AD Hybrid

AP Hybrid

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Despite the nerf to Iceborn Gauntlet that came with patch 3.02, this is still completely up to the players preference. I typically go with Fury to get as much as I can out of my auto-attacks, but Sorcery is great for getting in that last Skill shot etc.. The extra attack speed early will help you get through the Jungle faster and the extra cooldown reduction will potentially, let you use more spells per fight early to mid game. Regardless, late game you are still at least hitting 30% CDR with your Items alone, so you can just pack a 250g Elixir of Brilliance or Blue Buff to get the rest of the cooldown reduction you want for the big team fights.







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As I mentioned earlier in this Chapter, Spellsword only gives about 7 extra damage a hit if you go with the AD build and ~17 if you went with the AP build. Bare in mind, this is with the full build (maxed items), so early game you will be lucky to get 3 extra damage out of it with the AD focus and a hopeful 9 with the whole AP bit. If you don't feel like that is explosive enough for you, or just not even worth it in any way shape or form, the next two options that I would suggest are Destruction and Safeguard . Safeguard in particular is actually pretty amazing for Elise, because you know every now and then you are going to have to dive a tower to get that kill. Destruction is also nice for obliterating towers and potentially split pushing later in the game (rush your Iceborn Gauntlet and Manamune if this is the case).


I have just recently started packing Exhaust on Elise for that early game ganking power. Don't get me wrong, Flash is a great SS for any champion, Elise included, but as I play her more and more, I find myself almost always able to escape using her Rappel alone. Another thing people might be thinking is, "Well, she has a snare in her Cocoon, so why would you also need a slow in Exhaust?" The answer is, Exhaust + Cocoon = higher probability of securing the kill. I came across this logic trying to gank top lane over and over again, failing sometimes even after landing the snare. Ultimately, its going to come down to preference, but I thought I would at least fill you guys in on what has been successful for me lately.


Another option, not one I particularly suggest, would be to take three points out of Resistance and put two into Tough Skin and one into Bladed Armor for that extra push early game while Jungling. I'm not going to list every single possible option, but I'm sure there are many others that work just fine for Jungle Elise, its up to you, these are just my top suggestions.

Greater Marks of Hybrid Penetration vs Attack Damage
Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration vs

Upon first building and playing Jungle Elise, I heavily favored the Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration on her. Then, through more and more testing, I found myself going the Greater Mark of Attack Damage pretty much every game. I started playing with the Greater Marks of Attack Damage again while trying to get a Wriggle's Lantern start to work for a commenter. To be honest, I can't really say one is better than the other. I mean technically, the Greater Marks of Hybrid Penetration would be better late game per cost effectiveness, but they can be a bit lacking early game compared to the Attack Damage. The difference is very minute, almost unnoticeable in fact, but it is definitely big enough to make it worth noting. To sum it up, go what you want here. Personally, I'm going with the Attack Damage for the AD build and the Hybrid Pen for the AP build, but that's just me, go with what you feel here.




Greater Seal of Armor


This is pretty typical of any Jungler. You want an early game boost in your armor to make it through the Jungle easier. Not to mention, late game you will take as much armor as you can get to battle all the Armor Penetration and Attack Damage from the Bruisers and ADC's.




Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist


This is also pretty standard for any Jungler. Throughout the game you are going to be tanking a lot of damage of all sorts. AP damage can be relatively high in burst, so these runes will be nice in the late game team fights when they're maxed out. One more thing I want to mention on glyphs, is when I made this guide, Iceborn Gauntlets gave 15% CDR, and now they give 10%. With that being said, you are at exactly 30% CDR from Items alone, with another 4% available in the Masteries if you want to sacrifice the Attack speed. So if you want to be able to attain maxed out CDR (40%) with this build, I would recommend getting 6x Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction, 3x Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist, and 4 points into Sorcery. Or of course, as I mentioned in the Masteries Chapter, you can just buy an Elixir of Brilliance or steal an enemy Blue Buff.




Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed and Greater Quintessence of Health


I go 2x Movement Speed Quints and 1x Health Quint. I only want a small amount of extra movement speed and a little edge in Health. My reasoning is obviously for early ganks and overall survivability, but some people may go all +health, or +movement speed, or +attack damage etc. There are always tons of options with Quints, but I've gotten all I need out of this combination here. I have to put a bit of emphasis on the Movement Speed Quints, they really make people play honest early game if they want to survive your ganks.

Basically, in Human form your spells are generating Spiderlings for when you transform into Spider form (a maximum of two spiderlings at level 1, three at level 6, four at level 11, and five at level 16). These Spiderlings are only with you in Spider form, but they can be used to tank some of the damage while Jungling. You have to kind of learn a little dance with them, but its really not that complicated and it really helps you early game to save on using your Health Potions. These spiderlings Attack Damage actually scale with your Ability Power (40 + 10% of your AP).




Neurotoxin / Venomous Bite is Elise's percentage based damage ability. Fully leveled they deal 230 damage plus 8% (+3% per 100 AP) of the targets current health in Human Form and 230 damage plus 8% (+3% per 100 AP) of missing life the target has in Spider Form. That is obviously extremely important to know. What it means is, in Human Form, you will be doing more damage the more Health the Target has and visa versa in Spider form (more damage the more health is missing). In the current environment, 4000-4500 HP tanks are pretty standard, and they can be quite the problem. However, Elise doesn't really care how much life they have overall, she just takes a straight percentage of health away with this ability each time she uses it. These moves are very powerful and incredibly harmonious with one another.

Now, because of how much damage you are potentially capable of with this ability, its priority number one to level. Combined with an item like Liandry's Torment or Deathfire Grasp, you can really push your percentage damage over the top.




Volatile Spiderling / Skittering Frenzy is a great ability, with immense utility in Human form and insane damage output in Spider form. Volatile Spiderlings can be used to face check grass areas, deal AoE damage, and clear minion waves out quickly (especially when built Hybrid AP). Skittering Frenzy on the other hand is a bit of a flip from its Human form counter part. Skittering Frenzy has a passive that increases Attack speed of Elise and her Spiderlings. It can also be activated to increase it furthermore for about 3 seconds. Upon activation, it also allows the Spiderlings to heal Elise with each attack.

This is priority number two on the Ability leveling list. Fully leveled, you get 25% increased Attack Speed flat and 140% increased Attack Speed on activation. Combined with Items like Blade of the Ruined King or Muramana you are going to be able to really make dents in your opponents health regardless of how much Armor or Health they have.




While Cocoon is a skill shot, if you land it early game when ganking, the target is more than likely going to be grey screen (dead). Rappel is another great utility spell for Elise, similar to Volatile Spiderling, but in a slightly different way. Rappel can be used to get to an opponent running away, get away from opponents trying to gank you (if enemy/neutral creeps are nearby at least), reveal grass areas in its range, or best of all, completely evading some of the most annoying ults in the game (like Karthus).

Another really nice thing about Cocoon / Rappel is that you only need one point into it to get the full effect out of it. Literally as you level it, all you are doing is decreasing the cooldown by 1 second each level in Human Form and 2 seconds each in Spider Form. So obviously, this item is in last place on the priority list.




Well, even though you start off with this ability, its still technically Elise's "ultimate." Basically, you have Human form where Elise is a Ranged caster and Spider form where Elise becomes a Melee bruiser. In Human form, all of Elise's abilities cost Mana and in Spider form, everything is free.

I pretty much always run around in Spider form for the additional movement speed, but I start every fight in Human form. The reason for this is simple, I use my Caster spell rotation and finish the target off in Spider form with all my fresh new spells. This only makes sense, Neurotoxin / Venomous Bite synergize like that. In Human form, Elise can cast Neurotoxin to do its most potential damage on the target while his health is still high and then switch into Spider form and have Venomous Bite do its most potential damage now that the target has lost health.




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Starting Items:



I don't recommend going Hunter's Machete into some kind of Wriggle's Lantern or Spirit Stone build. I go Cloth Armor so that I can go directly into an early Warden's Mail, which ultimately allows you to dive towers early. The first time that I go back to buy items is anywhere between 750g and 1050g. This will allow you to buy Boots + Ruby Crystal and a few Health Potions (Sometimes even your second Cloth Armor or a Vision Ward if you were at the higher end of the gold spectrum).

Early to Mid-Game Items:

Catalyst the Protector

This is the least you are looking at for your Mid game items. Anything else you can throw on their or whatever you can complete by that time is great, but you should at the very least have this. As I mentioned a little bit earlier in this chapter, with these items you can tower dive and confirm some kills for your laners. Never over-extend, but don't be afraid to take some tower shots if you are going to get the kill and have over half health.





Core Items:



So this is the core of the build. From here, you can go down whichever path that you want (AD/AP) while still maintaining the solidity shown by the stats/images in the introduction (over 3k Health, 3.5k Mana, 275 Armor, etc..). Personally, I like the AD Hybrid more than the AP, but I don't think either is better/worse than the other. Preference preference preference.





Last Item(s):



Muramana is pretty insane on Elise all by itself. It gives great damage from the Passive, but when you activate the Toggle, you are dealing an extra 200+ damage every attack and single target spell cast. Now of course, as your mana starts running thin (about half) you are going to only be doing about 100 damage extra. So in other words, toggle wisely or steal their blue buff. ;].

I use to prioritize Blade of the Ruined King over Frozen Mallet because of the percentage damage. If you can start the fight with a 10-15% life swing from your Neurotoxin / Venomous Bite combo and then follow up with a continuous 4% off of their current Health every auto-attack, you are going to start to look very fierce. The Activate and 10% Lifesteal is nothing to ignore either, great sustain in those awkward 1v1 engagements late game, but things have changed for me recently. While BotRK still does job just fine, I have began to go with the Mallet over it. Me and my brother (who play test builds of ours quite often) found that around mid game, it hurts to not be able to go back and grab a 1k gold Giant's Belt. All in all, it just flows better with Elise to grab the mid game belt and have the greater survivability late game.







Seraph's Embrace has the same synergy for AP as the Muramana has for AD. It ties together all the Mana you've been accumulating from the items like Frozen Heart and Iceborn Gauntlet putting you at 1900 mana from just those three items alone. Add in Rod of Ages and the Mana that comes with eighteen levels and you get some 170 Ability Power from Seraph's Embrace all by its lonesome. Last but not least, a 900 point shield whenever you're in a pinch can really make the difference. Realistically, this item + Rylai's makes the AP Hybrid build tankier and harder to deal with than the AD Hybrid build (because of the shield).

I use to go Liandry's Torment over Rylai's Crystal Scepter, because lets face it, Liandry's speaks for itself. It is obviously an amazing Offensive item for Elise. More percentage damage? Magic Penetration? Ability Power? AND Health? I still recommend going this item if you are snowballing hard, but for those games where you actually have to pick the entire team up by yourself and carry them across the finish line.. I suggest going with a mid game Giant's Belt so that you don't get a hernia in the process. Ultimately, I'm just using the same excuse here as in the AD build above, that mid game belt flows so well.





Situational/Preference Items:



I have a few other options for Situational/Preference Items listed under each Build's Item section, but if I were to change out my Frozen Mallet or Rylai's Crystal Scepter it would more than likely be for one of these five. Randuin's Omen adds some really nice survivability and additional presence in team fights. Blade of the Ruined King adds some big percentage damage, life steal, and an awesome Activate. Maw of Malmortius has always been nice for me on my off-tanks and bruisers because of how low they tend to get and still survive. Oh, and the Lifeline on Maw can be a real life saver. Liandry's Torment is kinda like the AP version of Blade of the Ruined King for this build, great for its damage, Health, and AP. Last but not least, Zhonya's Hourglass, which is really nice for Elise as well.

Against normal camps, your rotation should resemble this:

Against the buff camps you may have to reset your Spiderlings:

Starting at Blue:

Starting off at blue buff is probably the easiest or at least, the most solid start for Elise. She can start off at wolves, followed by Blue buff if you have a team that understands whats going on, but its really not even necessary. Elise clears the Jungle very quickly and has great sustain in the Jungle, especially after her first trip back to buy. Nevertheless, an early blue buff is going to make your first 4 levels sail by insanely fast. Oh, and just like any other good Jungler, every blue buff afterwards goes to Mid.



Starting at Red:

Starting off at red buff is fine too, especially if you can situate your spiderlings to take some hits in the middle of the fight (I go over how to do this above in the 1-11 steps). I use to not start red very often, but as I became more and more aggressive as a Jungler, I do all the time. As is the case with most games, it all depends on if your team is going to cooperate with you or not, because if the other team comes in to counter you and your team is nowhere to be found you are real dead. Especially if you start off with Exhaust over Flash. The higher you climb the ladder, the more help you will get from your team. Last thing I want to mention here is, don't be afraid to ask your team to help you with whatever buff you want, most the times they will help, they are just in dream-land waiting for the game to start haha.



Invading:

If you are on a team that knows what they are doing and they want to invade, you may want to start Elise off a little bit differently. "Q, Neurotoxin / Venomous Bite" or "E, Cocoon / Rappel" are probably your best bet, because its better for ganking. Your team is going to help you take the buff and what not afterwards so that you can get to level 2 quicker and get the appropriate starting skill/ability. Elise isn't the best jungler for invading, but she can definitely get the job done. It doesn't hurt to start off with Volatile Spiderling / Skittering Frenzy while invading for the utility of revealing brushes without face checking, but Cocoon can do the same thing while also snaring the target. Do what you feel is best.