To begin with, the cause of the frustration:

https://gyazo.com/bea4f4cdc9ae2e1ab8fdeda7566ff4d0

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

She is - currently - the most popular midlaner in the game, and the highest winrate champion in the entire game.

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Warning: Long post below. My thesis on why Ahri is an issue right now.

Okay, let's look at some of the arguments in Ahri's defense. You can always list a way to "counterplay" Ahri. We get it.
"She has less damage than X."
"She's not as safe as Y."
"Just dodge skillshots."

All you are doing is listing Ahri's weaknesses.

The problem is that literally every single weakness you mentioned applies to pretty much every single other midlaner - except, she doesn't suffer from those weaknesses nearly as much. I.E. Squishiness means everything on Xerath, who can be easily and quickly blown up in his own tower, even through barrier. Whereas Ahri's squishiness is negated by the fact that she is almost uncatchable if she wants to be.

So the question isn't, "Does she have a weakness?" The question is, "How do her weaknesses compare to the weaknesses of other midlaners, who she's up against?"

If her weaknesses were fairly balanced against theirs, then the numbers would say so. That's where the problem comes in. She's the most played midlaner in the game, and yet she is nearly the highest winrate champion in the entire game.

And that's the key point.

THE NUMBERS DON'T SAY AHRI HAS NO WEAKNESSES. SHE DOES HAVE WEAKNESSES. WE GET THAT. THE NUMBERS SAY THAT HER WEAKNESSES AREN'T NEARLY AS EXPLOITABLE AS ANY OF HER OPPONENTS' WEAKNESSES. Please, understand what that means.

No, randomly listing weaknesses of her doesn't give a good defense against nerfs. It's like saying Preseason 5 Warwick was balanced because he had weaknesses too. "He's immobile!" "He's a melee champion!" "He can't gank pre-6!"

Yeah, and he still has those weaknesses now. But those weakness didn't mean shit compared to all of his strengths at the time, as shown by his massive pickrate/winrate inflation.

Just like the counterarguments for nerfing Ahri.

"She's squishy, just CC her and she dies." Like all of her opponents in the midlane. Except she's much more mobile, and thus much less susceptible to getting caught out, than most of them. Furthermore, after being caught out, she has a much higher chance of escaping and surviving.

"Just dodge skillshots." Same argument that Nidalee mains used as she was 100% pick/ban in the LCS. Yes, skillshots can be dodged. But they can either 1) be too reliable, or 2) reward you way too much for landing one. In Ahri's case, it's a little of both. One charm usually means death. If she doesn't have the skill to land her charm, she can dash into melee range to hit you with it.

"Just stand behind minions to avoid the charm." Her orb ignores minion collision.

"Just stand away from the minions to avoid orb." ...sigh.

Statistically, across what must be thousands if not tens-of-thousands of matches, playing Ahri means that you are much, much, much more likely to beat your opponent. Just by having her on your team.

Here's what's important to note. Even though having an inflated pickrate usually shrinks a champions' winrate, due to novices playing that champion, Ahri's winrate actually inflates massively as more people play her. Why? She has an abnormally high success rate for people who are barely picking her up. Over 52% for people just starting their first 5 matches as her.

That suggests that the people playing her are at least partially being carried by her kit. (As TheOddOne put it, I heard.)

And get this. I keep seeing people defending her by saying that Ahri players are just skilled at her. Someone recently checked. Ahri is (or, within the past day or two, was) ranked 24 out of 48 midlaners in terms of avg. games played.

That means the average experience of people playing Ahri....is literally average. Literally average. That means for every 200+ game Ahri main pubstomping, there is also an Ahri noob with 5 games who is winning most of them just because of the way her kit is designed.

I don't understand how someone can get so defensive of Ahri to actually suggest this is okay. The only other champions who ever approach her current level of success (54%+ winrate WITH 18%+ PICKRATE) are champions who were horribly broken for a short time (Sej on Cinderhulk release, Preseason 5 Warwick, etc.) OR champions who are extremely uncommon (Malzahar, for example, whose winrate is high, but is almost exclusively played by his mains, who have a lot of experience with him. Similar to the old Heimerdinger phenomenon.)

The argument that "winrate doesn't mean anything" is a fallacy. Winrate on its own doesn't tell us much, if anything. But winrate with pickrate tells us a LOT.

The higher a champion's pickrate, generally, their winrate drops massively. With Ahri, her pickrate inflates, tons of people randomly start playing her with little to no experience, and they win.

These are the statistical facts. The only defense left for her is, "Well, I feel like she has counterplay, and I don't want her to be nerfed!"

The irony is that you're kind of proving the point. She's incredibly successful and has tons and tons of people playing her. When a champion is overtuned and extremely popular, naturally, more people show up to defend the champion that is inflating their winrate.

:/