Ahri Build Guide by Neon Kitty

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to a Neon Kitty guide which is focused to sharing how I use Ahri, by starting the game in the Middle lane.

This guide is by no means perfect (as no guide is) but for my aggressive play style, it works wonders. This is proven as you can quickly bounce back by using Ahri to her fullest with great planning, positioning and general harassment that her first skill provides, but more on that later.

This guide will be updated every now and then as Ahri is one of my main characters and I will try to preserve the old and new versions together.

Ready for some awesome action with one of the best mobile assassins in the game? Read on my humble learner.

*Editor's Note*
Since this guide is the first one I made, it will probably see the most changes to layout and presentation... given enough time of course.

Warning and Disclaimer of Sorts... With a Changelog

By reading this guide you acknowledge that you won't be offended by any form of language used within. Also by reading past this point you waive every right and privilege to be offended by me and this guide and also you agree not to post anything in the comments which I or anyone else will feel offended/you didn't read this part/you don't want to understand this part.

Don't make me summon Ezreal to Hadoken you in the back of the face.

With that being said, since I love giving items and people names, this guide will use their actual names at some point, but will usually give them a different name next to their icon.

For example:
Will of the Ancients may appear as Dr. Insano's Diary

# Credits Where Due #
jhoijhoi for the separators - If she has a problem with me using them, she can contact me and I will make my own
Riot Games for League of Legends
Mobafire for hosting my awesome guide, as well as other awesome ones
Razer for their awesome keyboards, mice and mousepads - Just wish they'd hurry up and release the Razer Blade here in Australia (written 3/7/2011... that's July for you Americans, learn to write like the rest of the world)

# Changelog #
v0.2:

- Modified the title of the guide
- Added v0.2 to the changelog
- Added tags to the guide [3 at this time]
- Fixed jhoijhoi's gender calling in the guide
- Videos are on their way, uploading the smaller parts on Abilities now

v0.1:

- Created the Guide
- Added this cool looking Changelog
- Drawn a picture for the Guide
- Preparing videos featuring tactics, gameplay, strategies, and more... with me talking!!!

The Positives and Negatives

As is with every champion, there are some nice Positive points with some nasty Negatives. Let us take a nice long look at Ahri's Positives and Negatives in this wonderful table I'm about to draw up:

Positives - The Good Stuff (tm) about Ahri

+ Cheeky and sexy (listen to some of her quotes and you'll understand)
+ Great ganker, especially so if you stock Flash as a Summoner Spell
+ Her abilities have a relatively low Mana cost
+ Most importantly, her cooldowns aren't punishing like some other champion's are *cough* Lux*cough*
+ Orb of Deception does in fact do True Damage on it's return trip
+ Charm has a VERY short cooldown when maxed out
+ Spirit Rush functions like Tryndamere's Spinning Slash in that it can go through some walls, chase/run away VERY effectively and the last 2 charges have no cost other then the cooldown times, that I'm aware of

Evil Negatives to keep in mind

- Is squished easily, unless you use the Rod of Ages or like items
- Her main three abilities can be frustratingly difficult to land without the use of Charm or slows/stuns/some other form of disruption
- Tends to get targeted unless your team has a Master Yi, Tryndamere or some other significant threat
- Tends to be fairly useless while silenced, snared, juggled or out of Mana (as far as I know)
- Essence Theft isn't too crash hot without complimentary items

Summoner Runes

Over here in this section, I shall discuss the Summoner Runes that I like to use with Ahri.

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These Marks improve Ahri's damage output something shocking and makes her very scary. These bad babies grant a nice bunch of points in Magic Penetration upon entering a game. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what Magic Penetration is, I shall enlighten you.

Magic Penetration allows abilities to hit your target much harder than you would if you didn't have this. This means more damage is received ignoring points of their Magic Resistance stat. This also takes equipment and items Magic Resist stats into account.
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These gifts from the higher planes boost your Armour (a.k.a. Physical Defense), which soak up attacks such as Auto-Attacks and Attack Damage.

These runes allow you to tank the creeps/minions more effectively by receiving less damage as a result. Armour is essential against champions that rely on auto-attacks or Attack Damage in order to harm you.

Such champions include, but aren't limited to: SPACE SPACE
These nice little Glyphs give you some additional Ability Power upon entering a game. These give Ahri a nice boost to her abilites, particularly Orb of Deception.

Ability Power is the strength of you abilities. If Attack Damage would be considered as the Strength stat, then Ability Power would be the Magic Strength stat. Long story short, it makes you hurt them more. Woohoo!!
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These function the same as the Glyphs, providing a lot more Ability Power per rune.

Masteries

Now remember that this guide is meant to abandon Defense for more Offensive capabilities.

The Offensive mastery tree is basically like making one for Master Yi or Tryndamere, but replace the Attack Damage and Life Steal with Ability Power and Spell Vamp. This aids in maximising your damage output, as far as masteries go. Take the usual point for Summoner Spells while you're at it, with a splash of Cooldown Reduction.

Abandoning my usual Defensive 9 points, I place them into Utility where they actually make a major difference for the slight changes for Utility 9. Taking a point for the Summoner Spells, the other 8 are placed in Mana Regeneration, Mana Per Level and MUCH needed Movement Speed.

Abilities at Your Disposal

Passive Ability - Essence Theft

Correctly utilising Essence Theft allows Ahri to become surprisingly durable (for lack of word) and annoying in lane. When Ahri uses an ability, it charges Essence Theft up to 3 times. The amount of charges gained is dependant on the number of times an ability hits an enemy unit or champion (ie. the bozos not on your team, a.k.a. food).

You may be wondering what is the point of charging an ability, generally that means something nice is going to happen at some point right? Well dear reader, there is something very nice when you reach 9 charges. The next ability you use will have a 35% Spell Vamp of the damage dealt to enemies. This +35% Spell Vamp goes on top of your current Spell Vamp rating, and this is an important point, which will be explained soon.

Spell Vamp - A Primer by Neon Kitty

Now if you are confused as to what in the flaming pits of Noxus Spell Vamp (Spell Vampire?) is, I shall enlighten thee, as I too was confused to what it really was until recently.

Spell Vamp functions much like Life Steal. Now what good does Spell Vamp do if it functions like Life Steal? Unlike Life Steal, which restores health proportional to the amount of damage dealt by Physical Damage (usually Auto Attacks), Spell Vamp would be the "magic" version of it. Spell Vamp restores health proportional to the damage dealt by an ability that damages enemies.
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Q Ability - Orb of Deception

Ahh this probably should be your main weapon of choice as any Ahri. This can be considered a 2 part spell. Simply click somewhere around Ahri, doesn't matter where, and she will hurl this ball of awesome in the direction, damaging enemies for Magic Damage (Ability Power) until it reaches it's maximum range. Now, here's where you can have lots of fun, on it's return trip back to you, so it can tell you of it's wonderful trip to the beach and everything it slaughtered along the way, it deals True Damage until it returns to you. Basically True Damage, from my understanding, does exactly that much damage to the target.

Example: Orb of Deception returns with a True Damage stat of (125 + 80). On every target it passes through, it will deal 205 damage to their health, only once per target though. It may seem like more or less depending on regenerating effects or damaging effects like Poison or Drain.
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W Ability - Fox-Fire

This ability was nerfed in the patch where This Ugly Mug entered the League, so it doesn't pack the same punch it used to... or does it? The Draven patch also gave Ahri an Ability Power boost at the same time. So this ability does slightly less damage, the power reduction is still noticeable though.

I personally don't like this skill, even though it prioritises champions over minions, but chances are that you're going to hit minions or not the targets you want. Even before Fox-Fire was nerfed, I only took 1 point in this around level 8 at the earliest (level 4 at the earliest if I wanted to be more annoying). This skill should only be used in team fights where everyone is clumped together, but should be primarily used to get your Essence Theft charges up.

Fox-Fire is mainly used to apply on-hit effects such as the slow from Rylai's Crystal Scepter and like items. The best part is that each flame counts as a separate attack, so you can effectively stack the same ability on the same target up to 3 times, with each successive hit dealing less damage of course.
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E Ability - Charm

Aah, this has to be the hardest skill to land as Ahri, but makes her even deadlier when it does.

Charm is used by many to initiate Ahri into fights, and this is the preferred strategy since this is her setup ability. The enemy will be charmed and slowly run towards Ahri harmlessly for a short amount of time, similar to Shen's Shadow Dash and it's taunt effect. The enemy can't use abilities or move where they want to while charmed, so maximise your damage on them while you can. This ability also makes a great disruption move when your team needs to retreat or needs some breathing room from a particular champion

The wrinkle that makes this wonderous ability hard to use is that it is a skill shot. For those who, like me, have played Ezreal long before the over-hyped Pulsefire skin of his came out, will understand how annoying skill shots are.

Skill Shot - A Primer by Neon Kitty

A skill shot is an ability that hits the first enemy target it encounters, disappearing on-hit, regardless if it is a minion or champion. Think of it like Ahri's auto attack with an added effect and can't be targeted the same way.
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R Ability - Spirit Rush

Ahri's "ultimate" ability is Spirit Rush. While this is her most expensive ability to activate, the cost only needs to be paid once. Each successive use of Spirit Rush is free to cast and is only limited by the timer window, cooldowns and opponent's crowd control effects such as Silence and Snare.

This ability lets Ahri dash a short distance towards your mouse, also utilising a "mini Fox-Fire" as it's damaging compenent. This ability is her bread and butter in my opinion, just as important like Orb of Deception is. The fun part about this ability is that if you have 0 charges on Essence Theft, this skill lets you get all 9 charges, assuming all the damaging parts hit enemies. This means free Spell Vamp on your Orb of Deception or other skills.

General and Advanced tactics and strategies will be discussed in the Tactics and Strategies section about how and when to use these abilities.

Items, Delicious Items

Let us begin by going through the Items listed in this guide, in the order I consider getting them.

Doran's Ring

Most people begin with a Doran item and will call you a newbie when you don't. While the ring is a very nice item to start with, you can forgo this item and grab a more defensive item such as Null-Magic Mantle and a Mana Potion/ Meki Pendant and Health Potion/ Mana Potion, depending on who their mid is/are.

Doran's Ring will help you in most of the areas which Ahri is weak in; Health and Mana Regeneration. This is up to you what you choose to use initially, but please, for the love of Ahri, NEVER start with Boots of Speed. You will just get destroyed and become the target for early ganks, where you will get squished... and then I will laugh, eat some oranges and be on my way, uploading the video of your squish.

Blast Wand / Moonflair Spellblade

Alright, this item is my secret weapon and closely kept secret. Well... not anymore anyway.

The Moonflair Spellblade is a SEVERELY underused item. This baby grants you 50 Ability Power. Now before you scoff at this item, here's the real kick in the balls. It also grant +35 Tenacity . You seem to suddenly like this item? Thought so. This weapon of pure awesome is perfect for someone like Ahri. The added Tenacity provides Ahri with the option for more appropriate boots while retaining the awesome reduction of crowd control, which completely destroys her.

Buy this on your first trip back, or at least the Blasting Wand and win against people such as Lux and Morgana. This item is relatively cheap, costing a total of 1200 gold ( Blasting Wand + 340).

Speed Boots / Sorcerer's Shoes (a.k.a. Magically Penetrating Pumas)

During your first trip back, you should be able to also afford some new shoes. Depending on your gold income, you can get away with Level 1 boots, save up for Kage's Lucky Pick and come back shortly for the Sorcerer's Shoes.

These Magically Penetrating Pumas grant Ahri much needed Level 2 Movement Speed and the godsend that is Magic Penetration. I favour these shoes for the damage output and fear factor they bring.

Magic Penetration - A Primer by Neon Kitty

Magic Penetration allows abilities that utilise Ability Power to deal damage closer to the actual damage stated. In a sense, Magic Penetration grants a certain number of points which the target's Magic Resistance is ignored. The physical counterpart is Armour Penetration.
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Finalising the Build

This is where your build should deviate and cater for the buildup of your team and the enemy team.

Ability Power Glass Cannon

x3 - Build these into:



Start by grabbing that cute Witch's Hat and put it on Ahri's head, give her a shiny new Pimp Staff to whack people with, The Shiny Evil Grail from Indiana Jones to drink the blood of her enemies from and give her an Hourglass so she can keep track of the time.

While this is considered "Glass Cannon" path, besides a ridiculous amount of Ability Power, you also gain:

+ Some Armour from a Tiny Hourglass (how does this work by the way o.O)
+ Some Magic Resistance, Cooldown Reduction and much needed yet over powered Scaled Mana Regeneration from a Drinking Grail
+ Dramatically Improved Ability Power from a Witch's Hat
+ Even more Magic Penetration from a Pimp Staff

Ahri was already the devious charming dancer, but now she's also a more effective pimp master who will carve the words "Your Health Is Low" into your enemies foreheads.

This build has the drawbacks of:

- Being VERY squishy
- That Tenacity won't make you immune to Crowd Control
- The Hourglass may help you become a trolling statue for 2 seconds, but it really is the worst kind of item to have on Ahri, since she is meant to dance around the battlefield and be evasive
+/- You can swap this out for another Witch's Hat to put on your Pimp Staff. Making you even more squishy to physical attackers.

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Sustained Aggressor

I have to admit, now that League of Legends is far too popular and most people are using the same range of champions all the time, it's hard to keep up with the tanky champions that do almost everything *cough* Warwick, Darius*cough*, I find myself looking for a means to counter them while still dealing a lot of damage.

Since the The Rapist appeared, Ahri has lost a lot of her tank build viability due to the Ability Power reshuffle from her Fox-Fire to her Ability Power stat. Ahri still can be built tanky, but has to be played much differently and more skillfully, which you should be doing anyway.

What's that? You just charge her in there at the start of every fight? How cruel of you.

While Ahri is by no means an initator, she is a great tactician who suddenly appears and dances around the arena dealing insane damage. The key is to watch and manage your Spell Vamp, abilities and predictions.

From the Sorcerer's Shoes this path can be built in any number ways, but I'll list you the priorities for my play style.

> > or , then get the other one.
or or then grab that Hourglass.

If you have the Moonflair Spellblade and Boots of Speed, grab Kage's Lucky Pick and rush a Hextech Revolver, then complete your Pumas. If you have the complete pair of shoes and Moonflair, get the Revolver (not to be confused with the Gunblade FF VIII fans) and then a Blast Wand.

There is good news and bad news about this build:

+ Even more Spell Vamp with your trusty Gun/ Diary. Nearby allies will benefit from the Spell Vamp you give them by showing them your Diary.
+ Much needed Magic Penetration and increased Ability Power with your Pimp Staff
+/- Defense against physical heavy enemies with your Heavy Spiky Chainmail Vest OR
+/- Defense against ability heavy enemies and increased Health Regeneration with your Heavy Spiky Plated Vest
+/- In conjunction with either of the above vests, Short Ranged Attack Speed and Movement Slow, slightly incresed Cooldown Reduction and Health Regeneration with your Extremely Heavy Large Shield.

While I did mention that the vests and the shield were heavy, they do NOT restrict your Movement Speed in any way shape or form. However, by favouring sustainability, you also gain these negatives:

- Dealing noticeably less damage with abilities
- Prime target to be focused because of the above point
+/- Can swap any of the defensive items out for a Frost Wand.


While the usage of Thornmail can be disputed and more readily replaced with the Frost Heart for even more Cooldown Reduction and Mana at the cost of 1 point in Armour, the choice is ultimately yours if you even use them. Just remember that Ahri is fairly squishy and needs to be played smart, instead of just charging in like a mad woman.

Tactics and Strategies

Working on it... remember, patience is a virtue.

Closing Statements

Use this as a guide, not doctrine. Experiment, deviate from this and find your own preferences with using Ahri. I can only advise, you are the one who has to take heed.

This guide is far from finished, watch for more videos and tactics and what not.