I like Elise as a champ quite a bit.

I've tried her in mid and in jungle.
I've tried straight ap and ap/bruiser. Thus far I prefer ap/bruiser.

Whats the story with ad/bruiser? What is this build getting that I cant accomplish with an ap bruiser build? And why is there such a high backing for the ad version?

The AD version of Elise isn't really a true build. It's more of a trolling build. None of Elise's skills scale off AD, their all scaling off your AP. Building AD/Attack speed with her can work instead of AD/bruiser. I'm not sure how Bruiser can work with her when going AD. But if you get some cooldown reduction items then alot of AD items (Like IE) then it can then work.

Do her spiderlings scale off AD? Never played her, so I dunno.

If they do, then maybe it's like AD Malzahar. Stand there and let your minions do all the work.

When you think of Elise you see a mage who has 3 damage spells, correct? Q in both Spider and Human form and W in Human form are her ONLY 3 damaging spells that scale off of AP, which is reasonable because it's the same for pretty much every other mage in existence except for mordekaiser.

Now AD champions aren't quite set up like that, take Olaf for example - he has 1 skill that scales off of AD, Fiora has two. Ashe has 1. Caitlyn has 2. They aren't mages, they autoattack for a majority of their damage. (Tristana doesn't even HAVE spells that scale off of AD, Is she a mage like elise?)

Now Elise has a good 4 things that help her autoattack better. Her Q in spider form cost no mana and scales off of 8% of the targets missing HP and is a great short distance gap closer for your spiderlings.

Her W in spider form gives her incredible lane sustain and autoattack damage increasing her attack speed by a SHOCKING 140%, granted it's only 3 seconds.

Her E allows her to either stun an opponent, avoid aggro from the tower, escape into the jungle, initiate, or chase down a dying opponent. (Now that's a fun skill)

Her R allows her to turn into a spider, although she foregoes the benefit of extra "on hit" damage that mage elise's would enjoy, the free 25 MR and armor are still there along with the extra 200 DPS, not to mention her spiderlings benefit from Armor Pen make up for it completely.

It's not a troll build, no more than AD Tristana at the very least.

Not only does her 3 spells scale adequately off of AP, but so does her onhit damage and her spider onhit damage.

Elise does NOT have 4 things that make her autoattack better. A melee-range nuke is not an autoattack improver.
She has a very short duration Attack speed booster, and a gapcloser in spider form. In addition her SPIDER FORM gets minor extra onhit damage based on AP (not her human form).


AD Elise totally craps on her 5 different AP scaling sources and tries to turn a squishy mage into an AD bruiser, except without the survivability and AD scaling skills to back it up.