Can we look into reworking Ahri's W?

Ahri's w has a 300 range for it to burst, and around 500 range if you want your w orbs to go in one by one. For an ap squishy carry it is a very low range skill. Of course because she has mobility she should have something to put herself into risk. However, even if she does put herself into such a small range her w skill has a base of 224 + 0.48 ap ratio. Compare this to any low range ap skill. This is EXTREMELY weak. This is even weaker than malphite's Q being 270 + 0.60 ap ratio with a movement speed slow and higher range of 625.

The problem with W skill... it has always been the skill that Riot targeted for nerfs. It has always been w skill and r skill together when nerfs arrive. Even though the base damage on the skill is so low, why does Riot always target it? It is because it always worked so well with many items. For the recent nerfs, gunblade was the reason Riot nerfed Ahri's w and r ratio. Gunblade has 250 + 0.30 ap ratio. At early lvls it outdamages ahri's w(also has a slow) and it has 700 range. It is a nice item as it gives basically another w damage with a slow that you can use to reliably land a charm. However, even with the combo(w + gunblade + ulti) Ahri could not fully kill a target unless she lands her other skill shots. At least it was usually enough to burst her target. People found this oppressing because they could not dodge her skill shots. Since Ahri is not supposed to be a strong champ in soloq or competitive, Riot decided to nerf her.

Because of many items, Ahri's kit was nerfed. She became much more reliant on those item if she wanted to do damage. Her kit was significantly nerfed up to the point where even if she survives fights and become fed, she will not offer as much damage as any other apc. It just feels not worth for her to get fed despite not having a strong early, mid, or late. She is safe early, but weak. Good mid/ Bad late. Her only good moment is her midgame, and the tradeoff for it is safety after lvl 6. However compare her to Zed who has super strong early, mid, and average late, it is not fair why Ahri should be weaker than Zed in every phase of the game. Ahri's roam is as good as any ap mage who does not have roaming mobility like Aurelion, Taliyah, Twisted Fate and yet her damage is put lower than those roamers when Ahri getting fed has no pros and that getting her team fed is better than she getting fed.

Adding a skill expression into Ahri's w so that if she does well she will do much more and if she fails she will do as much as she is doing now. I'm not sure how to make it work, but that is for Riot to decide :)

Reducing the cool down of w will be a great start. Its damage is already garbage and the range on it will never hit back line except when you are trying to burst. So making her w like a good spammable skill against tanks will be a good start.

EDIT: Ahri's w cd is 5 sec late game, for how weak it is compared to so many other champ's skill, i think reducing it to 4 will be a good start.