Boards›Gameplay

Ahri update in 8.7: Suggestions to fix a few issues and not making her "Charm-first-reliant"

Lord Zefi··10 votes·1,464 views

Greetings Riot and community!

I've been looking forward to the Ahri update on 8.7, yet I'm not totally satisfied with the current changes on the PBE server and I'd love to make a few suggestions on how to improve her kit and her gameplay. If you could please bring this post to the attention of the Dev team I'd be more than grateful.

First of all, let me quickly introduce my self: I'm 25 years old, I live in Venice, I've been playing League for the past 7 years and I'm now a full time League of Legends coach. I've always loved playing Ahri and I've hit mid-Diamond multiple times on several accounts, yet this is my first time writing on this forum.

Please forgive any English mistake as it is my third language :)

With Ahri's new update I feel like we're going to have a few issues with her gameplay and "fun" aspect (I'm typing this today, 03/24, so I'm refering to the latest PBE build):

  1. By removing the movement speed effect on her Q, Ahri will lose a lot of mobility in terms of trading/fighting and overall roaming potential. In the laning phase, managing to hit an enemy with a max range Q while dodging his skillshots with the movement speed and repositioning to extend the trade from a better angle or just to disengage always felt fun and very useful. We could also use it to escape a gank by sprinting towards our strong side or to reach an enemy when chasing without out ult. Without this, Ahri looks a lot like a sitting duck when without her ultimate, which feels very sad when playing an agile and slippery champion.

  2. Charm is already our most powerful spell, it can make or break any duel/fight or extended-aram-situation. It's our main engage tool, our defensive tool, our peeling tool, our way to ensure we hit the return of our Orb of Deception. It's already extremely rewarding when we land it, while very punishing if we don't. Adding the 20% damage increase for 5 seconds feels like putting too many eggs in the Charm basket. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're giving Ahri some love but I think this isn't the best way to do so. I remember when Ahri had this same effect a couple of years ago and playing her felt very binary. The worst part is that it messes up with all of our combos, I'm sure most Ahri players will agree that we like to have some freedom on how and WHEN we hit our spells. When challenging and enemy midlaner I love to engage with R, cast my W and Q, try to catch him with the returning Orb and while I do all of this I try to read his movements to "check mate" him with a well placed Charm, a few autos while waiting and finally seal the deal when my W and Q cooldowns come back in combination with my last R charge. With these changes I would feel forced to always engage with Spirit Rush and Charm immediately, preventing a lot of the "dance moves" Ahri can pull off while puzzling her enemy and waiting for the perfect Charm opportunity.

  3. Fox-Fire has always been a bit disappointing as a spell, everything else in Ahri's kit is so much fun while W feels underwhelming. It's kinda hard to manipulate it in creative ways, it's more or less a "must press button in combos" without much to add or any fun passive attached to it.

That said, I've come up with a few different solutions for these problems, I know you guys put a lot of effort into updating champions but I'd really appreciate if you could just consider what any of those changes would mean to Ahri.

  1. Instead of making mandatory the Charm as an opener, you could move the additional damage on a W passive. This is just an idea but check this out:

    [New Fox-Fire passive] Whenever Ahri hits an enemy champion with Orb of Deception, Fox-Fire AND Charm within 3 seconds, Fox-Fire will make the enemy burst into quickly-consumed-blue-flames (think of a bigger, non-delayed Scorch effect) dealing an additional X damage (where X is how much we would get during the 5 seconds of 20% increased damage following a Charm - in the current PBE build at least).

     		This could have a per-enemy cooldown (think of Braum/Ekko passive) of 25-12 seconds (scaling per level) to prevent making it too powerful in lane and too "snowbally" with 40% cdr on Charm later in the game.

    Explanation: this would still add the damage increase you want to give Ahri in basically the same amount of damage, it rewards players who can hit skillshots (Charm is still a must to proc the bonus damage) while punishing those who don't, yet it doesn't force Ahri players to cast Charm as their first spell in any situation.

    Want to make it even more interesting? Change the requirements to proc the new Fox-Fire passive to "hitting an enemy champion with 4 unique spells or attacks". This would work with a basic E-Q-W-AA combo, but also with R-Protobelt-W-Q, making it easier to AOE enemies sticking together in a teamfight, with the right spells/items/autos you could proc the additional damage on multiple enemy champions at once. To help in this direction, the magic damage and true damage of Orb of Deception could count as 2 different spells, as they did in the old Thunderlord mastery.

  1. I would love to see our Spirit Rush become more interactive and fun to use, Ahri is very much relying on it to enable her "assassin" status, without it she's just a mediocre single-target mage.

    First idea: [New effect] Whenever Ahri kills an enemy while Spirit Rush is active or a champion that she has hit in the past 3 seconds dies, Ahri gains a new charge of Spirit Rush and extends the duration for 3 seconds.

     	This would require her ult to wait 3 more seconds after using the last charge before going on cooldown, to enable the possibility of a fourth dash if an enemy dies. To make it easier to track for Ahri players and their enemies, during the ultimate she could have a "Spirit Rush charges indicator" below her Health bar (think of a temporary Swain Soul Fragments or Jhin bullets indicator).

    Explanation: this would help a lot with Ahri's teamfighting and reward her for committing a lot of cooldowns to take down just one target. It would give her a bit more freedom to go in when she knows she can get a kill with her last charge. She would feel more dynamic in fights instead of running out of options after creating a kill for her team, yet it wouldn't make her "op" in case she's not doing too hot on her first few spells.

    Second idea (bear with me, in my opinion this is super cool but it's completely new so I'll try to be very detailed):

     	[New effect] Whenever Spirit Rush goes on cooldown, Ahri gains a charge of Spirit Dash (I'm sure you can come up with a much better name for this). While Spirit Rush is on cooldown or not learned yet, she can activate R to consume a Spirit Dash charge, immediately turning invulnerable for 0.75 seconds and doubling her movement speed for the duration, but preventing her from casting spells or attacking an enemy (maybe invulnerability is a bit unnecessary, but i liked the idea of making her harder to pin down). Ahri will start every game with 1 charge of Spirit Dash.

 	The animation could be like her ultimate but blurrier, making it clear she can't be hit during that short period of time. The indicator on the spell icon could work like the reworked LeBlanc's ultimate, where you can check her clone cooldown in the small green circle: in this case the green circle would be her Spirit Rush, as long as the Spirit Dash charge is available.

    Explanation: this would fix a lot of Ahri's problems: it would give her a movement speed buff on command, to get in position or disengage even if her ult is on cooldown. Starting the game with a charge would make her less weak to early game aggression, yet it could be used to go aggressive once before level 6 and force a 1v1 or a gank, letting her get in position to cast a Charm. It would add some mobility to her kit when her only mobility spell is on cooldown, making her way more fun to play while her R is down.

  1. Regarding the Q changes, removing her movement speed and moving the health sustain to this spell and adding mana sustain to the passive, I really like the direction this is going in, but as I said above I truly feel like keeping mobility on Ahri is key to her gameplay style. A solution to this could be to keep the movement speed on Qs that don't heal: the first 2 casts of Orb of Deception grant movement speed, where the third cast offers healing instead. This would add some depth to her Orb of Deception usage in the laning phase (is it a good time to trade or is it better to heal?), give her enemies windows to punish her (Ahri is on her healing Q, she can't escape a gank!) and adding some more thought behind her teamfighting patterns.

I know I've typed a lot but I really care about Ahri's kit and i wouldn't want her to go back to her season 5 style of must-hit-charm-first. Thanks a lot for your time and I can't wait to see her final changes as they go live, this is great news for any Ahri player out there. Keep up the great work and thanks again for reading :)

Cheers, Zefi

Ahri

14 Comments

wildfox993 votes

yep,it seems like both community (especially ahri mains) and rioters forgot why her kit got reworked,because it was so flat and binary to use,no point in reverting it

Whenever Ahri kills an enemy while Spirit Rush is active or a champion that she has hit in the past 3 seconds dies, Ahri gains a new charge of Spirit Rush and extends the duration for 3 seconds.

i already proposed something like that,my version was :

when spirit rush is active,you get a 10% damage amp if you get a takedown,you gain an additional charge and the ult timer is resetted (it got set to 10 sec again)

dashes 3 > 2

damage (maxed) 175 + 40% AP (total damage including the amp 385 + 88% AP,current pbe ult max damage 390 + 105%AP)

E :

damage (maxed) : 100 + 30%AP

the target is marked for 3 sec,hitting him with a foxfire or AA triggers it stealing (dealing damage and healing her) 200 + 50%AP

current PBE ful rotation damage : 1253 + 327%AP (614 + 169%AP non-skillshoot damage)

this version damage : 1269 + 323%AP (631 + 158%AP non-skillshoot damage)

so it'd make her kit more flexible without adding more damage or more non-skilshoot burst

edit : also since they removing her Q ms she needs a 10~15 ms buff,they kept her base ms low because she had this ability but now they have to buff it,champions supposed to be immobile like veigar have 340 base ms,some melees even more while she's at 330 actually she's the champion with the lowest base ms of this game after janna who still have a permanent ms buff in her kit,so without her ult she's the most immobile champ of this game

ExcessiveProtest3 votes

Thought I should correct this: Ahri has always been slow. The only time her base movespeed has ever been changed was when they added 25 across the board. They did not make her slower when they added the Q movespeed; she was always in the second-lowest movespeed range (not counting Janna and unmounted Kled, who are conditional cases).

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Movement_speed

She is uncharacteristically slow, yes, but she is nowhere near being the second-slowest Champion in the game, so please stop before you make Malicious Metal cry.

As for the Charm stuff: whatever problems the damage amp version may have caused (I loved it back before season 5, so I may be biased there), the Q speed version has been worse. Instead of flat and binary, it's just outright flat: Outside the most onesided lanes, player performance barely matters. She has too much safety to be shut down, so she isn't allowed to do damage. If she can't do damage, she won't dive enemies or take risks. It creates a lane that actively punishes anyone who takes initiative on either side.

wildfox991 votes

She is uncharacteristically slow, yes, but she is nowhere near being the second-slowest Champion in the game, so please stop before you make Malicious Metal cry.

if not the second,the third,if not the third still one of the slowest champions of this game

things are changes since s4 or before,there is so much mobility on the board and movement speed has become more valuable (in my opinion),but the reason it didn't became an issue was because of her Q ms

she's supposed to be a mobile mage but now that her ult CD is going to be nerfed and her Q ms is going to get removed,she feels too slow and immobile compared with other champions,and since they are trying to make her laning better (since her "new" kit ended up being too weak in early game) i just proposed to give her some base MS which can help her to dodge skillshoots and trade (just for example for dodging a decent lux E you need at least something like 340/345 ms,unless you just can't)

HP Crookshanks3 votes

I agree that with the rework she will be too immobile for an assassin. They will remove her ms bonus and increase her ult cooldown. Her base ms is really slow too. I can't understand why are they nerfing her both mobility skills. They say that they want to make her less safe but 'safety' and 'mobility' are not the same thing. And why does she have both health and mana sustain? Just remove her sustain give her more damage.

2Charmnot2Charm2 votes

Hope the change to presence of mind makes it to live so we can get our ult back faster.

wildfox991 votes

but now precision gives less AP/AD but some AS,sadly i don't think it could really work on her

2Charmnot2Charm2 votes

It's only 5 less ability power, besides it would be nice to be able to throw more autos to manipulate the wave and secure cs without having to use a spell that might push the wave to the enemy side or going oom early game.

The 20% max mana return will also help if you decide to not rush any of the lost chapter items for items like item 3152 item 3146 and whatever else people rush on Ahri. Even if you do get the Lost chapter items it's still helpful to gain mana back on kills.

The only issue with this really is that she needs to burn all of the charges before it takes effect now that i think about it.

wildfox991 votes

The only issue with this really is that she needs to burn all of the charges before it takes effect now that i think about it.

yep,forgot to mention

plus i think this rune is going to be nerfed if not reworked again,i mean ultimate hat gives 15% CDR and you have to stack it,presence will do basically the same (if not better for multiple kills) on top of giving mana sustain...

2Charmnot2Charm1 votes

Can be fixed if they just make it so her ult starts its cooldown the first time you cast it. Annie and Nasus have their ults cooldown begin as soon as they cast it so why can't ahri's be treated the same.

Also Ultimate hat gives 15% cdr if you have 0 CDR built, it gets worse everytime you gain CDR. They should buff that somehow.

wildfox991 votes

Also Ultimate hat gives 15% cdr if you have 0 CDR built, it gets worse everytime you gain CDR. They should buff that somehow.

isn't it applied on your ult base CD?

it should be 40%CDR + stacked hat = 55%CDR on ult

2Charmnot2Charm1 votes

The cdr from ultimate hat stacks multiplicatively, so really it's 49% cdr when fully stacked and you have 40% cdr built.

You can make it go up to 53.25% if you include the "cosmic insight" rune.

Bisaknosp2 votes

how about not turning her into a caster minion the removal of the ms on q, okay fine she needs to be less safe so she can get more damage but to also increase the cd on her ult? haha everyone will have a lower cd on their ult she will be trash tier after those changes even if she gets more damage for less safety so what? she wont be able to apply that much since she is still as ult reliant as before (even more after those changes) best part is they also gave her a garbage passive, tear is the best mana item atm anyways since it removes any mana problems so she basically wont have a passive xdddd i cant stand the guy who is working on her he has no idea how this champ works

wildfox991 votes

i cant stand the guy who is working on her he has no idea how this champ works

me as well,i still can't understand if he have like 0 fantasy or he's not putting any efford into reworking her

sure,come and downvote me guys,but it took 2 weeks for making a lissandra passive while the community is suggesting cool and interesting ideas for changing her kit

Iręlía1 votes

Ahri is getting a sup'd up new charm and I still have to have all my dps come from hitting my charm?

Correct me if I'm wrong, haven't really read into the ahri changes.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes