NOTICE: ALL MY GUIDES WILL NOT RECEIVE UPDATES UNTILL FURTHER NOTICE.

At time of writing (patch 11.6 release) the game is so horribly broken and unbalanced there is no point in writing (or reading) a guide, especially for an off-meta pick. Games are a coinflip right now (at least in silver/gold elo), skill does not matter as roughly 8 out of 10 games are decided by "who has the most broken champs". Of the remaining 2 games, at most 1 is decided by the best player in the match....and the other(s) are decided by the worst feeder. Maybe some sense will return to Rito and I'll get to update these sometime, untill then so long...

Let's Get Foxy in Botlane

Welcome to the fifth, and special, installment of "quick and dirty off meta supports" (check out the rest of the series here). This one is special since I got bored with writing off-meta support guides and decided to do one on a marksman instead. Let me preface this by saying this guide is primarily intended for ADC mains that want to have some fun. For that reason, I'm going to assume that, as a AD Carry, you know the basics of cs'ing, trading, etc. So, in season 8 we've seen some Ahri bot play, in the APC role. That's nice, but...what if we made her an ADC? Let's find out.

So what are we gonna talk about? We'll have a short discussion about the mindset behind this build (and whether you should hear me out or not) and then we'll go through some Ahri specific gameplay. That's it, quick & dirty.

GL;HF and see you on the Rift :)

-DutchWolf

PS. If you just want to know the build and start playing (or, you know, if you got autofilled and panic picked), scroll back up. Got most of the items, abilities, etc. explained in the notes. Give that a read and you should be good to go.

AD Carryin' Mindset

Okay, so quick extended intro here. If you've read my other guides, you'll know I'm a Gold support main that plays off-meta nonsense on his quote-unquote smurf. If you didn't read my other guides, well....now you know. Anyway, before I was a support main I was an ADC main. That is to say, I learned to play League as an AD Carry (as an Ashe/ Caitlyn main to be precise). That's the really short answer to "why you should listen to anything I have to say about AD Carryin'".

With that out of the way: marksman Ahri. The concept for this trollery was born when I was still an ADC main. There are two reasons I started playing Ahri ADC: 1) I wanted to play Ahri...just love the champ....and 2) one night, after maybe one to many beers, I said that I could make any ranged champ work as an ADC. Well, Ahri ADC was me putting my money where my mouth was (along with Lux, Bard and Thresh ADC for that matter). Turns our I was somewhat right.


First question: what does an ADC do? No, the answer is not an ADC AD Carries (although that is what we'd like to achieve). When you boil it down to basics, the ADC provides sustained auto-attack based medium-high physical damage. That is to say, throughout a fight you chip away the enemies heatlh at a steady rate. You don't blow people up like an assassin or chunk away portions of HP every now and then like a mage, you just pour out a stream of continues damage. Question two: what do you need to do that. Range first of all, since you can't do sustained damage when everyone is in your face (ask Tryndamere what that's like). Good positioning is another one, you won't be able to keep yourself alive and in range just by the virtue of having range. And honestly that is all you need at a minimum to function as an ADC: range and skill.

Now, I did say this was aimed at ADC mains so you might wonder why I went so deep into the existential merit of an ADC...since you'd assume most ADC main know this already. However, I want to have that crystal clear on everyones mind when we discuss the Ahri ADC mindset. Which we will do now.

So Ahri has range and, provided you can position properly, that qualifies her to fulfill the primary fuction of an ADC as dicussed above. However, she does miss one thing that most ADC's have nowadays: an attack damage steroid - meaning a passive or active ability that amplifies DPS (think Ricochet, Silver Bolts, etc.). Now to me, that is what makes it fun. See back in the good ol' days, ADC's were a lot lets reliant on abilities or passives for damage. Sure the old Caitlyn had her Headshot procs, but it didnt interact with her traps or net...it was more of a nice bonus every now and then. Heck, old Ashe had exactly 0 damage steroids. So ADC Ahri is a lot like the ADC's of old: it's just you, your Infinity Edge and 550 range. The point of playing Ahri ADC is not so much to subvert the meta or anything, you (should) do it to really (and I mean REALLY) challenge yourself and recapture the magic of what the AD Carry role used to be before Rito decided everyone needs gimmicky damage boost mechanics and botlaners should have burst damage as well. Think about that for a second whilst I get the damn kids to stop skateboarding on my lawn, then we'll move on to the gameplay bit.

Nine Lives...
So like I said, we're gonna skip all the where to cs, how to trade, etc stuff and just focus on how to make Ahri a proper ADC. For this purpose I'll briefly discuss building, and then move on to some gameplay tips.

Itemization
What I've laid out in the cheat sheet might not be the optimal build for this, it is just wat I've found to work for me. Galeforce provides extra mobillity (survivability) and is a fun choice, Kraken Slayer will give more damage. In the time between completing your Navori Flickerblade and Infinity Edge, your damage will be lacking quite severely. You could flip this around somewhat with a Zeal item for your second, but I find the Navori's CDr is more worthwhile.

There ARE more paths you could go with this is suppose, Trinity Force and Guinsoo's Rageblade and assorted mixed-damage builds spring to mind...but that is not really in spirit with what we're trying do do here so I'll refrain from further commentary on those.

Gameplay
Breaking this series tradition, I'll briefly go over the kit:

Passive

After hitting 9 spell effects your next hits give you a heal. Useful in lane, so keep track of that

Q

Magic damage on the way out, true on the way back. Primary tool to aid in cs'ing and decent damage early game (which is why we max it first).

W

Completely useless on Ahri ADC, save for the move speed boost. Do activate it when you fight, because 20 extra damage is better than 0 extra damage.

E

Does two things. First and foremost, this is your little sliver of CC that will help keep you alive / rake in them kills. In addition it amplifies your other abilities' damage output from completely insignificant to mostly insignificant.

R

Not only one of the most fun ults in the game, but also your lifeline. With ult-up, Ahri ADC is almost uncatchable and capable of chasing down almost everyone. With ult-cd, it really comes down to you and your positioning. You get 3 charges to be spend within 10 seconds. As a dash this will go thru terrain, but you are still targetable.

That's it, those are the tools you have to work with. You've got range, a get-out-of-jail-free card and a tiny bit of CC to set up your plays. That's the rusty knife you've got to carve a masterpiece out of a mountain made of pure granite. That really is all you've got to keep you alive and pouring out DPS. How are you going to do that? That's up to you. Good luck.

I'm serious, I'm not going to tell you anything else...for two reasons. First of all "what you should do" is very situational with this kit, but that's not really why I refuse to dive deeper. The actual reason is that it would spoil the fun. Your fun I mean, I'm having fun either way. In all seriousness, what makes Ahri ADC such a fun thing to play is the fact that you have to figure out how to best use your sub-optimal kit to position and kill people....so I won't spoil that ;)

Have fun!
If you are reading this: thanks for going all the way through, please leave a like if you liked or a comment if you have any suggestions. I hope it has been obvious that I'm being half-serious in this guide. Let me put it this way: you can play this and have some great games, but I don't know if it's the best way, it's just my way. Whatever you take away from this don't let it be that Ahri is a god-tier ADC, because she isn't. I did mean what I said about the fun bit tho, Ahri ADC is absolutely thrilling to play. Playing the support's I wrote guides for feels like a low-effort break, whilst Ahri ADC is intense as f....The pure AD Carry experience really put's me at the edge of my seat throughout a match, I hope you have a similar experience. Final word of warning: this is the most flame-inducing of all the off-meta stuff we've covered so far. Even if you are the only laner that is not 0/10 they will still find it in their hearts to blame you. Good luck :)

That all being said, it's time to head out to the Rift and have fun,
Thanks for reading,
-DutchWolf

PS. If you are looking for more off-meta stuff check out my other guides here.