Ahri main here
Thoughts
Pros to playing ahri
-great lane phase
-Safe lane phase
-Very mobile
-High threat with long range charms
-Lots of build variet
-Is an ap champion (meaning she goes well with most comps)
-great wave clear once she has items
-Cons
-Poor scaling unless using custmoized runes and masteries
-Can be very telegraphed, a good player can easily read what ahri wants to do
-Squishy once you are ontop of her/or stunned
-Is an ap champion (ap items suck right now)
-Constantly being modified by riot in nerfs or buffs (this is a huge con if you want to main a champion for it constantly interferes with how you want to play them, idealyl you want to main stable champions riot doesn't fuck with to often, so you can learna play style and keep it)
-Magic resist heavily counters due to W and R having low damage
Her place in the meta
-Ahri has the same place she's always had on release, despite what people tell you, she is an ap assassin, just like le blanc, and like any assassin your goal is to either win lane phase through an out play, or to roam bot and get picks. (talking about early game) However she has something very unique that almost no other assassin has. Hard, CC. Being hit by a maxed leveled charm or even a low level charm even if you are a tank can be a death sentance for it's a full second stun/charm and gives the team a opportunity to just murder you if you get hit. Because of this the ideal scenario Ahri wants to be in is the following
-Out of sight hiding in a bush or to the side so she can sneek ontop of the adc or enemy mage to assasinate them
-Sieging towers with her tamates using Q to wave clear, so she can use the threat of her charm to either zone the enemy away or straight out kill them.
HOWEVER
Fact is she does fall of late game. Is this an issue?
Yes and no
Why tho?
Riot is slowly removing the terms "late game and early game" and for the most part i applaud this. For frankly the whole "let's play ryze or vayne, and the moment it's 30 minutes we win strat" was toxic as fuck. It encoraged players to play like bitches for 30 whole minutes where the team that had the best late game designed comp would win. This was around season 1-3 that this strat lasted, but with the start of season 4 we started riot SLOWLY nerfing this strat. By the time season 5 started it was for the most part removed with evidence of it still creeping in season 6. Now in season 7 we have VERY few champions who are either "pure early game" or "Pure late game".
That being said the champions from that old "I am best at this time" form of balancing that riot use to have still exist, and Ahri is one of them. So the question is.
Do we fully remove this type of balancing and implement champions who are good at all times of the game so everyone is on fair footing? Or do we keep champions who have a. "i am best at this time" form of balancing to balance player psychology. What do I mean by player psychology? well if the enemy team has a kogmaw, the team facing the kogmaw now has to think strategically "we need to do this and this at this time before kogmaw happen"
Frankly it's a matter of riots old policy on balancing vs their new way, and it will eventually effect ahri in the future along with the many other older champions.
