Out Of Favor : Elise, The Spider Queen

[Credit for the picture go to chocolatenyanma, here’s a link to her DeviantArt page! http://chocolatnyanma.deviantart.com/ ]

After being the most prized champion during the season 4 LCS, Elise vanished from the competitive scene. At the same time, her win rate in ranked games over most elos is sitting around an awful 42%. What happened to the Spider Queen?

On patch 4.4, Riot slammed their banhammer on the anthropomorphic spider-lady. Here are the changes that remain nearly untouched as of today.

Q – Neurotoxin

Base Damage 40/80/120/160/200 ? 40/75/110/145/180

Maximum % health damage vs. monsters 60/120/180/240/300 ? 50/75/100/125/150

Q – Venomous Bite

Base Damage 60/110/160/210/260 ? 60/100/140/180/220

Maximum % health damage vs. monsters 60/120/180/240/300 ? 50/75/100/125/150

 E – Cocoon

Stun duration 1.5 seconds ? 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds

 E – Rappel

Cooldown 26/24/22/20/18 seconds ? 26/23/20/17/14 seconds

 R – Spider Form

Spiderling Health (Rough Values) 90~260 ? 85~390

Spiderling Health (Real Values)

90/100/110/120/130/140/150/160/170/180/190/200/210/ 220/230/240/250/260 ? 85/95/105/115/125/135/145/160/175/190/210/230/250/ 275/300/325/355/390

That’s a ton of information, so let me resume them. Elise Q receives heavy nerfs towards monsters, around a 50% cut, while in human form it’s a tiny bit stronger while in spider form it gets weaker towards the late game. Her E in human form receives a duration nerf on the lower levels of the skill, from 1.5 second to 1 second. Her spiderling HP are nerfed in the early game but are stronger in the late game. In the same season, at patch 4.13, she then receives a width nerf on her cocoon, her only cc ability. Riot said that it was to create a weakness in a now priority pick in competitive play, to reduce her consistency. Reduce it they did, and now she’s far from a priority pick in both competitive and casual play.

Mid lane

What exactly caused the champion to become an anomaly in champion select nowadays? Those nerfs aimed her early game strength, and at the same time her late game damage. Her Q in spider form, Venomous Bite, got nerfed heavily, and the top laners and mid laners building her as a mage aren’t dealing as much damage as before, and are getting outscaled by other mid laners. She’s also an odd fit in the current meta, with the range of her spells being lower than most control mages she will face. The assassins finding their way through some compositions will outdamage her if they can get close to her. She just can’t play in the mid lane anymore.

Top lane

In the top lane, the meta isn’t very kind to Elise either, with tanks with a lot of utility being at the top of the table. Gnar, Maokai, Sion, they all are strong frontliners. Hecarim, one of the most contested pick, is a carry top laner in it’s own right, but played with smite and Cinderhulk, he becomes a strong tank too. The picks similar to Elise would be Rumble, with power spikes in damage around the mid game, but then the lack of an Ultimate for Elise makes her weaker than Rumble.

Jungle

Her nerfs in the jungle is putting Elise in a weird place at the moment, with her falling off pretty heavily in the later parts of the game in both damage output and tanking ability. Compared to Evelynn,Sejuani, Nunu or Gragas, in Health, Magic Resist and Armor per level she gets lower amounts, and even no amounts of magic resist per level. Even Rek’Sai, that is considered more of a skirmisher gets higher tanky stat simply by leveling. Those stats put Elise behind even before that she can itemize.

Elise is considered as one of the lower tiers by many sites, on websites like metalol.net, lol.metasrc.com and nerfplz.com. She isn’t recommended to pick up if you don’t play her already, and is effective in the most expert hands only.

The Spider Queen can still be played, but isn’t one of the strong picks right now. Maybe with some buffs, maybe with some items changes, but as of right now, she is in the lower tiers of jungler, mid laners and top laners. I would even go ahead and say that as she stands right now, she’s in the lower tiers of champions. With champions like Jayce receiving a tentative change with his two set of skills recently, maybe that’s a viable avenue to fix Elise issues in the late game. For those unaware of those changes, i’ll add a link below that includes Jayce new non-maxable ultimate.

 http://www.surrenderat20.net/2015/06/patch-511-notes.html

Thanks for reading, see you all next week with another Out Of Favor.

HayTea.