Ahri's passive seems a bit strange considering she's a burst mage.

Here is Ahri's passive: 'Essence Theft: Whenever Ahri hits an enemy with one of her abilities, she gains a charge of Essence Theft, and can gain up to 3 charges per ability cast. Upon reaching 9 charges, her next ability heals her for 3 / 5 / 9 / 18 (+ 9% AP) for each enemy hit.'

It just feels really out of place and underwhelming for Ahri's kit and what she's meant to do as a "burst mage." I mean lore wise I kind of get it... 9 tails... eats livers of men... sure why not; however, it's a mediocre passive (I dare say the weakest passive in the whole game). It's somewhat decent early game, but still pretty un-impactful, especially mid-late game. At early levels, if you hit 1 creep, it heals you average 6.6hp (so about 40hp if you hit 6 creeps), which isn't too shabby, I'll admit it has saved me early game about once or twice from an ignite, but surely there is a more fitting passive than this for a mage. It's probably for early sustain, but honestly I feel like Ahris will back more for mana than to replenish hp early game. This is then counter-intuitive, since MP is more important than HP, yet this passive uses MP to restore HP. A single potion would heal 200% more than hitting 6 creeps with this passive.

Here are some lvl 18 stats: I gave Ahri a typical lvl 18 build, giving her 654.75 AP at full. Her healing per hit would then be (base + 9% AP), so 18 + 59 = 77. Assuming Ahri would have 2300 hp at lvl 18, this means each hit heals her for 3.3%. Now this sounds decent if you manage to hit a big wave (6 minions = 19.8% hp), but really now, how often do you use your passive like that late game on Ahri? Ahri's job late game is to get picks and/or at least do consistent dmg in team fights. More than likely you are going to use your first spell as a charm or ult, so if you have the passive, you pretty much only heal for 3.3% of your hp, which you probably don't need anyways since you just started the fight.

Perhaps you took some hits in the middle of a team fight and get a Q to hit 3 champs (which is hopeful), you heal for 9.9% hp. Not terrible, but again, this is lvl 18 passive we're talking about. Just for context, here is what 9.9% hp looks like:

••○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ <--- Healing that much probably isn't going to save you from a late game auto attack from Twitch.

The chances of you timing your passive charges in team fights to get efficient healing is VERY low, as your main objective is to kill and pick off. Knowing this, it's somewhat safe to say that passive timing in team fights is random and more than likely be in the 3.3%-9.9% healing range.

Let's compare this passive to 2 other popular mid-champs. (I know it's strange to compare different passives, but I address this further down).

Syndra Passive: _ '(maxing any ability gives it bonus effects)'_ •Her Q gets 33% uptime. •Her W does 20% bonus true damage. •Her E gets 50% wider. •Her Q gets farther cast range. Now Syndra is kind of a trade-off because she can't even get one of these effects til level 8, but she completely destroys Ahri's passive. Even without Syndra's power-adding passive, she can still delete champions with a click of an R. Now that's what you call a burst mage.

Orianna Passive '(auto attacks do bonus magic dmg, doing 20% more bonus dmg each stack, max 2 stacks).'

Early game this is one of the best passives IMO because it helps you CS so easily and makes your trades very strong. •Late game, your first auto attack does +150 bonus magic damage, plus your 84 ad, which totals 234 on the first auto attack. •Attacking same target gives you 20% bonus, so you do 180 extra dmg with your ad. •Getting 3 hits gives yet another 20% to the passive, so each auto attack does (216magic + 84ad = 300).

Now I know many of y'all are probably thinking "you can't compare Ahri's passive to other mid champs' passive. That's apples to oranges." Normally, I would agree with that, but the issue is that her passive SHOULD be comparable to other burst mages. She should literally be apples to apples. To prove my point of how out of place her passive is, here is a link from Riot showing what "category" each champion falls under. If you will, take a look at the burst mages and look at all their passives.

As you can see, they ALL contribute to the champion being more aggressive/stronger, all except one: Ahri. Her regen passive is comparable to NONE of the burst mages. Actually, It's comparable to FIVE of the JUGGERNAUT champions. These Juggernauts require a passive like this in their playstyle because they are melee bruisers/tanks. Ahri having it is totally out of place. She is a relatively "safe" champion who doesn't take as much damage as Juggernauts, and an aggressive passive would be much more helpful than healing 9.9% hp after every 4 spells.

It just feels like Ahri's passive offers no impact mid-late game and requires a lot of time/mana just to hit the 9 essence mark. Ahri is currently in a pretty balanced state, but having a passive that more aligns with her kit of burst mage would make more sense.

A few suggestions that might be more suited to her kit:

1. At 9 essence, her next ability does something similar to Luden's Echo.
2. When Ahri gets 9 champion kills/assists, all her scaling increases by (.2). (one time effect only, doesn't happen again after next 9 kills).
3. At 9 essence, her next ability will have an additional effect Q = Does 10% more dmg W = One extra fox fire E = Damages an additional 8% max hp OR charm lasts .5 seconds longer R = Dash farther
4. If ahri charms a male, they are charmed for a little longer (lol maybe this one is a bit dumb).

With suggestion 1 and 3 in mind, at least this will make getting 9 stacks of essence feel important before a teamfight and make you strategize better with Ahri.

Thanks for making it this far! Anyone else feel like her passive is a bit random for a burst mage? I don't necessarily hate it, but I think there is definitely room for improvement.