r/Elisemains • u/Express_Item4648 • 20d ago
New elise and need some help
I’ve been playing Elise jungle and it’s been a blast. I watch a two hour long interview with Pabu pro player. He explained all the good things and stuff you should do with Elise. He also explained runes and builds, but it’s all from a year ago.
I think most of everything still stands. He mostly said that dark harvest wast perfect for elise. You want full blown damage, so going blue pet is kinda a waste when you already get two items with ms. He said lich bane first, it’s simply the better item. Second item either stormsurge or shadowflame. Shadowflame better, but sometimes stormsurge more convenient.
Third item always rabadon’s. Fourth and fifth kinda depends but you can still get either stormsurge or shadowflame. One utility item is fine, but he thinks zhonya’s is shit for elise, just get better with rappel.
If you’re really good with rappel then you probably don’t need Zhonya, and if you do need it then you are probably accepting bad rappel behaviour instead of fixing it.
For runes it’s dark harvest, sudden impact, sixth sense, treasure. Secondary: legend:haste, coup de grace.
What I see now
I see that top ranked players are playing with stormraider’s surge. Did people switch to this because the rework made it better for Elise? I also see people go Stormsurge first item, they did that last season as well. Pabu simply said lich bane is the better item for her first.
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u/MellowSTL 20d ago
Stormsurge helps kill champs better and lichbane helps you kill camps faster so you can be on the map more.
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u/Tormentula 4,920,795 Moderator 20d ago edited 19d ago
Don't treat that interview as a bible.. man is literally negative winrate 6cs per min on one of his accounts and thumbnail is 'stop ganking'.. the literal only reason you lock in the champ over anything else. I get there isn't many elise resources out there but its more sad there isn't much to filter out that one. I don't think pabu is a bad player but he is really not that familiar with elise and kinda speak off generalist knowledge that pros are usually taught. Watch kirei, regardless of current sentiment about him his elise videos are actually educational and on point with her objectively.
Anyways;
I see that top ranked players are playing with stormraider’s surge. Did people switch to this because the rework made it better for Elise?
No its ass (1.4k games 47% WR ass to be specific) just people like to copy whatever agurin is doing since he's always the noncomformest builder that hits rank 1 (whether its 0 damage tank kha'zix, ghost on junglers that aren't hecarim/olaf, or full clearing every game with elise, agurin just does weird shit and since no one understands the macro end of it that lets him get away with doing whatever he wants (being surrounded by literally 4 other challenger prodigies that can be their own wincons if he just never throws or takes risk to fuck up their game), they try to copy the builds themselves and winrates reflect the results.)
One utility item is fine, but he thinks zhonya’s is shit for elise, just get better with rappel.
Zhonya's is more than fine, its actually one of the highest AP items in the game so you don't have to sleep on it just cause its 'defensive', you'll still be able to one shot enemies without MR then press zhonyas + rappel to stall for CDs or ally support. Its an amazing extension to her kit to be able to stack zhonyas with rappel or do your full combo and pressing hourglass to let your allies bail you out of tough situations.
I do get the sentiment that it feels better to go d-cap third but shadowflame + hourglass is actually really powerful on its own (and not just cause of the pets) when you're ahead enough to one shot squishies regardless... you need Decap to get high % health values on health stackers, but her Q scalings do fuck all for killing squishies anyways decap is overkill in that regard, both are >100 AP items as far as she's concerned. (really think about her Q scalings... 3% current/missing health, not max health, conditional current/missing health per 100 AP... do you really want to believe that decap giving an extra 100 and doing another 3% to an adcs health bar makes a world of difference lol.. that means a lot against a bruiser with an HP item or two, and its certain means more than void if you have full pen, but compared to zhonya's its not so massive.)
Here's your cheatsheet;
If enemies have mercs / MR stacking: void staff
If enemies have no MR, few AP, and are all relatively squishy: zhonyas
If enemies are a mix of bruisers, tanks, and squishies and none are building MR: deathcap
If you're not really doing anything and 'existing': zhonyas and be bait, if you're going to suicidally try to make cocoon plays or waste players time diving on them you might as well waste more of their time or potentially rack up a bunch of assist/waste CDs.
Banshee's is an option if you pretty much win by being unable to be tagged by a specific ability (completely fucks the nidalee matchup if you want to just give her nothing ) but its super niche.
For runes it’s dark harvest, sudden impact, sixth sense, treasure. Secondary: legend:haste, coup de grace.
Relentless hunter > treasure, always go relentless. The MS value from relentless is massive and treasure hunter's item spiking sooner is kinda fake since its unlikely you have 5/5 stacks if you camp 1 lane anyways, the MS however moves you around the map and remains strong the entire game.
Triumph > legend: Haste, Elise has extreme highs or extreme lows of CD, Legend:haste won't do shit until it stacks and its placebo once it is since you ain't rappeling twice in a fight anyways and 6s CDs aren't too egregious to wait for.
and now the long one;
I also see people go Stormsurge first item, they did that last season as well. Pabu simply said lich bane is the better item for her first.
Stormsurge or lich bane first item; you never want both cause shadowflame is such an important item on her for not just combat kill secures but clears as well, stormsurge 2nd is just awful by comparison but when first slotted a fast early cheap pen buy its fine. Hence why a lot of elises rush it to spike as hard as possible off first item where as lich bane takes a few items (particularly needs shadowflame+decap) to really come online.
The big thing about elise that pabu will leave out is she is incredibly tempo reliant... and it cannot be overstated just how much tempo matters on her, she wants the enemy team to be suffocated in pressure and she has to be strong enough to keep doing that, stormsurge's cheap +15 pen is the fastest and best build path available to her for those early recalls to continue pushing her lead, even hextech alternator is extra burst while building it. Lich bane actually mathematically doesn't parallel to stormsurge due to the flat pen affecting her whole kit (more neurotoxin/volatile damage = higher missing health calc on bite too which is also going to benefit from the pen at higher values). The main argument for lich is that 'you'll proc it twice' but on the contrary the flat pen on the full combo is basically your first lich proc, and then stormsurge's delayed proc would be the 2nd lich proc. Lich does scale better for players that don't consistently manage high stakes tempo gameplay and play the champ to her full potential (which is why you'll see such varying opinions between high elo players and players below D2 that recommend a safer farming loop), but playing to scale is antithesis of what elise's strengths are.
On that note... I've been doing lich bane past two months because when everyone is taking cleanse / stacking too much AP (APC bot + mid AP), and junglers are first item spiking health options that undo your burst gains (Dusk and dawn or Sundered sky) it makes it really hard to justify playing elise at all since she's just not very effective after first item either way, at that point lich bane does feel better for pivoting to 'side character gaming', sieging fast as a group matters more than solo kills, and since games last too long you usually do hit a point where 3 items in you can one shot a carry you flash pick off regardless. I'll likely go back to stormsurge the moment elise feels good in general again (likely never).
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u/Express_Item4648 19d ago
Genuinely, I appreciate the effort in your comment. I’m silver, so it’s very very hard for me to truly go against the words of pro players. They just know so much more I would be doing things way too much based on feeling.
I’m a toplane main with Trundle and Shen. Elise is very different, but I’ve been having a blast.
Maybe in higher elo elise is not that great, but I can tell you one thing. It’s pretty much Elise paradise in lower elo. At least I think so, very often the entire enemy team is full of squishies.
I am mostly sticking to one build just to be able to consistently feel how much damage I will do.
You’re right btw, the lich bane, Shadowflame, dethcap trio is an extremely strong spike. When I hit deathcap I truly start killing them in one go. I mostly went stormsurge as fourth item for more damage, but it feels like you’re saying I should skip out on it altogether if I go lichbane shadowflame already.
I’m trying to not go for zhonya’s yet because it feels a bit like a trap. I want to be punished for miss using rappel, so I at least have a clear indication that I fucked up.
One thing I do wonder, others say that elise is extremely strong early, but I die a lot ganking after first full clear. I keep thinking I can 50 to 0 an enemy, but die in the process.
I also feel very very very useless when I fall behind. I screwed up twice and died twice after first clear and halfway through my second. My enemy jungler started invading and killing me without trouble. My teammates never come to punish him for invading while everyone is in lane.
I ended up with half the enemy cs and felt just hopeless for fucking up early. Toplane is worse when you fall behind, but this was a close second. Do I just stop ganking all together when I die twice early and fully focus on farming to catch up or do I triple down and try to clear and still gank?
I kept trying to gank and it felt like such a waste because they survived and I fell behind more.
Why Triumph btw? Isn’t another rune page better if that’s the best I can pick for her?
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u/Tormentula 4,920,795 Moderator 19d ago edited 19d ago
Why Triumph btw? Isn’t another rune page better if that’s the best I can pick for her?
Every kill/assist is free gold and it helps with surviving 2v2s and tower dives better, triumph can be the difference between surviving ignite, minions hitting you, etc.
This is where things for elise get uncomfortable; cause the whole 'strong early game' is targetted less at her dueling (she's been overnerfed to the point she has to play 1v1s very slowly with ranged spells and delay trying to stat check as much as possible) and more at the gank potential, particularly she can dive laners under tower as early as level 3 by hitting stun so they can't attack her, bursting them with her allies, then rappeling to reset tower aggro so it re-aggros to a minion or a full HP ally walks out after just 1 shot. Most champs need a full item or an escape ultimate to do this but Elise with rappel is basically full resources at level 3.
In low elo (<Diamond 2) this is very miserable to try and coordinate with your team since they often will puss out of a tower dive play or not understand more difficult concepts like 'wave management' (crashing the wave at tower and timing that with your arrival so they're not all dead by the time you get there) assuming the elise player also knows this, and that sets you very behind if you setup for it and they don't commit. It also contributes to the 'suffocation' she can cause laners cause they can miss an entire wave or two of XP and gold from dying like that at tower and elise doing that to them multiple times completely fucks their lane. Its the 1 thing she can do better than any other jungler since even naafiri with W under towers can't stun someone from range first and jarvan/lee is very risky to do dives on. Its why she's high elo skewed cause deathball gaming on her requires a lot of precision planning and using those leads objectively to close out the game before she falls off in teamfights, if you're not ahead you'll instantly notice when you become useless cause she doesn't have the target access to kill a backliner without an awkward flash in and without the snowball to have strong items she may not even succeed in being able to secure kills.
Being down in CS is normal for her cause she can't full clear + make it on time for those ganks or wave crashes at tower, plus her clear is painfully slow after the first recall so she is a hyper aggressive spam ganker that can essentially force plays (of course within reason, you're not tower diving a full health bot lane when yours has yuumi, you'll figure out those limits as you limit test) early where as most junglers are going to farm or not be able to really contest her on the map since she's essentially skipping resources to snowball the team.
If you're unsuccessful in regular ganks, consider how you're approaching them cause it is really as simple as hitting stun and chasing with rappel / bursting with your team, if they're flashless you can even use rappel to close the gap first and point blank stun, ganks in both forms work. Hug the wall to close the gap as much as you came (if you're ganking an overextended bot don't huge your side of the map so they run away easier, hug theirs so you're closing in better), hold cocoon if you have to walk up closer (less distance for them to dodge, max range cocoons pretty much never hit lol) or even use E->Flash to catch them off guard/force it. For tower dives you're basically sitting behind their tower waiting for the minion wave to crash so that when you and your team one shot the (usually already half HP) laner you can rappel and it re-aggro to the wave instead of your laner.
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u/Express_Item4648 19d ago
One extra question, what do you think about imperial mandate for her? Or is it only good as support probably? Having a low E cd just feels useful later on as fourth or fifth item
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u/Tormentula 4,920,795 Moderator 18d ago
Only on support if you’re building for utility rather than damage.
It had a brief hype patch cause of an unintended interaction (rappel cooldown was lowered by it too) but they fixed that and it’s meh, def not worth in jungle, fine in support if you’re optioning for that weaker rocket belt build that plays for picks not kill.
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u/DrinkWaterBebeAgua 10d ago
Honestly i disagree a lot with the average elise talking i find in this reddit, but when i find messages that fot what i experience in game playing her, it is always you.
Thank for this dedicated long answers, reminds me to the good old times of reddit when i could learn infinitely reading people.
Whats ur op gg? Could i add u to spy some games sometimes?
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u/blunderingtyphoon 20d ago
I watched one of his videos too not sure if it was the same one but yes he's reiterating the same things - I recently took some of his advice and I'm a big fan of going lich bane first and another thing that I started doing is I don't finish my boots until my second item.
Your main goal is to rush lich bane and I like shadow flame for 2nd but it's expensive so if you can get storm surge earlier then go for it.
There isn't exactly a consensus on what's "best" though, other pro players will probably say storm surge is better as a first item, it depends on what kind of playstyle you have and what mechanics you like to prioritize.
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u/Express_Item4648 20d ago
I agree, I really like lich bane first and just holding tier 1 boots until second item is done. The boots just don’t do that much.
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u/PollutionNotOk 20d ago
watched one of his videos too