Why no Elise buffs =(

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Elise is a little bit of a problem champion. If her damage is high, like it was around her release and for awhile afterwards, she becomes a power pick because she is somewhat of a generalist, much like Vi, Jarvan, and Lee Sin; However if she has lower damage, she's a walking stun bot more or less. Her kit is somewhat feast or famine in my opinion. To this end, I've created a rework proposal, keeping many of the same abilities that Elise already has and tweaking a few things, check it out if you're intrested! Black Widow or Beefy Tarantula?

I think the problem with Elise's damage being too high has always came from the fact that a lot of her damage is innate in her kit and requires no commitment (via AP). If they would nerf her bases and give good boosts to her ratios I feel like she'd be a lot healthier. Then again people don't seem to complain about full tank Mundo doing damage so I don't know.

If this is the case then after nerfing all of her damage why did they nerf her stun's width?... which is utility.

Yeah, she was made during the period when characters could change between 2 kits willy-nilly, and have since learned that is a tough thing to balance. With the way she's currently setup, it's going to be pretty tough to put her in a better spot while keeping both of her forms valuable.

She's in a bit of a weird spot. Right now she has both a stun and a targetted leap, a tankier + quicker form and a stronger + smaller hitbox form that she can change on an instant, so she's some kind of an assassin pseudo-tank with adequate cc, mobility, and the ability to whittle away tanky targets with her % damage. She's halfway between a jungle generalist and Irelia (better nerf).

I think one way Riot could add not only more power-budget to her kit, but also more uniqueness and a bonus layer of difficulty (separating the inexperienced from the masters), would be to give her transformation a short (1 second?) channel. Doing so would ease the burden Riot currently has of trying to make her ability to switch at will with no costs not be a universal/on a dime change and gaining the benefits from it accordingly. Gnar's inability to directly control his transformations is what made room for more power in his kit and I think Elise could take a note from that too. The channel shouldn't be so long that it's debilitating, but enough to make it so that she should commit to a single form for a gank/duel unless she's able to buy herself the second of safety needed to switch.

An alternative way of transforming that keeps the same general idea I was going for: A Twitch-stealth like mechanic where she can move just fine for the duration and take damage, but she can't cast abilities until the 1 second transformation is complete.

Because I imagine there are plenty of veteran Elise players that hate the idea I just pitched, Riot could always do the standard "make this targetted ability a skillshot so we can add range/damage/counterplay to her kit" since admittedly a large portion of what damage she does deal is targetted. Or they could try to make her less of a generalist, making her human form more of the damage based assassin and the spider form more of the mobility/farming side, adjusting her numbers accordingly. Even then though, the ability to switch between those 2 suddenly seems like it's problematic.

Because Riot hates Elise. Look at her patch history. Straight nerfs.

She was also like 90% pick/ban in LCS in S3 and the first half of S4.

She needs more innate tank or CC honestly.

She used to have bonus armor/MR on herself when she was in spider form. It was viewed as too good with the rest of her kit. If she builds a lot of AP she can chunk you down with her spells and then execute you with spider Q; if she can dive without needing to actually build tanky she's VERY strong.

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Yeah, I'm kind of sad about this too. She doesn't even really benefit from Cinderhulk since she's not constantly in melee range.

Maybe they're still trying to figure out what to do with her?

Losing juggernaut is actually a nerf for Elise.