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Why Elise Used To Be Strong

Banshee·7/22/2015, 2:11:16 AM·3 votes·1,049 views

Elise was extremely strong for the longest time because she used to be able to build tank and do damage. Rito nerfed her damage, rappel range, cocoon stun duration, the width of the cocoon, the speed of the cocoon, spiderlings damage, spiderlings tankiness. Did Elise need to be nerf, yes. Did she need to be nerfed this hard, no. Rito thinks they can compensate by buffing the stun duration and buffing the spiderlings.

The stun duration buff is nice but it's not going to do much for her. Since it's buffing her utility but not her damage. She is a champ that punishes poor positioning but if she has no damage to follow up, she's useless and becomes too reliant on her teammates to come help.

The spiderlings buff does absolutely nothing because they last as long a teemo in a 1v5. They die to everything to quick. So this buff is not even going to be noticeable.

TLDR: Elise's buffs are more utility based, the only reason she was good was because she did a lot of damage. I wouldn't be surprised if people start playing her support due to all the buffs to utility and lack of damage.

4 Comments

Neo Cyrus7/22/2015, 2:14:33 AM2 votes

This also leaves the issue of her falling off hard late game. Even if her improved utility brings her back into favour for early game, she'll still suffer from the Lee Syndrome of being shit late game, she's be a stun bot in a best case scenario, and if she misses she'll be worthless. Not enough stats to survive a fight while putting out anything meaningful.

luckeyjoker7/22/2015, 9:59:29 PM1 votes

they nerf her tankyness too in spider form.

Lugg7/22/2015, 10:13:37 PM1 votes

The buff to the stun is pretty huge. She is in a pretty good place now.

Abyssphere7/22/2015, 10:42:13 PM1 votes

Eh. They're not buffing her base damages to where they once were, I think that's pretty clear. The #1 problem people had with Elise was that she didn't have to make a choice between being a tank or an assassin in the past, and weird cases like that are still very much hated by the community (Tanky Smite Fizz Top). Right now she needs to purchase a healthy amount of AP to be a damage threat (but honestly not that much, 450 AP or so puts her firmly in carry assassination territory) but the problem is that she doesn't have the same defensive mechanisms that other champs have should she do that.

Jayce has bonus resistances in melee form and Nidalee has her Pounce reset, not to mention a very powerful burst heal. But Elise doesn't have an escape, nor Jayce's bonus resists. She DOES have on-hit healing but it's not really been proven to be sufficient to keep her alive just yet, particularly as I've found that the healing falls off quite hard the more defensive your build gets. AP Bruiser Elise just doesn't get as much value from it as glass cannon does, but glass cannon Elise dies before she can even use it.

Elise shouldn't be building full tank, especially given that she was viable even after the final nerfs to her damages. However, she needs some sort of tool to allow her to survive should she build damage. I've always said a one-time Rappel reset mechanic (i.e. "the first kill or assist Elise gets in 30 seconds will refresh Rappel's cooldown") would do her the world of good, allowing her to get into the middle of the fight and live as long as she actually gets her target. I mean it'd even be cool gameplay-wise, Rappel is a badass move and seeing her use it twice in short succession would be really cool and push it towards being a defining move for her.