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Thoughts on Elise (~250 Elise games), less so her recent changes

Chairs·6/13/2015, 11:56:04 AM·15 votes·4,747 views

Hey guys, I'm Chairs. I started playing the game after Elise's first wave of nerfs which got her out of lane, after which I picked her up as a Top laner. Eventually, I also played her Jungle and the occasional Support because of instalocks.

So let me talk about Elise, and more specifically, what is wrong with Elise. Elise is an assassin. That's what her kit does. You get a lock-up, which follows into three nukes, after which she finishes people off with Spider W. Very similar to Ahri in a lot of regards (hit charm, get nukes, mobility to weave). However, Elise has some unique aspects for being an assassin. For one, to assassinate someone she has to get into melee range and stick around after her combo, as her combo will almost never one shot someone without some spider autos. For two, she has spiderlings. Spiderlings are really cool, but also feel useless right now, especially with Cinderhulk. Finally, she is an assassin who does not get a level 6 powerspike - she assassinates early on and powerspikes off of later levels more than anything (7 and 9, especially, and then again 13 when going W second).

So looking at Elise, I see the following defining factors:

  • Assassin
  • Trades off range advantage for a kill secure
  • Has pets/minions
  • No level 6 powerspike, so needs to make up for it in other areas

I will get back to these later. Let's look at what makes Elise a problematic champion! For one, she has a lot of targeted/easy to hit abilities, including two gap closers! (which make it insanely easy to hit a stun when ganking, as opponents are often running from the 2v1 and creep wave) One of her gapclosers/wideners even makes her untargetable for a while, letting her get through early skirmishes without dying. Also, with the cocoon changes a good while back, her stun became so strong that it is not worth it to go for a high-gold-cost assassin-y build, when a tanky stunbot does well enough. 33% uptime stun is crazy! Not to mention, she has %health damage to top it off. Investing gold in her %health damage spells is less pay-off than a lot of mages, and the other AP damage scalings she has are on W (currently not worth levelling over E because of how strong CDR tank is on her) and her spider form auto attacks (which aren't used as much when you are busy stunning in human form). Why build damages, especially in the jungle? You can do a decent amount of damage, be super tanky, and crowd control like a madman instead! Solo lanes have room for damage, but then again, how will she function in solo lanes when E as a one-point-wonder is a lot weaker (not enough time for a combo when opponent rushes tenacity, which is legit against Elise), her wave-clear on W becomes relevant too late, and her Q costs mana out the wazoo (I think you get 2 maybe 3 Qs on level1)? Finally, she gets free healing from auto attacks out of nowhere. There's almost no way this fits in with the Elise player power fantasy. Not to mention, that is the only interaction you have with spiderlings, W healing and W attack speed. Meanwhile, the spiderlings die so quickly. If Riot really hates the hidden power aspect of auras,** why are spiderlings losing even more of their noticable power?**

So let us look at problems Elise faces:

  • High up-time stun, combined with %health damage and relatively bad AP ratios, make tank Elise the best build in most situations
  • When mastered, a lot of means to hit her abilities - relatively little counterplay as jungler
  • On the other hand, faces a lot of laning issues which she used to make up with using bullying (hard to do nowadays with Q mana cost/damage)
  • Solo lane Elise has issues with Q mana costs, E rank 1 being bad, and W power coming in too late - weaknesses are good, but she needs strengths to compensate
  • Random healing on auto attacks limiting her power budget in more pressing areas
  • Spiderlings feel relatively weak, especially in health, less so in damage

Of course every champion needs some weaknesses, d'uh! However, let's take this moment to get back to Elise's defining features. Being an assassin is not delivered on. Tank Elise is better unless snowballing (not reliable). Trades off range for a kill secure is not delivered on. Sometimes it's better to just be a peeler with your crazy stun, but in the end, securing the last bit of kills isn't much of a consideration in the first place! Having pets and minions? They've died before they can do anything, especially in teamfights. No level 6 powerspike - fair enough. Elise still scales well into late-game, even without the lack of ulti spikes.

So let me go through all abilities and discuss/propose changes:

Spider Swarm [Passive]:

Human form: When you have the maximum amount of spiderlings, any abilities cast will heal one wounded spiderling.

Spiderlings: Give Spiderlings a Zyra-plant esque health bar.

Human form is QoL. Spiderlings change allow spiderlings to survive longer, but when focused die just as fast.

Neurotoxin [Human Q]:

Mana cost decrease. 50/55/60/65/70

This seems more approperiate than all the way up to 100 mana. Also allows her to cast some Qs without mana starving. The damage aspect scales somewhat fine - perhaps a slight hit on rank 4/5 - Elise's scaling when building bruiser/assassin is already really good, and can take this power trade.

Venomous Bite [Spider Q]:

If you want to add more synergy with her spiderlings, you can make all your little spiderlings do a small magic damage nuke when this is activated, and take away a good bit of base damage. This allows the opponent to make a conscious decision whether to kill the spiderlings or not in preperation the second rotation of Elise's spells.

Volatile Spiderling [Human W]:

Early ranks base damage up. Early ranks AP scaling down. Later ranks unchanged.

_I'd suggest increasing the lower ranks base damage and having the later ranks even out to live values. Maybe even lower the AP ratios on lower ranks to compensate, but just give her some waveclear on earlier ranks, without it becoming too strong if she snowballs or leaves it as a one point spell. _

Skittering Frenzy [Spider W]:

Healing removed.

I bet almost no Elise main out there cares much about the healing. Gives her way too much power, in early clears especially, that she rather have elsewhere.

Cocoon [Human E]:

Stun duration is now 1.25/1.35/1.45/1.55/1.65/1.75

1.00 is too little to do a combo on rank1, it needs a little more. However, 2.0 is simply too long considering the cooldown on later ranks, so nerf that a smidgen.

Rappel [Spider E]:

I think this move is fine for an assassin-y Elise, to be honest. I heard there's a bug where it has a little delay in cast since the range change, so perhaps look at that. There's a lot of levers to pull with this spell, but none that seem really useful.

Form Switch:

Movement speed change, a few patches ago, between forms reverted. Cooldown lowered to 3 seconds.

I think the movement speed changes really hurt lane Elise, and I think it is kind of a bad thing to force Elise jungle to move around in Spider Form, as she wants to start a fight in Human Form, kind of an artificial handicap to give her. Regarding the CD change, form switching is an important aspect to Elise, especially later in the game. This change helps her to not be forced into building CDR to stay relevant.

For reference, my Elise build is item 3020 item 3151 item 3116 item 3001 item 3110 and a situational 6th item. 15% scaling CDR blues for full 40% in late-game. Start Flask or Ring.

Anyway, random wall of text, I was bored and wanted to finally get this off my mind. Thanks for reading!

Cheers! Elise

18 Comments

Kill eem6/13/2015, 3:27:39 PM4 votes

Elise is just so bad right now!! she needs more buffs. item 3070

excodar6/14/2015, 1:48:32 PM2 votes

{quoted}

Healing removed.

I bet almost no Elise main out there cares much about the healing.

When I mained her in season 4 before the Q and E nerf this was one of my favorite parts of the kit. The fact that they nerfed Q damage and made it so you couldn't max w second was enough to make me say "fuck this champion"

Núll6/13/2015, 4:10:00 PM2 votes

[deleted]

Extreme Troller6/13/2015, 11:33:43 PM1 votes

{quoted}

Hey guys, I'm Chairs. I started playing the game after Elise's first wave of nerfs which got her out of lane, after which I picked her up as a Top laner. Eventually, I also played her Jungle and the occasional Support because of instalocks.

So let me talk about Elise, and more specifically, what is wrong with Elise. Elise is an assassin. That's what her kit does. You get a lock-up, which follows into three nukes, after which she finishes people off with Spider W. Very similar to Ahri in a lot of regards (hit charm, get nukes, mobility to weave). However, Elise has some unique aspects for being an assassin. For one, to assassinate someone she has to get into melee range and stick around after her combo, as her combo will almost never one shot someone without some spider autos. For two, she has spiderlings. Spiderlings are really cool, but also feel useless right now, especially with Cinderhulk. Finally, she is an assassin who does not get a level 6 powerspike - she assassinates early on and powerspikes off of later levels more than anything (7 and 9, especially, and then again 13 when going W second).

So looking at Elise, I see the following defining factors:

  • Assassin
  • Trades off range advantage for a kill secure
  • Has pets/minions
  • No level 6 powerspike, so needs to make up for it in other areas

I will get back to these later. Let's look at what makes Elise a problematic champion! For one, she has a lot of targeted/easy to hit abilities, including two gap closers! (which make it insanely easy to hit a stun when ganking, as opponents are often running from the 2v1 and creep wave) One of her gapclosers/wideners even makes her untargetable for a while, letting her get through early skirmishes without dying. Also, with the cocoon changes a good while back, her stun became so strong that it is not worth it to go for a high-gold-cost assassin-y build, when a tanky stunbot does well enough. 33% uptime stun is crazy! Not to mention, she has %health damage to top it off. Investing gold in her %health damage spells is less pay-off than a lot of mages, and the other AP damage scalings she has are on W (currently not worth levelling over E because of how strong CDR tank is on her) and her spider form auto attacks (which aren't used as much when you are busy stunning in human form). Why build damages, especially in the jungle? You can do a decent amount of damage, be super tanky, and crowd control like a madman instead! Solo lanes have room for damage, but then again, how will she function in solo lanes when E as a one-point-wonder is a lot weaker (not enough time for a combo when opponent rushes tenacity, which is legit against Elise), her wave-clear on W becomes relevant too late, and her Q costs mana out the wazoo (I think you get 2 maybe 3 Qs on level1)? Finally, she gets free healing from auto attacks out of nowhere. There's almost no way this fits in with the Elise player power fantasy. Not to mention, that is the only interaction you have with spiderlings, W healing and W attack speed. Meanwhile, the spiderlings die so quickly. If Riot really hates the hidden power aspect of auras,** why are spiderlings losing even more of their noticable power?**

So let us look at problems Elise faces:

  • High up-time stun, combined with %health damage and relatively bad AP ratios, make tank Elise the best build in most situations

  • When mastered, a lot of means to hit her abilities - relatively little counterplay as jungler

  • On the other hand, faces a lot of laning issues which she used to make up with using bullying (hard to do nowadays with Q mana cost/damage)

  • Solo lane Elise has issues with Q mana costs, E rank 1 being bad, and W power coming in too late - weaknesses are good, but she needs strengths to compensate

  • Random healing on auto attacks limiting her power budget in more pressing areas

  • Spiderlings feel relatively weak, especially in health, less so in damage

Of course every champion needs some weaknesses, d'uh! However, let's take this moment to get back to Elise's defining features. Being an assassin is not delivered on. Tank Elise is better unless snowballing (not reliable). Trades off range for a kill secure is not delivered on. Sometimes it's better to just be a peeler with your crazy stun, but in the end, securing the last bit of kills isn't much of a consideration in the first place! Having pets and minions? They've died before they can do anything, especially in teamfights. No level 6 powerspike - fair enough. Elise still scales well into late-game, even without the lack of ulti spikes.

So let me go through all abilities and discuss/propose changes:

Spider Swarm [Passive]:

Human form: When you have the maximum amount of spiderlings, any abilities cast will heal one wounded spiderling.

Spiderlings: Give Spiderlings a Zyra-plant esque health bar.

Human form is QoL. Spiderlings change allow spiderlings to survive longer, but when focused die just as fast.

Neurotoxin [Human Q]:

Mana cost decrease. 50/55/60/65/70

This seems more approperiate than all the way up to 100 mana. Also allows her to cast some Qs without mana starving. The damage aspect scales somewhat fine - perhaps a slight hit on rank 4/5 - Elise's scaling when building bruiser/assassin is already really good, and can take this power trade.

Venomous Bite [Spider Q]:

If you want to add more synergy with her spiderlings, you can make all your little spiderlings do a small magic damage nuke when this is activated, and take away a good bit of base damage. This allows the opponent to make a conscious decision whether to kill the spiderlings or not in preperation the second rotation of Elise's spells.

Volatile Spiderling [Human W]:

Early ranks base damage up. Early ranks AP scaling down. Later ranks unchanged.

_I'd suggest increasing the lower ranks base damage and having the later ranks even out to live values. Maybe even lower the AP ratios on lower ranks to compensate, but just give her some waveclear on earlier ranks, without it becoming too strong if she snowballs or leaves it as a one point spell. _

Skittering Frenzy [Spider W]:

Healing removed.

I bet almost no Elise main out there cares much about the healing. Gives her way too much power, in early clears especially, that she rather have elsewhere.

Cocoon [Human E]:

Stun duration is now 1.25/1.35/1.45/1.55/1.65/1.75

1.00 is too little to do a combo on rank1, it needs a little more. However, 2.0 is simply too long considering the cooldown on later ranks, so nerf that a smidgen.

Rappel [Spider E]:

I think this move is fine for an assassin-y Elise, to be honest. I heard there's a bug where it has a little delay in cast since the range change, so perhaps look at that. There's a lot of levers to pull with this spell, but none that seem really useful.

Form Switch:

Movement speed change, a few patches ago, between forms reverted. Cooldown lowered to 3 seconds.

I think the movement speed changes really hurt lane Elise, and I think it is kind of a bad thing to force Elise jungle to move around in Spider Form, as she wants to start a fight in Human Form, kind of an artificial handicap to give her. Regarding the CD change, form switching is an important aspect to Elise, especially later in the game. This change helps her to not be forced into building CDR to stay relevant.

For reference, my Elise build is item 3020 item 3151 item 3116 item 3001 item 3110 and a situational 6th item. 15% scaling CDR blues for full 40% in late-game. Start Flask or Ring.

Anyway, random wall of text, I was bored and wanted to finally get this off my mind. Thanks for reading!

Cheers! Elise

doooh. so bad elise build. that's why people say elise sux.

elise does mixed damage. why the fuck do you buy magic pen on her ? wtf seriously bad ap ratio, elise has the highest ap ratio on the whole fûcking game. THE WHOLE FÛCKING GAME. lategame she has 5 pets attacking at 1.5attack/second with 0.1 ap ratio each. elise in spider form does 0.3ap ratio. It's 0.1*5+0.3=0.8ap ratio per auto attack. and you say bad ap ratio wtf. also her hp sustain is crucial, why the fuck do you say she don't need it. With her sustain she's not stuck to rush warmog. and warmog is a bad item on her because it provide no ap.

elise usually buy mercury boot, athene, zhonya, rylai, banner of command, thornmail, with health/lvl runes you end up with 150mr 250armor and 3000hp. all the item are core, except maybe thornmail. if elise don't buy zonya you can be sure it's a noob elise, because zonya can brain the ennemy multiple time, spider pet continue attacking even if you zonya.

and i tried elise on pbe, she's way too op, they will nerf her a little. because she theorically have 1.3ap ratio @1.5attack speed, that's purely moronic, i killed a pure tank sion with 5.5k hp, 300armor 190mr, in like 3 or 4second.

FistOfSharkiesha6/14/2015, 12:19:45 AM1 votes

I think her biggest issue is that she's a mage/assassin that can't really burst. Her kit rotation takes forever to pull off, and she's dependent on her spiderlings and a few of her own autos after the AS steroid if she wants to do comparable damage to other mages or assassins.

This forces you to build her tanky or risk exploding, which reduces her damage to abysmal levels, which basically makes her a tank with 1 CC ability.

She's having an identity crisis she can't figure out if she's a long range mage, a melee assassin, or a tank, and she doesn't do any of these roles better than other top tier junglers like Sejuani Fiddlesticks and Rhengar.

Xelvi6/14/2015, 12:55:02 PM1 votes

She's godawful right now and there's absolutely no reason to pick her over other junglers.

Tengrichan6/14/2015, 5:17:07 PM1 votes

I would wait with these changes especially with the new reworked AP item on the PBE along with her changes.

Xelvi6/14/2015, 9:18:20 PM1 votes

The healing on her W is the only thing that makes her anywhere near worth picking as a jungler (she's still not worth picking).

UPfreely6/13/2015, 4:35:54 PM1 votes

She's a mage/fighter that played like an assassin who builty tanky. They are trying to stay away from that by buffing her spiders. Also I'm pretty sure they mostly look at her as a jungler, not a laner.

Things I'd like to see: Cacoon having additional effects/duration for landing spider form abilities. Spiders stay in a frenzy when elise leaves spider form, attacking nearby things until they die. Some sort of cooldown refund on her rappel for landing abilities or getting assists/kills(no full resets tho.) I feel like neurotoxin should have some sort of effect other than damage, maybe an attackspeed/movespeed slow. Thematically, I wish she had a web she laid down during rappel.(think vilemaw web, but works like thresh box.)

Just food for thought, I hope it helps.

Aspynn6/13/2015, 4:40:01 PM1 votes

I like to play full AP elise, and I recently played a game where one spiderling with ludens did 75% of each of my enemies' health, it was absurd. I alone was pushing bot and getting kills vs 3 while 5 of my team mates pushed out top. I absolutely love full AP elise, but more so in mid. I feel like top elise in general sort of struggles. She does fantastic against the likes of Zed and LB and Fizz as long as you aren't shit at landing stuns. Her damage is very high if you build for it. Now I'm not saying she doesn't need buffs, as I would love to see her do even more damage than she already does, (and she could use some QOL buffs and just changes,) but ATM I'm not seeing why everyone is complaining about Elise. This is probably because I play mid Elise, and I'm sure it's harder in the jungle.