Before I start I've been playing Elise EXTENSIVELY over the past few weeks (40+ games). I love her as a jungler (though she's a great top as well).

Elise is awesome and though I am glad she got some buff's to her late game scaling there are a few issues that I think are much more important. She works, but she has some kinks that need to be worked out.

First, and most important to me is the delay between switching to spider mode and having your spiders ready to fight. If you haven't played Elise much then you probably haven't noticed. By default when Elise switches to spider form there is a set delay on her spider minions before they will follow/fight. The real issue arises when casting her Q directly after swapping modes. Elise's Q has 2 main purposes. The most obvious is as an assasination/damage ability but the second is to get all of your spiderlings to jump to one target and dps that target. If you Q directly after swapping to spider form then ONLY Elise will make the jump and her spiderlings will be left behind to catch up.

Second, Elise's damage is split between AP and AD. Though normally on a champion such as skarner this is not a bad thing on Elise it conflict's with her playstyle/item build. I'm mainly talking here about her spiderlings doing physical instead of magic damage. It is inherently easier to find a viable M-Pen built then A-Pen on her. Seeing as she does not have any abilities scaling with AD and MANY that scale with AP. Based on the buff's to her AP scaling in the last patch it is hard to believe that anyone could justify buying an armor pen item. Item's such as Haunting Guise and Abyssal Scepter blend very well with Elise and it is a shame that her spiderlings lose a huge amount of damage because they are physical.

Third, and last, her base armor and magic resist are embarrassingly low for a champion seemingly designed to get down and dirty. She arguably has the lowest base and level 30 resistances of any other champion who fills a similar role (other than Galio's MR). It may be argued here that the MR and AR provided by spider form more than fill for these low base values but in my opinion an ability that gives MR and AR should never be an excuse for low base values (in most cases). You have to keep in mind that the lower resistances are the more each point means. Let's look at an example. Your playing a game as Elise in the jungle and you've just managed to finish your armor item to counter their AD top jungle and ADC. Everything is going well in the teamfight untill you have to switch back to human form to get out a stun. The AP mid notices you switch and immediately let's out his combo. Even though your level 18 you only have 30 base magic resist and if they have Sorc Boot's your down to a measly 15. I don;t need to tell you what happen's next. Just as a final thought, the fact that her spiderlings do physical damage does not encourage buying magic pen and therefore an Abyssal Scepter.

Wow, I wrote WAY more than I thought I would. Anyway. Those are my thoughts after MANY games with Elise. Take what you will. A red post would be nice!

tl;dr Just look at the bolded stuff

I've also been playing Elise a lot mainly as top still haven jungled as her yet, and I need to.
I agree with the spiderlings, for they should spawn instantly to attack and they should do magic damage.
It would be nice if she had higher base defenses tbh

Yeah, I've always hated this.
Her spiderlings benefit from your armor penetration stats. Try hybrid penetration runes and/or the armor penetration mastery if this bothers you too much.

Third, and last, her base armor and magic resist are embarrassingly low for a champion seemingly designed to get down and dirty. She arguably has the lowest base and level 30 resistances of any other champion who fills a similar role (other than Galio's MR). It may be argued here that the MR and AR provided by spider form more than fill for these low base values but in my opinion an ability that gives MR and AR should never be an excuse for low base values (in most cases). You have to keep in mind that the lower resistances are the more each point means. Let's look at an example. Your playing a game as Elise in the jungle and you've just managed to finish your armor item to counter their AD top jungle and ADC. Everything is going well in the teamfight untill you have to switch back to human form to get out a stun. The AP mid notices you switch and immediately let's out his combo. Even though your level 18 you only have 30 base magic resist and if they have Sorc Boot's your down to a measly 15. I don;t need to tell you what happen's next. Just as a final thought, the fact that her spiderlings do physical damage does not encourage buying magic pen and therefore an Abyssal Scepter.

Wow, I wrote WAY more than I thought I would. Anyway. Those are my thoughts after MANY games with Elise. Take what you will. A red post would be nice!

tl;dr Just look at the bolded stuff [/QUOTE]


She should totally have natural MR per level in my opinion.

This is the issue. Many would argue that M-Pen is a top stat for elise but her spiderlings are physical

the issue with the spiderlings popping right after you turn to spiderform would lead to a lot of skillshot dodging just by chaning to spiderform and having the lings take the skillshot, i think that is the main reason her spiderlings have a delay.

Though they spawn behind her and the delay on swapping states is a pretty big penalty just to avoid a skillshot. If your being chased well the spiderlings will take the hit's anyway.

if they hadn't buffed q so much i would agree with changed her spiders but now im not sure (she can deal alot of damage atm) my only problem is towers one shoting them and how low their hp is :/ but i guess its to stop her from eating every tower and why is her spider aa animation stupidly long ._. like it looks really cool but unless your using w it takes like 2 sec to aa....

Yeah, im running MR per level quints on her hahaha.

Its worth mentioning that most of the things i mentioned are only onticeable from the perspective of the Elise player themselves.

Having mixed damage isn't necessarily a bad thing. It makes it hard to itemize against your damage. The fact that the spiderlings scale off of AP to do physical damage means you don't have to build hybrid for them to deal damage.