Pros and Cons of the Ahri Power Shift

So a lot of people have become really confused with what's happening with Ahri right now. The body of her kit is going through some changes that we don't quite understand, and undoubtedly it's a scary time for all of us. So let's start with Riot's target goal:

Riot is transitioning Ahri to excel at what she was originally intended to be in theme: a kiting mage. Hell, you can see her do it in the "New Dawn" cinematic (or "New Draven" for those of you who prefer the correct sights through which to view League). There aren't a ton of champs that do this to begin with, which makes this a nice sweetspot for Ahri to fit in as a niche champ. However, there's some things wrong with this that Riot should be aware of before going in.

First of all, we do all know about Ahri's E secondary utility removal - the damage boost. Being basically the only reason Ahri could nuke anybody anyway, this removal removes Ahri from the class of Lux - a long range, "don't touch me" champ that can still trap a squishy and then take out their health with a patented laser-health-removal service. While Lux never had the same mobility as Ahri, her hard CC usually made up for that in kiting, as well as the slow to bring people down to her speed. What we're looking at now is an Ahri more akin to the current blue-build Ez, but reversed - a kiting champ that, rather than keeping enemies pinned down with a slow, instead speeds herself away. As of current, this sounds great in theory - yeah, I'd love to choose a champ that's really pesky and annoying to try and catch. And Ahri's wider missile width plus her actual ability to charm as hard CC puts her in a little bit of an advantage over Ez. Here's where it falls flat, though:

1. Movement impairment > Movement improvement. Let's say you increase your speed by 50% - lovely. You're going fyast, you're chuggin' along, you pass up Sonic tellin' him that he's slow as fug. However, if you're hit with a 50% slow - a similar percentage decrease - you've lost more than you gained. Unless slows are going to be changed to always apply to the original base speed by percentage (dream on, speed freaks), it's going to take twice the amount increase to break even from a slow, meaning that if you close the gap between you and Ahri and slow her, that Q's not going to be doing too much fancy stuff. Better build Rylai's from now on if you want to be able to keep your distance from melee champs.

2. Ahri doesn't have a kit built to do consistent sustained damage. Ahri doesn't exactly have her Q on a 1 second cooldown now does she? The reason blue build Ez is so potent is he can sock you with a slow every second and a half, keeping you in an easy-to-hit spot while simultaneously maintaining a suitable distance. Ahri gets to throw her Q about once every 4 seconds, and that's the lowest cooldown she has. On top of this, her Q also outranges her other abilities, so if she wants to get her Foxfires off, she's going to have to run in and out of a fight, putting her in more danger than Ez will find himself in. Additionally, the idea of Ahri constantly kiting means that the damage she would normally be putting out through her ult isn't going to happen - the proximity to which the summoned foxfires from her ult will travel toward and hit a target is quite small, which means Ahri would need to be faceplanting herself within the action to do this damage, which, again, directly contradicts the idea of a kiting champ.

3. Ahri no longer has designated targets outside of using her E. This statement is probably confusing, so to explain: Ahri has no target other than who is currently chasing her. However, her E is a skill entirely intended for picking off a target from a group and pulling them in range to either be dogpiled by her team or dropped by herself. With the damage reduction, Ahri can no longer burst like she used to, meaning that she must now focus on whittling down enemies through kiting and poking before finally going for the kill - basically, people chase, she pokes, they get low and decide that they should retreat, she dashes in to finish off the target. But this doesn't need her E to function - successful kiting and poking can do this plenty well, and her mobility will make it easy enough to secure a kill. The has turned basically into a drawn out Blitz grab that is meant to take one target and remove them from their team not for Ahri herself to nuke but for her team to jump on. Ahri no longer gains any benefits herself from landing this shot, and the mediocre scaling on this skillshot makes the skill's hassle greater than its reward. Essentially, the functionality of this skill is no longer integral to her kit. Other than it being a charm that matches her theme, this skill no longer serves a reasonable purpose.

4. While Ahri has gained something that sets her identity a little more apart from her peers, her peers still do her job better, if not far better now. Ahri can no longer qualify as an assassin under her secondary occupation - she doesn't pack the power to do it. She has no actual immediate burst with this update and it has been replaced with sustained damage - by the definition of the game's classifications, she is not an assassin now. If we're still considering her a mage, she is mediocre at best - while she used to pack a mediocre amount of AoE damage with a significant boost if focused on a single target, she now just does a medicore amount of AoE damage with a slight emphasis on hitting one target. Comparing this to her other AoE mage counterparts - Annie, Brand, Ziggs, Zyra, Lissandra, and others - yields the fact that those other champs all do considerably more AoE damage far more quickly than Ahri does while also still being able to deck out more shots. If we're going to precisely compare Ahri to the two champs that she previously was most like - Syndra and Malzahar, two AoE mages who could also second as an assassin nuker - she was already struggling to stay competitive with due to the sheer speed and reliability of these two. She now is a completely separate classification from those two and has, again, moved toward Lux and Ez, which again, both do the job better - Lux still packs enough of a punch to destroy squishies immediately and Ez is able to keep up his barrage almost unendingly, meaning that he's not going to have to duck out every five seconds just to make sure he can dish out another shot before the enemy team decides to stop dealing with his shit.

I can clearly see what Riot was intending to do with this update - it really is crystal clear what they wanted, and it makes sense thematically. But how they've gone about it has unintentionally thrown Ahri into a state of uselessness. If the power is removed from her E, the power must be moved to another skill - they've done some minor buffing to her W, but the full base damage still barely tops the majority of other champs' bases while also packing mediocre scaling, which means that Ahri's lategame effectiveness is now virtually none. This is a straight power nerf across the board with no meaningful makeup to this. I would suggest a cooldown reduction on Ahri's Q since this is now her key mechanic (throwing the orb and kiting through throwing) as well as basically her sole form of any meaningful damage, but that would firstly exasperate her lane bullying and clear times, and would secondly still leave her E being out of place in her kit. I would strongly encourage Riot to reconsider these changes and experiment some more with alternative approaches or buffs before pushing through such a drastic switch.