Ahri - The Success of a "High Skillcap Champion" in "Low" Elo

A lot of people have questioned the case for Ahri for God Tier, especially as the solo queue tier list takes into factor "ease of play", which translates into "consistency" and in turn transitions into "success in solo queue".

In regards to overall strength, here are some pros:

• Strong AOE burst
• Great gapcloser + escape combination
• Strong 1v1 and 5v5 damage
• Good sustain and waveclear in lane
• Currently has damage in line or higher than most other AP mids

Riot's given Ahri a couple small buffs here and there that have increased her waveclear potential, and also nerfed a lot of her counters. But on the "con" side, the strongest argument remains that her kit itself, being skill intensive, isn't good for "lower" Elos.

However, while it's true that Ahri has a somewhat higher skill champions than others out there to use to their fullest potential, let's take a look at what happens in two basic scenarios:

Scenario 1: Ahri throws a skillshot in an open path

Skillshots by nature, require skill. However, the following phrases are commonly seen:

• Ahri why can't you hit any skillshots?
• XXX how is it you get hit by every skillshot?
• $@#! how did you ALL get hit by Ahri's Q at the same time?

Here's how it actually breaks down:

1. Ahri throws her skillshot;
2. Enemy champion either moves or doesn't move; and
3. Enemy champion gets hit or dodges the skillshot.

That's really all there is to it. As you move up on the ladder, except for using a summoner spell, hitting and dodging will change proportionally. In regards to a single champion in a 1v1 matchup, this holds true across all Elos. There's no magic level where two evenly matched players will never get hit by charm or always hit charm.

Of course this could also go down:

1. Ahri throws charm
2. Enemy champion moves as close to charm as possible after he sees it go off
3. Ahri still misses charm

However, I'd like to think that this happens less often than you'd believe, especially since it's a straight line with a guide that shows the path.

Scenario 2: Ahri throws a skillshot in a narrow path

You can probably guess what happens here, but I'll quickly mention it.

With terrain blocking a champions movement, all Ahri has to do is fire off a spell in the general vicinity of the champion group and she'll likely hit *someone*. 

She also has the added benefit of avoiding losing champions into fog of war since all her spells penetrate through objects and fog. This combined with the fact that her return Q deals true damage means that even at high ping, late game "skill" plays a relatively low factor in many jungle fights for her. I mean just take a look at Reginald below:

Even though this is from a different patch with different damage ratios (her charm is now more important), you can see how in practice it could play out similarly in regards to landing her Q in a big teamfight, although Regi clearly shows it's still possible to miss charm by firing off in wrong directions.

Conclusions

As you reach higher and higher in the ranked ladder, certain things will have to be executed better in order to keep up with the rest of champions. However, I can say with fair certainty that right now Ahri is definitely a very strong champion at low Elo, high Elo, and almost everywhere in between.

While her skillshots need to be executed in order to reach her fullest potential, the difficulty of her play and the amount of benefit you receive at each level are very rewarding at the moment.