Why NO ONE Plays: Elise | League of Legends

Elise used to be one of the most ubiquitous and threatening junglers in the game roughly a decade ago for having just about everything a jungler could ask for. But over the years her presence has declined significantly to the point where she's one of the least played junglers in the game. For today's episode of Why NO ONE Plays, we'll be discussing why.

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[BIAKaboose]

That sad moment when "The Spider Queen" has 4 spiders, meanwhile Broodmother in DotA 2 pulls up to the party with 80 of the things and eats your base

[wesker]

I was an Elise one trick for 2 years. I love her
This video sums up exactly what her problems are. She feels outdated, one dimensional, and other champs do her job better. A midscope update would be enough to make her good again.
Sadly, I think Riot lowkey forgot about her ever since Evelynn rework came out. She replaced Elise entirely: lore wise, being the sexy femme fatale, AP female assasin jungler, and for God sake they're names are even similar. The only difference is early game Elise beats Evelynn, but then mid/late Evelynn does her job 10x times better.

[icebird]

giving elise the naafiri thing with more summons= more damage thing a lot of sense since you are losing that damage everytime you swap and it also puts a lot more importance to your ability rotation in human form in order to get the max amount of spiders

[arkokroeger]

What I noticed about some of the newer champs is that they have usually a a bit flatter curve in terms of scaling than some of the older ones. Asol and smolder have strong late games but their early game is at least somewhat save, while briar and naafiri have tons of scaling to compensate for their classes usually performing worse in late game team fights. The separation in early and late game champs isn't as strict anymore, and many champs feel probably more forgiving than her.
I mean, heck, even belveth, despite her infinite scaling, does rather well in the early game, although that might be more because she is 200 years.

[Koko-Katori]

Pray for more shapeshifters. One of my favorite archetypes. ADC Shapeshifter please and ty!

[AvalenFrost]

I used to main Elise when she first came out. I played her top lane because of the % HP damage, she was a tank eater. After they refocused her for jungle, she never felt the same.

[SangoProductions]

Basically: A long time ago, she was broken. She had a stun, substantial assassination power, some moderate sustained dps and the ability to freely remove tower aggro.
Now, everyone has that on their Q, basically. The turret aggro thing is probably still in the game, because she's so outclassed by much more cohesive and well designed kits, so she doesn't even get the Riot aggro over what they went to lengths to prevent other (especially newer reworks) from doing.

[Arethusa]

For a very long time, I always wondered why Elise is classified as a Diver instead of an Assassin personally speaking

[bepisboye]

"Champion that gets power/feature crept by the latest gameplay changes and champion releases, requiring an emergency rework or otherwise buff but not getting one for years after they've already been pushed out of the meta"? Many such cases.

Elise has been one of my favourite designs both character and kit wise, having a clear distinction between control mage and assassin, with the satisfying fluidity of being able to control when you transform and having abilities between the forms' kits enable each other (human Q %current HP damage allowing spider Q to gain %missing HP damage faster, human E stunning for easy and free DPS in spider form with W and Q). She used to be an easy answer to late game junglers and comps and fit in well with a lot of your own comps despite her arguably very basic abilities on each form's kit.

Nowadays, with how easy leads and gold are to get, and items like Serrated Dirk giving insane early stats, she just feels straight up bad, especially being an AP assassin (or bruiser if you fancy that), as AP item balance is super fragile. AD champs have the benefit of picking from AD + lethality, AD + crit, AD + health, AD + CDR, AD + armour/MR, or building tank items without losing much damage. AP champs have AP + pen, AP + haste, or AP + health, and that lack of choice feels REALLY bad on a crept-out-of-meta champ like Elise because the less her kit design contributes to her power, the more item reliant she gets, and her losing a shit load of AP or health because a Riot needed to slap down an HP stacking mage, or some other item abuser like Brand and Zyra. It shows how terrible her state is when we've been in an AP jungler meta for a split and a half and she's barely seeing a rise in pickrate (I think she gained like .3%? It's still abysmal compared to the Brand and Sejuani you'll see almost every game.)

Early game champions (as in champions designed SPECIFIALLY to have a strong early game) feel like they're a dying breed because there's just so much damage and stats in the game now that even a Heimerdinger, Veigar, or Jax are strong at 1 item now. I mean, hell, the premier late game mage from the old era, Vlad, is strong in early game right now. It just makes me super sad that Riot is obsessed with the 20 minute meta and doesn't invest in champions that won't generate skin sales or make epic proplay moments (despite that being the thing Elise used to do anyways). I really wish Riot would take the easy way out and issue referendums and Q&A with champion main communities to best determine how to handle their champions balance becuase as of right now, even the really smart players who know exactly what's wrong with a champion or can list all their bugs by heart are just outright ignored by Riot while they push their own clearly out-of-touch visions (see: the latest shitshow with K'Sante, the incoming rework being very clearly toxic and the wrong direction for the champion, all clearly outlined and decried by the K'Sante mains, and Phreak or Phroxon just says there is no war in Ba Sing Se...)

[CommanderSussy]

Range Form: Battle Mage, slowing them down and keeping them away from escaping your webs
Melee Form: Bruiser, you have come to close to me now. fight fight fight fight bite bite bite bite.

[llllSNEAKllll]

I think a mid-scope update, like how you mentioned that could turn her into a bruiser, would be a very good idea. Elise has a sustain effect in her spider form on her auto attacks; I think making it scale with bonus HP rather than AP would help, and having her spiderlings apply on-hit effects (probably with 50% reduced potency) instead of spell effects would help too, or maybe having a gimmick that allows her to summon more spiderlings in combat.
Fun fact: Naafiri's dogs' attack speed scales with 100% of Naafiri's attack speed, but Elise's spiderlings only attack as fast as her ranks in W. That definitely needs to be changed if Elise is to be a bruiser

[sadcasm]

Every time u release a why no one plays video I feel a calling in my heart to play that champion

[moobo]

She on my list of champions that in theory would be right up my alley but I never actually play. I'm a top lane player so I've always wanted to see her go up there as a sort of ap bruiser but a minion focused caster type would also be cool.

My suggestions are increase the spiderlings, change her human W completely (not fun or interactive to use or play against), increase her self healing, make human Q feel like an ability, give her higher base stats, lower her early level ability scaling but have them scale harder with levels, make her spider E feel more intuitive to use and reward her more for using it on enemies.

[mozzy]

"Qiyana who can wipe out entire teams with her ult"

You don't gotta rub salt into the wound Vars

[jususi]

Every1 plays elise when its a 0 farming spamganking meta, when its not there is no point to play her.

[matilo]

5:08 "tower diving has never been easier" old reworked pantheon empowered e: let me introduce myself

[Tdragyion]

I have a lot of success playing her bruiser top lane. Her lane bullying pressure is pretty substantial. I would say a weakness of hers is fighting un-interactive top laners such as a kayle or nasus, but if you capitalize on the early game weakness of those types of champions easy snowball lane and swap the build path to assassin mage. The most successful way of play for me has been go in with the mindset of bruiser and make changes based on game state and other factors.

[jureambroz]

Good video. The question really comes down to: why pick her ? Almost everything she does another champion does better. There are better divers, assassins, stun bots. Elise in 2024 simply has nothing which is ironic since she is a shapeshifter.

[xarao]

Wish she could be more like broodmother from dota 2, it's the only reason i really play it lmao, the fantasy of being a scary, cute-ish Wolf spider surrounded by webs and threatening ANYTHING and ANYONE within it's territory while summoning waves of spiderlings to help her is very appealing to me, like, really, i just wish broodmother was in league, and elise in dota 2, broodmother is just WAY more unique and fun and would perfectly fit the jungle role, being able to freely traverse terrain with it's webs and do objectives with the spiderlings, WHY GOD, WHY MUST I PLAY DOTA 2 ONLY TO ENJOY A SINGLE. SPIDER. CHARACTER.

[styrfry]

They could give Elise a great niche by replacing one of her boring abilities (Spider W/Human Q) with that AoE spiderweb thingie you mentioned at the end, with the only effect applied to enemies being 'grounded' to simulate being "caught in the spider's web" or whatever. IIRC only Cassio and Singed can apply Grounded, it would be great to get another user of it to help with all the movement/dash creep. Imagine if Cocoon could hit an additional target or do more damage or have an aoe slow when used on a target inside the spiderweb ability?

That would help Elise be suited towards "anti-mobility" like how Vex was supposed to, but it makes much more sense on a spider than whatever shadow yordle thing Vex is supposed to be.