1 - Introduction

2 - The Build
3 - Gameplay
4 - Closing Words




Hello! I am Khazem, a platinum ranked League of Legends player. In this guide I will be talking about Elise. I started playing Elise from the day she was released and immediately realized her potential where others could not see it. I got hooked to her interesting playstyle and started maining her. Up to this day, she is still my favorite champion and I feel it's time I pass on some my knowledge to the MobaFire community.



If played correctly, Elise is one of the most dominant top lane champions in the game. Her constant %health damage poke is just too much for most top laners to handle.

• Very dominant laner. Elise is a real bully in lane and her main purpose is to completely shut down the enemy top laner. Not a lot of champions can stay in a lane against her.
• Item independant. Her main damage output all comes from %health damage. This elimnates the need to build heavy AP in order to deal damage and allows you to be useful regardless of what you build.
• Long range gapcloser. Elise's Cocoon / Rappel acts as one of the longest range gap closers in the game. Being a simple point and click ability rather than a skillshot makes it more reliable than other high range gap closers such as Lee Sin's Q and Malphite's ultimate.

• Shields. Having mostly %health based damage, shields will block most of it. Any champion with a low cooldown shield is strong against Elise.
• Ganks. Elise relies on her movement speed and tricks with Cocoon / Rappel to escape ganks which isn't always very reliable. Ganking Elise in the early stages of the game often guarantees a kill.
• Early game. Elise's poke is not very strong at the early levels and she will lose all in battles with a lot of champions. Play the early game as safe as needed.

Flash: Always required to escape bad situations or to make offensive plays.
Ignite: Adds to your damage, helps you net kills in lane.






Standard Elise runepage. Stack magic penetration to increase your poke damage and make your laning phase stronger.

Greater Seal of Scaling Health: Can be used when laning against an AP opponent to make you a little more tanky late game.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power: If you're confident about the match-up you're in, you can use these and just go for damage to dominate your lane.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: Can be used when laning against a full physical damage dealing champion for more late game magic resistance.

Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed: Good alternative to magic penetration because of Elise's lack of escapes.

Offense In the offense tree, we're only looking to get down to the magic penetration mastery. The rest of the offense tree is generally not very useful for Elise and should always be avoided.

Defense The rest of your mastery points should go into the defense tree because Elise scales very well with a defensive build. This mastery build avoids all of the weak masteries and gets all the most useful ones. Avoid the 5th tier completely because although they look good, they're all very insignificant masteries. Perseverance and Relentless are both decent but situational. Relentless can be strong against a heavy kiting comp.

• Magic Penetration/Ability Power: Best way to increase your damage output. While you want to be tanky on Elise, damage is still a big concern.
  
• Health: Because of the way penetration is now calculated, a lot of champions tend to stack a lot of it. Stacking health is generally a better way of getting tanky and surviving longer fights.
  
• Cooldown Reduction: Allows you to spam your Q more, allows you to switch forms more often and greatly reduces the cooldown of Cocoon / Rappel - one of her most useful abilities.
  
• Armor/MR: Any other tanky stats. Elise has to be tanky to stay alive in teamfights. Besides her human form poke, she also wants to go into fights in spider form and this requires her to be tanky.

Starting Items Sight Ward

This is in my opinion the optimal start for Elise. Start with a flask, a ward and some potions (get at least 1 Health Potion and wait near the base for another 15 gold to buy either another Health Potion or a Mana Potion

Other good starting items include:


Rejuvenation Bead: Replaces the Crystalline Flask and is bought with a ward and 3 health, 3 mana potions. (or any other preferred mix). Used when rushing philosopher's stone to eventually build into a Shurelya's Battlesong.
Cloth Armor: Bought with 5 Health Potions and should only be started with against an early threat such as Garen, Riven and Jarvan IV. Viable start, but not advised. Only get this if you're unsure of the matchup and want to be safe.

Item Core

The 3 items you'll always want to get. Sorcerer's Shoes and Haunting Guise should be rushed, the Abyssal Mask can be delayed if you need armor early on. These 3 items will give you all the damage you'll ever need through high flat magic penetration.

Liandry's Torment: One of the strongest offensive items for Elise. Gives you % health damage on top of % health damage. Problem, tanks?
Deathfire Grasp: Even more % health damage. Works perfectly with Elise's kit.
Void Staff: Because of the way penetration is calculated now (flat after %), this becomes a very powerful 6th item if you need more damage and the enemy team has a ton of MR.
Zhonya's Hourglass: Decent item if you want more damage and survivability at the same time.



Frozen Heart: Great armor item if there are attack speed dependant champions on the enemy team.
Iceborn Gauntlet: Great armor item that goes well with Liandry's Torment.
Guardian Angel: Good buy if you're being heavily focused in teamfights.
Rylai's Crystal Scepter: Good source of health and ability power. The slow proc works great with Liandry's Torment.
Shurelya's Reverie: Grants Elise a great combination of stats, as well as an active that is very useful for both defensive and offensive purposes.
Sunfire Cape: Strong item if you're looking to stay in lane, push and duel the enemy top laner (if it's a physical damage dealer).
Warmog's Armor: One of the best items if you're looking to survive longer in teamfights.





Laning as Elise is very straight forward. The general idea is to try and poke your opponent out of lane with Neurotoxin.
At levels 1 and 2 (when you only have 1 point in Q), it's not really worth using yet because it taxes your mana quite hard early on and the damage at that point is really low. As soon as you hit level 3, you'll want to start using it on your opponent whenever possible.
When they start getting lower on health (around 50% or lower), you can start going into spider form after every Neurotoxin hit and hit them again with a Venomous Bite. Wither them down and either harass them out of lane or kill them if they stay. Not a lot of champions can deal with this kind of long range poke.

Always stay out of melee range of melee champions. Use your Cocoon when they engage on you and move back if needed. Only engage in a melee fight when they're getting lower on health and you know you can win. When engaging in an all in, make sure to activate your Skittering Frenzy to make your spiderlings deal a lot of damage as well.

As you get higher and your mana pool becomes bigger, you can go for bigger pokes by adding in your Volatile Spiderling. Because this ability is easily kited when running through minions, make sure to always land a Cocoon first.

Keep in mind that Elise is very vulnerable to ganks so ALWAYS make sure you have proper ward coverage.




Because most of Elise's lane matchups are free wins, I will only list the difficult ones.

Riven

What makes Riven a difficult opponent is her spammable shield, high mobility, and extremely strong all in engagement. Her shield has a pretty low cooldown and has the potential to almost completely negate most of your Q poke. The best way to deal with her is to just get enough damage/cooldown reduction to get through her shields and keep the harass up. When she goes for an all in on you, try and hit her with a cocoon and disengage. When her 3 Q dashes are on cooldown, she can't get to you and you're free to harass her. Get some early armor as well, so that when you do get caught you don't instantly die.

Rumble

Same deal as with Riven. Rumble also has a very annoying shield to deal with and you'll have trouble getting through that. Because of this, Rumble will outdamage you when you go in for a Q and will generally outlast your mana. As with Riven, disengage using your Cocoon when he goes in for you. Keep up the harass and try and wither him down as in other matchups, but be extra careful for his all in potential. Getting an early Chalice of Harmony can be very strong in this matchup to keep up your mana and give you a nice bit of MR as well.

Yorick

Sustains himself by harassing you. Becomes harder and harder as he gets more items and more mana to eventually outlast you. You'll have to be really aggressive early on. Buy enough health potions to outsustain his damage early on so he runs out of mana trying to kill you. Keep up the poke and kill him early on. If you can't get an early kill/lead, you'll most likely lose this lane.

There is not too much to say about Elise's teamfighting. Before the teamfight starts, look to poke down anyone who is in range (without putting yourself in a too dangerous spot). Try to aim your cocoon at key targets to catch them out. When you do land one, you can jump in if your team follows up on it.

When your team gets engaged on, your main goal is to deal damage to carries and cause disruption. If needed, close the gap with Rappel and cast your spider form abilities. (try to get on whoever is the biggest priority at the time) Next, go into human form and try to land your Cocoon, followed by the rest of your abilities. Rotate back into spider form and continue dealing damage as long as you can.

When the enemy backline is too well protected, try and stay near your backline and focus down whoever jumps in. Sometimes it's better to just focus down whoever is closest as a team, than to just blindly jump onto the enemy backline.





Thank you for reading this guide! If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment - I will usually answer every question. Please leave a vote if you liked the guide. If you disliked the guide, I would appreciate a comment saying why you disliked it.

As usual, credits to GrandmasterD for the awesome banner, headers and dividers!