"The spider demands sacrifice."

Elise is a champion who had seen play in both season 3 and season 4, season 3 where she was played in roles other than jungle and season 4 where she was mainly a jungler. In recent days, she sees very little play (1.09% pick rate) and has one of the lowest win rates of all champions (42.5%)*. In patch 5.6, Elise received some buffs and this drilled up the question of whether or not Elise was a champion that could potentially resurge in season 5. In this post, we'll discuss whether Elise is worth picking up now or if junglers should just stick to playing current power picks (e.g. Sejuani/Nidalee/Vi/etc).

First off, let's discuss what patch 5.6 brought to the table. In this patch, Elise loses 5 movement speed in human form in exchange for +10 movement speed in her spider form. In addition, she received a slight quality of life change to her E. Now she can right click in the air to descend on the target instead of having only the option of pressing E again. Finally, her missile speed on her cocoon was increased from 1,450 to 1,600 meaning that players have slightly less time to react to a well placed cocoon.

Elise patchlog changes

While at first glance these changes seem decent, they do not address some of the main problems of the champion. As of right now, Elise has two or three realistic build paths.

1) Mage build: Magus enchantment (your choice on jungler item), Liandry's Torment, Sorcerer Boots, Void Staff, Rylai's, Zhonya's Hourglass. (build can obviously vary but you don't need high AP since Elise does % health damage and prefers penetration over flat AP).

Example build:

2) Mage Bruiser build: Magus or Cinderhulk enchantment, Liandry's Torment (get it late game and sit on Haunting Guise for awhile), Sorcerer Boots, Tank items (e.g. Randuin's/Frozen Heart/Locket/Banshee's Veil/etc).

Example build:

3) CDR Tank build: Cinderhulk enchantment, Lucidity boots/Defensive boots (Mercury Treads or Ninja Tabis), Tank items (e.g. Randuin's/Frozen Heart/Locket/Banshee's Veil/etc). 40% CDR build with masteries.

Example build:

Each of these builds have their own perks but each of them have a lot of severe problems as well.

The Mage build renders Elise far too squishy and doesn't allow Elise to do as much damage as other Mages mid to late. In addition, Elise is mainly single target burst so she can only really kill one person with her combo.

The Mage Bruiser build makes it so you still have basic penetration as Elise (Haunting Guise/Sorcerer Boots) but build tank stats to allow for more survivability/utility. The problem with this build is again that Elise doesn't do much damage mid to late game. It's slightly more useful in the mid to late game since you won't be getting popped and was one of the more common builds for Elise in Season 4.

The CDR Tank build renders Elise a cocoon CC bot. The problems with this is that Elise basically does negligible damage mid to late game and is only useful for a single target CC spell. That in comparison to other tank junglers (e.g. Sejuani/Nautilus) makes Elise seem a little lackluster.

The common problem with each of these Elise builds is something that is a problem with Elise as a champion right now. Currently, she just falls off way too hard in a season where it's rare to see sub 30 minute games. While the changes that Elise received in patch 5.6 were well received by Elise players, she needs something more to become a viable pick. In my opinion, this is either a full revert or a partial revert of the changes in patch 4.4. Specifically, the changes to her Q damage.

Reverting these two nerfs, or more specifically the nerfs to her base damage, would help Elise out just a bit in the mid to late game. Last season, the problem with Elise was that she was too overbearing in the early/mid game but fell off incredibly hard late. This season, since she deals hardly any damage mid to late game, she has an OK early game, a mediocre mid game, and a horrible late game. Giving her a bit of love in base damage would make it so she can at least deal a bit more damage and I feel that would make Elise a much better pick. As of now, she's not in the best of places.

*Data taken from http://www.lolking.net/champions/