Ahri "The Awkward Fox In The Corner"
I have been playing Ahri for a while and talked to a few higher ranked friends, what resulted in me noticing several fatal flaws in her current balancing. Ahri is an awkward champion to balance. If one were to give her a damage buff on any of her abilities, her mobility could synergize with it and she could simply burst down an opponent and proceed on walking away. That was the issue in the past. Now that she has been nerfed into the ground, she cannot burst anyone down with her full combo unless they are not at full health or she does not run Electrocute. Of course, despite that new weakness of hers, her mobility allows her to survive and participate in teamfights. Sadly, due to her lowered damage output she can be only of use as a diving mage if she takes Electrocute. Otherwise, she wont be able to burst down the enemy fast enough and come out alive. However, due to the fact that she requires Electrocute in order to efficiently operate, her early game until level 6 is extremely weak. She still possesses her mobility and survivability, but not her damage.
That means, she cannot receive an advantage early game, unless her jungler helps her or the player plays her in a very aggressive and risky manner and since she is fairly squishy, she has no middle ground during her early game. She can either play passively or hyper aggressively in order to snowball. She lacks a solid middle ground. Of course, she can still win games due to her mid game power spikes and survivability, but all the enemy has to do in order to shut her down is simply shove the minion wave under her tower and roam a little. They cannot catch you, but you cannot safely kill them either. Meanwhile, they gank top or bottom with the jungler, while you are forced to push back the minion wave. A smart player can effortlessly snowball against an Ahri, since the moment she attempts to play aggressively, your jungler can shut her down or force her to waste her ultimate or flash to escape.
The moment she does that, she cannot play aggressively anymore for several minutes. Her high win rate results in the very fact that a good Ahri player rarely feeds, not allowing the enemy to take any leads. That allows them to catch up during the mid or late game by staying with the team and hunting down single targets. Sadly, if your opponent is simply a better player than you, you are unable to catch up. Ahri regains her strength during the mid and late game, but she only catches up due to the skill of the player, not her abilities. Many will complain that her mobility compensates for the lack of damage output, but we have to consider the killing potential. At the end of the day, you have to fight and you have to hunt down and kill your opponents.
The ability to run away cannot win your games, because it only helps you to survive battles, but not finish them. You can see the following issue with all the pro Ahri users. Win %: 40% / She can run away, but at competitive level, when both sides are around the same skill level, the abilities of a champion matter a lot. Ahri possesses such a high winrate, because in lower elos players make mistakes and she can punish those mistakes, while being very forgiving. If you move up the ladder, mistakes are not being made as often and you cannot purely relay on your skill to win a match. Therefore, I think Ahri is a strong champion in all lower to middle elos, but she requires a middle ground in order to potentially be able to catch up and win a match not solely due to the skill of her player, but also due to her abilities.
[sg-ahri-1]
Suggestions / Options (Please Vote in the poll at the end):
1 /// Buff her damage on the Q: Only a little bit. At the current stage of the game it merely tickles the enemy and can only do damage if one sacrifices her strong mid and late game.
2 /// Rework Her Ultimate: The damage of her ultimate could be lowered and a fourth dash could be added to it. This would allow the player to solely relay on their skill to win a game. Alternatively, her ultimate could be turned into something, what resembles Akali's ultimate. By storing her dashes, she can relay on her skill instead of dealing her damage to the enemy.
3 /// Prolong the stun of her E: It would greatly help during team fights, but not her in particular. Since, her abilities would be already on a cooldown by the time the target escapes the stun.
4 /// Alter her scaling: Simply let her scale a little better during the early game, but keep the max damage of her abilities. It would grant her a solid middle ground without giving her any hard buffs.
5 /// Do nothing about her abilities: Not optimal, but an option as well in the poll below.
