she's fine after the buff too.

She seems fine.

Elise has some solid early game, mediocre mid and modest late.

Where is the imbalance? nowhere.

She is only dangerous if you are dumb enough to get hit by QWE combo every time.

I've played Elise almost exclusively since her release. originally she was fine as an AD bruiser but her AP spec was falling off late mid-late game so she really wasn't viable as an AP in any game that went longer than 25min.
The new ratios put her in a great place damage ways as an AP. I do think she needs a slightly longer ranged melee and/or human Q range (about 50 units would surfice I think), but otherwise I would say she's in a good position now

In terms of jungling, until the S3 items changes/additions, I don't see her as viable as AP, only as AD jungle bruiser due to the limiting item choices as AP compared to those available as AD junglers.

Once those changes come though I will give her a go as a jungler again. She has all the abilities to make her an amazing ganker and counter jungler, she just can't keep up with the cost of an AP route...or more specificially the lack of good intermediate/prequisite utility items.

before the buffs elise was really weak and underpowered her only decent lane was top since she's terrible at mid and even then she was subpar the only thing she had going for her was being immune to single target skill shots thanks to her spiderlings.

I personally think that she is in a perfect spot right now. I've seen a few streams (Elementz comes to mind), in which high level players are saying she's very strong or OP. While I am not a high level player, I must disagree. While I don't want to sound arrogant, I think Elise is a similar situation to Darius in the sense that she counters a lot of the popular top champions (but not Irelia from what I've experienced, dat true damage), and this automatically makes people assume that she's broken.

Yes her Q damage when built with mpen is very high. But the rest of her human form kit is very VERY easy to juke. Her stun is a rather slow skillshot with a very clear animation when it is being fired. Her W (as awesome of a skill as it is) is very easily dodge-able with any minions around. I find that people need to play against Elise the same way you would play against a Khazix in lane.

Don't fight her without minions around. Just having minions in the lane with you already decreases her ability to land her full human form combo on you (which is required in order to burst you down in spider form). While the Q does hit hard, the closer you get to half HP the less damage it deals. And once you hit 50%, if she wants to deal good damage to you she needs to be in spider form. This means you either have to let her walk up to you (or stun you), or use rappel in order to get her spider Q.

Essentially the keys to beating an Elise in lane is to dodge her 2 skill shots, and to always engage her when you have minions that can block her spider bomb.

She'll be wild when season 3 rolls around.

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