Damn dude what happened to elise?!?!?!

19 19 19·Mar 5, 2015·27 votes·3,360 views

she's allllll the way in the bottom list. (click popularity)

She's literally next to Galio, Zac, and Urgot.

http://www.lolking.net/champions/

46 Comments

dunder killMar 5, 201517 votes

The community kept screaming "OP, NERF HER! OP, NERF HER! OP, NERF HER! OP, NERF HER!" every single time she was nerfed until she was completely unplayable. You know, the same that happens to all popular champs

Major SparklesMar 5, 20152 votes

Yup. Sometimes I think the community influences Riot to cause more balance problems than [Riot] normally would on their own.

ApplyForAGrantMar 5, 20153 votes

It was an attempt to prove that they don't favour champions with boobs

Takeuchi 17Mar 6, 20151 votes

or male champs without shirts (RIP Kass & Urgot)

edit: can also add brand to this

Penguin EclipseMar 6, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The community kept screaming "OP, NERF HER! OP, NERF HER! OP, NERF HER! OP, NERF HER!" every single time she was nerfed until she was completely unplayable. You know, the same that happens to all popular champs

Actually no one was saying that before her last sets of nerfs. Riot outright said the nerfs were out of necessity because she was such a strong pick in competitive play AKA LCS. The last crippling set of nerfs the community strongly opposed. Riot didn't give a fuck.

TourianMar 7, 20151 votes

Pretty sure it was just a blanket nerf so that they could love tap lee. "Lee is broken but its actually not just lee, we're tapping him and ruining elise and evelynn".

GrashnimMar 5, 201511 votes

Insane nerfs because of her strong early game..... I suppose she countered Lee Sin too hard so the community outcry was massive and Nerf Elise was the new thing.

19 19 19Mar 5, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Insane nerfs because of her strong early game..... I suppose she countered Lee Sin too hard so the community outcry was massive and Nerf Elise was the new thing.

BUT SHES BEAUTIFUL AND GOT A RECENT SKIN :(

Faith BreakerMar 5, 20152 votes

See: Sona.

CarryMar 5, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Insane nerfs because of her strong early game..... I suppose she countered Lee Sin too hard so the community outcry was massive and Nerf Elise was the new thing.

More like the community circle jerked and pretended the champ was strong while she took nerf after nerf despite already having a winrate in the ~45-48% area.

It's exactly what you guys are doing to Lee Sin and Zed and every other mobility champ. Cry about a champ being popular despite not being strong, until it gets gutted so badly that people finally stop playing it once its winrate dips to 40%.

Maple CrusaderMar 5, 20159 votes

She was nerfed repeatedly in Season 4, particularly in her damage ratios. Also Elise isn't that easy to play. It doesn't help that the Spider Queen is bad in teamfights.

straight4freeMar 5, 20157 votes

She's a generalist and was gutted for it, and now does nothing better than anybody else.

Not worth playing.

mvargusMar 5, 20157 votes

She's a hybrid champ that doesn't know what she wants to be.

In human form she has a decent Q spell that does damage based on current health. The healthier a champ is the more it does. It's a nice start to a combo, but can't really kill.

Her W in human form is a spider bomb that doesn't have and CC and can be easily avoided. It does seek a target, but not for long and doesn't do much damage.

Her E is her stun, but its a skill shot.

In spider form her Q is an "execute" that does damage based on missing health, but really requires the target be almost dead.

Her W speeds up her and her spiderlings attacks and heals her so little it doesn't count.

Her E is a jump, but can only target enemy/neutral champs and monsters or make her untargetable for 2.5 seconds (and often dead .5 seconds after she is no longer untargetable.)

There is no real theme here. She's mostly a "poke mage" as a human, but Nidalee does that better. Her spider form is basically an assassin, but she doesn't have a good gap closer, and has escapes that are uncertain to work properly.

When you consider the high skill cap to play her and the fact that she just doesn't do enough damage to be a good threat, but can't build tanky enough to sustain in teamfights. she's rather useless. Which is sad cause I own her and like her, but just can't play her because she doesn't so anything well enough to justify bringing her out.

WolfChasesMar 5, 20151 votes

Nice post. I agree with you, I said the same just with a little bit more explanation :D

And by the way, I forgot to mention that there are a lot of champions that are considered weak and unviable but they are actually strong....in the other hand Elise feels really weak and useless. The ONLY...ONLY good thing about her is that she is one of few champions that can clear the whole jungle without going B. And...you know, as Elise, you are not supposed to farm....

AbyssphereMar 5, 20153 votes

I don't really know how much I agree with you here. This is mostly a thread about her terrible play rate/win rate but you've gone off on a tangent about the quality of her design which tends to not affect popularity. And when you start a post saying she "doesn't know what she wants to be" and then mostly talk about her abilities not being very powerful, the point kinda gets muddled up. Plus, some of your points seem quite questionable. I'll go through them:

In human form she has a decent Q spell that does damage based on current health. The healthier a champ is the more it does. It's a nice start to a combo, but can't really kill.

I don't find it a weakness to the spell that it's poor at killing people. I mean its damage is built on current health, it was never designed to be a finisher.

Her W in human form is a spider bomb that doesn't have and CC and can be easily avoided. It does seek a target, but not for long and doesn't do much damage.

Volatile Spiderling actually scales tremendously well, 275 (+ 80% AP) at max rank. Annie's most damaging basic ability is W with 250 (+ 85% AP), so Elise's W is actually very powerful and only looks weak because she never builds damage. The ease of avoiding it is made up for by it being an excellent scout/bush checker and if Elise quickly changes to her Spider Form and uses Q, Volatile Spiderling becomes lock-on. So it's got good use in dueling as easy follow up burst to Neurotoxin.

Her E is her stun, but its a skill shot.

This is a bad thing in team fights because she can only deal with one person at a time but in a 1v1 duel it's pretty perfect. If it were targeted I fear she'd be dumpstered even worse than she is now.

In spider form her Q is an "execute" that does damage based on missing health, but really requires the target be almost dead.

This is similar to the human W problem. You can't expect an ability to do damage when a champion never builds any. As long as Elise is forced into full tank her spider Q will never be an overly strong execute.

Her W speeds up her and her spiderlings attacks and heals her so little it doesn't count.

Same problem here as ever. Try building Elise full AP and watch as your spider W heals you from 10% health to 100% health off a jungle camp. The base heal is tiny but the scaling would be fine if she built damage.

Her E is a jump, but can only target enemy/neutral champs and monsters or make her untargetable for 2.5 seconds (and often dead .5 seconds after she is no longer untargetable.)

Rappel is weird for sure. I think it's a fine gapcloser (not perfect at all though) but yeah it's a weird escape and can feel clunky to use. Bit random.

Elise isn't as unwieldy as people will say. She has quite a solid/sensible dueling pattern, so her power level isn't really a problem with her kit not working. It's a case of bad numbers.

Elise gets no reward for building damage or tank because her Q/empowered AA damage falls off incredibly hard and literally nothing she does has any synergy with tank stats whatsoever. Until she has a build path that makes sense on her she'll never be good again. I'd go for these changes:

Venomous Bite (Q) missing health damage changed from 3% per 100 AP to 4% per 100 AP Spider Form on-hit magic damage changed from 30% to 40% AP

Boom, actual reward for building AP in a strong execute and stronger dueling.

mvargusMar 5, 20151 votes

Your suggestions would help and you might be right that her abilities can scale well if she built AP, but it seems whenever I've brought her out I needed to build some level of tankiness just to handle teamfights since her best abilities are more of assassination and 1v1 duels than fighting in the mosh pit that most teamfights quickly turn into.

But I do think she's a hybrid that doesn't know what she wants to be.

Human = mostly a poke mage Spider = melee executioner/assassin

It's very similar to Nidalee, but Nidalee's Q is far better than Elise's and Nidalee's heal works better. Add in that all 3 of Nidalee's cougar form abilities are pure attack and I end up feeling that Elise is a pale copy of Nidalee.

As for the popularity. It goes along with what I posted. Elise doesn't feel rewarding because she does have such a quirky build and can't really get the flashy kills that other champs make look far too easy. She's so frustrating for the average player that only someone who is willing to take the time to master her is going to want to play her. And many of those will just go with Nidalee since Nidalee is more flexible in where she can play.

Champion SkinMar 5, 20151 votes

Most Assassins have some poke/wave clear Poke because Riot doesn't like 100-0 and wave clear so the assassin can roam and look for picks

And yes... Elise is in a rather weird spot and possible a bit up

Celeste BenalMar 5, 20151 votes

Quoted for truth. Every word.

AikkiMar 5, 20155 votes

Why bother picking her when there's Lee Sin and Jarvan who do her job better and easier? And are also stronger than her in all phases of the game. RIP Elise.

RaxicorMar 5, 201510 votes

And therein lies the problem. Champs that aren't picked often get less attention and less balance changes because there's not enough consistent data for Riot to work with. Its a viscous cycle.

TourianMar 7, 20151 votes

Fucking this. She will never get love. I've accepted this and learned to have fun playing her anyway.

WolfChasesMar 5, 20154 votes

There are a lot of problems with Elise and also a reasons why Riot nerfed her so hard and I will point out some of them.

had a strong early game, she could rely on ganking only because she had enough early game damage even without much farm.

Riot nerfed her early game ganks and utility ti the point that she can't rely only on ganking anymore, while in the other hand, she's not a late game champion, so it's not worth to farm all day long because you will fall off late anyways.

late game is really really weak because her AP scallings are too low and and also, her tanking stats are not even close to tanking stats of a fighters or tanks in general + she's a single target ''burst'' champion.

Riot didn't buff her late game except that late game E which is unreliable CC in team fights, in fact, they nerfed her utility which also affects her late game too much.

Her concept of a single target burst champion is also crap because she doesn't have enough damage to really burst someone down.

Riot didn't buff attack speed from her spider form W to compensate her so that she could at least be a good duelist. Attack speed lasts too short in my opinion.

'' is good against tanks because of her %HP based spells''

How about NO? Even with that %HP damage mana costs are too high that she can't really out poke any tank. With Void Staff and Liandry's Torment she barely damages mid/late game tanks. For example, try to poke , or and pay attention on how much damage you did to them. Not to mention that all those tanks/fighters have a tool to out sustain any poke so they will always be on full HP and you will be OUT OF MANA.

Now, why did Riot nerfed Elise so hard?

She was effective against muh skillshot ''L€€ $IN LC$BIGPLAY$'' and she was one of those champions that ''L€€ $IN'' could not counterjungle without any effort.

I see that as the only reason for nerfing Elise so hard and not even touching LeeSin ''L€€ $IN'', except that love tap, they removed the AS debuf from his kit but buffed his HP regeneration.

KlNG ACEMar 5, 20153 votes

lol believe it or not elise used to be one of the best junglers in the game. along with Khazix Evelynn Nunu

TourianMar 7, 20151 votes

Kha'zix is sneaking his way back up again >.>

FeathermaneMar 5, 20153 votes

That's called balancing for the LCS. Seriously, Elise got nerfed while she was being played as a Sightstone + 40% CDR gimmick. I still can't wrap my head around that. Her roles were brush checking, holding lanes and fishing for engages, and she got nerfed because she was being played somewhat often. They didn't even treat that as an unwelcome alternative build, just trashed the champion. But she kept her safe and fast clear, so you can be tricked into thinking she works.

KaisadiIIaMar 5, 20154 votes

Elise was never broken at LCS. She was just safe and reliable. And professional players tend to pick safe and reliable champions, and there is nothing RIOT can do to prevent this. Champions that are too risky or unreliable will never be played that much, and the only way RIOT can force pro-players to do not take a reliable champions is destroying it (like they did with Elise).

TserrisMar 5, 20152 votes

I never one time had a problem with Elise. She wasn't even that dominant of a jungler, just a high pick rate.. Not like her win rate was jacked up over 70% at worlds like Kassadin's was, like two years in a row lol.

AylioMar 6, 20152 votes

The thing I find funny is back then her players were saying things like "Elise is so much fun to play that I'd even play her if she's bad," "Elise takes so much skill to play, I have to land my hard to hit stun to successfully gank lanes," and "Elise falls off late" to try to mask her op state. Where are those players now? They moved to her AD equivalent Lee Sin since he never got hit meaningfully by a nerf bat.

TourianMar 7, 20151 votes

This and the fact that prior to the last nerf (E width and rappel range) people said she did a shit ton of damage and had strong ganks. Her damage was untouched and I guarantee you if they reverted her last nerf people would still say she's weak now even though she is the exact same from when she was "OP". The fact is she was never OP, strong maybe but not OP. Riot just doesn't value her because she falls in the same boat as urgot: unpopular because of appearance. She's a spider and most people hate spiders so she will never be a popular solo pick.

edit I'm one of those people that still main her after saying those things, I do pretty consistently well too.

AbyssphereMar 8, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The thing I find funny is back then her players were saying things like "Elise is so much fun to play that I'd even play her if she's bad," "Elise takes so much skill to play, I have to land my hard to hit stun to successfully gank lanes," and "Elise falls off late" to try to mask her op state. Where are those players now? They moved to her AD equivalent Lee Sin since he never got hit meaningfully by a nerf bat.

Well the thing is, you really can't expect even a champion's main to keep playing them when their win rate is 40%. You put yourself in a horrible position just by playing your main at that stage and you really can't afford to handicap yourself like that :/ Playing a suboptimal champ you like is perfect but Elise genuinely makes it difficult for you to win with and that's bad in ranked.

Samflash3Mar 5, 20151 votes

Oh yeah. I forgot about Elise jungle. I'm assuming she can still clear fast.

Hmm, gotta make an Elise build.

Crate of CobrasMar 6, 20151 votes

got tsm'd

junglerboy16Mar 6, 20151 votes

Basically, she was extremely popular at the end of season 4 (for good reason), so they nerfed her several times, sometimes quite hard. Fast forward to the beginning of season 5 and hey presto, those nerfs hurt a lot more now that the jungle fights back so much harder.

426287Mar 6, 20151 votes

Spiderlings op.

TourianMar 7, 20151 votes

It has nothing to do with the jg hurting more. She has incredible sustain. If you get a leash on Blue to start you get your 3 with full health and no pots used and can gank.

The Red WardenMar 6, 20151 votes

I find more use out of Galio, Zac, and Urgot than her right now. Each one has a game deciding ability (Galio ult wins teamfights by itself, Zac ult+ Sling shot initiate is devastating, and Urgot can Kamikaze their carry making them useless in fights). Elise on the other hand is a generalist, that is over shadowed by better generalists ( LeeSin , JarvanIV , )

AbodyHUN666Mar 6, 20151 votes

Like so many people commented before, she definietly needs some getting used to, and she was gutted so hard that her mains gave up on her. Now you can't see her in games to inspire people to pick her up and she is too hard to get into for new "would be" Elise players.

DJ Hatsune MikuMar 6, 20151 votes

She's bad, clunky, unrewarding, and overnerfed. The community forgot about her because she defined a good portion of s3 and was since obliterated. Hence why she got victorious, which is ironic because picking her will result in anything but.

Chef NastyMar 6, 20151 votes

She is the first champ I refunded on... If I want early ganks I'd play Vi. Even when ahead, her damage is low, plus her full combo requires getting in melee range. She went from a top pick in S4 in tournies to utter crap now. A commenter recently described her as "not optimal" as a jungler, so it should be obvious she needs buffing. I seriously wonder if her Bloodmoon skin plus past popularity was meant to entice people to buy her.

rinsujoMar 6, 20151 votes

...I honestly question what kind of data this is pulled from when SINGED is less popular than both Yorick and Eve. "Weekly data sets, all regions and leagues" Ranked? ARAM? Normals? Or am i just missing something?

JunkοMar 6, 20151 votes

I played against her last game as Malzahar. She dealt 2k damage to me in 1.5 seconds.

Why is she considered bottom tier again?

TourianMar 7, 20151 votes

Because you probably didn't build any kind of MR.

Update Yep you build AP, Magic pen and HEALTH. She does percent HP magic damage and you build health but no MR. Shoulda switched up that Voidstaff for a Abyssal at least, Malz is short enough range to benefit

JunkοMar 7, 20151 votes

Eh i didn't buy any MR because last time i sold my damage items to buy MR, i still got 100-0 instantly but also dealt 0 damage. Armor and MR pen is too broken atm.

We were gonna lose anyway.

TourianMar 8, 20151 votes

You should be slipping in an Abyssal on him anyway because I guarantee in your elo no one is building defensive items anyway except maybe the top laner, I say this not out of rudeness but because I'm in the same elo and I notice shit like that and take advantage of it. Abyssal is going to give you the same AP as void staff, one of the highest MR from a single item and flat MR reduction of 20 which is essentially the highest magic penetration in the game that teammates also benefit from. The only time you should build void staff over abyssal on a short range caster like Malz is if they're absolutely stacking MR items. If the mage is ahead or snowballing or whatever, I dont care who you are, pick up a banshee's veil. Both of these are going to bring you up to 135 MR. As an Elise main, I can tell you this is going to fuck her up.

JunkοMar 8, 20151 votes

I'll try that, thanks!

CaptnJakSparrowMar 7, 20151 votes

Her cc is dodgeable, her Escape is tied to her chase, a good 35% of her damage can be smited ((literally)), she either builds to nuke and goes oom after two rotations and blows up before she actually kills anything, or she builds tanky with lots of mana and cdr, but never actually does anything.

She is also slow.