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Elise human form Q: Should this skill be replaced?

Spiders Do Dance··9 votes·1,573 views

Okay,

I am one of the few hardcore Elise mains (I say "few" based on the data provided by champion.gg - only about 4% of Elise players have over 125 games on her), and I've been playing her ever since her release, with a few lapses. Though, I've been playing her mostly toplane, which makes me a scum of the earth, but that is beside the point.

The matter I want to bring up is Elise's human form Q - an ability which, honestly, I think should be reworked into an entirely different skill. Here are a couple of reasons why:

  1. Even when it was good, it was an extremely boring an uninteractive skill. It is a single-target, point-click, medium-range magic damage nuke which has no distinguishing features whatsoever, maybe aside from the current %hp damage component. Therefore, it is a skill that never felt especially satisfying to use, not ever created situations were the use of it could feel any skilful. As such, it feels like lacklustre fragment of design: it has a role on Elise's kit and fills it, but does so in an ultimately uninteresting and not very fun way.

  2. Because of the above, it is a skill that cannot be allowed to be strong. It is an epitome of counterplayless power. Those here who remember Elise on release will note that it was the only ability of hers that never got buffed, aside from (IIRC) AP ratio buff post-release, back when people felt like the spider is underpowered. And what happened later, we all distinctly remember.

Obviously, it quickly became apparent that such a skill - again, point-click hp% nuke - cannot be strong, or else it becomes overwhelming. Because if it is potent, it becomes - nomen omen - toxic to deal with, allowing Elise to almost freely poke for significant amounts of damage which scale decently well as the game progresses even without buying AP because of the current hp% component. As such, this skill has seen numerous nerfs, targeting both its base damage, as well as its hp% damage.

  1. This, in turn, made this skill very weak. In its current form, it does little damage, scales really poorly, and while providing Elise with some additional form of damage on her kit, feels not worth the mana it costs to cast.

  2. All things combined make it a skill that was justifiably nerfed into a state where, like Poppy, it cannot allowed to be strong. And just like with Poppy, it is not a condition that can be fixed by number-tweaking. It necessitates a ground-up rework.

It is an ability that should be removed from Elise's kit not for the sake of power, but rather because of its gameplay being just bad. I have no idea on how to actually do so - I am not a game designer - but I feel like it is a necessary action. Furthermore, it seems that at least someone at Riot agrees with me, given the change this skill received some time ago on PBE. The change did not go through (thankfully - I did not like it), instead replaced by yet another nerf, which, while entirely warranted, made it just a bad skill.

So, to Riot, to whoever reads it: I believe that Elise has at least this coming. Give her a better Q. Not stronger, just more pleasant to use. And less troublesome from balance perspective.

9 Comments

Hard4Hamsters3 votes

I really liked the idea that was on the PBE where they got rid of the %HP damage and made it a DOT ability. Thematically it makes more sense on an ability called Neurotoxin. I was really looking forward to it honestly as I think it would make her Q easier to balance as right now, a lot of people think it's overloaded to have a %current and %missing health ability in the same champion as it is good at chunking high hp targets and good at assassinating low hp targets. I don't think it would hurt her that much as she has plenty of damage in her Spider Q and her human W can be leveled 2nd now so it brings some damage as well. The DOT would also be good with her core items in Liandry's and Rylai's heavily benefitting from DOT abilities.

I think it's a shame that they just nerfed the damage on it and I hope they reconsider this change to Q in the future.

Dr Poro1 votes

I agree, making it a DoT ability was a nice approach, but I didn't really like the way they did it on the PBE.

What I would prefer is that it would be a DoT for say 3 or 4 ticks, and AA as a spider would increase the ticks to a max of 6 or 7. Anyways, having a long range point and click damage ability can only be really healthy if it interacts with the rest of your kit. For example tristana has her charge, but she needs to AA afterwards to make it deal significant damage.

I feel like Elise human form Q should be some kind of Venom that makes the enemy more vulnerable to her other abilities or attacks.

Hard4Hamsters1 votes

Yeah I thought of something like that where maybe during the DOT ticks it could add a debuff to do addtional damage when she uses Venomous Bite and then they could reduce Venomous Bite's damage a little bit when it is not during the debuff. It would reward going for the full combo and switching in and out of forms throughout a teamfight rather than sticking to human form for a defensive stunbot style or staying in spiderform to chase down enemies harder. I know she does a lot of form switching already if you know how to weave in and out of a teamfight as Elise, but this would emphasize that playstyle. The only thing that I could see being bad about this is that it would be challenging to balance her Spider Q around the human Q as it would likely be stronger than her current state when she uses both forms' Q in conjunction, but it shouldn't be incredibly stronger as it is easy to do so maybe only a very slight buff when she uses both forms but a pretty strong nerf when using only one form's Q.

Hupsis1 votes

Yeah, the DOT version was very nice. I liked the low cd which allowed her to spread it to multiple targets. Only downside was the huge mana consumption.

I thought of something cool that could enhance her spider theme.

Human Q - Elise infests a target enemy with a spider egg. The egg grows over 4 seconds dealing a bit of damage each second and slowing the target for 10% (stacking up to 3 times with additional eggs). When the egg hatches, a spiderling will follow the target and deal magic damage with its auto attacks (same spiders as her spider form spiderlings). 2 second cooldown (half against cocooned target).

LankPants1 votes

I really liked the idea that was on the PBE where they got rid of the %HP damage and made it a DOT ability. Thematically it makes more sense on an ability called Neurotoxin.

It was good but one thing I didn't like was that they made it incredibly weak against anything that wasn't a jungle creep. I'd definitely prefer to see the spell have an actual impact against players even if it meant Elise needed nerfs in other areas (1.6 second rank 1 stun)

ReshiKillim1 votes

I agree, she does need a new Q. Before the nerf, I literally pressed 3 buttons to steamroll the enemy ADC before they could do anything. Q R Q, they were dead. I've only played Elise a few times when she was free to play, and boy it was hellish for enemy team. Tanks would melt, ADC's would die in 1-2 seconds because the strong QQ combo was so ridiculous when built full damage.

With my wholehearted agreement, I also think her humanform Q should be entirely reworked so that it can be balanced well.

Only Play Darius1 votes

I honestly wouldn't mind a completely different human form Q. It doesn't even seem to do that much damage honestly, the only reason I ever actually use it is to charge a spiderling, and I know it can't ever be a strong skill because otherwise it would become obnoxious near-uncounterable poke for top lane Elise.

Saianna1 votes

I wouldn't call it as a "nuke". I might suck at Elise, but often I've seen it deals slightly more damage than her AA... Just wasting mana.

Wasabo1 votes

It would be cool if she could place webs around to slow/stun people, but that wouldn't work well with what she already has

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