When is Elise going to see some love?
There is nothing justifiable about Elise's state. Her damage is too low, her Cocoon passes through targets, her base tank stats make it nearly impossible to sustain the jungle, and her mana pool and regen are pathetic when both are taken into account. Yes, she has manaless costs, but at the result of losing her ability to poke, harass and deal significant damage to tanks.
Elise's main issue beyond her just not having any strength to her bite is that she is powerless in a meta dominated by those who have short cooldowns and strong crowd control. Her dominant feature - her versatility - is lackluster when compared to junglers who can shrug off damage like Maokai, Gragas and Vi. Her base damages do not compare to other AP-based junglers like Diana, Nidalee and Fiddlesticks, all of which have much greater sustain and ways to put out reliable damage from a long distance. While Elise does hold a similarity to these other mage-like junglers in the sense that she can gank from over a wall, the others have damage from those abilities, whereas Elise can be seen about 1-second earlier due to the targeted circle left by rappel (unlike Diana's Lunar Rush), and her stun is a skillshot (unlike Fiddlesticks' Terrify; which lasts longer and has a much shorter cooldown while also reducing the target's Magic Resistance.)
The increase to her Cocoon's missile speed in patch 5.6 did absolutely nothing. In fact, she is actually in a worse place since the changes to Cocoon and the "usability update" to her Rappel. At patch 5.6, Elise was sitting at a 43.61% global Ranked Solo Queue winrate and a 1.4% playrate in North America. Now, during Patch 5.11, she is at a 43.99% winrate and 0.93% winrate. The reason for this is that her Cocoon CAN COMPLETELY BYPASS A TARGET. I have run into the bug 3 times now where Cocoon has simply gone through an enemy. The worst offense was during a game of Dominion where I had shot it at a Renekton, "hit" him directly in the center of his scaly back, and watched as it passed through him as if it had cast Ghost. Fortunately, the opposing Sona was behind him, and she'd make a much better meal for my darling offspring. Hitbox error in my favour, I guess.
She isn't tanky enough to be a tank, she doesn't have the damage to be an assassin, and she doesn't have the crowd control or map pressure to be effectively played as a bruiser. Coupled with her poor synergy with the current meta and her terrible hitboxes, Elise, The Spider Queen is becoming more and more like old Karma than a venomous webslinger. A complete and utter "...Who?" in the competitive scene.
The best way I could think of to create an even playing field while keeping her current playstyle non-oppressive is to add something every 6-foot long Black Widow should have: a deadly poison. Adding a Poison damage-over-time to her Q - Venomous Bite would actually make it... you know: a Venomous Bite. This would help her clearing speed in the early jungle, specifically on the second camp, and give her some synergy with an all-poison team for those epic Twitch Expunges.
