"

aka low elo answers

"Safest"

What is this Leblancless, Zedless, Ziggsless, Orianna and Ahri only midlane ya'll play with. Hell Orianna is harder to gank pre 6.

Honestly Ahri is annoying to lane against, is ridiculously safe with three flashes that all do damage, a bullshit passive that gives her sustain (for what?), and overall making her a low-risk, high-reward champion. Most of the time she doesn't even need to land her charm, it's just a bonus. You get poked by a Q or two, and once you hit near half-health depending on her damage, she can just pop W, R around you a bit, and ignite you. The auto-targeted damage is enough to tick you down low, not to mention if she isn't an idiot a Q will probably land too.

The main problem with ahri is how her INSANELY overloaded Q makes her too safe and low skill requirement.

Ahri used to rely heavily on skill and making sure she could get in a teamfight and charm carries, she also relied on outplaying enemy midlaners to get ahead.

Currently Ahri can just spam Q in lane for free sustain, damage, waveclear, ms, escape etc

Agreed. She is low risk/high reward.

Her Q is disgusting:

1. She doesn't need to hit anything with it. Press Q, 200 move speed instantly, and no aiming required.

2. 200 movespeed = 8 boots = 2,600 gold in an ability she doesn't have to hit anything with

3. Q deals true damage and heals on top of that

4. 7 second cooldown

5. Hits back and forth

I'd love a justification for 200 move speed on an ability she doesn't need to hit anything with. Even if she only got it if she hit something 200 move speed is still bonkers for something that deals damage both ways and true damage and can heal.

~Riot "No, because she's our poster champion"

Meanwhile, people are going to complain she's one of the hardest midlaners cause she has two skillshots, one which goes through minions and doesn't get damage reduction.

Warning: Long post below. My thesis on why Ahri is an issue right now.

Okay, let's look at some of the arguments in Ahri's defense. You can always list a way to "counterplay" Ahri. We get it.
"She has less damage than X."
"She's not as safe as Y."
"Just dodge skillshots."

The problem is, those same arguments can be applied to pretty much every single one of her opponents.

So the question isn't, "Does she have a weakness?" The question is, "How do her weaknesses compare to the weaknesses of other midlaners, who she's up against?"

If their weaknesses were fairly balanced against theirs, then the numbers would say so. That's where the problem comes in. She's the most played midlaner in the game, and yet she is nearly the highest winrate champion in the entire game.

And that's the key point.

THE NUMBERS DON'T SAY AHRI HAS NO WEAKNESSES. SHE DOES HAVE WEAKNESSES. WE GET THAT. THE NUMBERS SAY THAT HER WEAKNESSES AREN'T NEARLY AS NOTICEABLE AS ALL OF HER OPPONENTS' WEAKNESSES. Please, understand what that means.

No, randomly listing weaknesses of her doesn't give a good defense against nerfs. It's like saying Preseason 5 Warwick was balanced because he was immobile. Yes, he was immobile, but that weakness didn't mean shit compared to all of his strengths, as shown by his massive pickrate/winrate inflation.

Just like the counterarguments for nerfing Ahri. "She's squishy, just CC her and she dies." Like all of her opponents in the midlane. Except she's much more mobile, and thus much less weak to getting caught out, than most of them. "Just dodge skillshots." Same argument that Nidalee mains used as she was 100% pick/ban in the LCS. Yes, skillshots can be dodged. But they can either 1) be too reliable, or 2) reward you way too much for landing one. In Ahri's case, it's a little of both. One charm usually means death. If she doesn't have the skill to land her charm, she can dash into melee range to hit you with it. "Just stand behind minions to avoid the charm." Her orb ignores minion collision. "Just stand away from the minions to avoid orb." ...charm...

Statistically, across literally hundreds of thousands of matches, playing Ahri means that you are much, much, much more likely to beat your opponent. Just by having her on your team.

Here's what's important to note. Even though having an inflated pickrate usually shrinks a champions' winrate, due to novices playing that champion, Ahri's winrate actually inflates massively as more people play her. Why? She has an abnormally high success rate for people who are barely picking her up. That suggests that the people playing her are at least partially being carried by her kit. (As TheOddOne put it, I heard.)

And get this. I keep seeing people defending her by saying that Ahri players are just skilled at her. Someone recently checked. Ahri is (or, within the past day or two, was) ranked 24 out of 48 midlaners in terms of avg. games played.

That means the average experience of people playing Ahri....is literally average. Literally average. That means for every 200+ game Ahri main pubstomping, there is also an Ahri noob with 5 games who is winning most of them just because of the way her kit is designed.

I don't understand how someone can get so defensive of Ahri to actually suggest this is okay. The only other champions who ever approach her current level of success (54%+ winrate WITH 18%+ PICKRATE) are champions who were horribly broken for a short time (Sej on Cinderhulk release, Preseason 5 Warwick, etc.) OR champions who are extremely uncommon (Malzahar, for example, whose winrate is high, but is almost exclusively played by his mains, who have a lot of experience with him. Similar to the old Heimerdinger phenomenon.)

The argument that "winrate doesn't mean anything" is a fallacy. Winrate on its own doesn't tell us much, if anything. But winrate with pickrate tells us a LOT.

The higher a champion's pickrate, generally, their winrate drops massively. With Ahri, her pickrate inflates, tons of people randomly start playing her with little to no experience, AND THEY BEAT EVERY OTHER MIDLANER IN THE GAME THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME.

These are the statistical facts. The only defense left for her is, "Well, I feel like she has counterplay, and I don't want her to be nerfed!"

The irony is that you're kind of proving the point. She's incredibly successful and has tons and tons of people playing her. When a champion is overtuned and extremely popular, naturally, more people show up to defend the champion that is inflating their winrate.

:/

Maybe the pick rate in itself, but isn't 46-54% considered decently healthy? Not optimal (probably 48-52% is truly healthy) , mind you, but nothing absurd.

And honestly? this Ahri thing seems very close to how the Vayne thing started.

A lot of laners were nerfed, but those two were hardly touched. Seems more of an overall balance issue than those two themselves.