Hi there! I'm Elusive Ferret and this is a guide to my favourite champion in League, Elise. You may know me from my Ahri guide, but if not, I'm a high elo Ahri/Elise/Irelia/Kass main on EUW. In comparison to my Ahri guide, this one will be more concise, but it won't lack any detail about the champion and what she's capable of. Also, I would like to state that this is a guide focused on how to play Elise, rather than how to jungle. It will still include the relevant jungling information, but that information will be relative to Elise, opposed to jungling in general. If you're entirely new to Elise and are unsure of what she is capable of, you can watch my Elise montage below to get an idea what what she can do once you master her. She is an extremely rewarding champion when played right and has a very high ability to outplay.

Despite being known as an Ahri main, Elise has actually been my most played champion in ranked since Season 6, and she continues to be my most played this Season so far too. I started playing her because the way you combo with Elise is very similar to Ahri and I love champions that have a lot of burst and outplay potential, which Elise most certainly has. Due to the amount I've played Elise over the last 3 years, I've gained a vast amount of knowledge, experience and confidence with the champion and she is the only champion other than Ahri I would say I've fully mastered hence me making this Guide. If you have any questions about Elise, feel free to ask me in the guide discussion and I'll be sure to answer. Thank you for checking out my guide, I hope you like it!

Elise, the Spider Queen, is a hybrid between both ranged and melee. While in her human form (ranged), she functions as a mage, and when in spider form (melee), she functions as an assassin/fighter. She is one of the few champions who start the game with their ultimate already leveled which is her transformation between human and spider form. Because Elise doesn't essentially have an ultimate, she instead gets 2 different sets of abilities, 1 for each form. This means that she has 6 unique spells, which more than makes up for her lack of a true ultimate. Elise works best in the jungle and she is one of the best early game junglers in League. Her main strength comes from excelling at ganking, dueling and skirmishing in the jungle. She also has quite a lot of safety with her bonus movement speed in spider form and having her Rappel to get her out of sticky situations. Another reason why Elise excels in the early game is due to her almost always being at full health after clearing camps. This is due to her Spiderlings being able to take aggro of monsters, meaning you can often clear a camp without taking much, or any damage at all.

A large reason for Elise's power comes from the fact that she has so many abilities available for use. Pair that with being able to transform between ranged and melee at will and she can pull off some crazy plays. She has the potential to nuke a target with her high burst, go melee and act as a tank/fighter, catch up to targets very easily, or even stay in ranged form and peel for your carries. Her kit includes pretty much everything you could ask for in a mage/assassin hybrid.

In her human form, she has: Ranged auto attacks Current %HP damage Ranged aoe damage High ranged stun And in her spider form, she has: Spiderlings to add dps and tank enemies or abilities Bonus movement speed Attack speed steroid Missing %HP damage Small gap closer/execute Bonus damage on autos Healing on autos Ability to become untargetable Long ranged jump to a target

As you can see, she has a lot in her kit, but most of it is in spider form. The main purpose for human form outside of being ranged, is to set up your combo with your initial spells and stun, to then switch to phase 2 of the combo where you remain in spider form for the majority of a fight. Spider form abilities also have 0 mana costs, which means she only has 3 mana costing abilities and can spam her spider form abilities as much as she wants. Her main weakness comes from being locked down by crowd control. Elise is a combo based champion and being locked down can prevent you from doing your combo, or mess it up which will greatly hinder her effectiveness. Not only that, but being locked down and bursted means you don't get a chance to use Rappel, and will often be taken out of a fight before getting a chance to do anything. Elise is also very squishy before you start getting items, so you have to be very careful at all times and be ready to react if you come across someone. Overall, Elise is a very strong champion and she has the ability to snowball her team very early in the game. Her vast amount of abilities and steroids make her a scary threat to any champion and she has the ability to easily win a fight against most champions in the early stages of a game. She also brings great objective control to your team by being able to solo Dragon/Rift with ease and secure the last hit on monsters with her spider form Venomous Bite + Smite.

Elise has one of the best kits in the game due to how much she has, and what she is capable of. Being able to utilise 6 abilities opposed to the standard 4 is a big deal and it's the sole reason she is such a strong early game champion. At level 3, you have all 6 of your abilities to your opponents 3, which is an insane advantage to have. This is why Elise can very easily win any fight between level 3 and 5 and she has a lot of tools at her disposal to effectively gank and start to snowball your team. I will go over each of her abilities in detail, starting with human form before moving to spider. Each ability will also contain a GIF of the ability being used in-game. First up, is her passive.

Human Form - Innate: When Elise's abilities hit a target she gains one dormant Spiderling, up to 2 / 3 / 4 / 5. Spider Form - Innate: Elise's basic attacks deal 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 (+ 30% AP) bonus magic damage and heal her for 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 (+ 10% AP) on-hit.

Elise's passive, Spider Queen is where she gets her Spiderlings from. It's a huge part of her kit and it's what enables her to have a lot more strength when fighting in spider form. One of the best things about her Spiderlings is their ability to tank jungle camps, absorbing a lot of damage that would otherwise go to Elise. This allows Elise to remain very healthy after clearing jungle camps, which eliminates the risk of ever being caught in your jungle on low health. You'll also always be at a high amount of health to be able to quickly react and aid your team when needed, rather than being too low to help. Spiderlings are generated in human form by hitting a target with a spell. The ability has to connect with the target, else it will not generate a Spiderling. This means that Elise can generate up to 3 Spiderlings in 1 rotation with her human form Q, W and E. Spiderlings do regenerate health over time, and they are healed to full health if you switch to human form with maximum lings, but if they die, you will need to hit more human form abilities in order to spawn more. Spiderlings have some decent stats too, and they scale quite well with levels and AP. When you have 3-5 of them out hitting the same target, they can do some serious damage. Health: 85 - 390 (based on level) Magic damage: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 (+ 15% AP) Attack speed: 0.665 (+ 0 / 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% / 25%) Range: 100 Armor: 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 Magic Resist: 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 Movespeed: 350 Spiderlings also only take 75% of damage from area of effect abilities, making them slightly harder to aoe down. They aren't difficult to kill though, and high damage aoe spells can often instantly kill all of your Spiderlings unfortunately. A lot of the time though, the enemy won't have the ability to 1 shot all of your Spiderlings and they can't afford to waste auto attacks or single target abilities on taking them out. There are also occasions where the Spiderlings end up absorbing or blocking skill-shots, a common one being Blitzcrank and Thresh hook, and major abilities such as Dark Binding and Javelin Toss. Being able to nullify an ability like those is a massive deal and can often save your life, or turn a fight into your favour. To add to this, Spiderlings allow Elise to run away from champions with more ease than most. This is because your Spiderlings always follow behind you, and so they act as a kind of wall against any abilities trying to hit you. Another powerful aspect to Spiderlings is that they allow Elise to very easily solo Dragon and Rift Herald. Having the Spiderlings tank the damage for her means you can safely take out objectives without as much risk as someone who has to take the front of the damage from the monster. One thing to note is that both Infernal and Mountain (the better 2 Drakes) have aoe attacks, so they are much more difficult to solo as Elise. This is simply because your Spiderlings will die a lot sooner due to the aoe attack from the Dragon. It's still possible to solo them however, it just requires a second, and sometimes a third switch between forms so that you can spawn more Spiderlings. As for Ocean and Cloud Drakes, they are super easy to solo because their attacks are single target and so your Spiderlings end up taking the focus for the majority of the fight. The same goes for Rift Herald, Elise can solo Rift with ease because the Herald's auto attacks are single target. You will almost always need 1 more rotation for ling spawning about half way through the fight though. For the times where you are not soloing, Spiderlings don't lose any effectiveness because they can tank the aggro that would otherwise be on another champion, saving your team health and making the whole process a lot safer with less risk of failure. The other, smaller part to her passive is the bonus damage and healing on spider form auto attacks. It's the icing on the cake for Elise's jungle clear as you're able to heal back up while your Spiderlings tank the damage. Not only that, but it enables Elise to juggle aggro between herself and her lings to maximise efficiency of clearing a jungle camp. It's often a good idea to take a couple of initial hits so that you gain the most amount of dps from your Spiderlings before they die, while still remaining at full, or near full HP. The bonus damage on auto attacks synergises very well with her attack speed steroid, and a late game Elise deals a ton of damage per auto due to the scaling. This gives her a lot of consistent damage, opposed to being all out of juice after she does her combo. Because of the bonus damage on spider form autos, it's always best to be in spider form when simply auto attacking. There will be occasions where you need the ranged autos, but prioritise your melee autos as often as you can.

Human Form Q - Active: Elise fires poison at the target enemy unit, dealing magic damage, capped against monsters. Damage: 40 / 75 / 110 / 145 / 180 (+ 4% (+ 3% per 100 AP) of current health)

Cost: 80 / 85 / 90 / 95 / 100 Mana Cooldown: 6 Range: 625

Neurotoxin is Elise's first damage move in her combo and it's her single target, medium ranged spell that deals some nice damage. You always look to initiate a fight with Neurotoxin first because it deals damage based on the target's current percentage of health. This means that the lower they are, the less damage it will do. It does have a base damage though, so even when the target is on sub 20% health for example, it will still deal quite a lot to them. Because it has an AP scaling, once you start to get some items and hit the 200 AP mark (typically after 2 and a half items), it starts to deal a ton of damage at 10% of the target's current hp, plus the base damage. Even at 100 AP though, it will begin to hit very hard and it's a large part of Elise's burst in her combo. Being health based damage, it will deal more damage against targets who have a higher amount of hit points. For example, a rank 5 Q with 200 AP on a 2,000 health target would deal 380 damage, and the same again on a 3,000 health target would deal 480. This makes Elise pretty decent at taking down tanks, or high health targets as she also almost always includes a Liandry's Torment in her build. It has a fairly high mana cost from the get-go, but since it's the first ability you max, it's important to use it as much as possible. The cooldown is a static 6 seconds, which isn't very high at all. This means that after clearing Blue Buff, your human Q will be at a 5.4 second cooldown. This allows Elise to initiate with full combo, then almost immediately switch back to human form for a second Neurotoxin if the range and extra burst is needed. Be cautious when doing this however, as switching back so soon means that the only thing you'll have after a second Q is your ranged autos, which do not do very much at all.

Human Form W - Active: Elise summons a venom-gorged spider for 3 seconds, which moves in the target direction. The spider explodes upon contact with an enemy unit or at the end of its lifespan, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies.

If the spider does not hit an enemy before reaching the target location, it re-targets and chases down a nearby enemy, prioritising champions. The spider gains bonus movement speed, based on its proximity to its target.

Damage: 55 / 95 / 135 / 175 / 215 (+ 95% AP) Cost: 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 Mana Cooldown: 12 Range: 950

Volatile Spiderling is Elise's second damaging move in her combo, and it's her only source of area damage. It's a good ability to help clear out the multi-monster jungle camps due to it being aoe, but since it's not maxed it doesn't do a great deal of damage early. Having a second damaging ability in human form is quite a big deal for Elise, this is due to it enabling her to get a near instant proc of Electrocute with a Q, W, auto. Volatile Spiderling has some really nice range due to the way that it locks onto an enemy unit and follows them until contact or the explosion time-out. This can often result in being a zoning tool for situations where you are sieging a tower for example. Enemies aren't going to want to take free damage and their only choice to avoid it is to back way off due to the tracking on it. More often than not, they won't be able to back off fast enough due to the bonus movespeed the spider gets, which makes it a great ability for sieging a tower or fighting for an objective. One of the best things about this ability is that it grants you vision of where it travels. This means that it can be used as a great scouting tool and it can prevent you having to facecheck a brush, or gain vision on an area you think someone might be. Due to it being aoe, it's gives Elise a fairly quick way to push lanes in whenever you need to shove a lane after a gank, or for late game when you're just generally pushing/farming a minion wave. As well as that, it enables Elise to deal quite a lot more damage in a teamfight if she has Liandry's Torment as the explosion will apply the burn to every enemy hit. The cooldown is fairly high, so it's not spam-able, but after the 12 seconds on initial cast, you can switch back to human for for a second W which can help to clear finish off multiple monsters/minions rather than spending a lot loner single targeting them down. It has a really good base damage and AP scaling at almost 1:1, so once you start getting some AP and ranks into it, the damage it will deal is quite significant and it becomes a very large part of Elise's burst.

Human Form E - Active: Elise fires a web in the target direction, granting sight of the first enemy hit for 1 second and stunning them.

Duration: 1.6 / 1.7 / 1.8 / 1.9 / 2 (Seconds, based on level) Cost: 50 Mana Cooldown: 14 / 13 / 12 / 11 / 10 Range: 1075

Cocoon is Elise's source of crowd control and it's a fantastic ability. It has a very high range at over 1000, and it has quite a fast missile speed too which makes it hard to dodge. It's her most crucial ability in comboing with Elise as it enables her to follow up with her barrage of damaging abilities and begin to auto the enemy down. The stun duration is long enough to let you get off a full combo, which often results in the enemy taking a massive chunk of damage before getting a chance to do anything. The mana cost is low for what it does, and the cooldown is also quite generous. It's maxed last as Elise, so for the majority of the game it will be at a 14 second cooldown without any CDR, but it will typically lay at around 11 seconds with the small amount of CDR you tend to obtain. As for the stun duration, it's actually very high for a rank 1 ability. 1.6 seconds is a very long time to be stunned for in the early game, and it's the sole reason Elise is able to easily win fights during the early stages of a game. Cocoon is the very first ability you use in Elise's combo, but at the cooldown that it has, you can often switch back for a second Cocoon half way through a fight. Elise is very good at chasing people down in spider form, and it can be very effective to get close with her bonus movespeed and then switch to human form for another Cocoon and rotation of spells to finish off your target. Cocoon is what makes Elise such an incredibly powerful early game ganker. The huge range, paired with the stun duration of 1.6 seconds is almost always a sure way to secure a kill and start to snowball your team. The only downside to Cocoon is that it's quite a narrow skillshot, and even though it has a fast travel time, it doesn't have the biggest of hit boxes. It's often beneficial to be patient with your Cocoon unless you see an easy to land opportunity. The final thing to note is linked to ganking and it's that Elise's Cocoon synergises insanely well with other stuns/snares/knockups. This is simply because it allows you to get a near guaranteed hit which will 100% end in a kill secured so early into a game. This means that Elise in general synergises very well with other champions that have some form of hard crowd control and her ganks become even more powerful than normal and her ability to snowball a game is greatly increased.

Ultimate - Passive: Spider Queen base bonuses increased with each level of her ultimate, granting 1 additional Spiderling up to 3 more and 10 additional bonus damage + 2 additional healing per auto.

Human Form - Active: Elise transforms into a menacing spider, gaining 25 bonus movement speed, melee basic attacks with 125 range, and access to her arachnid abilities. Additionally, Elise unleashes all stored Spiderlings. Spider Form - Active: Elise transforms into her human form, gaining ranged basic attacks, and access to her human abilities. Additionally, Elise stores all unleashed Spiderlings.

Elise begins with one rank in Spider Form / Human Form and can increase it at levels 6, 11, and 16. There is a 4 second cooldown between transforming, meaning that she can switch between forms fairly often. This is greatly beneficial because of how differently she plays in each form, and being able to quickly and constantly switch between forms allows her to make the most use out of all 6 of her abilities. You'll be spending most of your time in spider form when moving around the map due to the bonus movespeed, but also most of your time clearing camps will be spent in spider form too, simply because of your lings. You always want to start a camp in human form however, and once you cast Q and W, switch to spider and remain in spider form until either you lose all of your Spiderlings, or until the monster is on about 200~ health. This is because in order to maximise clear efficiency, you will want to immediately start kiting the low health monster away in the direction you are next traveling to, as well as being able to very quickly finish the camp with an auto, Q, auto. Even though you deal more damage per auto in spider form, it's always quicker to switch back to human form for another cast of Q and kiting ranged autos as it will almost half the time it takes to finish a monster that's low, opposed to auto attacking 2-3 times in spider form. As mentioned above, you almost always want to start a camp in human form. The only time where you wouldn't is when you have little or no mana to spare for your human abilities. In every other case, a general rule of thumb that you should follow is to always exit spider form around 3~ seconds before starting a camp. This is so that you can cast a human Q and W, and then go straight into spider form with no delay to clear the camp. If you don't exit spider form until you're at the camp, you're wasting about 3 seconds of time that lessens your overall dps and clear efficiency, as well as making you take unnecessary damage. The same rule should be applied for when roaming too. If you are walking to river, or walking up to gank someone, you should always exit spider form a couple of seconds before you reach a point where you might, or will encounter an enemy. If you encounter, or initiate a fight with someone after just exiting spider form, it will completely mess up your combo and you'll have to either delay your combo, or have them already break out of the stun before you can go into spider form. Situations like this are not good for Elise, and it makes her very clunky to play when her transformation is on cooldown mid-combo. The only times this rule should be disregarded is when you plan on ganking in spider form initially, to then follow up with a human rotation once you're on them. This is often the case when you're ganking someone far away from you, or when they're in the middle of a minion wave as you won't be able to land a Cocoon. The final thing to note about Elise's transforming is that you can save your Spiderlings from dying or taking damage by simply switching to human. When you switch to human, all of your Spiderlings vanish and thus become invincible. There are often situations where your Spiderlings are being attacked when running away, either by a champion or turret aggro. A quick switch of form can save the lives of your precious lings, meaning that you'll always have the full amount ready for the next transformation!

Spider Form Q - Passive: Elise dashes to the target enemy and bites them, dealing magic damage, capped against monsters. Damage: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 (+ 8% (+ 3% per 100 AP) of missing health)

Cost: Free Cooldown: 6 Range: 475

Venomous Bite is one of Elise's best moves in her whole kit. It's a short ranged gap closer that acts as an execute with the way it deal bonus damage based on how low the enemy is. Even when the enemy isn't low however, it's still a really good ability simply because it closes a gap of 475. Venomous Bite is the first spider form ability you use in Elise's combo, and the jump on it sets you up to then start auto attacking the enemy target down. You tend to get at least 2 off during an extended fight too, meaning the second one will deal a lot more damage and often be the final thing to secure the kill. Because of the execute nature of the ability, it's amazing for securing jungle monsters whether small, buffs, or epic like Dragon and Baron. This is due to being able to time Smite with Q at the same time, resulting in a lot of damage at once and it makes it very hard for someone to steal it, provided you time it right. You should always save your second or third spider form Q in preparation to secure the kill with Smite. This is especially important for Baron and Dragon, but also for the times where you get invaded and need to secure your own buff. A cool interaction with Venomous Bite is that after using Q on your target, any active Spiderlings will leap to Elise and reprioritise the new target. This interaction also works with her Volatile Spiderling which will be shown below. Play Video Being able to do this means that you won't ever miss your W if you send it out in the wrong direction. Immediately using spider form Q on an enemy will jump the Volatile Spiderling right to you. A great use of this is when you're about to clear a jungle camp, you can send out your Volatile Spiderling to gain vision of a nearby brush, to then pull it straight back to the camp and continue as normal. All spider form abilities cost 0 mana, and at a base cooldown of 6 seconds it becomes quite spam-able with CDR and you can get multiple Venomous Bites off in a fight.

Spider Form W - Passive: Elise's Spiderlings gain bonus attack speed. Spider Form W - Active: Elise gains bonus attack speed for 3 seconds.

Spiderling Attack Speed: 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% Elise Attack Speed: 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 / 140% Cost: Free Cooldown: 12

Skittering Frenzy is Elise's attack speed steroid and it's her main source of consistent damage. Her spider form W is typically the final piece to the combo that enables you to begin auto attacking the target down with greatly increased attack speed. This naturally synergises extremely well with her bonus magic damage on autos, resulting in a lot of dps dealt for the duration of Skittering Frenzy. It will also increase the amount of healing you receive because autoing more means gaining more life back per hit too. This ability is what you start with in the jungle as the 60% attack speed boost at level 1 greatly increases the clear speed of the first buff. It also increases the attack speed of your Spiderlings, further adding to the overall dps you deal. One important thing to note with Skittering Frenzy is that it resets Elise's auto attack timer on cast. This allows you to auto attack at standard speed, then immediately cast W to auto attack again. It results in the most possible dps available and it should always be utilised where possible. When it comes to the later ranks in this ability, it starts to give a massive amount of attack speed. Even at just rank 3, it grants 100% bonus attack speed and it's part of the reason why Elise has so much consistent damage, on top of her already very high burst. It's the perfect addition to her kit, as it means she isn't all out of juice after doing her main combo and is still a scary threat for a fair few seconds after comboing and entering spider form. The cooldown is at 12 seconds, which means you typically only use it once per fight. For things like Buffs, Baron, Dragon and Rift however, you can get multiple uses out of it which will spike your dps each time. The only downside to this ability is that you lose the attack speed bonus if you switch to human form. Just make sure that unless you aren't fighting, don't switch form for the duration of Skittering Frenzy or you will lose out on some dps.

Spider Form E - Active: Elise lifts up into the air, becoming untargetable for up to 2 seconds and revealing the area for the duration. Upon landing, Elise's Spider Queen bonuses are increased for 5 seconds.

If cast directly on an enemy, Elise automatically descends upon them after 1 second. While in the air, Elise can also use Rappel to select a target to descend upon.

Spider Effects Increase: 40 / 50 / 70 / 85 / 100% Cost: Free Cooldown: 26 / 24 / 22 / 20 / 18 Effect Radius: 750

Rappel is one of the best abilities in the game and it allows Elise to pull off some crazy plays. There are many uses for this ability which is what makes it not only very powerful, but also versatile in what it allows Elise to do. Firstly, the ability grants more bonus damage and healing on spider form autos when you Rappel onto an enemy, meaning that initiating a fight by rappelling to the enemy is never a bad idea. You can even simply Rappel on the spot just to get the bonus damage for a fight. This is just a minor use and benefit of the ability though. Due to it being maxed last, you'll only be getting a 40% boost for the majority of the game which doesn't translate to much extra damage/healing, but it is still extra. The second use for Rappel is for closing a large distance and jumping to your target. This is often done when ganking, or chasing down a fleeing target. The great thing about the way Rappel works is that as long as you are within range on the initial cast, you will always jump to the enemy's location of where they were when you pressed E on them. This means that even if they Flash or jump away after you already cast E, you will still travel to where they were and will be in range to then spider Q them, or transform and human E for a stun. The third use for Rappel is for dodging abilities and it's a major advantage Elise has over a lot of champions. Skill shots especially can be very easily avoided by a quick tap of E to go up and then come right back down, avoiding being hit by the oncoming ability. Common occurrences of this include Morgana's Bind, Lux's ultimate and Nidalee's spear. Rappel can also be used to avoid taking damage from channel abilities such as Nunu & Willump or Fiddlesticks ultimate. Play Video Being able to wait out the duration of their spells can often result in taking little to no damage from it. That's not all, because Rappel essentially takes you out of phase, it can be used to nullify certain abilities such as Nautilus, Zed and Fizz ult, which is a big deal. The fourth use for the ability is for granting vision of an area. Rappel grants vision of the entire circle of distance it covers, allowing you to check bushes or over walls without wards or having to facecheck yourself. The benefit to this is that if a unit is revealed, you can then descend upon them which is often used for getting over a wall to a jungle camp or Baron/Dragon. The fifth use is for dropping aggro with the most practical and effective being to drop tower aggro. This is a massive thing to be able to do, as it allows for easy tower dives even early into a game. Rappelling will immediately drop the tower aggro and any tower shots heading for you will disappear. Just makes sure that you are the one who takes the tower aggro first and don't leave it too late in order to pull off a clean dive. The final use for Rappel is for escaping purposes. You can Rappel to any enemy unit which includes wards, minions, monsters and even the jungle plants. This can allow for some quick and easy escapes and it often acts as a 'get out of jail free card' for when things go wrong. One last thing to note about Rappelling is that it does not prevent you from taking damage over time. If you are Ignited, or hit by bleed for example, Rappelling up will not stop the damage from ticking away at you.

When it comes to skill sequencing with Elise, there is only 1 optimal way to do it. It's a static sequence that never changes in any situation. You max your Q, followed by W, followed by E last, putting a point in your ultimate at levels 6, 11 and 16 as standard.

At level 1, you always start with your W on Elise. This is solely due to the attack speed steroid as it will give you the most dps from a single ability over an extended period of time. At 2, you level Q for your second damaging ability and at 3 you level your E to be ready for any fights or ganks. Level 3 is Elise's strongest point in the early game as that is when she has all 6 abilities at her disposal. After the first 3 levels, you want to max Elise's Q as it's is her main source of damage and also her most spam-able move. Then, W is maxed second because it's her only other source of damage and Elise is all about being able to make quick work of a target or put them low in a short time. Her E is all utility and you don't really get much out of it by maxing it second. The only bonuses for human E is that the stun duration goes up by 0.1 seconds per rank and the cooldown goes down by 1 second. As for Rappel, it only reduces the cooldown by 2 seconds each rank and increases the extra damage and healing by a small amount. These differences are very insignificant which is why it's not very good to max E second. As already mentioned, Elise is all about getting as much damage as possible out of her kit so that you can either insta-kill a squishy, or take them very low with your full combo. By maxing W second, you're increasing your chances of being able to accomplish this and you will scale much better into mid game. Maxing W second is also beneficial for farming and killing objectives such as Dragon, Baron and even towers from the huge boost in attack speed. There is no occasion where I would ever max E second when I'm jungling Elise, W second is superior in every way.

When it comes to Runes for Elise, there aren't too many viable options available. Luckily, the one's that she benefits most from are good Runes and they synergise well with her kit and tie in with her strengths. Undeniably, the best primary tree to taken Elise is Domination. It adds to her burst damage output, as well as granting utility and vision based bonuses which is exactly what a jungler wants. The tree you take for your secondary option isn't as static, but most players and certainly myself, tend to gravitate towards Sorcery simply because it offers a lot more power than any other tree here. A case can certainly be made for a Precision or Inspiration secondary, but I personally always run Sorcery and in my opinion it is the most optimal choice on Elise. For both Domination and Sorcery, there are a couple of Rune choices that can definitely differ which will be explained below. They make marginal differences though, so it doesn't really matter which option you go for at the end of the day. In a way, it's nice Elise's Runes are fairly static, because it means you are always going to be running an optimal setup, opposed to having multiple different variations that you aren't quite sure on which is better or worse.

Electrocute: Hitting a champion with 3 separate attacks or abilities in 3 seconds deals bonus adaptive (Magic in Elise's case) damage. Damage: 50-220 (+50% bonus AD) (+30% AP) Cooldown: 50-25 seconds (based on level)

Electrocute is by far the best Keystone available to Elise. It's one of the 2 Keystones that grant burst damage with the other being Dark Harvest. Because Elise is not a farm jungler however, Dark Harvest is not a viable option. Electrocute adds to the amount of burst Elise has in her combo, meaning she has a higher chance of being able to 1-shot a squishy. Even when you're not able to 1-shot, it will be adding an extra ability worth of damage on your target, increasing her overall damage output in every fight. There can even be times where you manage to get 2 procs of Electrocute off during an extended fight, or when you're chasing an enemy down. Elise has the ability to proc Electrocute extremely fast due to the speed at which she combos. Because you don't need to damage the enemy with an ability, only hit, all it takes in an E, then the W and Q part to your human combo and that's enough to proc the Electrocute. If you stun is not available, then you can simply add in 1 auto attack or a spider form Q instead. The cooldown of Electro is quite high, but as a jungler you aren't constantly trading with enemy champions anyway, so the cooldown doesn't matter as much. Whenever you meet the enemy jungler, or whenever you go for a gank, you're almost always going to have it up.

Cheap Shot: Deal bonus true damage to enemies with impaired movement or actions. Damage: 12-30 true damage (based on level) Cooldown: 4 seconds

Cheap Shot is a good Rune for Elise that provides her with more damage, but more importantly, extra damage in her burst combo. The immediate downside is of course you do need to hit your stun in order to make it work, but it does also work with the Red Buff slow. This is only for when you are alone too, as you get the bonus damage whenever the enemy is impaired, regardless of what impairs them. When it comes to teamfights and skirmishes, the chance that the champion you're hitting will be movement impaired is very high and so you'll be getting a lot of bonus damage output during a fight where multiple allied champions are involved. Cheap Shot also naturally synergises with Rylai's Crystal Scepter and you'll always get the bonus damage off. For the times where you do build a Rylai's, it will increase your consistent dps without the need to hit your stun. The other viable option to take instead of Cheap Shot is Sudden Impact. At first thought, you may be thinking that Sudden Impact is a lot better on Elise because of how easily she can activate it. This is true, but it's the timing of the activation that makes it clunky and inefficient on Elise. During your standard combo, you'll be activating the bonus penetrations at the end of your combo, meaning that all you'll be getting out of it is a tiny amount of extra auto attack damage. The magic pen is great, if you follow up with magic damage dealing abilities and in Elise's case, they're all on cooldown. You also don't get a chance to transform back after comboing to activate the penetration as your human abilities will all be on cooldown. The only time where you can make good use out of Sudden Impact is when you start in spider form, initiate with a Q and then switch to human form for a Q and W. This is not the ideal way to combo Elise though and doing all that just for a small amount of added damage from a couple of abilities is never worth it. The first thing you do to a target is stun them, so Cheap Shot gets activated from the beginning of the combo opposed to the end with Sudden Impact. This alone is why Cheap Shot is the superior choice.

Zombie Ward: After killing a ward, a friendly Zombie Ward is raised in its place. Additionally, when your wards expire, they reanimate as Zombie Wards. Duration: 60-180 seconds (based on level)

Zombie Ward is a vision control Rune that essentially increases the duration of your wards by up to 60-180 seconds. It scales with your champion level, so they don't last as long early game, but late they can extend the duration of your wards by up to 3 minutes which is huge. Zombie Ward is versatile as a Rune in the way that you don't have to keep your Stealth Ward for it to work. Most game, you tend to change to the Sweeping Lens, and almost always grab Oracle Lens at level 9. When you do this, it means that you can no longer provide any form of vision for your outside of 1 Control Ward. Come 6 items, and you no longer contribute towards gaining vision for your team for the rest of the game. Zombie Ward prevents this from being the case as you gain a Zombie Ward for every ward you kill, allowing you to generate vision while denying it. The viable alternative to Zombie Ward is Eyeball Collection. This is purely a damage option and it's very good on Elise who benefits from any raw damage she can get. It will increase your overall damage output and ability to 1-shot a target. It's not significant though, and it will take a while to get it ramped up. You get 2 stacks per champion kill, 1 per champion assist, and 1 stack per ward takedown. Once complete, you get 20 AP, which is an Amplifying Tome so it's not bad at all. There is some merit to both choices, neither one is necessarily better or worse than the other, but Zombie Ward is more useful late game and it's certainly better for your team. It's also worth to note that Eyeball Collection doesn't do anything for you very early, whereas Zombie Ward is actually really good for double uptime on your initial wards.

Relentless Hunter: Unique champion takedowns grant permanent out of combat movespeed. Amount: 8 + 8 per bounty hunter stack

Relentless Hunter is an amazing Rune for bonus movement speed. It works by giving you 8 out of combat movespeed, then 8 more per unique enemy taken down. This includes assists on champions too, so it's quite easy to ramp it up. Elise benefits from bonus movespeed more than most simply because of how gank oriented she is. The extra movespeed is great for being able to get around the map a lot faster, translating into faster ganks. The bonus movespeed not only helps you get to a lane faster, but it also increases the effectiveness of the gank by allowing you to get closer to the enemy or in range of a stun sooner, provided you haven't taken any damage. The only downside is that it provides you with 0 combat stats, but it allows you to get to a fight or gank a lane much sooner which is what Elise is all about being a gank heavy jungler. Once you get 5 stacks, it grants you 48 movespeed which is even more than level 2 boots. There isn't much competition here. Ravenous Hunter is alright on Elise, but due to the fact that she's an early game, gank heavy jungler who moves around the map a lot, Relentless Hunter simply outclasses it.

Celerity: Gain 3% movement speed. Additionally, you gain bonus Ability Power equal to your bonus movement speed (8% in Ability Power)

Celerity is one of the best Runes in Sorcery. Movement speed is one of the most crucial stats to have in League, and bonus movespeed outside of boots can be very effective, especially on champions who roam around the map a lot which is exactly what junglers do. Elise is a gank heavy jungler, so movespeed is even more important on her than most which is what makes Celerity a great Rune on her. It grants you 3% movespeed, which equates to an additional 10 ms. This may not seem like much, but it certainly makes a difference and will enable you to get to a gank or fight sooner. It can also be the difference between hitting or missing a max range Cocoon. Celerity also grants bonus AP based on your bonus movespeed. This will only be a small amount of AP however, but as Elise you get bonus moveseed from Runic Echoes, Celerity here, and also often Waterwalking. It's quite insignificant, but it may well be the difference between killing someone or them surviving on 20~ health. The other Rune you could choose to go with here is Absolute Focus. It's the damage alternative and it's actually quite good on Elise because you're typically at full health while you combo and get all your damage off, resulting in a nice dps increase from the bonus AP. It will also make your jungle clear a tiny bit faster. Both options are very good, with Celerity being slightly favoured due to the nature of Elise and how gank oriented she is, especially in the early game.

Waterwalking: While in the river, you gain 25 bonus movement speed and 5 - 30 (based on level) Ability Power or 3 - 18 (based on level) bonus Attack Damage (Adaptive).

Waterwalking is a great rune on Elise for similar reasons to Celerity. The bonus movespeed you get while in river is very beneficial to her ganking power and at 25 extra ms, you'll be able to get to a lane much faster than without it. For reference, 25 ms is the same amount of speed that tier 1 boots grants. On top of the movespeed, it also grants you bonus AP while in the river which is actually a pretty big deal. As Elise, you typically spend quite a lot of time in the river, either doing the Scuttle Crabs, Dragons/Rift, going for a gank or just generally roaming around the map. As well as this, there's quite a high chance that you end up meeting the enemy jungler in river after clearing your buffs. When this is the case, the bonus AP from Waterwalking comes in huge at being able to win the 1v1 and potentially grab first blood. Waterwalking is a very powerful Rune when you're in the river both early and late. Some of the major game deciding fights happen in the river when you're going for or contesting Dragons or Baron, and you're always going to have the bonus speed and damage for these fights. While it's not a great deal of extra stats, it certainly helps and it helps a lot more than any other Rune would in these situations. The other choice of Rune here is Scorch which you may have already guessed. Scorch is the other damage choice and it's also very strong on Elise. It will always be adding to your overall dps opposed to Waterwalking only being active while in river. This makes Scorch the better Rune for fights that happen away from the river, such as jungle invades/defends or when ganking. The damage does fall off though and won't be doing too much later on, but early game it can help secure those early kills. Both Runes here are fantastic on Elise, with Scorch being more reliable in providing consistent bonus dps, but Waterwalking providing you with more speed to gank and move around the map faster, as well as more fighting power in the river. Waterwalking also has better scaling due to the fact that game deciding fights tend to happen in the river a lot of the time, and you'll be gaining extra dps when doing Baron, Dragons and Rift Herald. It's also worth to note that Celerity paired with Waterwalking actually has a higher win rate than Celerity with Scorch. Either choice is fine though and you'll find success with which ever one you prefer.

When it comes to items for Elise, there's not a massive amount of optimal choices for her. She still has quite a lot of freedom in her build though, and the items you do build on her synergise very well with her kit. The general idea with Elise is to build damage based items that also contain defensive stats. The majority of items available to her will include some form of defense, whether that is health, armor or magic resist. You'll typically only get 1-2 full damage based items in a build, with 1 of those being your jungle item. Elise gets pretty tanky with the more items you get, while still having her damage increased at the same time. You never want to go full damage with Elise, and you also never want to go full tank. Elise is extremely squishy with quite low base HP, so it's very easy to get blown up in a small amount of time. Not only that, but you spend the majority of your time in melee form, and if you have no defensive stats you won't be lasting long at all. As for full tank, it results in Elise becoming nothing but a stun bot late game because she'll lack any kind of sufficient damage. A large part of Elise's strength as a champion comes from her ability to 1 shot key targets with a full combo, or take them low enough to win a fight. This is why you never want to build full tank. Undoubtedly, the most optimal way to build Elise is as an AP off-tank with her typical build including a lot of AP, bonus HP and some armor and magic resist.

Basic attacks against monsters deal 25 bonus on-hit physical damage and grant 15% bonus attack speed for 2 seconds. Killing large or epic monsters grants +50 bonus experience and +50 bonus experience for each level the monster is higher than you. +10% life steal vs. monsters.

Hunter's Machete is the better starting jungle item for Elise. The general rule of thumb for your starting jungle item is that if your champion has an attack speed steroid and auto attacks a lot when clearing, you go with Machete. Elise has one of the best attack speed steroids in the game, as well as bonus damage on spider form auto attacks which makes Machete superior to the Hunter's Talisman. The Talisman only applies extra damage when you use a spell, and since Elise only uses 1 spell at the starting camp, you don't get much out of Talisman. The only real benefit Talisman grants Elise is that she can clear Raptors faster due to the aoe damage over time you can spread with a Volatile Spiderling. As Elise, your main source of dps on every camp comes from your auto attacks and more often than not, you won't be clearing Krugs or Raptors before level 3 which makes Machete the much more efficient, and faster clear option to start with.

Regenerates 5.21 health every half-second for 12 seconds, restoring a total of 125 health. Holds up to 2 charges that refill upon visiting the store.

Refillable Potion takes up the last 150 gold you have available after Machete. It's a great item to always provide you with some sustain after every time you base. Elise doesn't tend to take much, if any damage during jungle clears due to her Spiderlings so you won't often need to use the potion in the jungle. It can greatly help when fighting the enemy jungler or when ganking though and it can allow you to restore your health after possibly getting low. You can also purposely tank the first jungle camp so that your Spiderlings stay alive to add more dps, then just use 1 charge of your Refillable Potion to top yourself back to full. Most of the time, you'll want to save the charges though because you never know when you might need them to help you fight, or recover and fight again.

Place an invisible Totem Ward at a target location (600 range), which reveals the area for 60 - 120 (based on level) seconds. Stores one charge every 180 - 90 (based on level) seconds, up to 2 maximum charges.

Pretty standard here, Stealth Ward is the best starting trinket to take. It allows you to either ward your jungle entrances to watch for invades, or ward the enemy jungle to get an idea of where they might be starting. The duration of the ward increases with champion level, and the cooldown decreases to the point where you can always have at least 1 ward up at all times. It can also store up to 2 charges so you don't have to immediately use it when ready. It can be a good idea to place a defensive ward in your jungle entrance when you're facing a jungle who is likely to invade you and attempt to steal a buff such as Nunu & Willump and especially Ivern. It also prevents you from having any risk when taking your buff with 0 vision around the area, just in case of an invade or cheese steal from an enemy laner. Other than that, as a jungler you can use your trinket to ward for your laners, or ward river as soon as you get there to provide vision on the enemy jungler if they go for a gank. You typically keep the Warding Totem for the early game, and then you'll often want to switch to the Sweeping Lens later on, and definitely Oracle Lens once you hit level 9. As a jungler, enemy players having vision of you is your biggest hindrance to pulling off successful ganks. Being able to remove the enemy team's vision, or know for certain that they have no wards down is vital to making ganks work. Until later on though, you'll be needing the Warding Totem to provide as much vision as possible for your team in the early stages of a game.

There's a few items you can go for on your first back and it's mainly dependent on the gold you have at the time. Most junglers look to upgrade their jungle item as a priority, and while this option is available to Elise, it's not always what you're looking to do. Due to Elise being such a gank focused jungler, early movement speed is often the optimal thing to do on your first back. As stated though, it all depends on how much gold you have when you back and your first buy can vary from game to game because of this. Items will be listed in order of cost with the highest first.

+18 Magic Penetration Unique – Enhanced Movement: +45 flat movement speed

Tier 2 boots can sometimes be the best thing to rush on your first back for the large amount of movement speed. Some of you may have been expecting Mobility Boots to be here, but I'm not a fan of the Mobi rush and I don't ever build them on Elise. My reasons why will be explained a bit later. If you do like Mobi on Elise, then Mobis would be here instead of Sorc. Sorcerer's Shoes on first back is very powerful on Elise and it's my favourite initial buy. It provides her with a lot of movement speed, but also a lot of fighting power from the 18 magic penetration. This allows her to gank very frequently, but also have a lot of bonus damage and burst potential for those ganks. 18 magic pen that early into a game results in close to true damage to most champions. Magic pen is one of the best stats to have on Elise due to the fact that she has high base damages, and percentage based health damaging abilities. You can easily 1v1 almost any champion early into a game with Sorc Shoes as your first item. Sorc Shoes on first back isn't always possible because it requires 1100 gold and this is usually only possible if you get a kill or assist from an early gank. It takes quite a long time to farm up 1100 gold at the start and if you're doing that, it means you're not ganking. When I do back with 1100 gold however, Sorc Shoes is often my item of choice before heading straight to a lane for a gank. It's quite a high risk high reward strategy as it will allow you to greatly snowball if you get some nice ganks off or catch the enemy jungler, but if you don't make any ganks work it can definitely set you back.

+30 Ability Power Unique: +5% movement speed

Aether Wisp is another great movement speed based item. It's part of the recipe for your Runic Echoes jungle item too, so it's a really good pickup on your first back. It costs 850 gold, so it's more reasonable than Sorc at 1100 and while it doesn't grant as much movement speed, it gives you 30 ability power. This ability power will not only increase your damage to champions, but also to monsters which is where it has an advantage over Sorc Shoes. Aether Wisp grants benefits to all major aspects of jungling early. You get movespeed to get around the map faster and gank more frequently, and ability power for extra damage to champions as well as faster clearing of camps. Going Wisp on first back will also then allow you to complete your jungle item fairly quickly which will give you a nice power spike. If you back with 1150 gold, you can also decide to go Wisp + level 1 boots, which puts your movement speed bonus up to 41, compared to Sorc Shoes at 45. This then makes the comparison of 30 AP vs 18 magic pen. The magic pen wins for champion only fights, but the AP allows you to clear jungle camps a lot faster which can often be more beneficial than going for more power in fights. The choice can depend on the situation a lot of the time. If you are expecting to be ganking non-stop, or fighting the enemy jungler a lot then Sorc can be better suited for doing so. If you don't think you'll be ganking a whole lot in the next few minutes or if you're slightly behind, then a Wisp would be the better choice to help you clear jungle camps faster. Wisp is certainly the more reliable choice however with less risk involved.

+10% life steal against monsters Unique: +225% base mana regeneration while in the jungle + Chilling Smite or Challenging Smite

Upgrading your Machete into the next stage of jungle item is another, cheaper option that's available on your first back. This jungle upgrade costs 650 gold and it will grant you with some nice mana regen, the stats that come from Hunter's Talisman and also the chosen upgrade's corresponding Smite. In terms of power, upgrading the jungle item offers the least because you don't really get much in the way of stats. The main benefit you get from the upgrade is the upgraded Smite, whether that is Red Smite or Blue. The choice of which Smite to go will be explained in the next part to items, but it doesn't matter too much which one you go for. The main issue I have with upgrading your jungle item as your first buy is that it means you can't really be using Smite for jungle camps anymore otherwise you waste a lot of potential when it comes to ganks and fights. The empowered Smites are strong tools that greatly aid in fights and you always want to be saving it to use on an enemy champion, not monster. Even still, upgrading to it early will help with clearing your jungle as you get more added benefits towards monsters, and you also get some extra mana regen which is very beneficial for when you don't have Blue. It's also cheaper than Wisp and Boots and it's the best thing you can do if you back with 650 gold.

+15 Ability Power +100 Mana +25% increased healing from potions and refillable potions. Unique: Grants 2 Glory (+6 AP) for a champion kill and 1 Glory (+3 AP) for an assist, up to a maximum of 10 Glory stacks (+30 AP). Upon death, lose 4 Glory stacks (-12 AP).

Dark Seal is a very cheap, very efficient item to pickup. It's a great item for champions of a snowbally nature and it enables them to snowball even harder. For just 350 gold, you can get up to 45 AP and due to the nature of Elise, you typically get quite a lot of kills/assists early on in a game (provided the game is going well). Even if you don't end up getting many stacks on it, it's still often worth the buy and it's never really much of a risk due to it only costing 350 gold. You even get decent base stats for 350 gold, and also increased healing from your Refillable Potion charges. Seal is a nice pickup when you don't have much gold, but can afford to get one of these. I would never go out of my way to get one, or delay a possible instant item completion in favour of one, but I will almost always pick one up early game if I back and have 350 gold to spare.

The Mobility Boots rush has always been a very common thing on Elise and for good reason. I feel like in Season 8, with all the new movement speed based Runes it has lost some effectiveness and you can get much better results with Sorc Shoes. Even when Mobi rush was meta on Elise, I was never a fan because it gives you 0 combat stats and your ability to burst a target down is significantly lessened. Due to Relentless Hunter, Celerity and Waterwalking, you no longer need to rush Mobi boots, or any boots for that matter in order to move around the map quickly. With that said, Mobis are still a viable option for Elise and it's still very effective. My playstyle with her just doesn't allow for them and I won't ever personally recommend them.

This will be a quick, short section that discusses the 2 jungle Smite upgrades and when to take which one. This is where player preference can come into play as certain Elise players will prefer to go Red Smite and others prefer Blue Smite. At the end of the day though, they each have there own strengths and are both always viable choices.

Chilling Smite can be cast on enemy champions, dealing 28 - 166 (based on level) true damage + stealing 20% of their movement speed for 2 seconds.

Stalker's Blade and Chilling Smite that comes with it is the more commonly built Smite upgrade on Elise. It's also my preferred choice on her and I'll usually go for this one. Challenging Smite does immediate damage on cast and it's also true damage. This greatly enhances Elise's burst potential and helps to instantly kill squishy champions. Because it deals instant damage, it also slightly increases the damage of your spider form Q, Venomous Bite which further enhances your burst. The second effect of Chilling Smite is that it steals the enemy champion's movement speed. This is great for both slowing the enemy, but also speeding yourself up to either keep on them, catch them or get away from them. It's important to be able to keep on your target as Elise because most of your extended dps comes from spider form enhanced auto attacks. The ability to slow a champion also has the benefit of enabling an easier Cocoon. While it's only a slow, having another form of crowd control is a pretty big deal and when you use it on an enemy target, it can greatly benefit your team in taking them out. It's also great for ganking because it allows you to slow the enemy immediately.

Challenging Smite can be cast on enemy champions, revealing them for 4 seconds, reducing their damage against you by 20% and making them take 60 - 162 (based on level) true damage over 3 seconds from your basic attacks for the duration.

Skirmisher's Sabre and Challenging Smite is the more situational of the two, but it's still always a good choice. It has 3 effects overall with a small effect of revealing the target you Smite for 4 seconds. This is a very minor benefit, but it's still good and often very helpful for you and your team. The main 2 benefits come from the damage and the damage reduction however and they are very powerful effects. The damage it deals is 60 - 162 (based on level) true damage over 3 seconds if the target is basic attacked once, but it can actually deal up to 140 - 378 (based on level) true damage if the target is basic attacked multiple times during the duration. This is a big deal because it makes it out-damage Blue Smite by quite a lot, provided you get multiple auto attacks off. This is where it can be unreliable and somewhat clunky at times and there can be cases where you actually get 0 damage from it. If you get stunned as you cast it, or fail to get on your target to auto them, you won't deal any bonus damage from the Smite. If you do manage to auto attack them multiple times, it will deal a lot more damage than Blue Smite would. The other main effect is that you cause the enemy you Smite to deal 20% less damage to you. This is a massive bonus and it works wonders against champions with high burst, or that tend to do a lot of damage in a short period of time such as Kha'Zix and Lee Sin. This is where Red Smite can be the better option as it allows you to essentially not get blown up by a high damage jungler. Red Smite is definitely less effective for ganking and teamfighting as you can't deal instant damage or slow them, but it excels for dueling the enemy jungler and it can prevent you from being bursted down.

Elise has many effective item options, but when it comes to items that are considered a must, there isn't much at all. Your jungle item is a given, and so are boots, but other than that there is only 1 other item I would consider core which is Oblivion Orb into Morellonomicon.

+60 Ability Power +7% Movement Speed Gain charges by moving or casting. At 100 charges, the next ability damage you deal will expend all charges to deal 60 (+ 10% AP) magic damage to the first enemy hit and summon up to 3 lesser bolts that target nearby enemies.

Whether it's in the form of Skirmisher's Sabre or Stalker's Blade, Runic Echoes is your jungle item every single game. It grants Elise everything she wants with AP, movement speed and an additional source of damage to aid her burst. The Runic Passive is also great for helping clear jungle camps due to the damage hitting up to 4 targets. On top of that, you gain mana back with the secondary bonus of 'hitting a large monster with this effect will restore 25% of your missing mana' which enables you to keep yourself topped up when you don't have Blue. Completing Runic gives Elise quite a big power spike, so it's important to get it finished as your first main item. The only time where it can be slightly delayed is when you rush upgraded boots, but it's not uncommon to be at tier 1 boots, or even no boots with Runic finished.

+18 Magic Penetration Unique – Enhanced Movement: +45 flat movement speed

Sorcerer's Shoes are the core boots for Elise. If you prefer Mobis, then by all means you can go for Mobis instead, but I feel like Elise is best played with all the magic pen she can get to aid her in bursting down targets. 18 extra magic pen will greatly enhance your damage potential, which directly translates into more chances of a gank or jungle fight ending in a kill. Elise is all about being able to get a lead and snowball a game, and Sorc Shoes are well suited for this. For any players that prefer to go Mobility Boots, I highly recommend that at a later stage you sell your Mobis and pick up Sorc Shoes anyway. Mobility Boots are only really good in the early stages of the game and they become fairly useless late. You're much better off switching to Sorc for more damage, or even Tabi or Treads to give you more of a chance in teamfights.

+300 Health +80 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: +15 magic penetration UNIQUE Passive: Magic damage dealt to champions inflicts them with Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds

Morellonomicon is a great all-round item that provides additional burst with the high amount of AP and magic pen, a small amount of survivability with the 300 bonus health and a passive that cuts enemy healing by 40%. The magic pen is where this item shines. +15 pen means even more burst potential from Elise's abilities and it will further enhance her ability to 1 combo someone. Paired with Sorc, you're sitting at 33 bonus magic penetration which will cut through most of someone's MR if they have no MR items yet, and it can greatly help to take down the champions who have built extra MR. Because the magic pen is the most valued stat on Morello, you can choose to leave it uncompleted at just an Oblivion Orb as you gain the same amount of pen from that. You can then finish it at a later stage. The bonus health on Morello is also a very nice bonus to have because Elise is very squishy without any bonus HP and being 50% melee, it can be a big weakness so any extra health she can get is a welcome addition. The passive healing reduction to Morellonomicon is very good for when you are against a champion with some form of significant healing such as Nidalee or Warwick. When you hit an enemy with magic damage, you apply Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds which will straight up cut their healing by 40%.

This section will detail all of the other items that are good choices on Elise. You can pretty much pick and choose what you want as preference can play in big here. There's no right or wrong choice, but there can be situations that make a certain pick more optimal such as requiring some armor, or needing more magic penetration.

+300 Health +85 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: Damaging abilities slow units by 20% for 1 second.

For the item cost at 2600 gold, the stats on Rylai's Crystal Scepter are very good because it provides you with a nice amount of HP at 300, a lot of AP at 85 and then of course the passive that grants all of your abilities a slow effect. The slow on Rylai's enables Elise to catch targets and keep on them better, but also get away from enemies with ease as well. A great interaction with the Rylai's passive and Elise is that her Spiderlings will actually apply the slow when they attack someone, making it extremely easy to get away in spider form as your Spiderlings will attack and slow the chaser. Rylai’s works wonders against the type of champions that don't have any form of jump, dash or teleport. Rylai's makes sure that they can never get away from you and the slow can also make it a lot easier to hit your Cocoon.

+300 Health +80 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: Deal 2% increased damage for each second in combat with champions, up to a maximum of 10% UNIQUE Passive: Spell damage applies a damage-over-time that deals magic damage equal to 1% of target's max health per second for 3 seconds. This is doubled to 2% against slowed or immobilised units

Liandry's Torment is a very strong item. It's another tanky damage based item as you get 300 health from it, but the item shines from the bonus damage you get. On top of the 80 AP, you get 2 passives that both grant you additional dps and they are strong passives. The first one grants you up to 10% more damage dealt when you are in combat with an enemy champion. While Elise often kills her target in a matter of seconds, she can also have drawn out engages where you'll be auto attacking a lot in spider form. Every second spent autoing will be ramping up your dps, and once you're ready to switch to human form for another rotation of spells, they will all deal 10% more damage. This is also a big deal on Elise as she does % based health damage. The second passive is a damage over time burn. This burn deals % max health damage, which makes it very powerful for taking down high HP targets which Elise often struggles with. It will allow her to much more easily take down tanks and it will still add a fair bit of extra dps to squishy targets too. The final thing to note with Liandry's is that on her own, Elise cannot proc the double damage because she has no form of damaging crowd control. This is changed when you also have a Rylai's Crystal Scepter however and these 2 items pair together extremely well. The Rylai's Liandry's combo is an excellent pair of items to go for and they are both very good items on Elise as it is. It will make you very tanky from all the bonus HP, and give you a ton of extra damage and crowd control. If you're going for either Rylai's or Liandry's, it's usually a good idea to get the other one too because of how powerful the items are together. The added fact that they are both decent items on Elise as it is makes it a no-brainer.

+45 Armor +70 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: Put yourself in stasis for 2.5 seconds, rendering yourself invulnerable, but unable to move, attack, cast spells, or use items (120 second cooldown).

Zhonya's Hourglass is another great item on Elise. It enables her to teamfight a lot better and you can dive onto a key target knowing you have the ability to enter stasis if you take too much damage. The armor you get from Hourglass can also be a great help in the later stages of a game and I would always build one when I'm facing mostly physical damage dealers. The stasis is one of the key reasons to pick up an Hourglass though. Being able to make yourself invulnerable for 2.5 seconds is huge for counter-playing a lot of abilities and even though Rappel can often be used to do this, you won't always have it available and there's nothing wrong with having 2 ways to nullify an ability such as Zed's Death Mark. The cooldown reduction you get isn't a big deal on Elise since she isn't someone who typically scales well with CDR, but nevertheless it's still helpful and it will reduce the cooldown of her key abilities Cocoon and Rappel by a fair amount. The active also allows for Elise to play extremely aggressively in a teamfight, or even being the one to initiate the fight herself. This comes from being able jump into a team, use all of her cooldowns and then go into stasis. Late-game, Elise tends to get blown up very quickly and have little impact in a fight. Hourglass stasis helps to prevent this from being the case and it's one of the best items to help her scale and not fall off so hard.

350 Health +55 Magic Resist +10% Cooldown Reduction 300 Mana UNIQUE Aura: Nearby enemy champions take 10% more magic damage.

Abyssal Mask is a very good magic resist tank based item that still also provides Elise with additional damage. Not only does it provide Elise with more damage though, it actually grants 10% more damage to any magic damage dealing ability on your team, provided they hit a champion affected by the aura. This makes Abyssal Mask a crucial item to build if your team is heavy AP, but even if you're the only AP on your team, it's still a great buy for Elise when you need magic resist. It does have a secondary passive which is: 'Restore mana equal to 15% of damage taken from champions. Restore health equal to 20% of mana spent, up to 25 health per cast', but this isn't that big of a deal and won't help much due to the timing of the item being quite late typically. Other than what's mentioned, you get 10% CDR and 300 bonus mana. The 10% CDR pairs well if you have another CDR item like Hourglass or Protobelt as you'll then have 20%. Elise doesn't really need CDR like most champs, but it's still very nice to have some as it will lower the cooldown of your impactful abilities Cocoon and Rappel. The extra flat mana is no big deal, but it's a bonus and will help prevent you from ever running out of mana. You typically build this item when you're looking to gain some bonus magic resist. It;s one of the best choices for Elise because of the fact it grants you damage on top of the tanky stats and that's the exact kind of item you're looking to build on her.

+70 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: Magic damage ignores 40% of the target's magic resistance. This applies before flat magic penetration.

Void Staff is an item that you end up needing when the enemy team has a ton of bonus magic resist. This will typically occur when your team is AP heavy, but also if the enemy team has a lot of tanks. The main purpose of the Void Staff is to simply cut through some of a target's magic resist, allowing you to deal more damage with your spells. Void only costs 2650 gold and it gives you 80 AP along with the 40%. Before you take into account the passive, it's not a very efficient item at only 65.66% gold efficiency. For the item to break even in terms of gold efficiency, the passive needs to be worth at least 24 magic pen. This means that the target will need to have at least 60 magic resist for the Void staff to be considered efficient and worth the buy, but by the time you get one on Elise, it will be more than efficient. A lot of games you won't really need a Void simply because you'll have a lot of flat pen, and it's not super important that you're a primary damage dealer on your team. Void on Elise is often my last, or second to last item if I'm going for one. The only exception is for rare cases where my team is like 80% magic damage and in those cases I'll grab one sooner. It's one of the only pure offensive items that you'll see built on Elise and if you get one too early, you'll be too squishy which is why you won't see it til late in most cases.

+300 Health +60 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Active: Dash forward, firing out seven bolts that deal 75 - 150 (based on level) (+ 25% AP) magic damage (40 second cooldown). champions & monsters hit by multiple bolts take 10% damage per additional bolt.

Hextech Rocketbelt is fairly common item on Elise, but you'll usually see it as her first item after Runic, or you won't see it at all. The active is basically a small dash that shoots out rockets in a cone in front of you. These rockets deal a fair amount of too and so it increases Elise's burst potential by quite a bit which is one of the main reasons to get it. Outside of the damage on the active, the small dash can be super helpful for both offensive and defensive purposes. It can give you that extra push to catch up to or get on a target, or it can be used to help you get away from someone chasing you or dodge an ability. The build path for Proto is split between part defense and part offense. The Kindlegem provides defense in the for of additional health, plus some utility with 10% CDR, while the Hextech Revolver provides a lot of offense with AP and its passive. Revolver is one of the best things about going Proto because it's one of the best early offensive items an AP champion can get. This is due to the passive empowered auto attack, on top of the 40 AP it grants. One slight downside to Protobelt is that after the active, there is a very brief period of time where you are locked out of being able to cast any abilities. This is because of the way that Protobelt's dash disables spellcasts and channels for the duration. This can make it quite clunky when trying to pull of quick, smooth combos after using the dash. The only way to prevent this, is by using the dash at the end of a combo, rather than at the start. It's a great item for the cost and it works really well on Elise, providing her with more burst and an additional gap closer, but it caters to a certain playstyle that I'm not an adopter of, so I tend to never buy Proto. I personally value early magic pen and by going Proto, it delays the magic pen rush by a long time.

Some champions tend to spend a lot of time in the jungle, clearing all their camps and ganking occasionally, but Elise is not one of those champions. Her kit doesn't allow for her to be a farm jungler, and the sole reason you take Elise is to try and snowball a game very early with her ganking effectiveness and level 3-5 strength. Because of this, I highly recommend you do a fast level 3 clear to try and get a game rolling in favour of your team. For starting in the jungle, you can start at either one of your buffs, depending on where you plan on level 3 ganking. Most of the time, it's better to start with your bot lane in order to get the best leash and fastest initial clear possible. That said, Elise can still very easily clear her buffs with minimal and even no help which is a good thing to be able to do. Some situations result in you having little or no help with your first buff and while it does slow your clear down, it doesn't hinder her too much thanks to her Spiderlings. Due to Elise's major power spike at level 3, doing a fast level 3 clear while grabbing both buffs is often my goto clear. To hit level 3, you also need to include 1 other camp which is almost always Gromp for me as it's the only other single unit camp, making it very easy and quick to clear as Elise. I've spoken about clear efficiency by utilising your forms and kiting the monsters earlier in the guide, but I'll have 2 video examples below that show how I do my initial clear as Elise in most games. In each clip, I start with my bot lane, but the same can be done in reverse if you want to start top side. The choice on where you want to start is usually decided by where you'll focus your first gank attempt, but other factors such as being invaded, or expecting a buff steal attempt from the likes of Nunu & Willump or Ivern can force you to start top instead. No matter which side of the map you're on or which buff you start at, the clear can be done in the same way, just a different order. Play Video This clip shows the initial start when you're Red Team, starting at blue buff with the help of your bot lane. The first thing you'll notice is that I intentionally take some hits from blue buff, opposed to letting my Spiderlings tank it from the start. This is because it's optimal to take some damage yourself in order to prolong the life and as a result, dps of your lings. Elise heals on spider auto attacks, so it's always good to take the first bit of damage while doing a camp as you'll heal it back in no time. The major thing to note about how I do the clear is the way that I somewhat juggle the 2 camps. I start doing Gromp before I've finished off blue, and I kite blue buff all the way to Gromp with ranged auto attacks. Doing it this way allows you to start Gromp almost as soon as it spawns, opposed to being a few seconds late. 1-2 seconds may not seem like much, but it's so important to be the first one to river at level 3 in case you meet the enemy jungler which you often will. The final thing to note about the start is the switch to human form near the end of Gromp's life, just after my second Spiderling dies. Doing this enables you to start kiting Gromp away, moving towards your next destination sooner. The camp is finished with a spider form Q and then you proceed to move to Red with the bonus movespeed from being in spider form. The results of this strategy can vary depending on how good of a leash you get from your bot lane, but the idea stays the same. Kite blue towards Gromp in ranged form when it's at around 200 health, then human W towards Gromp while you finish blue. Once blue is killed and you hit 2, immediately level Q to then human Q Gromp and then go into spider form. Then repeat the kiting process near the end of Gromp and switch to spider form finish it with Q if needed, else start moving to Red. Play Video This clip shows the level 3 clear when you're on Blue Team and start at red buff instead of blue. It's the exact same idea, only you do red before blue and Gromp. When red buff is low, start kiting it towards your top side jungle, then use the blasting plant to get over to blue and start it immediately. Using the plant saves you a couple of seconds from not having to walk around, and every second counts as a gank focused jungler. I usually use my first Smite to finish blue buff here. This is because it ends up at around the Smite damage amount when you use your last spider form Q, meaning it would take a few seconds to finish it with auto attacks. You could speed up the process by going into human form and using another Q + W on blue buff, but then you won't have those to start Gromp with. You can just Smite Gromp too though, so it doesn't matter which way you go about it here. The level 3 rush on Elise is quite important as that's when she becomes a scary threat to the enemy team having access to all 6 of her abilities. A level 4 clear on Elise is an option, but it's not very good on her because you need to get a game snowballing to maximise your effectiveness of the champion. A level 4 clear means you won't be ganking very early, or meeting the enemy jungler to potentially kill them or force them back and it's only really done when you have nowhere to gank early. Level 3 on Elise is where the fun begins and it's where you can start to make a major impact on the game. The main goal from level 3 is to begin ganking as soon as possible to try and get an early lead on the enemy team. Once you hit level 3 and head towards river, you have a few options of what can happen next, these are: Meet the enemy jungler, Invade enemy jungle/checking their buff, Look for a potential immediate gank, Do Scuttle Crab, followed by a gank or invade, Or do Scuttle Crab, then go farm another jungle camp. Most of the time you'll meet the enemy jungler in river, also level 3 and this is your first opportunity to get an advantage. It's sometimes a good idea to brush camp for a few seconds once you reach the river as you'll always win a fight that you get to initiate with a stun, provided you do land it. Elise can out-trade most champions at level 3 and so you should always be confident going into a river fight, especially if you have Waterwalking. If you don't meet the enemy jungler at river, you have a few options. The first and best option is to look for an immediate gank on either mid or top if you started bot, or bot/mid if you started top. If there's no opportunity to gank, you can instead do the Scuttle Crab or invade the enemy jungle. Doing Scuttle is a the safer option, while invading is more risky because you could end up wasting time if the enemy jungler is doing a level 4 clear. You can also do Scuttle, then look to gank or invade right after. The final option here is the worst case scenario and that is when you don't meet the enemy jungler and you can't really gank yet. In these cases, it's best to do the Scuttle and then go farm either your Raptors, or Wolves to then look for a gank. Just remember that when you're playing Elise, ganking is almost always your number 1 priority and especially early ganks. The main thing you need to be careful with when jungling Elise is to not fall too far behind in XP. You can often find yourself a level or 2 down on the enemy jungler as a result of ganking too much and not farming enough. If your ganks always end in kills/assists then it's no problem, but it's when you have multiple failed ganks that can set you back. Find the right balance between ganking and farming and either soak some XP from lanes after each gank, or farm a few camps consecutively if you need to catch up a bit. If you do start to fall behind early, it's often best to keep taking your jungle buffs, even if it's a mid laner that can benefit from having a blue. It's your jungle, and blue buff is just as good on Elise as it is on a lot of other champions so it's never wasted and it can allow you to catch up in XP. The same goes for red buff, even if your ADC could use it, it's actually very effective on Elise due to her attack speed steroid and frequency of auto attacking. Don't feel like you ever need to give away your buffs, especially if you are slightly behind in levels. This is one of the biggest downsides to Elise and it's because she can't efficiently and quickly kill Raptors and Krugs. You will often find yourself down a level on the enemy jungler come mid game unless you're fed, but it's just down to the nature of the champion and how Elise works. She's not a farm jungler, so if your ganks don't really work out then chances are you will fall behind. Just makes sure that you don't ignore farming entirely, just because she is a gank heavy jungler. Doing a jungle camp in-between ganks is often the best way to go about balancing farming/ganking. Objective control is one of the most important aspects of jungling. As Elise, you have a very easy time securing objectives with the burst from spider form Q and Smite. She also has a very easy time soloing Dragons and Rift Herald due to her Spiderlings. Dragon is first up, and it's important to try and have vision of it at all times. Scuttle Crabs are an excellent source of vision that you should always be aiming to get. Elise can take out the Crabs in no time with her Cocoon and empowered auto attacks. You should always look to clear the Crabs when you can, but also to place a ward in the actual Dragon pit so that you have full vision of it. It's not uncommon for junglers to sneak in the pit with a dash or the blasting plant and do Dragon unnoticed if you don't have a ward in the actual pit. Play Video Elise deals a lot of dps to Objectives, simply because of her massive attack speed steroid. With the help of her Spiderlings to tank and also add dps, she can take down a Dragon in no time without the need for any help. The only time where you ideally need some help is in the early levels vs a Mountain or Infernal drake as your Spiderlings get taken out very quickly due to the aoe attack from the Dragon. Rift Herald is the other main objective pre 20 minutes and that spawns in at 10 mins. Elise excels at being able to solo the Rift and she can do it almost untouched due to her Spiderlings. Rift Heralds auto attacks are only single target, so it takes it a very long time to kill even 3 of Elise's lings. Depending on how early you attempt Rift, the only thing you need to do is switch to human mid-way for another rotation of spells to spawn more Spiderlings. You should also always Cocoon Rift even though it doesn't stun it because it still counts as a spell hit to generate 1 extra Spiderling. Play Video The final thing to note about doing Rift with Elise is that you shouldn't go into spider form until the Herald does its charge attack. If you switch to spider form before it charges, it can take out, or damage all of your Spiderlings. As for Baron, Elise is never able to solo it, but she adds a lot of dps to the team when going for it and she can quite easily secure, or have a high chance of stealing it with her Venomous Bite paired with Smite.

Ganking is where Elise shines and it's what she's best known for. She has the ability to pull off constant ganks with a high chance of securing a kill due to her kit. When it comes to ganking with Elise, there are multiple ways you can go about doing it. Obvious things include which path to take and using the blasting plants to get over a wall, but Elise has 2 different ways to initiate a gank and they play out very differently. The most common way to gank with Elise is to enter the gank in human form, ready to attempt a Cocoon on an enemy champion. This is usually the most effective, and it works very well when you come in from behind. Once Cocoon lands, you then go in for your rotation of spells, switching to spider form to secure the kill or chase them down. You also then have Rappel at the ready in case they dash or flash away, or for when you need to close more distance. Play Video Landing Cocoon is the most crucial part to your ganks, and missing it often leads to a failed attempt. This is why it's usually best to come in from behind when you have the chance as it gives you the best opportunity to land a Cocoon, or force the enemy champion to walk a direction other than directly to their tower. If Cocoon misses, you still carry out your rotation of spells in the same way. Ganking from the fog of war is also highly effective at enabling a Cocoon hit. It has a very fast missile speed, but its small hitbox makes it quite easy to dodge, especially when it's a max range Cocoon. Firing one from the fog of war gives the enemy little time to react and as long as you aim it right or predict their movement, you'll have a much higher chance of it landing. Of course, you can't always get a Cocoon off from the fog of war, or get behind the enemy for a gank and so it can often be a good idea to hold your Cocoon for a few seconds rather than rushing it. If you immediately attempt a Cocoon, the enemy is more than likely going to be expecting it and will start to dodge and sometimes even pre-emptively blow a Flash or dash to get away. By holding your Cocoon, you give yourself more time to get a better position to land it as well as making it a lot more unpredictable. Other than those points, it's all about learning the travel speed and range of Cocoon. Once you're comfortable with how far and fast it goes, you'll become much better at landing them at max range and landing them on moving targets. Just remember to be patient and wait for the right opportunity to Cocoon, rather than always rushing it. The second way that Elise can gank is actually ganking in spider form to start with. This may come as a surprise, but it can often be even more effective than starting in human form, despite it somewhat messing up Elise's combo and not being able to stun them right away. Play Video Certain situations result in a human form start being very ineffective and you'll have a higher chance of getting a successful gank off with a spider form start in these situations. Some examples of these situations are: Enemy has no form of dash They are far away from your point of entry They are in the middle of a minion wave Your ally is engaged in a fight already Whenever these situations are present, it can often be better to initiate the gank in spider form as it allows you to get onto the enemy champion a lot sooner. This can be from Rappel, or just from the added movement speed paired with the small dash on spider form Q. If the enemy has no form of dash, getting on top of them as soon as possible is great for maximising your dps, and it allows you to then switch to human form for a point blank stun which is much easier to land. Even if they have Flash, you can still switch and stun them after they Flash away and it has a very high chance to end in a kill (as seen in the clip). If your ally is already engaged in a fight, it can be beneficial to initiate in spider form and Rappel to the enemy as soon as you can. Doing this can often prevent the enemy from having a chance to kill your teammate if they are going even or winning the fight. This is extra important for when your ally is being ganked and it's a 1v2 or 2v3. You need to even the playing field as quickly as possible for the best chance of a positive outcome. The final one is for when the enemy is in the middle of a minion wave. It's near impossible to land a Cocoon on someone surrounded by minions and you can end up wasting a lot of dps by auto attacking in human form, waiting for a clear path for Cocoon. It's often best to gank in spider form, then once they retreat you can switch to human for a stun. These points are just some examples of when it can be more effective ganking in spider form, but it doesn't always mean it is more effective as each situation is different. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter too much which form you gank in, but I would say for cases where the enemy surrounded by minions, a spider form gank would definitely be more effective.

Using the Blasting Plants is one of the most effective ways to gank top or bot lane and it greatly increases the odds of getting something out of it. By using the Plants, you can jump over the wall to immediately enter the lane which gives the enemies very little time to react. Play Video Being able to do this means that it doesn't even matter if the enemy has the brush warded. By jumping straight over, the enemy won't have enough time to realise you're there and back away and it's very easy to secure a kill from this. You should always use the Blasting Plant to gank when they are available, especially when ganking bot lane. Being able to nullify a ward and gank an unsuspecting enemy is the best way to secure a kill, or at the very least give lane advantage to your allies.

Elise is one of the best champion in the game when it comes to tower diving and she can pull off a tower dive as early as level 3. This is all because of her ability to drop tower aggro with Rappel, and even jump out of tower range after if a minion is nearby. The most important thing to note with tower diving as Elise is to always take the initial aggro of the tower. If it goes onto your ally, they will likely die or have to move back to drop aggro. The idea is that you take the aggro, then 1-2 shots before you would be killed you Rappel up and drop the aggro. When you Rappel tower aggro, it will also drop any incoming tower shot and you won't take any damage from it. This allows you to maximise the time your damaging an enemy under tower before having to Rappel and get out. Play Video What's more is that if you have Spiderlings, after using Rappel to drop tower aggro, when you come back down the tower will aggro to your lings instead of you. This can allow you to either get out safely or continue to chase down a kill.

This is the point of a game where you don't want to get to without your team being ridiculously far ahead. Elise's early game is amazing, but in order for her to have such a strong early game, she has to be weak somewhere else to balance it out. Late game is where this compromise is met because she falls off harder than most champs in League. This graph is always changing, but you'll always see a drastic drop in win rate post 25 minutes. Luckily, Elise is good enough to snowball a game into an early win, but it's not always the case and you can often lose games you were quite ahead, simply because the enemy team stalls and you fall off so hard. Elise kind of becomes a stun bot in the late stages of a game. Her damage isn't high enough to 1-shot anyone that has shields/peel and she's not the tankiest of champions. post 40 minute teamfights can often result in Elise having little to no impact and even just dying outright to the enemy adc. It's very hard for her to get to the enemy carries at this stage of the game and even if you do, you won't be able to take them out alone. There are 2 best case scenarios when it comes to late game teamfighting with Elise. The first case is that you catch someone out with a Cocoon and if it's someone somewhat squishy, you can often turn it into a kill. This is also why you build mostly damage items, or tanky damage items on Elise. If you build as a tank without many damage items, you'll never be able to capitalise on a pick with Cocoon. With a build that includes mostly damage based items, you can quite easily take out a squishy champion who doesn't have the help of their team. Even if the champion you catch isn't alone, it can give your team the opportunity to quickly focus them down and gain a numbers advantage for at least 30 seconds and that's often long enough to take an objective or force a 5v4. When it comes to straight up full on engages from both teams, it's often best to peel for your carries rather than go for theirs. Your Spiderlings can greatly help with peeling for your carries because they have the ability to soak up some damage or absorb a skillshot that would otherwise hit an ally champion. You'll also stay alive for a much longer time which then gives you a chance to get off some nice dps with your attack speed steroid, opposed to dying in seconds after jumping on the enemy carry. The only other thing you can do is to try and give kills secured by ganks to your laners, rather than taking them yourself. Avoiding late game at all costs and trying to close out a win as early as possible is so important though and it's quite a big risk that comes with playing Elise. She's far from useless, but she really does fall off hard.

This is the final main chapter of the Guide and it will be dedicated to all the cool things you can do with Elise which make her such a fun champion with a lot of outplay potential. Other than tips and tricks, it will also include some interactions with abilities you may not be aware of. Some tips and tricks have already been talked about and shown such as avoiding channeled abilties, tower diving/dropping aggro, and soloing Dragon/Rift. Those ones will not be mentioned a second time, it will just be the various tips and tricks that haven't already been talked about in previous sections of the guide.

I'll start with one of the most important parts to Elise which is how you order her abilities and combo with her. The video below will showcase in slow motion what the combo looks like, and I'll explain how it's done after. Play Video The rotation of abilities in her combo goes as follows: E -> W -> Q -> R -> Q -> W and then the use of Rappel is situational. The reason that I cast W before Q is because there is a lock animation on Q and it's a lot smoother to Human Q immediately after using Human W. It also makes it so that all of your damage hits at the same time and your Human Q will still hit before the W due to the missile speed on Human Q. The only time where you shouldn't cast W before Q is when you're right in the face of the enemy. You'd want to do an E -> Q -> W in these cases so that your Q will be the first instance of damage. Most of the time though, I think it's better to cast W before Q. After you use your Human rotation, you immediately switch to spider form and then go in for a Q before beginning your auto attack spam with W.

This trick is to use Rappel immediately after auto attacking and then come straight back down into another auto. This accomplishes 2 things. Firstly, it takes away the downtime on your auto attack which is typically 1 second, and secondly it prevents the enemy from autoing you. When you come back down, your auto attack is off cooldown and you usually get the first hit again. Play Video The end result is often 2 auto attacks from you to 0 from the enemy and can come in huge for close fights that you would end up losing if they managed 1 more attack. At the very least though, it enables you to get 1 free attack off which is the difference between life and death in many occasions as you see in a clip.

I've spoken a bit about countering certain abilities with Rappel already, but here will be a prime example of it in use. A very common one is against a Zed player. So long as you have Rappel at the ready, Zed literally doesn't have Death Mark against you because you can completely nullify it with Rappel. Play Video It's so easy to do this, and it means that Zed can basically never 1v1 you and win unless you completely mess up. Zed is the most common enemy to do this against, but the same rule applies for other ultimates that essentially 'latch' to you or follow you such as Fizz, Nautilus, Caitlyn. These champions don't have an ultimate when they 1v1 you and it's extremely easy to win a fight vs them.

Elise is one of the best champions in the game when it comes to being able to utilise the jungle plants. Being able to Rappel to any of the 3 plants opens up a lot of opportunity to outplay, catch, or escape an enemy from certain death. Below will be a clip showcasing just how amazing this interaction can be for Elise. Play Video Without being able to do this, I was 100% dead there. This is not an uncommon occurrence either and it can save your life all the time. The only thing you need to be aware of is the range of Cocoon so you know just how close you have to be in order to reach the plant.

This refers to the way that Rappel functions when you use it on a target that then moves an amount of distance away from where they were. This can be from a dash, Flash or simply by moving. Watch the clip below, and then I'll explain why what happens occurs. Play Video The reason this happens is because the location at which you descend is decided by where the enemy was when you used Rappel. This means that no matter where they travel too, you will always go to where they were at the moment in time you pressed E on them. This interaction can allow for some very clean, easy escapes when the timing is right.

Rappel enables Elise to easily avoid being hit by so many abilities in the gam. I've already talked about abilities that 'lock on' to you like Zed ult, but the same rule applies to any form of skillshot really. The only difference is that it takes a lot more skill and timing is everything when it comes to dodging skillshots. With targeted abilities, you usually have plenty of time to nullify it, but with a lot of skillshots you have to either predict that it's coming, or react insanely fast to get the Rappel off in time. Play Video Pulling something like this off will come in time after practice and experience with Elise, but once you're able to consistently pull this off it will allow you to make game changing plays and make cases like the clip above extremely satisfying.

So that's it for the guide! I've been playing League for 8 seasons now, and even though that's a very long time, there's only a few champions that I've come to love. Elise is one of those few and she's extremely fun and rewarding to play. I hope that my Guide has been of some help in teaching you to play Elise, or teaching you things you may not have known about her. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to use the Guide discussion as I check daily and always respond. Absolutely everything in this Guide was coded by myself, and all the custom icons and visuals were created by myself so if you liked it, hitting the up vote would be greatly appreciated! You can also check out my Ahri guide if you fancy it. As a final note, I'll leave my links below in case you want to follow me or talk to me elsewhere. Thanks for reading! OP.GG YouTube Reddit Twitter Plays.TV