@Riot Ahri Doesn't Feel Satisfying to Play
Hello. I used to love playing Ahri since her first rework after season 3. What I really enjoyed about Ahri is that if I show effort, my effort is quickly shown in the game and I would be satisfied by it. However, after her many changes she no longer feels good to play. The reason for this was that now her outplay potential does not yield much reward. Previously, landing a charm would have meant that I would be able to do good amount of burst to kill mostly any squishy(before the rework). Now whenever I play Ahri, it feels like I do not do any damage at all and become completely irrelevant without knowing if I do not score a lot of kills.
A point I want to make is Ahri's famine once she loses lane. Once Ahri loses lane, she completely becomes an irrelevant source of damage and only exist to land a good charm. Of course, Ahri needs to have a drawback when she loses her lane, however, after she loses her lane, it is very hard for Ahri to get back into the game. This is because Ahri has one of the lowest ap scaling from all ap burst mages. It would be acceptable if Ahri has a really good laning phase where she can bully her lane opponent and have constant kill pressure(think zed). However, Ahri has a relatively passive laning till 6 due to her not having any all in potential.
http://imgur.com/a/i04se Champ such as TF who Ahri used to do fairly well with now remain in the top of the chart for countering Ahri. TF focuses more on winning other lanes, even if Ahri wins lane against TF her power alone cannot do much to carry once botlane gets going.
If Ahri falls behind in lane, the enemy can easily take advantage of it because of her weak pre-6. After 6 most ap mages have some way to fight back Ahri and even be able to solo kill her. This shows that even after 6 Ahri is no threat to many champs. Ahri is a champ designed to make plays against her opponent. If her opponent is Lux, Ahri can dodge her skill shots and eventually make her way to Lux to win against her. Lux has room to outplay against Ahri. It is hard, but the reward for winning trade against an Ahri means that she will have no mobility for the next 110 seconds while Lux will have her ulti back from cd to repeat kill her when she has no mobility. That is about 2 minutes of no mobility. Ahri will be prone to ganks and have no way to roam to other lanes. Ahri won't be able to push and have to be aware that Lux can land her snare anytime to continue punishing Ahri for her first death in lane. This is fine because Ahri has to be punished for dieing. Ahri will be denied many cs and Ahri will have a very hard time from the pokes coming from Lux. As result, Ahri will be very behind Lux. However, Ahri can still have a chance against Lux. Once Ahri's ultimate is up, Ahri can try again. This one is a very dangerous one. If she is able to kill Lux, then Ahri would be able to return to the game. If she loses the trade, then she won't be able to return to the game. Or she can play passively and only use her ultimate to avoid dieing the second time. The thing here that we need to know is that if she plays passively she will be outscaled. Lux will prove to be a lot useful in teamfights as her spells are from very far and mostly from AOE. Ahri won't have enough burst to kill enemy carries due to being behind. Now this seems like a very usual situation, lose lane and lose game idea. We need to then look at if Ahri actually wins lane.
The Above data shows that once Ahri starts to go behind(building defense stats) Ahri's winrate drops signifcantly. This is only a lane item as well. It shows that having a difficult laning for Ahri affects her entire game.
Using the same opponent from before, Ahri actually manages to kill Lux the first time. Okay Ahri has no mobility for the next 110 sec. Ahri has no kill pressure towards Lux, but Lux still has hers towards Ahri. Lux has her ultimate and any lucky binding can mean the end for Ahri. Ahri also has to be aware of jungle ganks and will have to play safe. This results in a playstyle where she is in a very big disadvantage by having her mobility ultimate down. Even if Ahri won the trade against Lux, the laning afterwards does not feel rewarding. Ahri is too gated by her ultimate. Even after a successful trade Ahri is forced to play very safe and have a lot of room for making a mistake. With so much risk of losing the trade with ultimate, Ahri does not gain much reward after outplaying(by landing charm and both her qs and ultimate) solo killing Lux once. The 300 gold she gains from Lux won't give enough of a boost towards her laning. Because of Ahri's poor ratios, she needs to get more ahead in lane. Once she has her ultimate up again, she needs to look for opportunities to get kills. Ahri can roam and go to other lanes, or Ahri can aim to kill Lux again. Depending on how hard Lux wave clears and how she plays(safely or not) she can decide. For the sake of this conversation, Ahri decides to roam due to Lux playing really safe(no reason for her to play aggressive when she outscales Ahri anyway). Ahri has two choices to make, roam top or roam bot. In most cases roaming bot is best. After Ahri wave clears with one or two q's Ahri will quickly go botlane. Lux aggressively pings that Ahri is going bot, many wards catch her going bot. Enemy bot laners prepare to go back under turret. Now normally after botlane goes back under turret, most midlaners will decide to go back into lane and continue farming up. Ahri has already missed a couple of cs in lane to go bot, so Ahri will attempt to turret dive enemy's botlane. This is a very very risky strategy. Especially in soloque where it is not organized at all, the idea of turret diving can cost her death and make the enemy botlane ahead. Since Ahri is a champ that relies so much on going ahead during laning phase it costs her to do these risky actions. Even after, say Ahri gets a kill bot lane, she will be without ultimate for a good amount of time that allows Lux who was able to farm up to where Ahri is after she spent her time in botlane. Ahri with now 2 kills gets about 600 gold. With 600 gold and all her csing she may have gotten her tier two boots and morello. Ahri will again have to continue to face Lux with good kill pressure. At this point it should be 13 minutes into the game. This is where midgame starts.
There will be many skirmishes going on the midlane. Ahri is in a good spot, she is fed and she has enough burst to kill a carry. Skirmishes start and Ahri manages to kill Lux by landing her charm, her double q and her ultimate 3 cast) again and Ahri's team manages to kill Gragas. Now comes the part where Ahri will try to take midturret. Ahri is low from the fight she just fought. Ahri was fed but she has no mobility. Any gank from top or bot lane can mean her death. However, due to the scaling factor she needs to end the game quickly. So she risks taking turret. During this time the enemy Camille starts running towards midlane. She manages to kill Ahri. Ahri's single target cc is risky to throw out while having a weaker burst than most midlaners. Enemy team got a shut down which helped enemy team get more fed. At this point both adc are getting their powerspike items. It is around 20min into the game. There is still no sign of enemy willing to budge. Ahri cannot burst a carry once she miss her hard to land skill shots. Ahri finds enemy Draven in the jungle and tries to duel. Draven ended even against Twitch adc. Draven manages to dodge Ahri's aggressive attempt to get fed to prevent the game from going any further. Ahri throws charm, Draven flashes and duels Ahri melee range. Ahri has to run now. There is no way Ahri can land a q, Ahri will use her remaining ultimate to run away. She is already low from trying to attempt the killing. She burned her ultimate. The enemy knows this, they force a fight. As result Ahri is irrelevant and dies again. Then the enemy takes 3 of Ahri's turret. She was fed in lane but because she failed to land a charm even with her ultimate she lost the trade which costed the team the fight. The enemy team gets more ahead, now they can easily beat Ahri. Ahri starts to feel her damage is falling off. Enemy draven built Death Dance. Ahri knows she can't duel Draven anymore. Enemy support builds locket and knight's vow. Ahri has no way to kill the enemy adc now. She can now only try to attempt to kill Lux who is the furthest and hardest to get to in teamfight. Ahri eventually ends up doing barely any damage to enemy frontline. Ahri cannot get to the backline with her ultimate. As result Ahri was not able to do anything with the lead she had. This is considering a scenario where Ahri successfully got fed, but because of poor damage she has and the tankiness of enemy carries and the range that Lux has, Ahri isn't able to kill anyone. Everyone else in their team is a tank that can solo kill Ahri while negating her damage with their tankiness.
The problem here is that Ahri relies a lot on ultimate. Ahri relies too much on landing an ability that is very easily dodged. Ahri's kill potential and her suvivability are all tied to her ultimate. If Ahri goes even she is eventually outscaled and enemy will build very tanky that causes her low range burst(approximately 300 range to proc all w orbs) to be nullified. If Ahri is fed, she needs to end the game quickly so that her low range burst will not go against her favors and so that the enemy mid won't be able to use their role more effectively(range, assassinations like Fizz's). Not only she has to use her only mobility to burst someone, she has to land a very telegraphed charm, she has to come very close to kill the enemy carry, and the carry has to have no defensive items. Ahri has no way to get away to safety after she uses her ultimate, even after she kills the enemy carry, she has no real way to escape. Sure, she killed one target by completely outplaying her enemy under many circumstances, but even with many circumstances and managing to kill the carry she ends up dieing or very low in teamfights. This really goes against the risk reward idea. The greater the risk, the reward should be great as well. Ahri has a lot of risk in lane and outside of lane. Her roaming is very slow(her walking speed is 330) and has no instant way to get to lanes(like Aurelion Sol and TF). The tanks can prevent Ahri from ever accessing the backline which causes Ahri to use her only single target cc to peel for ADC who will try to kill the ADC for the team. As result Ahri will no longer have ways to kill the enemy carry. Charm has a 12 second cd. Without landing her charm, Ahri won't be able to use rest of her kit to kill the carries.
To be fair, Ahri's laning phase is fair for both laners. It usually ends up a farming lane unless the enemy laner is like Zed who constantly have kill pressure even before 6. After 6, midlaners will have a huge powerspike that helps them burst better or have more mobility. At this point Ahri is just like any laner. However, unlike many champs her mobility is tied to a very long cd ultimate. Once she uses it her kill pressure becomes close to none. Ahri also relies on her ultimate and landing her charm in order to win trades. Most ap mages have an easy way to land their cc. Annie can use her point click or her aoe stun with ultimate. Syndra's stun can stun multiple targets with her ball. Veigar can land his huge aoe cage that also prevents dashes. Ahri has to burn her ultimate in order to position herself in a position where she can charm. Other champs do not need to do the same and can spam their cc to land one good one where they will go all out with the rest of their kit. Even with many difficulties and the risk in her kit, Ahri is not given the damage like given to other ap mages. Ahri will realistically only land one cast of r. That is 854 base damage with 2.03 ap ratio. That is less than Lux's aoe damage from very far who has a base damage of 990 and 2.05 ap ratio(accounting for q e r, no passive, with passive it goes to 1180 with 2.25 ap ratio). For an ap mage with very low range to burst, and the requirements to allow her to burst is too low for how situational it is. There aren't any rewards afterwards as well. She will be left without ultimate and become an irrelevant threat to the enemy for the rest of the ultimate cd.
http://imgur.com/a/rqT6O Comparing Ahri's survivability to other laners. Opposed to other safer champs, Ahri has less damage compared to them.
Suggestions. It is very hard to make a gameplay that rewards going risky for a champ that has a decent winrate. I want to know what Riot thinks of Ahri as of now. I can try asking for making the ultimate cd to instantly start after death so that she doesn't need to wait extra seconds for when she could not cast ultimate anyway. Or change her kit up by increasing her mana cost a bit more on q so that her laning phase won't be too safe(she will go oom quickly which can be used to capitalize on much more easily) and increase her damage on her q for mid and late. Increased mana cost will put Ahri more at risk when casting q on minion waves and can effectively prevent many of the roams she is able to do now. However, this will help in a way that Ahri will be able to have a decent lead that is rewarded for outplaying with so much risk. She will be able to stay in line with other champs while having the requirement of landing both of her qs. This is mostly a way for making ahri much more satisfying to play. To feel like an outplay is an outplay. Thank you so much for reading!
TLDR: Ahri is punished too much for losing lane. Ahri is outscaled very hard. Ahri relies on her ultimate too much to be able to do anything when her ultimate is in cool down. Ahri is not quite rewarded for outplaying her opponent. Ahri cannot snowball well but because of how hard she is outscaled she is forced to play in a specific and predictive playstyle. A fed Ahri is no scarier than other ap mages for how much she relies on her ultimate and landing a very telegraphed ability. For how situational her burst is, only when all circumstances are met she can burst. Suggestions are to increase her q mana cost and add a bit more power to her late game q. Making her ultimate cool down to instantly start after death to be a lot less punishing(couple of seconds can do a lot) for already punishing mistake. Any further suggestions would be appreciated.
