She had super powerful spammable poke with her q and w which took little skill to achieve. They fixed this by nerfing her q and w and buffing her charm so you need skill to land cc before you can spam damage. Now they've reverted that change and gave her a speed boost to boot. What gives?
That wasn't why they nerfed her. Also, it isn't even an accurate description; Q was not nerfed in the 3.12 charm rework and ended up being buffed twice in subsequent patches.
Ahri had enough damage with DFG to miss everything and just R+DFG+W+R+R to kill squishy targets. That's why they nerfed her damage unless she landed a charm.
Now that DFG doesn't exist, this whole line of reasoning is void.
Try and remember that the game has also evolved since they last took a look at her, and so her design must evolve with it. Before now she had two basic roles: that of a somewhat guerrilla fighting kite mage and the superior build as a DFG based assassin, a role that several others could fit better, and ignored much of the mobility in her kit as her ult was relegated more to a juking/escaping position than to be the icing on the cake of a combo because DFG gave the rest of her kit more than enough to kill someone.
Most people were ignoring one of her design aspects to play a style that relied entirely on a single item, part of the reason that DFG was removed and one that I agree with.
With this change Ahri has found a stronger identity. Instead of one of several high damage, 100-0 nuking champions Ahri's finding a niche role as a mage who perhaps does a little less damage but over a more consistent amount of time, and who can succeed by using her full kit wisely instead of just trying to burn everything on one person and if it doesn't work to just ult back to safety.
Balance team is a joke.
