Hello! and welcome to my guide to Ahri. Whether you are new to League or a seasoned veteran, if you have come to learn about Ahri then you have come to the right place! I have poured all of the knowledge and experience that I have gathered over the last 6 years into this Guide. I can assure you that it includes everything there is to know about her and more. I keep it constantly updated over time with any changes that come to Ahri or League in general, and I'm always trying to make it look as visually appealing as I can to help with reading and digesting the information. If you have any queries about the guide or Ahri then feel free to ask in the discussion and if you like the guide, hitting the up-vote will help greatly. Once you're done reading the Guide, you can also check out my YouTube channel where I have many Tutorials, Highlights, Commentaries and Full Gameplay Videos. If you're entirely new to Ahri and you're unaware of what she is capable of, you can watch one of my Ahri montages 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.

I'm Connor, 24 years old from the small county of Cornwall - South West England. My Summoner name is Elusive Ferret and this is my comprehensive guide to one of my favourite champions, Ahri. I started playing League on the US server around the middle of Season 1 ( Maokai Release) and very quickly became addicted to the game. I spent about a year on the US server before moving to EUW which is where I now reside. Before League, I primarily played first person shooters and League was my first experience with a MOBA. Season 1 and 2 I didn't play much Ranked, probably only about 30~ games because I mainly played normals with friends and didn't take the game too seriously. Season 3 is where I started playing a lot of ranked and I managed to climb to Diamond 5 right before the Season ended. Season 4 I ended Diamond 2, and in Season 5 I finished Diamond 1 which was my best and most played season so far. Funnily enough, I've never really liked the play style of mages in any game, and when I first started out with League I never touched any mage. When Ahri was released however, I decided to buy her solely from her splash art and instantly found a love for the champion. From that day, she became my main and I went through a phase of almost exclusively playing only her for a very long time which is where my vast knowledge of the champion comes from. Many people think I'm a '1 Trick Pony' because I'm only known for my Ahri, and I mostly play Ahri, but it's actually not the case. Other champions that I can play to an equal, or arguably better standard are Elise, Morgana, Irelia and Kassadin. I'm a shy, quiet person but I love to help people in any way that I can and I'm very easy to approach and talk to. I get along with most types of people and I'll usually respect your opinion on matters where we may disagree and if not then I'm always up for a discussion. I'm a fun, chilled guy and you'll always see me messing around and having a laugh. Fun is the most important aspect to gaming for me, but at the same time I always play to win. So that's a bit of my background and who I am, now it's time for you to dig deep into the wealth of knowledge I have poured into this Guide. Good luck, and I hope you find something useful!

You may be wondering why you should trust anything I have to say, and that's perfectly reasonable. While I don't have too much to back my words up, I've been Diamond every Season since Season 3 where I peaked Diamond 1 during the time I was playing a lot in Season 5. I've been playing Ahri since her release with the vast majority of my games with her. That makes 6 years of Ahri experience through every meta and every stage that League has been through. From the nature of this, I have an incredibly large amount of experience with every matchup, build and what Ahri is capable of, and experience playing vs high level Diamond players. As a final note, you'll find my seasonal Ahri stats below if you're interested.

I tend to play Ahri in a less common way than most and I'm the kind of person who likes trying to be as unique as possible when it comes to things like builds, rune setups and generally the way I play. Because of this, I hope that even if you are an experienced Ahri player, you still might be able to learn something new from me! .

The first and main reason is because of how unique she is. Ahri has one of the most fun kits in the game and this is mainly due to her ultimate, Spirit Rush. What's not to like about having 3 dashes that deal damage for an ultimate? Ahri has a very unique kit in the sense of it essentially being a Mage Assassin Hybrid. She has the basic traits of a Mage with her Orb of Deception and being ranged, but she has the burst and mobility of an Assassin with her Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush. She also has the ability to pick off a specific target like other Assassins with her Charm. There's really no champion like Ahri in League and she's the kind of 'Jack of All Trades' champ which makes her very fun to play overall.

This moves on to my second reason as to why Ahri is such a great champion to play. Due to her part Assassin nature, she is able to make picks and sometimes instantly take out an enemy champion. Because of this, all it takes is 1 good Charm on a key target to swing the direction of a teamfight or entire game.

In general though, Ahri is great for picking off wandering champions that don't have vision on you. If they walk right into a Charm, the chances are you will be able to take them out or at least force them to go back which could then get your team map pressure. Another way that Ahri can make picks is by forcing them rather than waiting to ambush someone. You have 3 dashes with your Spirit Rush and a 4th counting Flash, which means you can afford to ult in aggressively in order to get a Charm off, and then ult backwards to get out safely if you need to. The more aggressive pick attempts are much more risky but they can pay off big if you manage to Charm someone out of place. Charm, paired with Ahri's mobility and ability to reposition herself makes her a great champion for 1v1'ing almost anyone and you can usually just get out safely with your Ultimate dashes if things ever go wrong.

The third reason for why I love playing Ahri is her ability to outplay opponents. Ahri has the perfect kit for outplaying champions and this is due to being able to reposition yourself multiple times during a fight with Spirit Rush. Not only does Ahri's ultimate make it extremely easy to dodge skill-shots, but it allows you to reposition for a perfect Charm or return damage on Orb of Deception.

Ahri's Spirit Rush can be used defensively and offensively at the same time, dashing back to dodge an ability or get away from a gank will likely make your opponent feel safe, but you can very easily go in for a counter attack just before your remaining charges of Spirit Rush are gone. Leaving the counter attack to as late as possible will mean that your opponent will think that you have no intention of going back in for a kill and if they are not paying full attention to detail they might think that you are out of charges, though be aware that they can see how many charges you have left and how long is left on the timer if they click on you.

Most champions have at least one ability that can be dodged easily with Spirit Rush such as Lay Waste or Plasma Fission and it can be very satisfying dashing around an enemy champion having them unable to hit you with any of their abilities. This is what makes Ahri so good at facing off against champions with skill-shots as if timed right, you can avoid being hit almost entirely. On the flip side however, it can get frustrating playing against champions that have no skill-shots because it is almost impossible to outplay something that you cannot dodge. These are usually found on the champions that counter Ahri which is pretty much the main reason why they counter her in the first place, such as Annie, Malzahar, and Syndra. There will almost always be champions in the game that you can outplay with Spirit Rush though, even if they are not in your lane.

Ahri has a fantastic kit that is both fun and rewarding when played right. I will go over each of her abilities in detail with the relevant information such as cooldowns, damage numbers, ability power ratios and a GIF of each ability in-game.

Passive: Ahri gains a charge of Essence Theft when one of her spells hits an enemy (max 3 charges per spell). Upon reaching 9 charges, Ahri's next spell heals her for 3 / 5 / 9 / 18 (+9% of ability power) per unit hit. This value increases every 5 levels. Healing: 3/5/9/18 per unit hit (at levels 1/6/11/16) (+ 9% AP)

Ahri has an interesting passive and it's actually quite a nice one for keeping your health up in lane, or late-game healing for more than half of your health pool. It also doesn't tend to take very long to charge up because both Orb of Deception and Fox-Fire count as 3 charges each most of the time. The healing scales with Ahri's level and also with AP, so early-game it won't heal for much, but once you get some big items and higher levels, it can heal for a good chunk of your missing health. The best way to get the most out of the heal is by lining up an Orb of Deception to hit as many enemy units as possible. Once your passive is up, send a Q down the middle of a minion wave and it should hit all of the minions twice, healing you for the highest amount possible. If there's only a couple of enemies to be hit, it would be best to try and save your passive until you can hit more units and get a better heal, provided the heal is needed. You should also try to avoid wasting the passive heal, which refers to when you have it up but you’ve only lost a tiny bit of health. If you sent an Orb down a minion wave on near max life, you would essentially waste the heal. It's often better to hold the passive for as long as you can until you take some more damage to make better use out of it. Since it doesn't become active until you reach 9 charges, if you have lost some health and are at 6, 7 or 8 charges, the best thing to do is quickly cast Fox-Fire on minions and then straight after send an Orb down the wave. Using Fox-Fire first will instantly get you the remaining charges to activate your passive so that the Orb you send out after will heal you opposed to using Orb for the final charges and then having to wait for Orb's cooldown before you can heal. Just remember to account for the small travel time on Fox-Fire so you don't cast Orb too soon when your passive isn't ready. When Essence Theft is ready, Ahri's Orb will turn green and it will also start to make a sort of mystical chime-like sound to further let you know that it's ready to be used. The final thing to note about Ahri's passive is that you should always try to avoid using it with Charm because that's her only spell that can't hit multiple targets and the heal from hitting 1 spell will be extremely low. When there are multiple targets to hit, Orb should always be the priority. When there is only a single target such as Dragon or Baron however, Fox-Fire actually becomes slightly better to use for the heal. This is because Orb can only get 2 hits on a single target whereas Fox-Fire can get 3.

Q: Ahri sends an orb of arcane energy in the targeted direction, dealing magic damage to every enemy it passes through, then pulls it back to herself, dealing true damage on the way back. Ahri also gains a massive movement speed boost while her orb is traveling that rapidly decays over time.

RANGE: 880 COST: 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 mana COOLDOWN: 7 Magic / True Damage: 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140 (+ 35% AP) Max. Damage vs Same Target: 80 / 130 / 180 / 230 / 280 (+ 70% AP)

Orb of Deception is Ahri's main tool for damage and wave clear. The way the ability works is slightly strange as once it is sent out it comes back, similar to Sivir and her Boomerang Blade, only with Orb of Deception the return damage is true damage while the initial is magic. Because of this, it is vital that you try to hit both parts of the ability in order to get the most damage out of it. If you only hit 1 part, then it's not going to do a whole lot. The ideal way to use the ability is to try and hit your target at its maximum range. In doing this, it will apply both the magic damage and true damage at the same time which means you won't have to worry about hitting the return part of the ability. Ahri's Orb of Deception actually has a bit of a strange thing with it. The range indicator of Orb doesn't actually show the actual range that it will go, which is 880. At a guess, I'd say that the indicator only shows about 850~ range. This means that if they just past the end of the range indicator it'll still hit the target, even though according to the arrow it won't. Once you throw out an Orb of Deception, you can move Ahri around to re-direct the return. This can be extremely helpful for when an enemy moves as you can move yourself to try and hit them with the return damage. You can also use Spirit Rush and Flash after you send out an Orb and by doing this you can completely change the direction of where the Orb will come back to. Orb of Deception synergises extremely well with Ahri's Charm because when you land a Charm, it enables you to get an easy double hit on Orb and Orb of Deception can really chunk people once you get some AP and levels put into it. The cooldown of Orb is fairly reasonable at 7 seconds, it's not spam-able, but it is back up fairly quickly once used. You typically always have quite a lot of cooldown reduction on Ahri too so Orb will almost never be at its default cooldown. It's great for farming minion waves too and once you reach level 9 which is rank 5 Orb, it will start 1 hitting the caster minions and leaving the melee ones on a very little health which makes shoving or clearing lanes very easy. Another great thing about Orb is that Ahri gains a massive increase in movement speed whenever the Orb is in flight. This greatly helps Ahri during the early-game when she does not have her ultimate. Pre 6, Ahri is quite vulnerable to ganks as without Spirit Rush she has no easy way to escape. The movement speed on Q makes it so that she can get away from ganks or enemy champions in general a lot easier. It can also be used offensively to catch up to enemy champions, or the speed buff can help you reposition for the return damage of the Orb. Something to note is that Orb of Deception does have a cast time/animation, but the speed you gain is definitely worth the time it takes to cast the ability, even if it is used on nothing to get back to lane slightly faster for example. The final note for Orb is that you can use it with Flash to essentially extend the range of the ability. This is done by the Ability + Flash trick that cancels the animation of the ability rather than using Flash and then having to stop for the animation of Q. Doing this trick extends the range of Orb by 425 and the spell goes off instantly. Below will be a clip showing what I mean and showing you how incredibly fast it is when you manage to pull it off. Play Video As you can see from the video, the Lissandra didn't even have time to self-cast her ult because there was no way to expect the Orb kill as I was standing well out of range. I go into more detail about the 'Ability Flash' trick later in the guide and once you master this trick, it makes plays like this feel absolutely amazing.

W: Ahri summons three spectral flames which orbit her for up to 5 seconds. After a brief delay, each flame will target the closest visible enemy, prioritizing champions then the target of Ahri's last basic attack, dealing magic damage upon hit. Multiple flames can hit a single target, but each flame beyond the first will only deal 30% damage.

RANGE: 550 COST: 50 mana COOLDOWN: 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 Magic Damage Per Fox-Fire: 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140 (+ 30% AP) Max. Damage vs Same Target: 64 / 104 / 144 / 184 / 224 (+ 48% AP)

Fox-Fire is Ahri's second best ability in terms of consistent damage output. It is a great ability for single target damage on a champion and it can also provide some multi-target damage due to it being able to hit up to 3 targets. A great thing about Fox-Fire is that it prioritises champions when they are in range. There is no need to hit Charm or anything, you just press W and they will lock onto an enemy champion as long as they are within range. You have to be careful with this though, because if they are out of range when you activate Fox-Fire, the charges can be used up on minions/monsters and that is a large part of Ahri's damage output come mid/late-game. There is a tiny delay from the flames coming out and then homing in on targets which allows you to use it before ulting or flashing in range rather than after, provided you immediately dash forward after casting W. Something that I really like about Fox-Fire is that there is no cast time, you can just press W whenever you want and Ahri won't pause or even cancel an auto attack. This makes it very nice to use while kiting or perusing a target as you can be non-stop moving away while casting your W for damage. For the rare occasion you may have a Rylai's, it makes it even stronger for kiting or catching up to enemies. Fox-Fire also synergises very well with Spirit Rush as they are essentially the same move in terms of how the flames function and the damage they deal. Activating W and then dashing in with R will send 6 flames out at 3+ targets or 4 at 1 which can be a good amount of damage to multiple targets or a lot of damage to a single one. The only major difference is that Spirit Rush will only send out 1 flame per target, hence only 4 flames for a single target with W + R. The range is the same as Ahri's auto attack which means you will have to get quite close to the enemy in order to get the flames off. From having to get close, Ahri will naturally be in more danger than when you are playing further back using Orb and so you must be a lot more careful when using Fox-Fire to trade in lane. Because you have to be so close, it also raises the chances of the flames homing in on minions from being too far away from the target you wish to hit. This makes important to be aware of your position when using it and make sure that you are at least within auto attack range to prevent damage from being wasted.

E: Ahri blows a kiss in a targeted direction, dealing magic damage and charming the first enemy hit, forcing them to walk harmlessly towards Ahri while slowed for 50%.

RANGE: 975 COST: 85 mana COOLDOWN: 12 Magic damage: 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 60% AP) Duration: 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2

Charm is Ahri's unique, deadly tool that she uses to catch people out and assassinate targets with. When an enemy is hit by Charm, they are open to the full barrage of damage that Ahri can apply with Orb of Deception, Fox-Fire, and Spirit Rush. Generally speaking, if a squishy target gets hit by a Charm, they will likely be killed or at least taken very low in a short amount of time. Charm is a great tool for essentially locking an enemy champion while they get hit with any and every spell thrown at them. In a way it works better than a stun, because if the enemy is running away from you and you Charm them, they will move towards you for a brief moment instead. This can be extra effective if you end up pulling a key target away from their team and towards yours. Ahri's Charm is the whole reason she is able to assassinate champions and so there is quite a lot of reliance on the spell to hit in order to pull of these assassinations. There are many tools available that aid Ahri in landing Charms such as Spirit Rush, which can be used to re-position Ahri allowing for an easier Charm to land, and item slows from Rylai's Crystal Scepter or Hextech Gunblade to slow enemies which then makes hitting a Charm much easier. Other ways to pull off easy Charms include being in a brush that the enemy has no vision in and waiting for a squishy target, or charming enemies over the other side of walls that you have vision of. Something to keep in mind when using Charm is that it has a cast time and it doesn’t have the fastest missile speed. This means that when you are trying to Charm a moving enemy, you will have to aim ahead of them slightly in order to compensate for the travel time. It may take a while to get used to the missile speed of Charm, but once you get used to it you'll be hitting them on unaware moving targets with ease. As mentioned when I talked about Orb of Deception, Charm synergises amazingly well with with it. This is because when you hit a Charm, you are almost guaranteed to get the perfect double hit off on your Q. Charm has slightly more range that Orb of Deception, but when you hit a max range Charm, the enemy will start to walk towards you and by the time your Orb of Deception gets to them it will be at the perfect point to apply both parts of the damage at the same time. One slightly annoying thing about the way that Charm works is that when you Charm someone who is on the other side of a wall, the pathing of the game will make their character walk around to get to you. So, instead of them walking into the wall as if straight towards you, they will instead walk off to the side which can cause you miss an Orb of Deception. Something you can do to counter this problem is by holding off on your Q for a split second until you see which way the pathing will take their character, or throwing it ahead if you know which way they'll go. The final note about Charm is that you can pull off some amazing plays by either ulting into Charm or doing the 'Charm Flash' trick which I explain later in the guide in the Tips, Tricks & Advice Chapter. I will leave a clip below to demonstrate how quick and effective a Charm Flash can be at catching someone. Play Video Just like with the Orb Flash, it is almost instantaneous and there is very little time for the enemy to react. They don't expect to be in any danger because of how far back you can stand before attempting the Skill + Flash.

Ultimate: Ahri dashes in the direction of the cursor and fires up to three energy bolts, which target the closest visible enemy units, prioritizing Champions, and deal magic damage on hit. Spirit Rush can be cast two additional times within 10 seconds of activation, at no additional cost, before going on cooldown. The same enemy can only be hit once per dash.

RANGE: 450 COST: 100 mana COOLDOWN: 110 / 95 / 80 Magic Damage: 70 / 110 / 150 (+ 25% AP) Max. Damage vs Same Target: 210 / 330 / 450 (+ 75% AP)

Spirit Rush is what makes Ahri who she is. Spirit Rush is Ahri's signature move that allows her to dash around, dodging skills and outplaying opponents. Being able to dive in and out of a fight is the reason she is so fun to play. Spirit Rush synergises with Ahri's entire kit extremely well. It allows you to re-position to set up a better angle on a Charm or to change the directional return of Orb of Deception. Ahri can also dive in with a very high amount of unmissable burst damage with her Fox-Fire combined with Spirit Rush procs. Spirit Rush can be used both offensively and defensively, diving in or diving out of a fight and it makes Ahri a very slippery target to deal. Spirit Rush is also what makes Ahri a great roaming champion. Without her ultimate, Ahri doesn't have much more mobility than the other Mages, but when her ultimate is up, she can enter a lane and make quick work of the enemy champions with the help of allies. Spirit Rush also gives Ahri the ability to pick off targets safely by ulting to close the gap for a quick Charm, unloading all her spells and then ulting back out to safety. The cooldown on Spirit Rush is fairly reasonable, and you should be looking to make a play or all-in attempt when it's up. The level 1 ult cooldown is quite large at over 100 seconds, but once it gets to mid-game with CDR from items such as Luden's Tempest and potential CDR from Runes, the cooldown becomes very short for what it does. Ahri tends to always build quite a lot of CDR too, so the cooldown on Spirit Rush will never be at the default time. Because of how important Spirit Rush is to Ahri, when it is on cooldown you should play very safe because you go from being extremely mobile and hard to catch to not very mobile and easy to lock down. If you have to blow your ult to get away from a gank, make sure that you play further back than normal, especially if you have little or no vision because they will likely return and gank you again only the next time you won't have Spirit Rush to dash away. Having to use Spirit Rush defensively greatly hurts Ahri's offensive and play making capabilities too. It can be a good idea to just try and play safe and farm while it's on cooldown and then once it's back up you can play more aggressively or look to make plays somewhere on the map. Spirit Rush is also excellent for getting over terrain very easily. Ahri can dash over almost every wall in Summoner’s Rift and she can do it multiple times since you have 3 dashes available. I talk more about using Spirit Rush to get over walls in the Tips & Tricks section of the Guide. The last thing to mention about Spirit Rush is that it's a great tool for tower diving in the sense that you can quickly go in under tower and then get out preventing yourself from taking too many tower shots. Because you have 3 dashes, you can go in under tower to unload all of your abilities, then use the second charge to get out of tower range, and finally once your cooldowns are back up you can use the last charge to dive back in again.

This is the only part to Ahri that is somewhat linear and there usually isn't much diversity. When it comes to the Skill Sequence with Ahri, in my eyes there is only 1 order. There are many champions in the game that have multiple abilities that can be maxed first or second, but with Ahri her Orb of Deception is undeniably the best skill to max first, followed by Fox-Fire and finally Charm, taking points in Spirit Rush when they become available.

You won't find a lot of variation when it comes to the order of leveling skills on Ahri as explained above. For most people and always for me, it's R > Q > W > E. The reason that W is usually maxed second over E is because Ahri needs the damage from W to help take down champions. The damage increase from Fox-Fire is much more important than more Charm duration and if you leave Fox-Fire at rank 1, it will be doing almost no damage at all which is why I tend to always go with W max second. Fox-Fire is also reliable damage because there is always the chance that you might not hit the Charm. Another option that is available is to put a couple of extra points in Charm before maxing Fox-Fire and it makes it so that the Charm duration goes up, giving you more time to single out a target and also maximise the chance of hitting both parts of Orb. It also makes it better for teamfighting as the target you Charm will be unable to react for a slightly longer amount of time. If you do this however, Fox-Fire will be left as a useless spell outside of charging your passive and procing Lich Bane attacks.

Most games as Ahri you will want to level your Q first so that you have a tool ready for farming or trading with the enemy in lane. The only time you would start something different is if you were planning an invade or waiting for an enemy team to invade you. If you are planning an invade, don’t level anything until you see an opportunity to Charm someone. If you level Charm as soon as the game starts and you don’t find anyone in the invade, you’ll be at a disadvantage for laning. There will never be a game where you would start W, so it is either Q or E at level 1. In a typical calm game with no level 1 shenanigans, you would start Q, and then at level 2 I recommend that you ALWAYS take your E in case of a jungle gank. If the enemy jungler ganks you early, you should be fine by using Charm on either the jungler or enemy mid laner and if your jungler ganks for you, you will be able to either set up or follow up the gank with Charm. As for Fox-Fire, there is no reason to take it at level 2 as the damage is very low and it will just soak up your mana.

The way that I rank up her abilities at level 3 and 4 may be slightly different from some. At champion level 3, 100% of the time I will choose to level up Ahri's Orb to rank 2 instead of going with W to get 1 point in each ability, and then level 4 I'll get my first point in Fox-Fire. 2 points in Q by level 3 is far superior to only 1 and 1 in W because early-game your main trading & farming tool is your Orb of Deception. Another thing I don't like about going Fox-Fire at level 3 is that the damage is so low, it pretty much just becomes a mana sink and you shouldn't be very close to your opponent in the first place to be in range of a Fox-Fire. The only real advantage that taking W at level 3 has is that you can charge Essence Theft slightly faster.

There are many variations of Rune setups that can be taken on Ahri, but generally they follow a similar pattern. She has 2 options for Keystones, but a ton of variety when it comes to the lesser Runes. It can differ from game to game, player to player or be entirely based on a matchup. A lot of Runes have very rewarding upsides, but also severe drawbacks to the point where often they will actually be useless in certain situations or at certain stages of a game. This makes many of the Rune choices a double-edged sword and because of this, there are now far more situational picks compared to the previous system and your Rune load-out can and probably will be different every game. While the change may only be a single Rune, you might have to take a completely different tree based on who you're laning against. The main difference in what Runes you take depends on what Keystone you choose to go for. 1 is for laning and consistent damage, while the other is for all-in burst power and late-game scaling. I'll be going over all of the relevant paths and choices of Runes that Ahri can take, explaining and comparing in detail each choice and also stating any clear advantages or downsides to each Rune. The images of the tree will contain my preferred choices as the selected ones, and any in a circle for alternate or situational choices.

The Domination tree as a Primary choice is pretty good tree for Ahri and it offers the best Keystone for her in terms of burst damage and being able to make quick work of a target. The rest of the tree is more situated to healing, mobility and vision. By taking Domination as your Primary Tree, you will also be granted 18 Ability Power.

Electrocute: Hitting a champion with 3 separate attacks or abilities in 3 seconds deals bonus adaptive (Magic in Ahri's case) damage. Damage: 50-220 (+0.50 bonus AD, +0.3 AP) Cooldown: 50-25 seconds (based on level)

Electrocute is the new Thunderlord's Decree, but the way it works is slightly different now. The old Thunderlord's was undoubtedly the best Keystone for Ahri because of the double Orb hit + 1 auto combo that would instantly proc Thunderlord's. This is no longer the case sadly and it actually makes it quite clunky in lane due to Ahri's limited range outside of Orb. The way that Electrocute works is that it only counts 1 stack per unique source of damage from an ability. What this means is that if 1 ability damages someone more than once, it will still only count as 1 stack due to the damage coming from the same source. This is a pretty huge deal for Ahri because it means she can no longer get quick and easy procs for good trades in lane with a double hit on Orb. Instead, now you will have to follow up with 2 auto attacks, or a hit from Fox-Fire or Charm. This means that you are putting yourself in danger for a much more extended period of time in order to get a good trade off, and often times you just won't be able to get the last stack to get Electrocute off, making it quite clunky in lane. There was also a shift in power with the change between Thunderlord's and Electrocute. Electrocute now deals quite a lot more damage, but the trade-off is that the cooldown is much higher. This allows for a lot more burst, but less consistent damage which is actually great for Ahri, being burst oriented herself. Due to the strength of Electrocute, you ideally want to be looking for a trade everytime it's off cooldown. This won't always be possible because of the need to land 3 unique hits, but any opportunity you get to pull it off in lane should definitely be capitalised on. Overall, it can be quite a clunky Keystone during the early game as already mentioned and some of the time it won't be doing anything for you in the first couple of levels. Once you're past that point however, it's no trouble getting it to proc, especially when you catch someone with a Charm combo or all-in with Spirit Rush. It's certainly a mid-late game focused Rune and it's second to none for burst output on Ahri, you just have to take into account the trade-off that sometimes during early-game it won't be doing much for you. This can often mean forgoing Electrocute and the Domination tree as your primary choice if you really need some early game strength or extra trading reliability in a tough matchup for example.

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 an alright Rune for the Malice tier as any extra damage is always welcome on Ahri. The way it works is that it will allow you to deal some bonus true damage to an enemy that is affected by crowd control, including slows. Something to note is that the damage doesn't go off immediately, it goes off on the next damaging ability after the target has their movement impaired. For Ahri, this means the bonus damage will go off on the next ability hit after they are Charmed. The reason why I said this Rune is only alright instead of good on Ahri is because of its unreliability. Ahri's only form of movement impairing is her Charm. Miss Charm, and you miss the bonus damage, it's as simple as that. You essentially just don't have a Malice Rune when and if this happens and this is a major downside to the Rune. Of course, if you have Rylai's Crystal Scepter then you'll always be getting the bonus damage every 4 seconds, but Rylai's is almost never built on her anymore. During teamfights, Ahri certainly won't have any trouble proccing the damage almost every 4 seconds simply due to the split crowd control among your entire team. The source of movement impairment doesn't have to be from the Rune user and more often than not, there will be a large amount of soft and hard crowd control between your team. When Ahri is on her own however, she will struggle and there will be many times where you won't get anything from the Rune. Whether it's from Charm being on cooldown, or missing it entirely, the end result is the same and that's what makes this Rune unreliable on Ahri. Other than dishing out consistent additional damage during a teamfight, its other main benefit for Ahri is that a standard combo of Charm + Orb will hit for a bit more than without Cheap Shot. That said, the damage isn't exactly a lot, so when you aren't proccing it almost every time it's off cooldown it's a sub optimal Rune.

Sudden Impact: Gain a burst of Lethality and Magic Penetration after using a dash, leap, blink, teleport, or when leaving stealth that lasts for 5 seconds. Bonus: 10 Lethality + 8 Magic Pen Cooldown: 4 Seconds

Sudden Impact is my favourite Malice Rune on Ahri and it suits her extremely well. Because of the way it works, you can get up to 10 seconds of extra Magic Pen by utilising Spirit Rush which will add a lot of bonus damage from all of her abilities that follow. The reason you cannot get 3 procs on Sudden Impact is because there is a 4 second period after you lose the buff before you can gain it again. This means that you'll be able to get it on the first cast of R, and once more on a final cast after 9 seconds, right before Spirit Rush times out. At the very least though, you'll be getting a full 5 seconds of additional Magic Pen and it usually doesn't take any longer than that to unload all of your burst. The reason I prefer this Rune over Cheap Shot is because not only is it more reliable, but it also provides more additional bonus damage on average. If you're solo especially, a full combo with Sudden Impact will out damage Cheap Shot 100% of the time. Its reliability comes from the fact that you don't need to hit anything in order to deal the extra damage. Even if you miss Charm and Orb, you'll still be getting extra damage from the charges of Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush. You'll need to hit multiple Cheap Shot procs in order to be on par with the bonus damage Sudden Impact will get you, which is impossible solo and not always likely in a teamfight or skirmish. The 8 Magic Pen you get from it is static, so from the start of the game to the end of the game it will apply the same bonus. This makes it powerful early-game and it makes all-ins at level 6 quite potent. To give you an idea of how much 8 Magic Pen is, it's essentially the same amount as a whole page of Marks in the old Rune system, and just under half the amount Sorcerer's Shoes grants you (44% to be exact). The 10 Lethailty will do next to nothing, but it will add a couple extra damage on each auto which might just make the difference one day! Like most Runes though, Sudden Impact also has a downside. When you don't have Spirit Rush, you essentially don't have a Malice Rune doing anything for you, but when Spirit Rush is down you don't tend to look for engages or teamfights anyway, unless they are forced and you have no better choice than to fight. The final thing to note is that this Rune also applies when you Flash and ProtoBelt, so even if you don't have Spirit Rush up, there is still another way to proc the Rune and get the bonus Magic Pen.

When it boils down to the choice between Sudden Impact and Cheap Shot there really isn't a lot in it. I feel like Sudden Impact is a bit more reliable though, and has the potential to deal a lot more bonus damage on average, especially in a 1 vs 1 or 1 vs many situation. Cheap Shot is better pre 6 and for poke combos, Sudden Impact is better when Spirit Rush is up and for all-ins. Both have their downsides, but Sudden Impact has more reward with less risk which is why it's my preferred Malice Rune. If you were wondering at all about Taste of Blood, I simply don't see it as a good Rune choice for Ahri. The times where you would want to take this would be vs heavy poke and those matchups tend to be ones where you are either out-ranged (Azir) or get pushed in (Malzahar, Cass) and so it's extremely hard to even hit them with an ability for the heal. On top of this, Ahri really only has Orb in lane/early as a reliable tool to hit the enemy laner and so it's just not very efficient on her. It would be alright vs Melee matchups and I would maybe consider it vs Zed or Talon, but I'd probably still take one of the other 2 options that increase her damage output because that's what she needs, now more than ever.

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 the best vision control Rune to ever be in League and I see it as a must whenever you go with Domination. The great thing about this Rune is that it works very well in quite different ways depending on whether you went with a Stealth Ward or Sweeping Lens. Both options allow for great use of the Zombie Ward though as it procs on enemy ward kills and your own wards timing out. Almost every game, you're going to be starting with the Warding Totem. Having Zombie Ward essentially means that you get more time out of every ward you place, because the chances of an enemy finding and killing the Zombie Ward as soon as it comes up is every slim. You can get up to an extra 3 minutes on every ward you place which is a huge deal, especially in mid lane where there are so many areas to ward. When you also take into account Ahri's slight vulnerability to ganks pre 6, this Rune helps even more. If you switch up to the Sweeper mid/late-game, then you still get the same, if not more use out of this Rune because you'll be taking down a lot of enemy wards with Sweeper. On average, Zombie Wards generated by taking down enemy wards will last a lot shorter, but even granting vision of the enemy team or where a certain champion is for even 1 second is crucial. It also counters the fact that before when you took Sweeper on Ahri or any Mage, you would no longer be able to contribute vision for your team, only deny it for the enemy. Now with Zombie Ward, you can both create and deny vision with the Sweeping Lens and it's often why I rate the Sweeper a lot higher now and you'll almost always see me switch to it around mid-game. There's really no downside to this Rune, it's by far the most reliable option in the Tracking tier and it's second to none in providing vision control which is why I rate it so highly. The fact that it doesn't force you to take the Totem all game for it to work is a big deal too because it still allows for the flexibility of switching to Sweeper at any point to deny vision while creating it at the same time... what's not to love about that? The final thing about Zombie Wards is that there are a few things to note with the way they function and their interactions with various other things which are: A Zombie Ward will arise from a takedown on an enemy ward as stated, but this also counts for ward kill assists. Even if you don't get the final hit on the ward, as long as it gets taken down within a 10 second window of you hitting it, you will get a Zombie Ward! The Zombie Ward has 1 single hit point and they are always visible to the enemy team. It works the same as the Farsight Alteration ward that is left behind in that sense. Its range however, is actually that of a normal ward at 1100 units (Farsight Ward is only 600 units). Zombie Wards are created from killing all types of wards, other than enemy Zombie Wards. This means Vision Wards, Control Wards and Blue Trinket Wards. It's a minor one, but you cannot use Teleport on a Zombie Ward and you cannot see the remaining duration. Those are some of the interactions that aren't explained in the Rune description, so hopefully you can see just how amazing this Rune is after knowing all the details.

Eyeball Collection: Collect eyeballs for champion and ward takedowns. Gain 1 Ability Poweer per eyeball collected and upon completing your collection at 20 stacks, gain an additional 10 Ability Power. Stacks: 2 per champion kill, 1 per champion assist, 1 per ward takedown

Eyeball Collection is the damage option in this tier rather than vision control. It's a pretty good Rune for some extra AP and it will be granting you 30 bonus AP when the collection is completed at 20 stacks. Early-game, you won't be stacking it much because you won't be getting many, if any takedowns on champions and you won't be destroying many wards. This means that it's more of a scaling Rune, but come mid-game you should have it close to completed provided you're doing well. One downside to this Rune is that if you aren't doing very well, it's going to take very long to gain the stacks as you likely won't be getting many or any takedowns. The other source for stacks is of course from wards, so something you can do is get an early Sweeping Lens to aid you in destroying wards for stacks. This isn't ideal though as you'll then have 0 form of vision for yourself and you'll likely only get 1 max ward takedown per use of Sweeper. This can result in taking a very long time to make the Rune useful and you could go most of a game with only a small bonus amount of AP. If you're doing very well on the other hand, it will stack up very quickly and aid you in snowballing and furthering your lead. This makes it a win more kind of Rune where it's great if you're ahead, and quite bad if you're behind. Because of this, it's quite unreliable and it's why i don't rate it too highly. Still, it's the only form of bonus damage in this tier and if damage is what you're going for, you'll want to take this one!

So the choice between these 2 comes down to vision vs combat stats. Zombie Ward comes out ahead on average because it is more reliable, and gives you the ability to provide a ton of vision for your team. This, paired with the fact you can create vision while denying it with Oracle Lens makes it a very strong Rune for late game. Eyeball collection is a more selfish route, but it's extra AP and will be increasing your overall damage by a fair bit when it's maxed out. For games where vision is important such as vs a heavy gank jungler, or roaming mid laner then Zombie Ward will be more valuable to you. If you want or need the extra stats for more raw damage then Eyeball Collection is a fine choice.

Ravenous Hunter: Unique takedowns grant permanent healing from ability damage. Healing reduced to one third for area of effect abilities. Healing: 2.5% + 2.5% per bounty hunter stack

Ravenous Hunter is a pretty good Rune for some healing on ability damage. Ahri's only source of healing is from her passive, so it's nice to have a more consistent way to get some health back. The initial heal amount is only 2.5% (reduced by 66% for AoE) which won't be doing much, but once you get a couple of takedowns it starts to work out quite nicely. Just to give a quick example of some heal numbers, at 2.5%, a level 1 Orb down a whole wave with 33 AP (18 from Dom + Ring) will only heal you for 5.2 HP. A level 4 Orb with say 200 AP at 10% healing would give you 74 life back, and late-game with full stacks at say 500 AP, you'll be getting back 157.5 health. That's just from Orb alone and so you can heal a lot of health, especially when it's paired with her passive. As you can see, early game it will do next to nothing for you, but it scales quite well and since Ahri doesn't tend to build much HP if at all, it makes any health regain on her more efficient and very welcome. When it comes to late-game, being able to quickly go to a lane and heal back up rather than having to base can be a pretty big deal. You can also do things like throw a random Orb at a jungle camp to regain a little bit of life at any point. This can be a handy Rune to take in matchups where you will be expecting to take quite a lot of damage from poke as any extra health recovery in those matchups can make your lane go a lot smoother.

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

Relentless Hunter is really nice on Ahri because of the fact that she's often a roaming champion. Outside of roaming, the extra movespeed out of combat greatly helps with just generally getting around the map and returning to lane after basing. It doesn't really do anything for you in lane, and it certainly does nothing in combat which is where its weakness lies. Once you get a few stacks going though, your out of combat movespeed will increase by quite a large amount and it'll make it much easier to roam. To give you an idea of how much movespeed you get, just 2 stacks plus the base amount will grant you practically the same amount of speed as level 1 Boots (24 vs 25) and at max stacks you get 48 movespeed, which is actually more than level 2 Boots gives you at 45. Pair this with even more movespeed from Lich Bane or Spellbinder and you're looking at close to 500 out of combat MS. Games, or matchups where you might be expecting to roam a lot is where this Rune comes in big. If you're against a passive laner, or someone who can be easily shoved in, this is a great opportunity to make the most out of Relentless Hunter and get those successful roams in. This is never a bad Rune, and once you get 5 stacks you actually move around insanely fast out of combat which is super helpful mid-late game where there's a lot of general map movement. You'll almost always be at 4 or 5 stacks come late-game too.

The one I didn't mention was Ingenious Hunter and while it can be useful, it's incredibly situational because if you don't buy an active item during a game, the Rune does literally nothing for you as it provides active item CDR. It can be a good choice if you're against a Zed for example and will be getting a Zhonya's Hourglass, but other than that, you never really know what your exact build might be. Items that this would work well with are Hextech Rocketbelt, Zhonya's Hourglass and then the lesser common Everfrost and Hextech Gunblade. Overall, the Hunter Tier includes some of the least impactful Rune choices, which means that there's a lot more room for preference and any choice is fine realistically. There are definitely certain situations though that raise the viability of each choice, for example: Ravenous Hunter vs heavy poke/harass, Relentless Hunter vs roam heavy games/passive matchups, and Ingenious Hunter when you 100% know you will be building an impactful active item such as Hourglass. I personally prefer the movespeed from Relentless Hunter in most cases though and you'll often see me go with that one.

The Sorcery Tree is, as expected, very good for mages in general. It provides a ton of options for added utility, resource manipulation and damage. There are far more situational picks in this tree and a lot more choices can be swayed by preference. The Keystone choices don't offer quite as much power as Domination's Electrocute, but they make up for it via consistency. By taking Sorcery as your Primary Tree, you will also be granted 20 Ability Power.

Summon Aery: Your attacks and abilities send Aery to a target, damaging enemies or shielding allies. Damage: 15-40 based on level (+0.10 bonus AP and +0.15 bonus AD) Cooldown: Aery lingers on the target for 2 second before flying back to you, and cannot be sent out again until she returns to you. Aery is initially very slow, but gradually accelerates, and can be picked up by moving near her.

Summon Aery is a decent Keystone Rune. It's the most reliable, and best form of consistent damage in terms of all the Keystone options and it will always add more damage to your poke with Orb, or full rotation of spells (provided Aery is ready). You can even apply Aery with auto attacks which is what also makes it a great source of bonus dps. For matchups where you expect to auto the enemy a lot such as melee mids, Aery is amazing at being able to out-trade enemy champions and often give you lane pressure to either force them out of lane or away from being able to cs. For the longer ranged matchups, it's great for extra damage potential on Orb poke. Aery's cooldown is tailored to the distance it has to travel in order to return to you after the 2 seconds of being on the enemy. This means that if you are close to the target, it will come back very quickly. Because Ahri is mostly medium-close ranged with her spells, Aery has a low cooldown and can be utilised for heavy consistent poke, especially against short ranged or melee champions. The main drawback to Aery is that the damage isn't very high. It's reliability and lane phase power is where it shines and it's certainly more of an early-game focused Rune. It falls off the longer the game goes on, but sometimes all you need is that extra help to get you through lane where you would otherwise struggle without it. It's still going to be doing something late-game too, even though it won't be a lot in comparison to Electrocute. Another slightly smaller downside to Aery is that because of the way it travels back to you, it can sometimes give away your position, or general whereabouts. While the enemy team may not know exactly where you are, they can see the direction that Aery is traveling back and make a rough guess as you where you are or might be heading. It's important to keep this in mind at all times and in situations where you are about to roam especially. I'd definitely say that Aery can be better in tough matchups, simply because it's more of a lane phase Rune and it does a lot early-game compared to Electro often doing nothing. There are a lot of matchups where all you can really do is poke here and there with an Orb, and this is where the Aery helps as you will be rewarded with extra damage with that single Orb poke.

Nullifying Orb: Gain a magic damage shield for 4 seconds when taken to low health by magic damage. Shield: 40-120 based on level (+0.10 AP and +0.15 bonus AD) Cooldown: 60 seconds

The Artifact tier is a very situational based tier and all 3 options are very good for Ahri. To start things off we have Nullifying Orb, which is essentially a mini Hexdrinker shield. When you go below 30% HP, you gain a small magic damage shield that will adsorb any incoming magic damage by a set amount which is based on your level and AD/AP. The shield isn't massive, but being able to take around 100 damage (more or less depending on stage of the game) can be the difference between life and death on someone as squishy as Ahri. The cases where this would be most effective is against high burst from someone like Veigar or Syndra. Those champs have very high amounts of burst with their ultimates especially and so Nullyfying Orb can come in very handy when facing these types of champs. The cooldown is only 60 seconds too, which is actually a lower cooldown than Hexdrinker which is 90 seconds. The 60 seconds pretty much means you're always going to have it up for when the enemy has their ultimate and are looking to fully burst you down. Of course, this Rune isn't good at all if you're facing off against an AD mid, and I would only consider taking it when I'm against high burst. While it won't be entirely useless against an AD mid because they will have some form of AP somewhere, but you'll be putting yourself at a major disadvantage in lane so you should never take this against AD.

Manaflow Band: Periodically, your next ability used has its mana cost refunded and restores 8% of your missing mana. Cooldown: 75 seconds

Manaflow Band is a super useful Rune to have during lane phase and it greatly helps prevent having mana problems or ever going out of mana. Being able to not only cast an Orb for free, but then get some mana back is a great way to pressure mid by pushing in, or counter an enemie's attempt at pushing you in, all while remaining topped up on mana. It's important to note that Manaflow Band only works if you can afford the spell in the first place, since it simply refunds the mana, rather than making the spell cost 0. This can mean that even though it's off cooldown, you won't be able to cast an ability until you reach the mana cost of that ability. This Rune is great for matchups where you will be expecting the enemy mid to shove you into tower, because it will allow you to spam Orb to counter push the wave, and not go out of mana immediately. It's also great for games where you want to forgo a Luden's/GLP, as Manaflow band itself is usually good enough to keep you from going too low. Before this Rune, it was pretty much only Lost Chapter that could sort out any mana issues for good. Sometimes you want to be rushing an Armguard against a Zed or Talon, and so in these games, Manaflow Band can greatly help. The only real downside is that come late-game, you don't ever tend to have mana problems and so the Rune kind of becomes useless, or at the very least not as effective anymore. It's definitely a more lane oriented Rune, but a great one at that and always a good choice. The final thing to note about this Rune is that it's effectiveness can be tied directly to whether or not you buy Luden's/GLP as your first item. If you go Lost Chapter, there won't be much need for Manaflow Band. For times where you don't go Chapter, Manaflow Band becomes very good at keeping you topped up on mana.

The Ultimate Hat: Your ultimate's cooldown is reduced. Each time you cast your ultimate, its cooldown is further reduced. Amount: 5% + 2% per use of ult, up to 10% (15% at max stacks)

The Ultimate Hat is a great Rune and my favourite for the Artifact tier, though not neccesarily the best. The basis of this Rune is simply more cooldown reduction for your ultimate. On someone like Ahri who is so heaviliy reliant on their ultimate, this naturally makes Ultimate Hat a very effective Rune on her. Something to note about cooldown reduction from different sources is that it's not additive CDR. Instead, it's multiplicitive which means that the base CDR is taken into account first, and any further CDR is taken from the remainder. For example, if you have 40% CDR, there is 60% remaining which means the 15% is actually calculated from the 60, resulting in 9% extra. The end result nets you 49% total CDR, opposed to 55% if it were additive. Getting nearly 10% extra cooldown reduction on Spirit Rush is a pretty big deal. That works out at 10 seconds off at level 1 R, 8.5 at level 2 R, and 7.2 seconds off level 3 R. Now, that might not sound like much, but 10 seconds can be a very long time in a lot of situations. Just to quickly add some more info the the CDR calculations, for every 10% base CDR you take 1.5% off of Ultimate Hat's 15%. That means at 10, 20, 30 & 40% the extra CDR is 13.5, 12, 10.5 & 9% extra ultimate cooldown. There isn't really a downside to Ultimate Hat other than taking 5 uses of Spirit Rush to get the most CDR as unfortunately it doesn't work per dash. You still get a flat 5% extra from the start though and as Ahri, you use your ultimate a lot and should always be looking to make a play when it's off cooldown. Another thing I love about Ultimate Hat is that when you pair it with 40% CDR, Ahri's ult is on a 40 second cooldown, which is absolutely insane.

All 3 options in the Artifact tier are viable, but the best choices are either Manaflow Band or Ultimate Hat. Ultimate Hat is my favourite one because of how crucial Ahri's ult is to her, but I really like Manaflow in matchups where you want/need to hard push from level 1. Nullifying Orb can be good against high AP burst, or a lot of AP threats in general, but it's a pretty insignificant Rune and you get more out of the other 2 choices most of the time.

Transcendence: Gain 10% CDR when you reach level 10. Each percent of CDR exceeding the limit is converted to a bonus of 2 Ability Power.

Transcendence is a really good option here for Mages as it's just straight up 10% CDR when you hit level 10. It's similar in a way to the old Runes where you would take CDR Blues and champions who often did that, like Ahri, can benefit the same way still from Transcendence. As for the excess CDR converting into AP, it won't happen a lot, but it does free up some more build diversity where before you wouldn't want to build another item that contained CDR if you were already at the cap. Now, you can freely buy another part CDR item and in return get more AP instead of a wasted stat. There is a pretty big downside to this Rune though which is before level 10, it's doing nothing for you where other choices would be. Level 10 is around the time of game where Ahri peaks though, and so being granted the 10% CDR here is good timing and another major point is that it's right before you hit level 2 Spirit Rush. Transcendence allows you to easily hit the CDR cap with Luden's/GLP too. Paired with the many choices of a final 10% from Lich, Proto, Banshee's, or Zhonya's you will very quickly and easily hit 40% CDR. For the games where you forgo Luden's or GLP though, it still allows you to remain at a decent amount of CDR with a typical build that tends to include at least 1 of the 10% CDR items mentioned above. The final note I want to make about Transcendence is that when you're at max CDR, every Blue Buff will grant you 20 bonus AP due to the excess CDR. This is quite good because Blue Buff at 40% CDR was always just a waste really, but now it's actually a damage buff when using Transcendence.

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

Celerity is a movement speed based Rune and it's very good in any situation. The passive 3% bonus movespeed grants you +10 MS and is close to the old movespeed Quints so it's already pretty decent just from that alone. It can greatly help in matchups where movespeed is crucial for dodging or avoiding spells. On top of this, there's an interaction with Orb of Deception and Celerity that adds 17 AP on cast of Orb. This is due to the boost in movespeed from casting Orb and how bonus MS is converted into some additional AP. As well as this, you also get 1 more AP at the start of a game from the bonus 3% MS, which makes 18 extra AP with every Orb cast. This has a few benefits such as being able to waveclear more effectively, dealing more damage with Orb for poke, and even healing more with Ahri's passive. Celerity is a very reliable Rune overall, and some extra movespeed is always a welcome bonus. You won't be getting much extra AP from standard bonus MS, but when you build items such as Lich Bane or Spellbinder you will still be getting a small amount of bonus AP.

Absolute Focus: While above 70% health, gain extra Ability Power. Amount: 5-40 AP based on level (2 extra per level)

Absolute Focus is the 3rd contender for this slot. It's basically just more raw damage, but only while you're above 70% health. Early-game, it won't be doing much at all as the AP you get is very low. As the game goes on, the AP does scale up and while it's not a bad amount, it's also not that great. Mid-game, where Ahri is at her strongest, you're only going to be getting around 24 more AP. There is of course the obvious downside of the bonus AP going away when you're taken below 70% health, and that's not uncommon at all. This makes the Rune fairly unreliable at almost every stage of the game, bar maybe the first couple of levels but then it doesn't do much at that stage anyway. The main benefit to this Rune is that it will amplify your burst potential, and ability to catch someone with a combo and all-in them. In most cases, Ahri is at full HP before and after she gets 80% of her damage off (while the target is caught in Charm) and so in terms of efficiency on Ahri, it's actually pretty decent. That goes for anyone with some form of hard cc that uses Absolute Focus, as it ensures you're likely above 70% HP for the 1-2 seconds you unload most of your damage.

Overall, the main choice comes down to Transcendence or Celerity. As for Absolute Focus, a lot of the time you will be below 70% HP and won't be getting anything which makes it very unreliable and so I usually won't ever take it. For the other 2, I would actually say that they are both of equal power and they are both always good choices. The only exception to this, and where I would rate Transcendence marginally higher is when you don't build Luden's or GLP as the CDR becomes more effective due to having less from items. Celerity can be situationally better when movespeed is an important stat for who you're laning against though. If you're in a game where you will be dodging a lot, or might have the chance to roam often then Celerity becomes extra effective. Even when these conditions are not present though, Celerity is still always good because it's extra movespeed and damage. The final note is that going Transcendence does also free up some more build diversity without sacrificing too much CDR due to the 10% you get for free, and giving you the oppertunity to gain a bonus 20 AP with a Blue Buff is also very nice. It'll mean that whenever you're over-capping on CDR, you won't be wasting any stats.

Scorch: Your first ability hit every 20 seconds burns champions. Damage: 20-60 magic damage based on level

Scorch is a very good Rune and it greatly helps with the early game and potential damage you can deal to the enemy laner. Scorch, paired with Aery or Comet is a lot of bonus damage when poking with Orb in lane and it actually allows Ahri to be quite the bully in many matchups. It's certainly an early game Rune, and it's most effective during lane phase. It's damage falls off late-game, but it will still be applying some bonus damage and so it will always be relevant throughout a game. There isn't really any matchup where taking Scorch would be a bad idea. You almost definitely need it in hard matchups, or ones where you will be expecting a lot of trades, but even in easier matchups it's still a great choice because it means you can win your lane even harder. Something to note however is that you may not be the only one who takes this Rune and if the enemy mid also has it, and usually out trades you anyway, you could be in trouble. This is why it's quite an important Rune for someone like Ahri, because if you don't have Scorch and they do, the chances of you winning trades is very low.

Gathering Storm: Gain increasing amounts of AD or AP over time. 10 min: 8 AP 20 min: 24 AP 30 min: 48 AP 40 min: 80 AP 50 min: 120 AP 60 min: 168 AP

Gathering Storm is the contender to Scorch. It's the complete opposite in the way that it scales amazingly well into the late-game, but does next to nothing early. You don't get the first bonus amount until 10 minutes into a game, and even then it's only 8 AP which is nothing. At 20 minutes, you get an almost noticable boost in AP at 24, but it's not really until 30 minutes where you start to notice the bonus at 48 AP. The amounts you get after that are absolutely insane and at 60 minutes you're essentially getting a free Deathcap. Speaking of Deathcap, it will also amplify the AP you recieve from Gathering Storm, making it that much better once you start getting the later amounts. As mentioned already, during the first 10 minutes it will be doing nothing for you. Because of this, I would never take Storm in a hard matchup where all the early help is needed. It's all well and good planning to scale to late-game, but if you get destroyed in lane or fall behind too much, you won't have a late-game. Winning, or passive matchups are the ones where you can get away with Gathering Storm, and it will somewhat make up for Ahri's lackluster late-game if you do manage to get there. Overall though, it's pretty unreliable, and you're forcing yourself to go without a Power Rune for 19 minutes 59 seconds really since 8 AP isn't going to do much at all for you.

There are 2 main reasons why I rate Scorch higher than Gathering Storm at this current moment in time. The first and most prominent reason is simply because Scorch is always useful. Scorch is doing something positive for you at every stage of the game, whereas Gathering Storm does absolutely nothing for you for the first 10 minutes of the game as mentioned before. On top of that, Gathering Storm only gives you 8 AP at that point and so it doesn't really start to kick in until the 20 minute mark where it grants you 24 AP. Gathering Storm doesn't really start to make a huge impact until 30 minutes, where it grants you 48 AP. Most games are over or decided before you even reach 30 minutes, and so it's a huge risk when taking this Rune. Gathering Storm is by far the most game changing Rune out of every single one though once it hits its higher scalings. It'll be granting you 80, 120 and then 168 AP at minute 40, 50 and 60. Granted, less than 1% of games go that long, but for the times they do, you're gonna be wishing you took Storm.

The way that the Secondary Runes work is that you get to choose 2 out of the 9 lesser Runes (non Keystone Runes) and use them with all of your Primary tree choices. This is where a lot of preference and situational picks come in and you could often end up with a different setup from game to game depending on who you're against. The Secondary choices include the already talked about Domination and Sorcery, but also the Inspiration Tree for when a situation calls for it. Also a quick note to avoid any confusion, for a Domination Secondary, it would be with a Sorcery Primary and a Sorcery Secondary would be with a Domination Primary as you can't have both trees in both slots.

With Domination, the Malice (top) and Tracking (middle) Runes outclass the Hunter (bottom) Runes by quite a large margin. This makes the amount of optimal combinations much simpler as you're choosing 1 damage Rune and 1 vision control Rune. My personal preference of choice here are the same Runes as I prefer when Domination is the Primary tree, going with Sudden Impact and Zombie Ward. The other 2 choices, Cheap Shot and Eyeball Collection are certainly viable alternatives however and there's nothing wrong with choosing a different combination.

Gain 8 Magic Pen + 10 Lethality for 5 seconds after using Spirit Rush or Flash

Deal 12-30 true damage (based on level) to enemies with impaired movement

The Malice choice is Sudden Impact vs Cheap Shot. They are both damage related Runes, with Cheap Shot being tailored towards crowd controlled enemies, and Sudden Impact working with Spirit Rush and Flash. Out of the 2, Sudden Impact is a lot more reliable and has the potential to deal much more bonus damage than Cheap Shot. Cheap Shot's unreliability comes from the fact that Ahri only has Charm for crowd control and so if you miss that, you'll be getting 0 bonus damage. Cheap Shot has ability to dish out a lot of damage in a teamfight, where the enemy team will have their movement impaired a lot of the time from allied cc, but having to rely on your team in order to deal a decent enough amount of damage to be considered as good as Sudden Impact is not ideal. It's not uncommon for Ahri to be alone, or waiting to ambush a target and so you will often not have the assistence from your team to impair the enemy champion's movement. Cheap Shot is the better Rune when it comes to standard Charm Orb combos however, and Sudden Impact will be doing nothing for you if you don't have Spirit Rush or Flash up, so there is merit to taking Cheap Shot too. I just see Sudden Impact as the less risk more reward kind of deal since it's more reliable and will always add more bonus damage to your spell rotation. *You can read more in-depth details about these Runes in the Primary Malice section.

Scoring a takedown on an enemy ward will summon a Zombie Ward in its place that has 1 hit point and lasts 60-180 seconds

Gain 2 Eyeball stacks per champion takedown & 1 per ward takedown. Gain +1 AP per Eyeball collected and +10 AP at 20 stacks

The Tracking choice is the same as before, Zombie Ward or Eyeball Collection. They are both good Runes that do different things, with Zombie Ward providing vision and Eyeball Collection providing bonus damage. Zombie Ward is definitely more reliable and better for the team overall as it has the potential to give you a lot more vision in multiple places. Not only that, but it allows you to switch to Oracle Lens and still grant vision for your team while destroying enemy wards. Zombie Ward can allow your Stealth Ward wards to last up to 3 minutes longer (based on level) which is absolutely insane. When you also consider how many different spots you need to ward in mid lane too, Zombie Ward becomes a very powerful Rune. Eyeball Collection is more unreliable than Zombie Ward simply due to the fact that if you aren't doing well, it will take you ages to stack it. Most of the time it won't be doing much, or anything for you early too and so it's more of a scaling Rune. With that said, it's the damage option here and if you want or need more overall damage, Eyeball Collection is the one to go with. *You can read more in-depth details about these Runes in the Primary Tracking section.

With Sorcery, there are a lot more combinations of Runes to take and a lot of these combinations are neither better or worse than others. This means that in many cases it will come down to preference and/or playstyle more than anything. You could go for super late-game scaling with Gathering Storm, you could go for a mix of CDR and Movespeed, or you could choose to go with the most CDR possible with Transcendence and The Ultimate Hat. I tend to gravitate towards at least 1 CDR option, and 1 damage or utility. Any combination here is absolutely fine though.

Every 75 seconds, your next ability cast is refunded and you regain 8% of your missing mana

Spirit Rush's cooldown is reduced by 5% and is further reduced by 2% per cast, up to another 10%

Manaflow Band is always a good choice when you want to be spamming abilties from level 1, or for when you don't plan on going Lost Chapter. It allows you to play much more aggresively in lane too, without as much need to conserve your spell usage and worry about running out of mana. It's certainly a good one in touch matchups, or ones you tend to get pushed in a lot. The other choice here is The Ultimate Hat and it will give you the most amount of CDR for Spirit Rush. I tend to favour this Rune a lot of the time due to how essential Ahri's ultimate is to her being able to do pretty much anything. Ultimate Hat can be very effective when you don't plan on getting max CDR, or even near max because it means you will still have a lot of CDR for Spirit Rush, and that's the most important cooldown to have reduced. *You can read more in-depth details about these Runes in the Primary Artifact section.

Gain 10% CDR at level 10 + gain 2 AP per 1% of CDR over the limit

Gain 3% MS + gain 8% of your bonus MS as AP

Transcendence is a fantastic choice because 10% free CDR at level 10 is perfect for Ahri. It allows you to get max CDR very easily, or still have a sufficient amount when you don't have much CDR from items. Where movespeed is more highly valued for roaming, or dodging something from the likes of Xerath, Vel'Koz, Cassiopeia etc. Celerity is what I'd go with. The added movement speed can be paramount to winning some matchups and the extra damage with each Orb cast also helps quite a lot in the early stages. Where up-time on Spirit Rush and abilities in general is more highly valued vs the likes of Zed, Diana, Akali & Talon for example, Transcendence would be my choice. Transcendence's value is also slightly raised for the times you forgo Luden's or GLP, but overall they are equally as good and both choices are always fine. *You can read more in-depth details about these Runes in the Primary Excellence section.

Your next ability hit burns champions for 20 - 60 (based on level) magic damage

Every 10 minutes, gain 1 (+ 1 per 10 Minutes) stacks of Gathering Storm. Each stack grants 8 AP

The Power choice is essentially early-game vs late-game. Scorch is a very powerful Rune for a 'lesser' Rune and it's heavily tailored towards the early game and laning power. It will maximise the amount of damage you can deal with abilities, but primarily with Orb poke. Scorch, paired with Electrocute enables Ahri to dish out some serious damage if you get a successful trade with a double hit on Orb, followed by an Electrocute proc. Gathering Storm is a super late-game scaling Rune and it's why I much prefer Scorch at the moment. Storm doesn't really start doing a whole lot until 30 minutes into the game where ti grants you 48 AP. At level 10 you only get 8, and at 20 you only get 24 which isn't that good considering the time it takes to get there. If you do somehow manage to go late and hit the 40/50 minute marks then this Rune will have more of an impact alone than any Keystone even would. At the 50 minute mark, you'll get 120 AP, which is the same amount of AP as an un-amped Rabadon's Deathcap. The thing is though, games are not going very late in the current state of the game, and it's quite rare that a game will even get past 30 minutes now. This is the major reason why Scorch is just better overall right now. *You can read a more in-depth comparison about these Runes in the Primary Power section.

Inspiration secondary is only ever taken when you need the Perfect Timing stasis to counter a certain matchup, primarily Fizz and Zed. It's still a decent secondary tree for Ahri, but if you don't really need the free Stopwatch then there's Sorcery or Domination are better trees to go with. With Perfect Timing set as the main choice here, that leaves 1 more choice of Rune to be made. There's not a lot of decent stuff here for Ahri, but there's a couple of helpful Runes which I will go over below.

Receive a Biscuit every 3 minutes that restores 15% of your missing health & mana over 15 seconds, as well as permanently increasing your max mana by 40

+5% CDR +5% Max CDR +5% Summoner Spell CDR +5% Item CDR

The Biscuits add some really nice extra sustain in lane and are super helpful in matchups where you often get out-poked or out-traded. Because they restore quite a lot of mana too, it also has the ability to allow for more lane pressure by utilising the extra sustain to your advantage. One thing to note about the new Biscuits is that they do not have a set amount of healing, instead they restore a percentage of missing health and mana. This means that ideally you will want to use them at a lower amount of health and/or mana in order to make the most out of them. Biscuits are great for matchups where you expect to get out-traded, or take a lot of damage via poke in the early levels. Common examples of these matchups are Azir and Xerath. Cosmic Insight is just extra CDR for Ahri, which is exactly what you want on her. What's nice is that it also gives you some item and summoner spell CDR too, rather than just more base CDR and it also raises the cap to 45% max. Cosmic Insight allows for Ahri to reach 45% CDR which puts all of her cooldowns on a very low timer. Either choice is fine here, but Biscuits are definitely better for any kind of rough matchup, or if you just want a smooth lane phase.

Below, you will find my current up to date goto Rune page for Ahri. Whenever I make a change, I will change it here and make any notes about why I'm running what I'm running. You can also just look at the cheat sheet Runes to see what I'm currently running, but if you want an explanation to why I'm using the Rune setup then you can find it here.

My current Rune setup is Electrocute, paired with Sorcery for added cooldown reduction and movespeed/damage. In my opinion, Ahri is best played with Electrocute and I swear by this now ever since Aery was nerfed. Aery may be good in lane, but come mid game it already does next to nothing, and mid game is where Ahri shines. Another thing I dislike about taking Aery is that you're basically putting pressure on yourself to win lane, or not fall behind because you're already going to fall off faster from having Aery instead of Electro. Electrocute fits the way I play Ahri best, I like to be able to burst targets down, and maximise by chances of assasinating a target. This is only possible with Electro. The downside to this is that your laning is very poor with Ahri and you have to play somewhat safe and passively. Farm up to 6, then look to make plays or roam around the map. Being Domination primary, I also take Relentless Hunter which enables me to have a lot of roam pressure and with the extra movespeed from Celerity on top of Relentless, you can move around the map pretty quickly. Eyeball Collection is my current choice instead of Zombie Ward and this is again, to give me the best possible chance of assassinating a target, and to generally increase my overal dps. Zombie Ward can definitely still be taken however, and I often switch between the 2 still. For the Sorcery choices, I've been leaning towards CDR options lately to increae Ahri's play making frequency. The Ultimate Hat is a near must in my opinion because it will grant you the lowest poissible cooldown for Spirit Rush, provided you have a lot of CDR which I always do. Transcendence is something I often pair it with, but lately I've been going with Celerity instead for the movespeed and extra bonus dps from the interaction with Orb and bonus AP from bonus MS. The main change I make other than Transcendence over Celerity is that I'll often take Manaflow Band instead of Ulti Hat for matchups or games where I want to be hard shoving from level 1. Manaflow, even when going Luden's/GLP, is quite essential to take when you're looking to spam Orb from the early stages of the game and it will prevent you from going out of mana as often. There's alwasy room for change, but IMO Electrocute is her best Keystone by a large margin.

There are many items that can be built on Ahri and there are many different options that are available to choose from due to the amount of Ability Power items that are in the game. I will go into a lot of detail about each item choice and the situations where they can or should be built. Starting items will be up first, followed by the 2 different build paths before moving onto her core, situational & general items with trinkets to finish off the items section of the guide.

+60 Health +50% Base Mana Regeneration +15 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: Restores 4 mana upon killing a unit.

The Doran's Ring is the standard start for pretty much any of Ahri's matchups. It provides a nice amount of early AP, mana regen and health to make the lane phase go smoothly. The passive of restoring 4 mana upon killing a unit is also quite handy because you will be last hitting a lot in lane. 4 Mana may not sound like much and while it isn't, it certainly adds up. You can get up to 24 Mana per Minion wave (30 on a cannon wave) so you can essentially get a free Orb of Deception every 3 waves. You might be wondering about Dark Seal as a starting item, but it's not as good for laning and it's better to get one after your first back. If you went with a Dark Seal start, you would almost definitely have mana issues due to 0 bonus regen or mana back on minion kills. While you do get 100 flat mana, the lack of regen is what you'll eventually suffer from. The Dark Seal is a very good item to go for upon your first back and I will often do this myself. The extra HP from a Doran's Ring is a pretty big deal during the early levels too as it will soak up most of the damage from an ability or all of the damage from an auto attack. When you also think that 60 health is more than 10% extra HP at level 1 then it's a lot more than it seems. A second Doran's Ring on first backing used to be a common thing for Mages, but it's not quite as effective anymore due to the passive being unique. That said, it will still offer the most early-game power for its cost and it will make your early laning significantly stronger with a second Ring. It's often better to just go with a Dark Seal instead of a second Ring though as not only is it cheaper, but you get the opportunity to begin snowballing after takedowns. The added healing from potions is always a nice small bonus too as during very early laning you still tend to buy a potion or 2 on each back. If you do decide to add a Dark Seal to your Doran's Ring super early, then it's quite beneficial and certainly efficient to grab a Refillable Potion due to the increased healing from Dark Seal's passive. Overall, a Doran's Ring is the best starting item for Ahri and you'll see most players go with this start almost every game.

Regenerates 5 health points every half-second for a total of 15 seconds, restoring a total of 150 health. Limited to 5 at one time and limited to one type of Healing Potion. This means you cannot have a Refillable Potion as well as Health Potions.

The next item on the starting list is the Health Potion. Health Potions are probably the most important item at the start of a game as it allows you to take damage and recover lost health. Without Potions, any damage you take in lane will be almost permanent damage as base health regen is very low, especially for Mages. Ahri has a base health regen of only 6.5 at level 1, which means she will only regenerate 78 health every 60 seconds. With the Doran's Ring start, you can afford to buy 2 Health Potions which when combined with your passive Essence Theft gives you some great early-game sustain. It is important to note that for the first couple of time that you recall, you should always buy a Health Potion or 2 as it makes it a lot harder to be pushed out of lane or be killed when you can keep healing up the damage done to you. Don't go too mad on potions though, they may be cheap but the cost can add up if you keep buying loads. If you're going to be needing a lot of healing during lane phase, then it can be a good idea to pick up a Refillable Potion on your first back instead of constantly pouring gold into Health Pots. A prime example of this is Azir as you will always be in need of Potions during lane phase from his insane poke.

Consume a charge to place an invisible Stealth Ward at the target location which reveals the surrounding area. Duration: 60 - 120 seconds (based on level). Cooldown: Stores one charge every 180 - 90 seconds (based on level), up to 2 maximum charges.

The Stealth Ward is undoubtedly the best Trinket when starting a game. Before laning even begins, 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. It's an all-round great Trinket because it's a free 60 second ward at level 1 that can be placed whenever you like. 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. This Trinket is so crucial to a laner because without vision, there's no telling when you might be getting ganked. Being able to ward one side of mid and then play more to that side is greatly beneficial and decreases the chance of you dying to a gank. The ward can be used to watch for enemy roams too, either by your laner, or someone coming from top or bot. Warding is such an important part of the game and getting a free ward is too good to pass up. Mid/late-game it can definitely be traded for a Sweeping Lens, but early-game there is no question for Ahri or solo laners in general, the Warding Totem is by far the best choice. If you also have Zombie Ward then starting with the Warding Totem is even more effective as it will essentially increase the duration of your Totem Wards by placing a Zombie Ward down when they time-out.

+300 Mana +25 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: +10% Cooldown Recution UNIQUE Passive: Restores 20% of your max mana over 3 seconds upon leveling.

The Lost Chapter costs 1100 gold and it's the standard build path when facing an AP Mid. The general build is to go Luden's Tempest as your first core item and so once you back with enough gold, you can grab a Lost Chapter as your first component. You ideally always want to go for the Lost Chapter first because of the mana sustain it grants. You'll basically never have any mana issues from the point you have a Lost Chapter as it restores 20% of your maximum mana over 3 seconds upon leveling, as well as giving you straight up 300 extra. By the time you get this item, you'll likely have around 800 or more max mana which means you'll be getting 160+ mana back on a level up. The Lost Chapter also grants 25 Ability Power 10% CDR. The AP isn't a lot, but the CDR is very nice because Ahri's level 1 ultimate is on quite a long cooldown. Any CDR you get while Spirit Rush is at rank 1 is more effective as it will be reducing the cooldown by more than it would at ranks 2 and 3. You can also build the Chapter into a Everfrost if you're going for that instead of Luden's so there's some diversity there too.

+30 Armor +20 Ability power UNIQUE Passive: Killing a unit grants 0.5 bonus ability power and armor, stacking up to 30 times for a max of 15 bonus ability power and armor.

The Seeker's Armguard costs a total of 1200 gold and it's the goto item when facing AD mid laners. The entire reason that you go for Seeker's in lane vs AD champs is because of the armor it grants. If you lane vs an AD without any armor, you're going to have a bad time. What's more is that most of the AD mid laners tend to have a lot of burst damage such as Zed, Talon and Jayce. Without any bonus armor, you'll be assassinated quite quickly and any poke they have will be hitting you way harder than you can hit them for in return. With the Armguard, it's quite important to finish it as soon as you hit 1200~ gold and this is because of its stacking passive. It's a general rule of thumb that whenever you're building some form of stacking item in League, you want to finish it as soon as possible. With the Armguard, it's stacked by simply killing units and so during a laning phase is an ideal time to have it completed and stacking. The passive is actually amazing too, it enables you to gain an additional 15 armor and AP, bringing the stat totals to 45 armor and 35 AP. That's a lot of armor and ability power for just 1200 gold and it will greatly reduce the amount of physical damage you'll take. Provided you last hit every minion per wave, it will take 5 minion waves to fully stack the Armguard, so realistically it'll take 6 waves. This can be quickened by killing jungle monsters, but Ahri isn't a very good jungle camp clearer and you won't usually be killing jungle camps until later in a game. The build path to Armguard is pretty handy too as it includes 2 Cloth Armor. Cloth Armor is a neat item you can pick up after an early back which will already aid you in reducing the damage you take from your opponent. This can be extra effective when you're against an AD mid that can poke you often like Zed and his Razor Shuriken. You should never start with a Cloth Armor, you need the stats from the Ring and it will always help you more than having some extra armor and potions from level 1. It can be quite important to grab at least 1 cloth armor before the Amplifying Tome though because with the new Runes system, you're at 0 bonus armor until you build it yourself. Most of the time, it's best to leave the Armguard as it is instead of completing the Zhonya's Hourglass, with the only exception being Zed to counter his ultimate. With the upgrade to Hourglass, you actually don't get any more armor, all you get is 35 more AP, 10% CDR and the stasis active. Paying 1700 gold for that little of an increase in stats isn't ideal, and so you should only ever upgrade if you value the active or need it to counter an ultimate such as the already mentioned Death Mark. After you have Seeker's Armguard, you can simply start to work on your normal items such as Luden's Tempest or a Lich Bane for example. The only other thing to mention about this build path is that you won't have the mana sustain you would have with a Lost Chapter and so you need to be a bit more careful with your use of spells. One effective way to essentially make up for the loss in mana sustain is to take Manaflow Band in Runes. This will help a lot with mana while you focus on getting your Armguard completed and it should prevent you from having any mana problems.

Places a visible Control Ward at a target location, granting vision over the surrounding area + revealing camouflaged champions and revealing & disabling enemy wards and traps. Control Wards are limited to 1 per player, 3 per inventory and they last forever until destroyed with 4 auto attacks.

A Control Ward will reveal and disable nearby hidden enemy traps and Sight Wards in a 900-unit radius which is the main reason they are so valuable. Being able to lock-down an area where you know the enemy can't have vision is a very effective thing to be able to do. It greatly aids in attempts to catch targets or gain an advantage for a fight by having the initiative. They can also be used to bait enemies when they go to try and destroy them with auto attacks. Camouflaged enemies in the area are also revealed, but invisible enemies are not. Champions that have invisibilty are: Akali, Talon, Kha'Zix, Shaco, Vayne, Teemo and Wukong. The champions that have camouflage and will be revealed are Evelynn, Rengar and Twitch. What these champions have in common is that their periods of beeing unseen are much longer than those who have invisibility. This makes Control Wards very good against them because they will cover a wider area of the map while camouflaged, giving them more chance to be spotted by a placed Control Ward. It's extremely important to have a Control Ward down when facing against an Evelyn due to her always being camouflaged post 6 out of combat. Map control is super important in League, and so Control Wards are naturally vital to helping win games. Other than your Trinket, the only other form of vision control you can get is from a Control Ward and you should always have one down if possible. They are limited to 1 active at a time, but they do last forever until destroyed/replaced and you can hold up to 3 for when the enemy does destroy one, or when you simply wish to place one in a different location. You should always aim to buy a Control Ward on your first or second back and the earlier you get one and place it down, the more advantageous it becomes for your team. When placing them down, ideally you want it in a brush so that the enemy won't see it unless they walk into or gain vision of said brush. It can also be a good idea to make sure that if it is in a brush, you put it as close to your side of the map as possible so that it will be easier to defend it when the enemy tries to destroy them. The last note to make about Control Wards is that whenever you buy one, it's a good idea to place it down before returning to lane. This is because if you enter lane with a Control Ward in your inventory, the enemy can see that you have one available. They'll also see when you've used it as it'll no longer be in your inventory and so they may be able to get information on when or where you place it down. If you place it before going to lane, they will have no idea if you bought one or not.

Limited to 1 pair of boots. UNIQUE Passive: Enhanced Movement +25 flat movement speed

Boots and boots in general are actually the most important item in League and every single champion (other than Cassiopeia) includes boots in their build. Movement speed is one of the most essential stats to have in a game and as a mid laner it becomes even more essential due to being in the center of the map and from the principle of roaming. Ahri values movespeed higher than a lot of champions because of how squishy she is, but also how effective she is at kiting and catching up to someone. Movespeed is an indirect defensive stat as it allows for easier dodging of abilities and getting away from enemies. This makes boots a very valuable item against champions who have a lot of skill-shots such as Vel'Koz and Xerath or champions who need to stick on you to do damage such as Yasuo. On the flip-side, boots aren't quite as important against champions that are all or mostly point and click such as Annie or Kassadin. This means that depending on who you're against, the time where you build boots can vary. I highly recommend that you try to always pick up at least level 1 boots as early as possible on Ahri though. This will not only help you in lane, but it will allow for faster roaming around the map which is a key part to Ahri's effectiveness in a game. What's more is that they only cost 300, so it won't hinder your build by too much.

These are my goto items on Ahri that I will typically focus on in any given game. It's never set in stone though, and there are many situations that call for a build deviation. Something you may have already noticed is that the second major item is a question mark. This is intended, and it's because this item is never static. The choice here can be either one of the situational items to meet a certain requirement, or a general item to fill the slot. This is also where preference and personal playstyle comes in as there's a lot of viable items on Ahri and she has a lot of diversity with the way she can be built. Everything will be explained in detail as always and I'll be going over each item from what I see as her core, followed by situational and finally general for a total of 15 items.

+500 Mana +90 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction +10% UNIQUE Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: Gain charges upon moving or casting. At 100 charges, the next ability hit will deal 100 (+ 10% AP) bonus magic damage to the first enemy hit and summon up to 3 lesser bolts that target nearby enemies.

Luden's Tempest is one of the best AP items in the game for Ahri due to how much you get overall. It gives a great mix of both damage and utility with a strong passive to go with it. It does cost quite a lot at 3300, but it's well worth it because of how much you get. Ahri values cooldown reduction a lot and being able to get 20% from 1 item is a pretty big deal, especially if you're aiming to try and hit max CDR for the most uptime on Spirit Rush. The extra up time on her other abilities is also very beneficial as it allows her to deal more consistent damage, rather than having to wait a while before being able to use another rotation of spells. 20% CDR will also take the cooldown of Charm to just under 10 seconds too, allowing Ahri to get 2 casts in during the time of Spirit Rush that lasts 10 seconds. Outside of this, the more uptime on Charm is just always a very nice benefit as it's a very powerful tool and Ahri's only form of crowd control. Luden's pairs very well with Transcendence too as you'll be able to hit 30% CDR by level 10. It's very easy to max out on CDR from here because all you need is 1 more source of CDR and there's a ton of options available to Ahri. The passive on Luden's is also very powerful and it has many benefits. The most obvious benefit is the extra damage it provides when you hit an enemy with a spell. Overall, it will slightly amplify her burst damage and it will make assassinations easier to pull off on squishy targets. Because it isn't just single target damage, it is also great for teamfights and the passive damage will hit up to 4 targets. The other great thing about the passive of this item is that it will make farming and shoving waves a lot easier. Ahri's Orb of Deception is a fantastic ability for wiping out a minion wave as it is, but the added damage with a Luden’s proc will make it even easier as it will speed up the time it takes to clear the melee minions. A nice interaction between Orb of Deception and the Echo passive is that it can proc on the return damage. So, if you are at say 85 stacks as you throw out Orb, after hitting the magic damage on the first part it will bring you to 100 stacks and as the true damage part hits an enemy, the passive will go off even though you weren't at 100 stacks when you used the ability. Another reason that the item is so good on Ahri is because she can very easily charge the Passive to 100 stacks. This is due to the insane movespeed from Orb of Deception and also from each charge of Spirit Rush. Every dash will charge around 25% of the passive at 24 stacks, so with the 3 charges of your ultimate you almost get an entire use out of it. The build path to Luden's is pretty decent with your main component being the Lost Chapter. Lost Chapter is arguably the best early game AP item for a mage and the other 2 components are just raw AP which is exactly what Ahri wants in the early stages of the game. Overall, Luden's is a perfect item for its cost and it gives Ahri exactly what she needs. Mana sustain for laning phase through the Lost Chapter, a ton of CDR, a ton of AP and a damaging passive to aid in burst and waveclear.

+18 Magic Penetration UNIQUE Passive: Enhanced Movement +45 flat movement speed

Sorcerer's Shoes cost 1100 gold and they are the standard boots for Ahri. There isn't a lot to say about them other than that they are the perfect boots for maximizing damage output and they are usually a no-brainer for most mages since they provide flat magic penetration, and magic pen is quite hard to come by. Sorc Shoes definitely aren't the only choice of boots however, but I would rate them as the best ones to go with since they will increase the amount of damage you can deal with each rotation of spells. Ahri is a burst mage, a large part of how I play her and how I believe she is best played is about being able to assassinate a target, or take them very low within 1 rotation of spells. Sorc Shoes go hand in hand with this and so 9 times out of 10 I'll go with these. The other choice of boots I would consider are Mercury's Treads, and in very rare situations Ionian Boots of Lucidity but they come as very situational buys and I will explain when to get them in the 'Situational Items' section. The timing of when to buy tier 2 boots can vary from game to game. I usually want to get the first core item finished before I complete my Sorcerer's Shoes, but I will sometimes get them earlier. It essentially depends on whether I need to roam a lot or if I am being camped by a jungler. Also in matchups where a lot of dodging of enemy abilities is required, early level 2 boots can greatly help. As long as you don't leave them too late it's up to you when you wish to buy them though.

Twin Shadows? Lich Bane? Morellonomicon? Hextech Rocketbelt? Banshee's Veil? Zhonya's Hourglass?

This is where the build can change from game to game or player to player based on preference, playstyle or situation. Luden's, Lich Bane and Protobelt are the 3 standard choices, with Hourglass and Banshee's being the situational 2. I'll briefly go over each item stating what they do for Ahri and any situation that favours each choice. There will be much more detail about these items in their relevant sections of the guide soon to follow. Twin Shadows is a great choice for a mix of damage, more CDR and movespeed at a low cost. It can allow you to very quickly hit the CDR cap and the bonus movespeed makes it great for roaming purposes. The active makes it easier to chase targets and land your skillshots. Lich Bane is similar, only it has less AP & movespeed and it has a bad build patch. It makes up for it with 10% CDR and its passive that grants higher consistent damage. Morellonomicon enables Ahri to deal a lot of burst damage with the high amount of magic pen you'll have. The health is also great for making you harder to kill and the grevious wounds is a nice bonus for cutting down the enemy healing. If you do choose to build Morello here as your second item, skip the next core item or replace it with one of the other choices here. Hextech Rocketbelt is a much cheaper item with nice all-round stats. It will make you tankier and have slightly higher burst, as well as another form of gap closer. Banshee's Veil is for survivability against heavy AP burst such as Veigar or Syndra. Its passive is also amazing for being able to block an ability, making it excellent against the likes of Malzahar and Morgana. Zhonya's Hourglass for when you need the active stasis to nullify an ultimate such as Fizz's Chum the Waters or Zed's Death Mark. All of these choices apart from Morello will grant Ahri 10% more CDR, which makes it incredibly easy to get near max CDR (max with Transcendence) at a very early stage in the game and it's often how she is best played.

+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 bonus health on Morello is actually a very nice bonus to have, much like with Protobelt and Rylai's. Due to how squishy Ahri is and how low her base HP is, any extra health she can get is a welcome addition. Most of Ahri's items don't include any health and so it makes Morello a great pickup for when you could use some extra HP to stop you from being 1-shot so easily. Another good thing about Morello is that it can be built basically whenever. A lot of items are better when built either early or late, but Morello is pretty much always good at any stage. That said, you wouldn't want to rush it as your first item, but anytime after your first item is great. The passive healing reduction to Morellonomicon is very good for when you are against a champion with some form of healing such as Nidalee or Swain, or for when the enemy mid laner takes heal as their summoner. 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 is a pretty big deal in a lot of matchups, but also because the enemy ADC will have Heal and so it will give you a much easier time taking them out. The build path of Morello is pretty decent. The part Blasting Wand is good for raw AP and the Oblivion Orb is good for added burst with its AP and magic pen, and survivability with the health. If you aren't in any need for healing reduction, you can choose to leave Morello at Oblivion Orb and finish it at a later stage. The magic pen doesn't go up, so all you get is a lot more AP and some more HP. Still, it's never bad to finish it out right even if you don't need the healing reduction.

+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 are almost guaranteed to need in every single game you play. At some point, the enemy team is very likely to get some magic resist and the tanks will start to get magic resist well above 100. A lot of champions also gain magic resist per level, so come mid game they will already have some bonus MR even without items. 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. This is typically why you don't tend to build it until mid way through your build, because it gives time for the enemy team to be building MR to make the Void more efficient, but also more necessary. The general idea with Void Staff is that you should always be looking at the enemy team’s items to check for anyone building magic resist. If you see that 1 or 2 have started to build magic resist, then will need to start thinking about buying a Void. You'll typically aim to be getting Void as your 3rd main item (not counting boots). Void can sometimes be pushed to your 4th main item though, provided no one is building any MR on the enemy team. More often that non though, come the time for your 3rd item they will have some MR. As long as you grab a Void at some point during your build, you'll be ok. Just remember to keep an eye on what the enemy team is building so you can get an idea of when the best time to build it is. Just remember that its only 2650 gold, so it doesn't take too long to finish and it also builds from a Blasting Wand and Amplifying Tome which are often parts of other items too. This means that you could be part way through building say a Deathcap or Lich Bane and already have a Blasting Wand, but you could easily turn that Wand into the Void Staff if you see the enemy building a lot of MR suddenly.

+120 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: Your total amount of ability power is amplified by 40%

Rabadon's Deathcap is one of the best items to get on Ahri, and any mage for that matter simply because it's just a ton of raw damage. Buying a Deathcap will significantly increase the amount of AP you have because of the passive of boosting your AP by 40%. This also means that even though Deathcap only gives you 120 AP, you actually get 168 because of the passive amp. Deathcap costs an insane amount of gold at 3600, and because of the nature of its passive amp it's best when built quite late. If you build it early, not only will it take a very long time to build, but you won't be getting much bonus AP from the 40% amp and so it becomes less efficient the earlier it's built. Typically, you'll want to build Deathcap a your 5th or final major item, including Boots. Having a Deathcap means that you will have the most amount of AP possible and it will maximise the damage that you deal with Orb of Deception, Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush both in single target and area of effect. It also makes farming a whole lot easier as having so much AP means you can clear minions waves extremely fast quickly. Other bonuses to Ahri's abilities from having a huge amount of AP include much more healing on your passive, and more true damage on Orb. On top of all this, it will also significantly increase your damage from any AP scaling items such as Luden's Tempest, Lich Bane or Hextech Rocketbelt which you will typically have 1 of. Whether it's your 4th, 5th or last item built, it's very important that your full build does include one as it's one of the most impactful items in the game.

These are the items that are sometimes required to be built in certain circumstances that require the use of what one of these items do. You can go many games without the need for any situational item, or you could need multiple in one game. These items can be very useful and often crucial by providing some form of defense or counter to champions you are facing. I will explain each item in detail and the situations where it would be a good idea to get one.

+60 Magic Resist +70 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: Grants a spell shield that blocks the next enemy ability. This shield refreshes after no damage is taken from enemy champions for 40 seconds.

Banshee's Veil is a great item on Ahri when facing either a lot of magic damage, or a higher amount of magic burst. The stats it provides are very good and it’s the ideal item when you need defense and offense at the same time. For 3000 gold, it's slightly lower on the AP side at 70, but it provides a perfect balance of offense and defense and it's extremely helpful to Ahri due to how squishy she is. The 60 Magic Resist and spell shield passive basically prevents her from being blown up and it means you won't have to play in fear of being insta-killed by a burst mage such as Syndra with her Unleashed Power. The 60 bonus MR you get is a massive amount and it'll put Ahri at close to 100 magic resist overall. This is enough magic resist to negate nearly 50% magic damage, whereas Ahri's base MR of between 30 and 38.5 is only enough to negate around 25% magic damage. You can see just how big of a deal this is, going from taking 75% damage from a spell to 50% and it's often more than enough to allow you to survive a mage's full burst, even without blocking an ability with Banshee's passive. The passive is one of the best parts to this item as it allows you to entirely block an ability that would otherwise hit you. Being able to block a key stun such as Veigar's Event Horizon or Syndra's Scatter the Weak can easily turn a fight greatly in your favour. Even when it only blocks a lesser ability, it's still 1 less thing hitting or affecting Ahri which is always an added bonus. For the passive, you need to be aware of the cooldown and how it works. Its cooldown is 40 seconds which is quite long, but the cooldown is also reset if you take damage from an enemy champion. As a result of this, there will be times where you might not have the spell shield up for minutes at a time, and it might force you to play more passively and further back than you might like to. It can be worked around though simply by avoiding engages until the shield has been refreshed, and every time you back and return to lane or roam it will likely be ready for a possible fight. On top of the AP & MR, you also get 10% CDR which is an added bonus. It will allow for a lot of early game CDR when bought after Luden's or GLP and it can mean hitting the cap as soon as you reach level 10 with Transcendence as a chosen Rune. The build path to Banshee's is also quite flexible. The path consists of the part offense, part defense aspect of the item, meaning you can go for the Fiendish Codex if you need or want AP and more CDR, the Blasting Wand if you want raw AP, or you can go for the Null-Magic Mantle for the magic resist to help you in surviving your lane and reduce damage taken overall. The timing of Banshee's can vary depending on who you are against and how the game is going, but I'd say that its best built as your second item. For games where you don't need one so soon though, it can still be a great item to round off your build as your last item. A final thing to note is that firstly, the passive spell shield is incredible against champions with long cooldowns, or limited spells that actually take the shield off. A couple of prime example of this is Morgana and Zoe. For Morgana, the only way she can pop your shield is with a Dark Binding or her utlimate, Soul Shackles which are both essential to her in a fight. Zoe is similar as she only has her Paddle Star and Sleepy Trouble Bubble which are both needed in order for her to do any serious damage. As for the matchups where I would build a Banshee's in, they would be vs Annie, Syndra, Veigar, LeBlanc, Morgana, Zoe and sometimes Malzahar & Lux.

+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 good item on Ahri and even though it's only situationally built, because of the stasis it's a great item no matter who she is facing. You would think that Hourglass is only built vs AD matchups, but this isn't actually the case. The main reason for buying an Hourglass is not for its stats, but rather for its extremely powerful active stasis. Being able to make yourself invulnerable for 2.5 seconds is huge for counter-playing a lot of abilities that would otherwise be un-dodgeable. These abilities that can be entirely avoided are also abilities that would often result in your quick death if they were not able to be stopped. This is why the Hourglass is not just limited to AD matchups and it's why the armor is not the most important part. The armor is the most important part for the Seeker's Armguard and the reason you buy a Seeker's is for the armor when facing an AD mid. You only upgrade to Hourglass when you're in need of the stasis though and as far as AD matchups go, that's pretty much only Zed to block his ultimate. In fact, the majority of matchups where an Hourglass can come in clutch to save you or outplay an enemy are actually vs AP champs. I'll list the champions and their abilities that can be prevented below: Zed and his Death Mark Syndra and her Unleashed Power Fizz and his Chum the Waters Karthus and his Requiem Morgana and her Soul Shackles Kat and her Death Lotus Ziggs and his Mega Inferno Bomb Those are just the mid laners you might face where the active stasis can come in huge at countering their abilities. There are also many other champions elsewhere on the map that the stasis is great against. A prime example being Rengar as you can stasis the exact moment he jumps to you, preventing any damage taken opposed to being 1-shot. Other than abilities and champions in particular, it's also great for stopping any form of damage over time like Ignite or Malefic Visions. The active also allows for Ahri to play extremely aggressively in a teamfight, or even being the one to initiate the fight herself. This comes from being able to Spirit Rush into a team, use all of her cooldowns and then go into stasis. Then you can either dash back out to safety, or forward to chase down fleeing enemies. It can be a great tool to get focus off of you too. By using the active, the enemy team will have no choice but to ignore you and focus someone else, giving you time to get out or do damage after without being the focus. Overall it is a fantastic item in any matchup. It provides some nice stats with a mix of damage, defense and utility an extremely powerful passive which opens up the ability to make neat plays with Ahri and counter many abilities. If you're in need of the active stasis, the Hourglass can be a good option to build after Luden's/GLP. if you aren't in desperate need, but it would still be a great item to have in a particular game then you can always leave it until late, either after Void and before or after Deathcap.

+25 magic resist UNIQUE Passive: +30% tenacity. UNIQUE Passive: Enhanced Movement +45 flat movement speed.

Mercury's Treads are a strong item when it comes to boots and they are surprisingly very good on Ahri despite her being a mage. I build Treads a lot more often than you might think and I have my reason for it. Ahri is half assassin as we know, which means that she suffers from the same problem as other assassins. If you get locked down, you will die very quickly and won't be able to get anything off. Mercury's Treads greatly help in making sure that you cannot be locked down by crowd control for as long and I would actually recommend that you build Treads whenever you are laning against a champion with some form of stun or snare such as Morgana, Lux, Syndra and most certainly Veigar. There are many champions who rely on their crowd control in order to set up their combo or burst on you and being able to break free sooner can often mess up their combo and allow you to avoid a lot of damage. A prime example of this is Veigar with his Event Horizon stun field. He will want to stun you in order to land a guaranteed Dark Matter and Treads can often let you break free from the stun and avoid his ability that would otherwise deal a ton of damage to you. Treads not only prevent Ahri from being locked down for too long, but the magic resist they provide is a welcome stat in the mid lane. I would suggest even going Treads if you are not facing hard crowd control in mid, but there is a lot in the game such as a Leona support. It is a bit annoying having to avoid Sorcerer's Shoes in favour of Mercury's Treads, but the whole point of Ahri is to be dashing around kiting enemies and because of this, she must avoid getting locked in place or else her main advantage is gone. Below will be a video example of how vital I think Treads really can be in making the difference between living and dying. Play Video As you just saw, if I was stunned for even a tiny bit longer, I was 100% dead. Having Treads in this situation allowed me to break free of the stun in time to get away and avoid certain death. This is a very common occurence due to how much crowd control there is in every game and that clip is a perfect example of why I actually rate them very highly on Ahri.

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

Rylai's Crystal Scepter is a good item and it synergises well with Ahri's kit. You basically become near un-catchable with the slows on your abilities and the mobility on Orb and Spirit Rush. Pair Rylai's with a lot of CDR and you can have some serious kiting power. For the item cost at 2600 gold, the stats on it are pretty good because it provides you with a nice amount of HP at 300, some AP at 85 and then of course the passive that grants all of your abilities a slow effect. It’s worth to note that the health you get from it is extra good for Ahri because she has a very low amount of base HP. Rylai’s works wonders against the type of champions that don't have any form of jump, dash or teleport. When the enemy is only able to get to you via moving, Rylai's completely shuts them down and because of Ahri's kit, they basically can't touch you. Some examples of champions that Rylai’s is extremely effective against are melee champs such as: Cho'Gath, Udyr, Shyvana, Yasuo, Nasus, Renekton and Mordekaiser. Another great benefit to the Rylai’s Passive is that it makes it a lot easier for you to hit Orb and Charm. The enemy will have a much harder time trying to sidestep a Charm when they have their movespeed slowed. The slows also make it very easy to escape from enemies trying to chase you down. With the enemy being slowed, and you being sped up by Orb, almost no one can keep up with you. Fox-Fire also has no cast time and because you can use it while moving without slowing down, it's really effective at being able to catch up targets, or get away from anyone chasing you. Overall, everything about Rylai's is good for Ahri, both the stats it provides with HP + AP and the slow effect. You can make some really great plays and escapes with Rylai's and as well as being a very effective item on Ahri, it's also extremely fun. A couple of matchups where Rylai's is paramount to winning are Cho'Gath and Irelia.

+10% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: Enhanced Movement +45 flat movement speed. UNIQUE Passive: Reduces you summoner spell cooldowns by 10%.

The Ionian Boots of Lucidity are a rare, but situational item that provide 10% CDR, as well as 10% cooldown reduction for your summoner spells. On top of this, they are cheaper than Sorc and Treads at just 900 gold instead of 1100. Let's start with the 10% CDR for Summoner Spells. With Ahri, it's almost always going to be Flash and Ignite, so the 10% reduction on those equates to 30 seconds off Flash and 21 seconds off Ignite. Half a minute on Flash brings it down to 270 seconds and that's actually pretty huge. 30 seconds is a very long time when it comes to abilities and having Flash back that much sooner can save your life or get you a kill. The 21 seconds off Ignite brings it down to 189 seconds which isn't as impactful as the time saved on Flash, but it's still very good and it basically means that you can look for a full all-in 21 seconds sooner. For the times that you may have taken either Teleport, Cleanse or Exhaust, it will save you 30 seconds on TP and 21 seconds on Cleanse + Exhaust. With a standard build having either Luden's or GLP, Lucidity Boots offer a the quickest and easist way to reach max 30%, or max CDR with Transcendence. That said, the main reason for going with Lucidity is for when you are lacking in CDR from forgoing Luden's as it gives you an easy way to make sure you aren't sitting at a low amount of cooldown reduction. The final note I want to make about Lucidity Boots is that they can actually result in 20 bonus AP for you when you're running Transcendence. If you already have max CDR build with 30% from items (not counting Lucidity) then the 10% you'll be overcapping with Lucidity will actually net you 20 more AP which is pretty nice. Suddenly the comparison between boots doesn't look so heavily favoured for Sorc Shoes! Overall, they are not the best boots for Ahri, but they offer some nice benefits with more uptime on your summoner spells and an easy source of 10% CDR, as well as being slightly cheaper.

These are the items that are basically generally good on Ahri and they can be built in most situations. These are also the kind of items where player preference comes in big. They are all decent items on Ahri at the end of the day and none of them are rated as the best or worst on her, they are all just solid choices. You'll typically end up with at least 1 of these items in your build and usually they would be built quite early.

+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 an interesting little item, but it's very good for a 2500 gold item. The main reason to pick up a Protobelt is for the active on the item. The active is basically a small dash that shoots out rockets in a cone infront of you. These rockets deal a fair amount of too and so it increases Ahri's burst potential by quite a bit. 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. Another slightly smaller benefit to the active is that it allows you to make quick work of a huge minion wave by using the rockets paired with an Orb to instantly clear many minions. The cooldown of the active is also quite low at 40 seconds, so you won't often get punished for sometimes wasting it or using it to clear minions for example. 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 added utility with 10% CDR, while the Hextech Revolver provides a lot of offense with AP and its passive. The 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. The Revolver greatly increases Ahri's kill potential in lane and it's very easy to win trades with the empowered auto attack. The Kindlegem on the other hand is not such a great item for Ahri as it provides 0 AP. Buying an early Kindlegem will greatly lower your lane pressure and kill potential. Because of this, you should always aim for the Revolver every time. Luckily, due to the low overall cost of Proto you can often complete the item on your next main back after buying a Revolver already. 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. Overall, its a great item at a low cost and it provides Ahri with one more tool to use to her advantage with the active dash. There's never really a bad time to go Protobelt either, but you'll tend to want to get it as your first or second item ideally because it is on the lower end in terms of overall power simply due to its low cost.

+7% Movement Speed +250 Mana +80 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: After using an ability, your next basic attack within 10 seconds deals 75% base AD (+ 50% AP) on-hit bonus magic damage (1.5 second cooldown).

Lich Bane is a very strong item on Ahri. It synergises with her very well and the stats it grants are great on Ahri. The passive is the main reason you get Lich Bane and it provides Ahri with another source of damage that is also consistent damage. Ahri has a very easy time activating the passive empowered auto attack via her spells, especially Spirit Rush. Typically, you want to auto attack in between each use of Spirit Rush as it is and with a Lich Bane it would be an empowered auto for 2-3 of your dashes. CDR pairs incredibly well with Lich Bane simply because it will allow for more empowered auto attacks. What's nice is that the item itself already comes with some CDR to get the ball rolling. Going Lich after a Luden's for 30% CDR minimum means you'll be able to constantly deal bonus damage through Lich's passive. Lich Bane's passive is essentially another source of damage outside of Ahri's abilities and it makes assassinating targets a lot easier. It's also consistent damage because of the amount of times you can apply the bonus damage and it's extra effective at dealing with tanks because of this. Lich Bane is a very similar item to Luden's Tempest which I will talk about next. Both items are similar in stats and what they do, but Lich Bane has a shorter range since it's tied to Ahri's auto attack which is 550. It makes up for the low range by being more consistent though and in games where range is not an issue, Lich Bane is marginally better. If you're in matchups where you can't or won't be able to get close to the enemy often then Lich Bane certainly loses some effectiveness. When you're committing to an all-in, you're always going to be in range to utilise the empowered auto attack though and so it's never a bad item to get. Lich Bane scales very well with ability power because of the passive damage increasing with AP by 50%. This means that it's a very powerful item when you are max build and it can often be the best item to get as your final choice if you don't yet have one. The major downside to Lich is the build path. It contains a Sheen, which costs you 1050 gold and gives you 0 AP. This means that your power spike is quite heavily delayed because the Sheen + combine cost is 1500 gold. Getting 0 AP from 1500 gold is far from ideal and it's the only reason why I don't rate this item as the best general item on Ahri. The 2 most common times where I'll build a Lich bane is after Morello for my second major item, or for my final item to finish my build.

+10% Movement Speed +100 Ability Power UNIQUE Passive: Nearby allied and enemy spellcasts charge Spellbinder up to a cap (100 maximum) UNIQUE Passive: Gain a maximum of 30% decaying movement speed and 100 ability power for 4 seconds, based on charges spent (60 second cooldown)

Spellbinder is a nice item for Ahri as she greatly benefits from everything that it provides. It is one of the highest damage giving items at 100 AP, but as well as the raw power it provides, the utility from the 10% movespeed is a very welcome addition. Movement ppeed is one of the best stats for Ahri due to her being part assassin and a heavy roamer. It allows her to roam around the map faster and it helps to counter her weakness of being very squishy by making her much more slippery and harder to catch out. Because of this, it also sort of acts as a defensive stat in a way. The 10% movespeed equates to 33 MS on Ahri, which is quite a bit more than tier 1 boots. This makes Ahri very fast when paired with boots and it can be very helpful in matchups where you need to be dodging or avoiding abilities all the time such as a Xerath or Vel'Koz. It's also very good for games where you may be roaming a lot since you'll be able to quickly shove a wave and then roam with over 400 MS. For what it gives, the item is priced very well at only 2800 gold and it grants a lot of AP for the cost. The build path is very good too with a Large Rod for a lot of AP and an Aether Wisp for some movespeed + AP. Spellbinders active is very strong on someone like Ahri. She's the type of champion who gets off most of her damage in the first few seconds of a fight, meaning that you get the most out of the boost in AP. It will greatly increase your chances of being able to assassinate a target, and it will also help you chase someone down, or run away with ease. The active can be somewhat clunky in certain situations and you can quite easily end up wasting it if you get hit by any crowd control, or if you simply miss your skillshots. It also gets countered quite hard by Hourglass stasis, or any form of 'untargetable' move as they can use it to wait out the majority of the time you have the bonus movespeed and AP. Most of the time though, it will be a very beneficial active and it will greatly increase your damage output, especially with a Deathcap. The main issue with the item is that it's a luxury item and it's completely glass cannon oriented. It offers no real defensive stats or cooldown reduction, so it's kind of a high risk high reward type of item, but it can pay off big.

+7%Movement Speed +60 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: Summons 2 Spooky Ghosts that hunt down nearby champions, revealing them and Haunting them on contact. Haunted enemies are slowed by 40% for up to 5 seconds based on the distance the ghosts travel. (90 second cooldown)

Twin Shadows is a great little item on Ahri and it gives her all the stats she could want, as well as an effective passive, all for a low cost of 2400. The movement speed bonus you get is a great part to the item that enhances Ahri's ability to effectively roam, as well as all the other benefits that come with moving faster such as dodging. 7% movespeed puts it on par with Lich Bane's amount and because of how cheap this item is, it's a really nice amount of MS. The 10% CDR allows you to hit max, or near max CDR very early into a game after either Luden's or GLP. This means you will have a ton of CDR for your abilities, as well as extra movement speed which turns Ahri into a roaming machine. Luden's into Twin Shadows is an amazing combo because of how fast you can clear waves and roam around the map. It's the ultimate roam package you could ask for and it's much better for roaming than Luden's Lich or Luden's Spellbinder, simply because of how cheap the item is. The active to Twin Shadows is a very effective one too. The ghosts you send out serve multiple purposes. They can be used to scout an area where you have no vision of which can be very helpful if you have no vision and think you might be getting ganked, or to try and scout the enemy jungler when you're going for a roam. The active can be used to either chase down opponents, or help to get away from them and since you send out 2 ghosts, it's especially effective at shutting down incoming ganks or chasing an enemy team. The slow not only helps with catching up, but it also greatly aids you in landing your Charm which is a pretty big deal. Overall, the item is very strong on Ahri and due to it's cost. It's a fantastic early pickup and Ahri will excel at roaming and catching targets with this item.

+500 Mana +80 Ability Power +10% Cooldown Reduction +10% Unique Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: Fires a spray of icy bolts that explode, dealing 100 - 200 (based on level) (+ 35% AP) magic damage and slowing by 40%, decaying over 1 second, to the first units hit (40 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech items).

*NOTE - This is the alternate option to Luden's Echo as your first item. Echo and GLP are almost identical in stats, but have different passives. If you already have Luden's, disregard this option as you do not want both. **You should also never buy Protobelt if you have this item, or vice versa as they share the same cooldown. Everfrost is the sister item to Luden's Tempest as your first buy (most of the time). It shares almost identical stats to Luden's with the only differences being that Luden's has 10 more AP, but costs 300 more gold. The comparison of Luden's and GLP mainly comes down to Luden's passive vs the GLP active. Both are very good, with Luden's granting more consistent, and poke damage and GLP being better for all-ins, with the added bonus of providing some cc in the form of a slow. I personally rate Luden's higher because it allows you to waveclear faster, enhancing your roaming potential, and there's also no risk to the Luden's proc whereas you can miss the GLP active. The GLP active is also on a 40 second cooldown, and you can get off multiple Luden's procs in that period of time. GLP is 300 gold cheaper, so there may be situations where you back and can afford GLP right away, but not Luden's. In these cases, it would be better to go ahead and pickup GLP rather than returning to lane with only components. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which one you go for because their stats are near identical. Both items are excellent and it will largely come down to player preference here.

This small section of the Guide will be focused on the Trinket upgrade choices that Ahri can consider. Something to note about Trinket upgrades is they can be situational, but it generally follows a linear path which utilises both the Stealth Ward and Sweeping Lens.

Consume a charge to place an invisible Stealth Ward at the target location, revealing the area for 60 - 120 seconds (based on level). Stores one charge every 180 - 90 seconds up to 2 maximum charges. *You can only have 3 Stealth/Totem Wards down at a single time.

The Stealth Ward is what you start with in every single game. Anyone that plays Ahri should know how important vision is to her because of the way that her Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush work. Not only that, but she is an extremely skill-shot reliant champion with Charm and Orb of Deception and if you can't see the enemy, you will be throwing your abilities out blindly. You need vision on your target in order to hit them with anything Ahri has and this is why this trinket is so good. Even without considering the major factor of how important vision is to Ahri, map vision is one of the most important aspects to League and it has a huge impact on winning a game. Having the ability to place wards around the river and/or jungle can actually have a direct link to you dying less because you will see ganks and roams coming and will have time to react to get to safety. Another fairly major benefit to this trinket is that come late-game where everyone is pretty much max build, warding for both teams dies down a lot due to no slot for a Control Ward. Players also often switch to Sweeper and so that instantly means less wards for your team. Having the Stealth Ward allows your team to keep up sufficient vision on key areas of the map and it can prevent your team from losing complete vision control which is crucial to avoid. It scales based on your champion level. At level 1 it only lasts for 60 seconds and has a cooldown of 3 minutes which isn't great, but it's a free ward nonetheless. As it gets later into the game, the ward ends up lasting longer than the cooldown, allowing you to have multiple wards placed at one time. The final thing to note is that with the new addition of Zombie Ward, this trinket has become even more amazing for providing vision. It will extend the duration of every ward you place by 60-180 seconds which is really good.

Summons a Sweeper Drone that escorts you for the next 10 seconds (76 - 60 second cooldown, based on level). The drone has a 660 / 690 / 720 / 750-unit detection radius. *Cannot be purchased until level 9.

The second Trinket that you will want to almost always switch to is the Oracle Lens. I'll start by noting that before level 9, it's best to stick with the Warding Totem, but at any point after 9 you can switch to this one instead. The Oracle Alteration is the best form of vison denying in League. It will allows you to clear a large area of any wards or traps and gain map pressure from this. A large benefit to having this trinket is that it enables you to know if an area is warded or not. For Ahri, knowledge like this is very important because part of how she is best played is by waiting somewhere hidden to try and assassinate a target that walks near. If you don't have an Oracle, you're essentially guessing on whether or not they have vision, and smart players will make it seem like they don't know you're there when in actual fact they do. Before Season 8, when you switched from the Warding Totem to Oracle Alteration, you would be essentially sacrificing any further contribution to map vision for your team. This is no longer the case however because of the amazing Rune Zombie Ward. Zombie Ward allows you to create vision from denying it and it't the main reason why I always switch to Oracles once I'm level 9, or at somepoint soon after. Being able to both create and deny vision is a big deal opposed to only creating, or only denying it. If you don't have Zombie Ward, the Oracle Alteration does lose some value because you'll be back to only denying vision, but it's still such a strong tool to have come late-game. You don't have to switch to this one though, it's perfectly fine to stick with the Warding Totem and I will sometimes do this myself when I feel that my team needs more vision around the map. There can also be certain situations where each one is better suited such as Oracles vs champions with traps like Teemo, Jhin or Nidalee and the Warding Totem against champions who like to get a cheaky ult or combo off from the fog of war such as Fiddlesticks or Jayce. Overall, both choices are great, but I would definitely rate Oracle higher if you have Zombie Ward in Runes.

Summoner Spell choices for Ahri are usually straight forward, but there are a couple of situationally good ones to take instead of the standard Ignite. Flash is always a must though and you should take Flash in every single game as Ahri. I'll go over the main 2 that are used in most games, and then 3 other choices that can be situationally picked and when you may want to take them.

Teleports your champion a short distance toward your cursor's location. Cooldown: 300 seconds Range: 425

Flash is the most common Summoner Spell is League and the game probably wouldn't be the same without it. Because Ahri already has 3 dashes with Spirit Rush, you might think that Flash would be less necessary, but I cannot think of any situation where I would not take Flash. It is by far the most useful Summoner Spell in the game and it is actually even better on Ahri than a lot of other champions due to a trick you can do with Flash and her abilities, which I will go over in the 'Tips, Tricks' section of the guide. If you want to quickly see the trick now, click here (there will be a link to jump straight back here). The reason that Flash is so good on practically everyone is because it acts as a 'get out of jail free card'. There are so many sticky situations that Flash can get you out of, whether it is being ganked, being trapped by a wall, dodging an ability or needing to get away from a champion or tower as quickly as possible. Flash is also great for offensive uses, it enables you to chase someone down or go over a wall or to get close enough to use an ability on them. Flash can also be used to dodge abilities such as Final Spark, Mega Inferno Bomb and Rite of the Arcane. A final note about Flash is that it can be used during a cast of Orb to drastically change where the return on Orb will come to. Because Orb retunrs to Ahri's position, Flash can be used to ensure you get the true damage on return by flashing right next to your target. It has a very long cooldown at 5 minutes and the range is 425. To put this in perspective, Spirit Rush has the range of 450, so it's about the same distance as a dash from you ultimate will get you.

Ignites an enemy champion, dealing 70 - 410 true damage (based on level) over 5 seconds, applying Grievous Wounds and revealing them for the duration. Cooldown: 210 seconds Range: 600

The second best Summoner Spell for Ahri is Ignite. Ignite is the perfect spell for an assassin or burst mage like Ahri due to the raw damage that it brings to the table. Ignite is True damage which means that it cuts straight through any resistances the target may have. It's a great extra ability to finish enemies off with and generally helps win a fight. It also increases Ahri's ability to instantly kill someone as Ignite does do a fair amount of damage on its own. A level 6 Ignite does 170 damage, level 11 it does 270, and level 16 it does 370. Mid/late-game Ignites can deal quite a large chunk of a health bar. Another great benefit to Ignite is that it straight up cuts all healing by 40%, so if you Ignite someone like Nidalee with Primal Surge or a Marksman with Heal, it will only heal them for 40% of the total amount which can be quite huge in a fight. Ignite scales with your champion level, so early-game don't expect much damage out of it. As for the timing of when to Ignite someone, it doesn't matter too much but it is generally better to Ignite the target as soon as you can. There are a few benefits to Igniting straight away, one of them being that it will likely burn for all of its damage if you use it at the start of a fight compared to using it when they are almost dead. You will also put it on cooldown sooner and as a result it would be back up a few seconds quicker which could make a difference. The final reason is because every champion has some form of healing even if it's as basic as base health regen, so Igniting them straight away would cut every bit of healing they could be getting. The final, slightly smaller benefit is that Ignited targets will be revealed for the duration of the Ignite. This may not seem like much, but for Ahri it's actually really helpful because she does not do well with lack of vision as I mentioned in the Trinkets section. The cooldown is quite high at 3 minutes 30 seconds and the cast range is 600. What's nice about the cast range is that it's actually longer than Ahri's auto attack range by 50, so you don't need to get super close to them to get it off. Overall, because of all the great benefits to Ignite and the fact that it's just more raw damage, I highly recommend taking it with Flash in almost every game.

After channeling for 4.5 seconds your champion teleports to target turret, minion or ward. You may reactivate Teleport to cancel it, placing it on a 200 second cooldown. Cooldown: 300 seconds Range: Global

Teleport is a very situational summoner spell for lanes where you have little to no kill pressure in. It can often be a good idea to take TP against champions that are also likely to take TP, or that have some form ultiamate that allows them to get somewhere very quickly such as Twisted Fate and Taliyah. Teleport can also be very handy for hard matchups because it allows you to take a beating, recall to buy and then come straight back to lane on full health/mana with an item advantage. It also means that if you ever get forced out of lane or killed early, you won't miss out on too much due to being able to TP right back to your tower. Being a heavy roamer, TP also acts as a safety mechanism for when a roam doesn't work out. Often when you decide to roam, your opponent will try to push the wave to your tower and deny you gold and experience. If you have TP, you can finish your roam and then TP right back to lane, resulting in next to no lost gold or xp. Ahri is also an amazing TP ganker post 6. Being able to Teleport to bot or top with 3 charges of Spirit Rush ready is an extremely effective way to aid your team and create pressure around the map. The main downside to taking TP is that your solo kill pressure is a lot lower. This is why it can be a very good summoner for when you're in a very passive lane, or when you're against someone who generally plays far back such as Xerath and Azir.

Removes all disables (excluding Suppression and Airborne) and summoner spells debuffs affecting your champion, as well as granting 65% Tenacity for 3 seconds. Cooldown: 210 seconds Range: Self

Cleanse is a summoner spell that could also be chosen, but only in the case of facing someone who has a form of stun or snare. Cleanse is a pure defensive summoner spell and the whole purpose is to remove any form of crowd control and/or debuff on you. This means any kind of stun, snare, root, slow and also things like Ignite and Exhaust. The fact that it removes Ignite and Exhaust is huge alone, but being able to instantly remove a move impairing effect on you can easily save your life and also prevent you from taking as much damage. Being able to get out of a stun will often prevent the enemy from doing their complete combo on you and it will often mean the difference between living instead of dying to a full combo. Ahri is extremely weak to any form of hard cc, and it's one of her major weaknesses. Almost all of Ahri's counters have some form of stun or snare and it's often the reason that they counter her in the first place. Cleanse can essentially remove the part of the enemy's kit that hinders you and allow for counter-play potential. Another thing that Cleanse does is that after using it, for 3 seconds you get a further 65% crowd control reduction, meaning that any cc you get hit with after Cleansing won't last very long at all. This can be very helpful in teamfights as you'll likely be getting hit with a lot of different cc effects. As mentioned though, Cleanse is a very situational summoner spell and even when you are in a situation where it can be taken, Ignite can often still be the better choice. The matchups where I would consider taking Cleanse in are: Annie, Syndra, Lissandra, Morgana, Lux, Zoe and Veigar. Basically, any champion that relies on locking you down in order to full combo you a second or 2 later.

Exhausts target enemy champion, slowing them by 30%, and reducing their damage dealt by 40% for 2.5 seconds. Cooldown: 210 seconds Range: 650

Exhaust is the final alternate situational chocie to consider taking. Exhaust is a great ability for completely cutting down the damage that someone deals in a period of 2.5 seconds. The damage reduction is 40%, but they also have their movement and attack speeds reduced by 30% which can greatly aid Ahri in landing Orb and Charm. Exhaust works best against champions who deal a lot of damage in a short amount of time such as Lux, or have a particular move that deals a very large amount such as Zed and the proc on his Death Mark. It's typically good to take Exhaust against a burst mage or assassin as those are the types of champions where it works best. I will note that Exhaust is much easier to use against a melee champion though because they will always be in range for you to use it. When vs a ranged champion, you might not be able to get it off in time. Exhaust is also great for teamfights, because it means that you have the opportunity to use it on the enemy marksman which can quite easily make the difference between winning and losing a fight. It's not that difficult to get an Exhaust off on them either as Ahri because of Spirit Rush.

This is the massive section of the Guide dedicated to Ahri's matchups. I will go over each one individually and explain in detail the difficulty of the matchup and why they are the set difficulty. I will also explain in detail how you should play the matchup including what to watch out for and what to do in certain situations. The basic rule of thumb with Ahri's matchups is that if they have something that can be dodged, Ahri will have an easier time against them. If they have nothing that can be dodged or avoided, Ahri will have a hard time. This is because of how Ahri's main advantage over a lot of champions is tied with her mobility and ability to dodge spells. Also, generally speaking, champions that have hard cc tend to be on the harder side of her matchups. The champion icons above are linked to take you straight to the one that you want and there is a return link below each of the matchup explanations that will bring you back here. Matchups are listed in alphabetical order they have been colour coded so that you can instantly get an idea of the difficulty. The difficulty rating system follows a worded system as followed: Green = Easy Matchup Yellow = Average or Skill Matchup Red = Hard Matchup For each matchup, I will also put in any Items, Runes and Summoners that I recommend to take. Please keep in mind that these are my opinions on how Ahri matches up against each champion based on my experience and knowledge in the matter and there may be certain matchup difficulties that you disagree with. Also, you must be aware that just because champion x counters champion y, it doesn't mean that champion y can't win. There are a lot of other factors that determine how a matchup can go such as player skill/experience or jungle/gank intervention.

Akali is a odd matchup and you tend to experience both ends of the spectrum with it. During the lane phase and typically pre 6, Ahri will have a very easy time, but once Akali reaches 6, the matchup typically takes a U turn and it can become very challenging for Ahri. This is because Akali always has a way to jump to Ahri with Shadow Dance and Akali has a lot more burst than Ahri does as she is a true assassin. The best thing to do in this matchup is harass early with Orb of Deception and auto attacks whenever Akali goes in for a last hit. Most Akali's will start the game with a more sustain based purchase so it can take longer than usual to whittle them down. I've seen many things from Doran's Shield to Boots, but expect them to bring quite a lot of healing to lane. She also has sustain built into her passive Twin Disciplines, but you can quite easily burn through the sustain and this is one of the few matchups where Ahri is actually the lane bully. Since Akali is melee, she will often be quite far up the lane. This can make her quite easy to gank. While she does have her Twilight Shroud to escape ganks quite easily, it has a very large cooldown at 20 seconds and Akali's will often use their Shroud to safely farm.

You can also sometimes bait out her Shroud by going slightly aggressive on her, then once the Shroud has ended your jungler can gank with a much higher chance to get a kill or force a recall.

Once Akali hits 6 and gets her ultimate Shadow Dance, you need to play with a lot of caution. The way Akali's set up for an attack is that they'll throw a Mark of the Assassin on you, then a few seconds later they will jump to you with Shadow Dance to proc the first Mark, and by waiting before jumping to you they will have their Mark back up again for insane burst. To counter this, back off when you get hit by a Mark and wait for it to time out.

Something important to note about her ultimate is that she will actually end up behind you when she dashes. This means that if you attempt to Charm her immediately, you must throw Charm behind you, very similar to how you Charm a Zed ulting you. This is the best way to catch the Akali with Charm though as they will be right next to you making it harder to miss, provided you throw it in the right direction. It's vital that you try and Charm immediately too because of 2 reasons. Firstly, Akali will be looking to go into her Shroud when she's dashed to you and once that happens you are basically blind to where exactly she is.

The second reason is because while she is Charmed, she won't be able to proc a possible Mark on you and by the time that the Charm duration ends, the Mark might have timed out, or you would have had the chance to ult out of her Shadow Dance range. Hitting Charm is one the most important parts to winning the matchup overall. If you land it, you'll be able to hit Akali with a full bombardment of your spells that she won't be able to hide from which will often win you the fight, or deter the Akali from continuing the engage.

If you miss the Charm, the Akali will be able to proc her Mark on you and immediately go into her Shroud and follow up with another Mark and Shadow Dance a couple of second later. If this happens, you've already lost the fight and so it's crucial that you land the Charm. Because Akali can go invisible, it's best if you try to avoid fighting her while Shroud is down. Ahri needs vision of her target in order to get a lot of her damage off via Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush. Fighting when she's in her Shroud can often mean all of the damage from those abilities will be lost or wasted on nearby minions and you won't be able to win a 1v1 when this happens. It also makes hitting her with Orb and Charm basically down to a guess which is not good. It's best to just back off and wait out her Shroud before engaging, or continuing the fight. A major piece of advice when facing Akali is that you should never fight her when your ult is down, it will almost certainly result in your death. When Spirit Rush is down, play very safe and don't let her Mark you for free. If she does jump to you, Charm her and immediately back off.

If you play this matchup smart, then it can be very favourable for Ahri. Play aggressively pre 6, safer post 6 and never fight without your ultimate and you should be fine.

Anivia is quite an annoying champion to play against and the results of the matchup can vary depending on how good the Anivia player is and what they build. The main reason that it's annoying is because it can be a very hard task to actually kill her because of her Rebirth. Due to her passive, you basically have to kill her twice over and with Ahri, that can be very hard to do in 1 go. This is because it will pretty much require you to use all of your resources to kill her like normal and when she goes into Egg form, you won’t have much left. It can sometimes be best to just proc her passive, do a bit of damage to the Egg and then back off before she revives. Anivia will very likely look to stun you when she revives and because you will often be low from the initial fight, it’s best to just back off if you cannot get the kill. Luckily, it’s very easy to tell when she is about to hatch and revive because there will be a ball of light that slowly falls onto her Egg. Early-game you will want to focus on dodging her Flash Frost because if she hits you with that, you will be 'chilled' and so the incoming Frostbite will do double damage to you.

Pre 6, the only way that Anivia can apply her chill effect on you is with her Flash Frost (stun) and so it's crucial that you try to dodge it. Luckily, the travel speed isn't very fast on her stun and so you have some time to react and move out of the way. You can also cast Orb and use the movespeed to help get out of the way.

Post 6 becomes a lot harder as Anivia's ultimate, Glacial Storm is a very easy way to get the amplified damage on Flash Frost. It's also a very good tool for shoving minion waves and that is what most Anivia players will do once they hit 6. I find that a lot of the time post 6, the lane becomes quite passive and it will end up being a farm-off.

Anivia has a very hard time last hitting pre 6, so something that you can do is push her to tower early and she will likely miss a couple of minions. Try not to push and overextended too much though because jungle ganks are very dangerous when combined with her wall, Crystallize. You can be blocked off by Anivia's Wall, making you have to use Flash to get out. Luckily as Ahri, once you have Spirit Rush, her wall isn’t as much of an issue because you can easily dash through it.

A major advantage you have in this matchup is that Anivia is incredibly immobile and so catching her out can be very, very easy. Spirit Rush can be used to quickly get in range to Charm her, or it can be used to get away from her and there's no way she can catch you or get away.

Spirit Rush is also very good for not only avoiding her stun, but getting out of the area of Glacial Storm and if you avoiding those abilities is a sure way to win the fight. The best way to beat an Anivia pre 6 is to try and pop her passive and the best way to do this is from a jungle gank. Anivia's low mobility means that if she goes past the half way line of mid, a gank will almost certainly get her Flash and quite possibly her Rebirth cooldown, if not a kill. If you can manage to get her passive down before you hit 6 then you have a good shot of killing her when you get Spirit Rush. It is extremely easy to land a Charm on Anivia due to how slow she is and when it comes to a post 6 fight, her Crystallize is almost completely useless against Ahri because of Spirit Rush. If you don't manage to get her passive then I would suggest simply playing safe and looking elsewhere to get kills, unless you can manage to poke her down a lot. I highly recommend buying Mercury's Treads in this matchup because if Anivia hits you with her stun, you will need to get away as quickly as possible to avoid taking the damage from a Frostbite or to reduce the time you sit in Glacial Storm.

As a final note, you can always see if she has her Egg up by simply clicking on Anivia. If it's greyed out then it's on cooldown. The cooldown of Rebirth is also very long at 5 minutes, so you will have a big window of opportunity to try and kill her.

Annie is a very hard matchup because of her ability to fully burst you down and there is almost nothing Ahri can do about it. Another reason that this matchup is hard is because Summon: Tibbers can be used to block Charm and absorb Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush hits, making it very hard to even kill Annie in some situations. The early-game of this matchup will likely go quite smoothly, but when it comes to level 6 power, Annie has a much higher chance of winning a fight because of her raw damage and being able to lock you down with her Pyromania. Because of this, the best thing to do is just avoid fights entirely until you poke her down with Orb of Deception and then go in for a kill when she is low. It's also worth to note that the best time to fight her or go for an all-in is when she's low on Passive stacks, or after she just used her stun. While in lane, you definitely want to watch out for her passive, as this is when she'll likely look for a trade. When she has her stun up, just stay back out of range until she uses an ability on a minion, you won't win a trade while she has her stun up.

You can see how close Annie is to getting her stun by clicking on her and looking at her passive buff. It will display the amount of charges she is on and this can help with planning an engage because Annie can only quickly charge her stun 3 times without her ult. You can also visually see when she has her stun up because she will have what looks like wind swirling around her.

The one thing that you have going for you is that your Orb of Deception can out-range anything Annie has. When you see her running up to you, move back and throw out Orb and it will allow you to get free damage a lot of the time. When Annie tries to go for a stun on you she will also likely have to move away from the cover of her minions which can allow you to land an easier Charm as she won't have the protection from minions to block it.

Her W is Molten Shield and it acts similar to a Thornmail in the sense that you will take damage in return for hitting her with auto attacks. Her Shield also gives her % damage reduction at 16 / 22 / 28 / 34 / 40% based on the level. Because of this, when she has it activated, it’s best to not fight her. Ahri does have true damage so her Shield isn’t as much of a problem compared to most other mages, but it’s still best to avoid fighting while she has it on her because you will deal less damage overall and you will also take more.

One way to turn this hard matchup into your favour is from jungle help. Annie is very immobile and because she is in a winning matchup she might be more aggressive than usual which can lead to her over-extending to hit Ahri with spells (when she has stun up).

This makes her easy to gank and all she can do against a gank is try to stun the jungler, if she even has her stun available. Because her Incinerate is AOE, Annie can stun multiple targets. Make sure that if you get a gank, try to stay away from your jungler to prevent the Annie from being able to stun you both and get away. Unfortunately, it’s very easy for Annie to just Flash Tibbers you and then nuke you from full to nothing. There isn’t really much you can do against this either which is why you have to build quite defensively and keep your distance when she has her stun up. It is also a very good idea to time her Flash so that you will have a rough idea of when it will be back up and when you should start playing with a lot of caution. This is where Cleanse can come in. Being able to instantly remove her stun and also Ignite is a great way to help solve one of the main reasons she counters you. It does mean that you won't have Ignite yourself though and so your ability to kill her won't be quite as high, but being able to get out of her stun right away can be a lot more useful than extra damage.

With this matchup, I would generally recommend that you play quite safe ppst 6, avoiding head on trades while she has her stun and trying to poke with Orb of Deception where you can. Typically, an early Banshee's Veil is very good at countering the amount of burst damage Annie can deal and possibly blocking her Stun. I would also recommend Mercury's Treads as you will be getting stunned a lot in this matchup and the magic resist also helps with surviving her burst.

Aurelion Sol is quite an easy matchup for Ahri. He's very immobile and easy to catch with a Charm. On top of this, Ahri can utilise Spirit Rush to dodge his Breath of Light, his ultimate Falling Star and keep outside or inside of his passive, Cosmic Creator. Sol is not like other champions because he has an ability that is constantly in effect. Cosmic Creator is his passive that causes 3 stars to constantly orbit around him, dealing damage to anything they collide with. This makes it very important to always stay either outside, or inside of his orbit so that you avoid taking a ton of free damage. It can often be better to not even auto attack Sol when you're at the range of his passive because you will take more damage from standing still to auto than you'll deal with that auto. Movespeed greatly helps to achieve this, so I would run Celerity and usually get early boots against Sol. Rylai's can also be great because it allows you to kite him, keeping him and his orbit of stars away from you. It also makes it near impossible for Sol to get away from you with the slows from Rylai's.

His Q is Breath of Light and it's his main source of crowd control. It's a long range skill-shot that when detonated outside of his passive orbit will deal damage and stun the targets hit. You have 2 options for avoiding the stun. First, you can Spirit Rush or move to the side or second, you can move into Sol's orbit to prevent his move from being able to stun you at all. The former is better for when you aren't looking to go all-in yet, in which case it would be a sidestep. The latter option is better for an all-in against Sol. The further away from him you are, the easier it will be to dodge, but it has a very large hit-box at that point and so you need to make sure you move well out the way.

Sol's W is Astral Flight and it can be toggled to increase the radius of his passive. This allows him to deal damage with his orbiting stars from further away and he can use this to better position himself to get the damage off. This is typically used more for ranged champions, or champions that are generally far away.

You must always be aware that he can extend or retract his orbit radius and be ready to adjust your own positioning to be in or out of it. One thing's for sure though, if you stand in his face as if you were a melee champ, you'll always be avoiding his passive damage. Ahri tends to have an easy time doing this and keeping close to him because of having 3 dashes.

Sol's E is Singularity and it's his form of mobility. It can be used to get him through large pieces of terrain and so it's very effective for roaming or escaping. One thing to note is that it can be effectively shut down by simply dealing damage to him. It will end his Comet of Legend and prevent him from reaching his destination.

His ultimate is the only other major thing you need to be careful of. Falling Star has 1500 range and it fires a massive line of starfire that slows, damages and knocks targets to the outer limit (his passive orbit) if they are inside. This is his way of countering champions that get right in his face to avoid his passive damage and so it's important to try and dodge this where you can. Ahri can quickly dash to the side of his ult, but it can be quite hard to react in time. Even if you do get ulted and pushed back to his orbit, you can simply dash right back to his face and proceed to avoid his passive damage. Try to keep tabs on Sol at all times because he will very often look to roam, utilising his Singularity to get a good gank path and he has more than enough damage and crowd control to make his ganks highly successful. It can be a good idea to hard push mid all the time post 6 to try and prevent him from roaming as much.

The last thing to note is that Sol can become fairly tanky as he tends to build health AP items and so taking him down can become quite a struggle. If he's only building health items then it can be best for you to ignore him and look for roams to get your team ahead instead.

Positioning and mobility are the most important factors in countering Sol. Items like Lich Bane or Luden's are very good due to the bonus movespeed you get and it will greatly help you to stay away from, or inside his passive. I highly recommend a Rylai's in this matchup though simply due to how effective it is to kite him.

Azir is a hard matchup and it's down to how difficult it will be during the early-game. Azir is very good at poking with his Sand Soldiers, Arise! and he has very good disengage with his ult, Emperor's Divide but he is a very squishy champion with no sustain so killing him is usually not much of a problem when you can get to him. Early-game will be hell, so the best thing to do is play safe and farm until 6. Azir's often play far back, using Soldiers to last hit and harass you. This means that you likely won't be able to kill Azir without your ult to close the distance. The most important thing that you can do in this matchup is to make sure you always stand away from his Soldiers to stop them from hitting you, but also to stop Azir from dashing towards one and further aggressing on you, or get behind to ult. Conquering Sands sends all of his Sand Soldiers to a targeted location, dealing magic damage and then allowing the Soldiers to further damage the target with their auto attacks. This is the most annoying thing about Azir in lane because he can do this while being well out of range for you to trade back with him. It’s also very hard to avoid getting hit by this because of the range of his Soldiers and you will likely always take a little bit of damage each time he does this.

It is very important to stay back in this matchup and always stay away from his Soldiers. It is also very important that you get a lot of sustain in this matchup because you will be getting hit a lot. Basically, you'll need a lot of potions in this matchup in order to survive, so a Refillable Potion is always a good choice.

Azir is a very good champion for sieging towers because of his ability to stand far back and poke people down with his Sand Soldiers, so if you do get pushed to your tower, expect to take a lot of damage if you are not careful. You must stand well back even at your tower in order to prevent yourself from taking a load of damage from his Soldiers. If you are in this situation it can be a very good opportunity for your jungler to be ganking as he'll be very far forward and you can always follow up with your ultimate if you are quite far back. Becausee of how far back Azir tends to play, it can be better to go with Sorcery for your primary Runes with either Aery or Comet. You won't tend to have many extended trades against Azir and so getting the extra poke damage on Orb can be quite important for laning. This is one of the few matchups where I like to take Biscuit Delivery and this is because of how much damage you will be taking early game. Biscuits can ensure that you have a much smoother time in lane and it greatly reduces the chance of being shoved out of lane, or killed.

Overall you just need to play safe early-game and watch out for his Sand Soldiers. In the mid/late-Game it becomes quite easy to kill Azir because they are almost always built as a glass cannon so catching them with 1 Charm will often lead to a kill. Chances are, if you survive the early phase without falling behind, you'll do alright.

Brand is a fairly average matchup for Ahri overall. It's similar to Azir in the way that the first few levels can be a real pain, but once you get 6, the 3 dashes provided by Spirit Rush make it easy for dodging around Brand's abilities such as his Pillar of Flame and Sear. Being able to dodge the Sear is also a major advantage that Ahri has because the only way Brand can stun someone is by hitting Sear. Brand's main damage source comes from his Pillar of Flame too which is extremely easy to avoid with Spirit Rush or even the speed buff on Orb. Pre 6 is the only hard phase of the matchup because Brand has really good harass with Pillar of Flame from level 1. This is why I take Celerity. Doing this makes dodging Pillar of Flame much easier and it will increase your chances of being able to out-trade in the early-game where this matchup is the toughest. The MS from Celerity also makes it easier to avoid his Sear which can make Brand have a very hard time locking you down. Brand will often go to use Pillar as you last hit a minion so be aware of his movement. If he casts Pillar as you stop to auto attack, it's almost definitely going to hit you so you need to take this into account when going for a last hit.

It's very hard for Ahri to win trades early-game and that's mostly down to her only having Orb as her laning tool. Brand has Pillar and also Conflagration for his tools in terms of trading which means you're already at a disadvantage. Not to mention that Conflagration is a targeted spell and you can't avoid it other than being out of range.

A pretty huge thing to mention about his Conflagration is that you must be aware of exactly what it can do. If Conflagration is used on a unit that is affected by his Passive (Blaze), the damage spreads to enemies around the target. This basically means that when he casts Pillar on the minions and then Conflagration, if you are near your minions you will also take the damage. Because of this, you should always stay away from any minion or ally champion that has been affected by Blaze. It's a very easy way for Brand to essentially get free damage because he'll be using it on the minions to farm or push a wave but also get damage on you at the same time.

His ultimate is Pyroclasm and the main thing you need to watch out for with this ability is the way that it can bounce between targets. If you are standing right next to an ally unit, that's bad news. When Brand casts his ultimate, you must disperse from any ally champion or minion immediately. It can do some serious damage and if it bounces multiple times between you, you're pretty much dead. Don't be hesitant to even Spirit Rush back in order to stop his ult from bouncing multiple times. Zhonya's Hourglass can be good in the sense that it can basically make his ult disappear before it even hits you and it can also help with reducing the burn damage you take from his passive.

Make sure that you do not underestimate Brand, he can do a lot of damage if he does catch you in a stun and even full to 0 you. Because Brand relies on his stun to nuke a target, I highly recommend that you build Mercury's Treads against him. This makes it so that if you do get stunned, it won't be for as long and you will be able to quickly get out. I've experienced and witnessed many situations where he'll stun someone and by the time the stun ends the target is dead. Mid/late-game is a piece of cake in terms of killing Brand. He's extremely immobile and like with other immobile champions, catch him with 1 Charm and he's as good as dead. Due to his lack of mobility, you honestly don't even need to hit your Charm in order to win a fight. If you miss Charm, make sure that you use your Spirit Rush charges to dodge his skills when he uses them rather than just dashing anywhere for the damage. In other words, play reactively against Brand opposed to spamming R in every direction trying to kill him. The last thing to note is about his passive. When you get hit by 3 of Brand's abilities in a short period of time, you will be marked and after 2 seconds you'll take even more damage. It's also AoE damage too, so if an ally is affected by the 3 stacks, stay away from them.

The early-game can be very rough against Brand but as soon as you hit 6 it changes completely. The main objective to this matchup is to survive the early levels and try not to fall behind too much. Because of this, it can be a good idea to pick up a Refillable Potion rather than constantly buying potions to take into lane. Also, if the Brand is being overly aggressive then hopefully your jungler will realise it because Brand is quite vulnerable to ganks at pretty much every stage of the game.

Cassiopeia is quite a hard matchup for Ahri and it is a lot like the matchup with Brand. Early-game will be absolute hell as Cass has very good poke with her Noxious Blast and Miasma. Because of this I recommend that you take Celerity. Having extra movespeed against a Cassiopeia is a huge deal in surviving the early-game harass. It will allow you to more easily avoid her Noxious Blast and Miasma and if you can do that, she won't be able to hit you with any empowered Twin Fang which severely cripples the amount of trading potential she has. Basically you need to keep your distance in this matchup because Cass will be constantly trying to hit you with Noxious Blast and it’s on a 3.5 second cooldown. If she does hit you with one, immediately back off because it gives her a movement speed boost and she will be able combo Twin Fangs on you. It’s actually not uncommon for a Cass to get first blood by level 2 just from hitting 1 Noxious Blast on you and then going all-in with Ignite and Twin Fangs. They will even sometimes Flash in your face to make sure that you can’t get away from her ridiculous damage at even level 2. This is why it’s important to back off straight away when hit by Noxious Blast.

You will likely be pushed into tower in this matchup because of how much AoE and pressure Cass brings to the lane and there isn’t too much you can do about it. This will make her very vulnerable to jungle ganks though and she is very immobile and squishy. You can try to counter push the wave with Orb too, but make sure you are always moving and trying to avoid being hit by her poison.

Once you hit 6, the lane does become much easier and Ahri can dodge almost everything Cass has using Spirit Rush, most importantly you can also dodge her ultimate, Petrifying Gaze if you time the dash right. Cass also has low mobility so again, Ahri can land a very easy Charm at any point in the game and due to how most Cassiopeia's build they are very squishy and will likely die without even having to use all of your Spirit Rush charges. When it comes to a 1v1, you basically have the ability to dodge every one of her spells. It is better to use Spirit Rush reactively though unless you are just trying to burst her down. Wait for her to cast a spell before you dash to dodge it rather than randomly dashing around and possibly getting hit by one. Something important to note though is what Miasma can do. When touching the Poison, Ahri can't use Spirit Rush because of it grounding you. Due to this, you have to be very careful not to stand in, or accidentally dashing into the poison as it can be very bad news for you. I can't stress enough how careful you need to be Pre 6 against Cass. I highly recommend that you also buy Boots as early as you can. You'll be needing a lot of sustain in lane too, so it can be a good idea to pick up a Refillable Potion on your first or second back.

Just remember, do not ever fight Cass when you are hit by her poison because you will not win the trade. Back well off so that she cannot combo Twin Fang because it is literally impossible to out-trade a Cassiopeia when she can get the bonus damage.

Cho'Gath is an uncommon, but strong mid laner and I've played against quite a few in the past. He's a much less straight-forward matchup and a lot of people ask me about him. Cho isn't as hard as you might imagine for Ahri though, he just requires specific countering via items and once you get these items he won't be too much trouble. First off, it can be quite hard to effectively bully Cho early-game because of his passive healing from Carnivore. His passive essentially means that any time and mana spent on harassing him is almost wasted in the early levels, and any damage you take from things like minion aggro, you've taken for free. It's better to just focus on farming and build up the Gold for the items to deal with him. You should keep your distance in this matchup because of 2 things. Firstly, his Feral Scream has ridiculous range and he'll often hit you with it while he's farming minions. They will try to position themselves to hit the wave and you at the same time, so just back off if he shows any sign of advancing. Secondly, his Rupture can easily mean a dead Fox when paired with a jungle gank. Without Spirit Rush, there's no easy way to avoid his Rupture other than being aware, reacting as soon as possible and walking out of the area. Casting Orb for the movespeed buff is pretty useless too because of the cast time.

Other than being careful for ganks set up by his Rupture, the early-game will likely be a farm fest. Once Cho hits 6 he’ll usually starting Feasting on minions to get more HP, but that means he has much less kill pressure on you. Basically, if he uses Feast immediately, you're ok to play as you like. If he holds Feast however, play slightly safer because it can mean he's looking to try and all in you and Cho has some crazy burst with his combo. You also can't do anything while it happens because you will often be Silenced and/or Knocked-up.

As I mentioned at the start, this matchup is won through items and items alone. The first item that counters Cho and allows you to easily win the matchup is Mercury's Treads. This is one of the most important parts to the matchup because it will reduce the amount of time that you are silenced by his Feral Scream. Really, the only way that you will die to Cho is when you get caught by Rupture or silenced so that you can't get out with your dashes. Reducing the time you're silenced means that you will be able to get out sooner and it will save your life a lot of time. Not to mention the help from the magic resist on Treads as that will reduce the damage he does with Rupture and Scream.

The second and major counter to Cho'Gath is the Rylai's Crystal Scepter and it's literally your best friend in this matchup and the key to beating Cho. In my eyes, Rylai’s is a must in this matchup because the slows that you get allow you to very easily kite Cho so that he basically never touches you. The health that Rylai’s provides is also amazing because it essentially counters the true damage on his Feast, meaning that he won't be able to burst you from 100-0.

Morellonomicon is also a great item for the HP and healing reduction. It will cut the healing on his passive and the health is a very welcomed stat to help counter the true damage on his ult.

Once you have Rylai's Treads, you can start playing very aggressively just because of how easy it is to kite him. If you did get hit by a Rupture and full combo'd, you'd likely survive and can easily get out because he won't have anything left to use. It will take quite a lot to take him down and you definitely won't be bursting him, but kiting and poking is how you do it. Other items that are very good against Cho are basically items that grant movespeed, so either Lich Bane or Twin Shadows. The movespeed greatly helps avoiding Rupture which is the only way he can get on you once you have Rylai's. Lich Bane is also great against him for added consistent damage for taking down the beast. Both are great choices in this matchup, but they aren't required. The only other thing to be aware of is his Vorpal Spikes. They have an AoE to them which makes it so that if you are standing behind the unit he auto attacks, you can get hit by them. Just make sure that you don’t stand too close to minions that he's attacking and they’ll never hit you because the range isn’t very far.

The tl;dr of this matchup is just Treads and Rylai's paired with Liandry's. Once you have those items it shouldn't be a problem. You'll be able to survive his burst if caught by it, and you'll be able to take him down through sheer kiting and consistent damage.

Corki is an easy matchup overall. He is super squishy at every stage of the game and it's very easy to assassinate him due to his escape being easy to catch up to and most of his damage being easily avoided with Spirit Rush. Lane phase is the only part to the matchup where it doesn't seem easy but that's just down to Corki being a marksman and having quite good poke with his Phosphorus Bomb. This is his main trading tool for lane, but it's not too hard to avoid. Because he is a marksman, you should avoid trading many auto attacks with him as he will always out-damage you. The only time where it's acceptable to trade autos is for when you need 1 or 2 to proc Electrocute. After you proc it, you should immediately back off and stop trading with autos. Corki's early laning is actually vaguely similar to Ahri in the way that he functions with his Q being his only real lane tool. He is much safer than Ahri though because he has Valkyrie to get away from a gank, or follow up on one.

Valkyrie sends him quite far and you should always be aware of his ability to close a gap early. It also leaves behind a trail of fire that will deal damage to anything standing on it. Make sure that you stay away from his trail to avoid taking any unnecessary damage .

His E is Gatling Gun and it's not much to be worried about for the lane phase. It has a range that is slightly higher than Ahri's auto attack at 600, so make sure that you just back off whenever he uses it as you won't win any trade while being damaged by a Gatling Gun, as well as his auto attacks and a possible Q too.

Corki's passive is the main thing you need to watch out for. His Hextech Munitions allow him to get a package after 8 minutes, and every 4 minutes after that. This package greatly enhances Corki's movespeed and grants his Valkyrie an amplified ability that doesn't use the cooldown of his standard version. You will have an audio warning of when he has his package, and this means you need to play very safe because he can cover a huge distance with the amplified Valkyrie.

He will also very often look to gank top or bot with his package, so it can be a good idea to quickly shove mid and roam bot or top yourself once he picks up his package to try a counter gank.

Level 6 is where Corki becaomes a heavy poke champion and he can deal quite a lot of damage with his Missile Barrage if he hits a few in a row. It's a good idea to have boots by the time you reach 6 as you'll be dodging them mostly from moving left or right. He can also push a wave very quickly post 6 thanks to his ultimate. A huge advantage Ahri has is with her Spirit Rush. It enables her to have a high chance of avoiding the damage from his Phosphorus Bomb and multiple shots from his ultimate. Most of his burst comes from those 2 abilities and so it's very easy to win an all-in when you dodge that much damage. When going for an all-in, be patient with Charm and wait for him to use Valkyrie first. Once he's used that, he has no way of avoiding Charm unless he Flashes. Corki will often take Heal or Barrier, and they will often buy a Hexdrinker quite early against Ahri. Don't let this bait you as you'll need to do quite a bit more damage in order to kill him through a Heal/Barrier + Hex shield.

The final thing to mention about Corki is that he is entirely mixed damage. He deals a lot of physical, and magical damage and so it's not that effective going Seeker's against him. Instead, your best choice is to opt for an item that includes HP such as Protobelt.

Overall, this matchup is fairly simple for Ahri and it's very easy for Ahri to all-in and kill him 1v1 due to her mobility and pick potential. Just remember to hold Charm for after he uses his W as that's his only reliable way to dodge it.

Diana is a hard matchup and I basically see it as a harder version of Akali due to the similarities in their kits. The reason that Diana is harder is because she doesn’t have a terrible early-game like Akali does so it's very hard to get ahead of a Diana. Diana is also naturally tankier than Akali because of her Pale Cascade, so killing her is automatically a harder task. Diana may not have as much sticking power as Akali, but she still has an insane amount of burst and she will always have at least 1 dash to get to you. Diana has quite good poke with her Crescent Strike and this also enables her to get multiple dashes with her ultimate, Lunar Rush. Because of this, it is important that you try to dodge her Crescent Strike. You can usually tell when a Diana will go on you because they will first hit a Crescent Strike prior to going in. If you have not been hit by one then the chances of a Diana going all in are much lower unless you are low on health. If you do get hit by a Crescent Strike however, make sure you move back until the mark ends and be prepared for her to go on you.

Like with Akali, if you are patient with Charm and wait for Diana to jump to you, it should be quite easy to land a Charm and then follow up with everything else which will likely win you the trade.

Diana is melee, so you can auto attack her when she goes in for last hits, but quite often they will use their Pale Cascade so autoing them will be fairly pointless. You also won’t often get free harass from autos because it puts you in an easy position to be hit by a Crescent Strike. As Ahri, you don't have to be too worried about her Moonfall, but when used in conjunction with a gank it can be very effective. An early Banshee's Veil works well against Diana as it will greatly reduce the amount of damage you take. The Spell Shield is great too because it will be almost always blocking her Crescent Strike which can really mess up her coombo and will prevent her from being able to get a reset on her ult dash. Something else to be aware of with Diana is her passive, Moonsilver Blade. Every 3rd attack becomes an AoE empowered auto and so often what Diana will do is auto attack twice to get it ready, and then jump to you with their empowered auto attack at the ready. It can be a good idea to back off slightly when they have their empowered auto at the ready, especially if they start to move towards you when they have it.

The best way to play out this matchup is very similar to Akali, try to hit Orb of Deception early-game for poke and save your Charm for when she jumps to you. And just like with Akali, do not ever fight Diana when your ult is down.

From my experience of this matchup I find that it's not a very hard one, but you do have to be careful. Ekko has a good early-game for a melee and he can poke you down with Timewinder and farm safely with the shield he gets from Parallel Convergence. Parallel Convergence also makes it hard to bully him out of lane essentially and it doesn't help that he's quite slippery with Phase Dive. The early-game is the only time where you should really have trouble with Ekko. Ahri is not a lane dominant champion and her first few levels are extremely poor. One thing you really have to be careful of is an early all-in from Ekko. He has insane burst at level 2 and it's the time you wouldn't expect an all-in. It's very easy for Ekko to poke you down with a couple of Timewinders and then jump on you with Phase Dive. As long as you're aware of the damage he can do early-game, you should be ok. His Timewinder works in a very similar fashion to Ahri's Orb of Deception funnily enough. He throws it out, then it returns to him and both parts deal damage. The difference is that his slows right down at the end of the way out, before quickly returning to him.

It also slows any targets hit by it which helps him to get the return damage. When you see him throw out a Timewinder, you can back straight off or even to the side. If you get hit by the slow, you actually have time to cast Orb and with the movespeed buff, run out to avoid the return damage. The only other thing you have to watch out for with his Timewinder is when you're dodging to the side, he can dash to the same side as you with Phase Dive and that will reposition the trajectory of the return on Timewinder, often resulting in still hitting you.

Parallel Convergence is when he'll throw out a projectile (easiest way to describe it is a grenade) and wherever it lands, after 3 seconds a bubble will appear and that bubble is what gives Ekko his shield. That's not all though, if you happen to be standing in his bubble, when he enters it you will be stunned. This is bad news for Ahri and it's often the only way he can actually kill you. Make sure that you stay away from his bubble and the second you see the projectile flying through the air back off immediately.

A sneaky trick that Ekko can do is use this from the Fog of War, so when you have no vision of Ekko. This results in you only being able to see the projectile pretty much as soon as it lands and the Ekko will then come dashing out of the Fog and get the stun off on you. Basically, just make sure that whenever he goes out of sight, you are ready to react and back off.

Finally, his ultimate makes him quite annoying to actually kill. Chronobreak can be used offensively and defensively to either get out or deal a lot of extra damage. Luckily you aren't always blind to it though as you can see his hologram following him and that is where he will be sent back to if he activated his ult. Ahri can actually deal with Ekko quite well in terms of denying the use of his ult because when he's caught by Charm, he can't activate R and so if you can manage to burst him down he won't get to port back and likely escape. The last thing to note is his passive, Z-Drive Resonance. It's basically just more damage after consecutive auto attacks or abilities on you, so it's important that you try and stay slightly further back when you get hit by an ability and never have an auto attack war with him, instead just back away. Ekko also gains quite a big movespeed boost if he gets the 3 stacks off too, making it very easy for him to keep up with you or dodge Orb and Charm. The stacks time-out after just 4 seconds though, so it's not hard to avoid if you play smart and back off.

Overall, the matchup is quite easy but there are a fair few things that you need to watch out for and be aware of. If you are not aware of what he is capable of, the matchup can go south very quickly.

Ezreal is a fairly simple and easy matchup whether it's AP or AD. He has a hard time pushing a wave without using his ult which means it's easy to get away with roaming as Ahri and not worry about losing much mid. Other than that, the main reason that it is such an easy matchup is because of how easy he is to kill at all stages of the game. Ezreal has to build full offensively or he doesn’t do enough damage which means that he gets melted by Ahri, with or without Charm. Most of the lane phase is pretty straight forward, all you have to do is stand back behind your minions to block his Mystic Shot. With AP Ezreal, watch out for his Essence Flux as it goes through minions and it will be his main source of damage as AP. Something that I tend to do when playing vs an Ezreal is buy quite a lot of health potions, or a Refillable Potion for laning. The reason is because he is a poke champion with multiple skill-shots and you won't be able to dodge them all. Against a poke champion, you will want to be at a high amount of health at all times so that they can't suddenly kill you or push you out of lane.

With Ezreal, it can be quite tricky to land a decent Charm because of his Arcane Shift, so sometimes it will be better to wait until he has used his Arcane Shift before Charming. It's not too hard to bait out his jump either, simply ulting towards him will probably scare him into using it, and then you have 2 more dashes to position for a perfect Charm.

One thing to watch out for with Ezreal is his ultimate, Trueshot Barrage. It will do a lot of damage whether he is AD or AP so if you are ever low and backing, try not to back in an obvious spot as Ezreals love to snipe people recalling on low health. There is nothing more gutting than dying to a Trueshot Barrage after escaping a fight on low health. Once Ezreal gets some items, he can dish out some serious damage, and it's also burst damage if he's AP. You definitely don't want to underestimate him and it's not uncommon for them to Arcane Shift in aggressively. The best time to go all-in against an Ezreal is ideally when his Arcane Shift is on cooldown. With that said, you can pretty much go all-in whenever you want once you get some items because he only has 1 jump to your 3 dashes. Your 3 dashes also make it quite easy to dodge his Mystic Shot and Essence Flux and you can even avoid his ult a lot of the time.

As already mentioned, Ezreal is incredibly squishy at all stages of the game so it’s very easy to burst him down and come late-game, you won’t even need to land a Charm to insta-kill him.

Fiddlesticks is a relatively easy matchup for Ahri and this is based on the fact that in order for Fiddle to deal the majority of his damage with Bountiful Harvest, he needs to stand still, and what becomes easy to hit on a target that is standing still? Charm. Basically, if you save your Charm for when Fiddle starts to Bountiful Harvest you should never lose a fight. The only way that Fiddle can kill Ahri without his drain is by getting a good Crowstorm off and even then, Ahri can Spirit Rush out of it if you're quick enough. Fiddle will Silence and Fear you however with Terrify and Reap so it is extremely important that in this matchup you buy Mercury's Treads. With tenacity on Ahri, the fear and silence duration will be much shorter and the only time period that Fiddle has to get off damage with Bountiful Harvest and Crowstorm is while Ahri is crowd controlled. With Treads, the fear/silence will end sooner and you can get out of range of Drain and Crowstorm. Another reason that I love to play this matchup is because when Fiddle goes to Drain a minion, you can Spirit Rush in from way back and then get a perfect easy Charm on to him while he is still Draining.

Once you Charm a Fiddle he will drop in seconds as they are always very squishy. The only thing you need to watch out for is his Zhonya's Hourglass as that is a core item on every AP Fiddle.

Early-game during the lane phase, Fiddle will try to hit you with his Reap by bouncing it off minions and praying to the RNG Gods that it hits you. When you see him throw out his Dark Wind, stand well away from your caster minions so that the bounce does not chain to you. This is pretty much his only way of harassing you in lane and being that easy to avoid, the lane phase will most likely go very smoothly. As a result of Fiddle using Dark Wind on minions, it will automatically push the lane to your tower too. This means Fiddle will be vulnerable to ganks and due to Fiddle being extremely immobile, ganks are usually very successful on him. Just be careful not to stand right next to your jungler to prevent a Dark Wind from bouncing between both of you, doing a lot of damage and silencing you both. Fiddle's passive is A Harmless Scarecrow. It gives him a movespeed boost after standing still or channeling for 1.5 seconds. This means that when he is channeling his ult or Drain, he will gain a boost of speed when he starts to move again. It's not too much of an issue for Ahri since the extra movespeed is nowhere near enough to catch up with Spirit Rush and if you Charm him, the speed boost he gets will be redundant anyway.

Morellonomicon is second to none in this matchup because of the ability to cut his healing with Grievous Wounds. Ignite is also amazing against Fiddle for the same reason. being able to cut his healing right down is a big deal when it's such a big part of his kit.

The main thing you have to be careful for with Fiddle is his ultimate, Crowstorm. He will likely try to hide over a wall or in a side bush to try and catch you by surprise so make sure you are aware of his location as best you can be. This can be done by either warding spots he could ult from, or playing safe when you don't know where he is.

Fizz is all kinds of annoying for Ahri to deal with, mainly because of 1 move, Playful / Trickster. He can dodge literally everything you throw at him just with that 1 move, which leaves Ahri dead in the water (no pun intended). His damage is high enough to instantly kill you too if you get hit by his Chum the Waters, so it is very important that you try and dodge his ultimate if you can. Zhonya's Hourglass is a very good tool against Fizz because if you get hit by his Chum the Waters you can simply Hourglass it, avoiding all damage. Early-game, Fizz is quite weak so you have a slight advantage there. You will want to try and harass him with Orb of Deception and auto attacks as much as possible, but make sure that you do not use Charm until he uses his Playful / Trickster or else you'll likely never hit it. In many cases, you may have to use your ult to dodge his ult too if you see it coming towards you. It may seem like a waste of your ultimate but it could very well save your life. His passive, Nimble Fighter means that he takes slightly less damage from auto attacks, but constantly hitting him will still amount to a lot and he can’t really retaliate in the early levels.

You will likely get slightly ahead of Fizz during the early-game in terms on cs and maybe even kill him once or twice, but do not underestimate the amount of damage he can do, even when behind. When it gets to mid/late-game he will still be able to 1 shot squishy champions if he lands his ultimate and Ahri is by very definition a squishy champion.

You must also be very aware of how easy it is for Fizz to get on you with Playful / Trickster and Urchin Strike. The only benefit to him using these moves to get to you is that if it goes badly for the Fizz, he has no way of getting out and if he uses Playful / Trickster to get to you, he won’t have an easy time dodging Charm. When activated, Seastone Trident is where Fizz's next damage becomes an empowered one and if you are already affected by his damage over time, the damage on the empowered auto is tripled. This makes it very important to back off when you are bleeding, and certainly back off when you see him activate his Seastone Trident. Because of how much damage Fizz can do in the space of a second, Exhaust can be very good in this matchup. Hourglass is the best way to avoid taking damage from his ultimate, but Hourglass won't always be available or you just might not have one. Exhaust is the next best thing as although you will be taking damage, it won't be anywhere near as much and you certainly won't die from a full combo.

Perfect Timing is amazing in this matchup because it allows you to nullify Fizz's first use of his ultimate. It's also extra good because the Rune reduces the cooldown of Hourglass by 15%. Hourglass should always be built vs Fizz and so the extra up-time on the stasis is a great bonus.

The best way to play against a Fizz is to try and poke him down early-game and get a small lead from your only window of advantage, but for the most part you need to play safe. I would highly recommend that you grab an Hourglass because it's crucial that you don’t get hit by his ultimate. If you save your Charm for after he uses Playful / Trickster then you can have a good chance of killing him, but if he dodges your Charm with it you will not win a fight.

Heimerdinger is a fairly rare matchup and he isn't too tricky. The main thing that makes Heimer so strong is his H-28G Evolution Turret and as Ahri you don't have a hard time taking them out because you can out-range them and destroy them with your Orb of Deception, essentially taking away his biggest tool from the fight. A weakness to his turrets is that Heimerdinger will naturally push a lane when he places them down which means ganks are usually quite easy to pull off on him. He is also a very immobile champion and he has no way of escaping outside of slowly walking away. Just make sure that you are aware of his turrets when you go in for a fight because they deal a lot of damage. He has some poke with his Hextech Micro-Rockets but you can quite easily avoid them by standing behind your minions and they aren't too hard to dodge. In terms of cc, Heimerdinger does have a stun with his CH-2 Electron Storm Grenade but it isn't the easiest skill to hit perfectly for the stun. As Ahri, you don't have to worry about getting hit by it in a fight while you are dashing around.

As for Heimerdinger's ultimate, UPGRADE!!! they will tend to either use it on their Turret or Rockets. If he uses it on a Turret, make sure that you stay well away because it does a ton more damage than the standard Turret and it has a lot more health too. If he uses it on his Grenade, it basically makes it bounce forward 3 times. Again, as Ahri it’s very easy to avoid this because all you have to do is dash to the side and you’ll avoid them all.

When he uses it on his Rockets, it will send a quick barrage of missiles your way that will deal a lot of damage. You can very easily dash to the side to avoid being hit though, so Ahri tends to do pretty well at avoiding his major sources of damage.

Basically the only thing you have to keep an eye on are his Turrets because even though Ahri can outrange them with Orb, you might not be able to take them all out before or during a fight and they can quite easily block a Charm and absorb some charges of Fox-Fire. If you ever catch Heimer alone or off guard with none of his Turrets down or nearby though, you will be able to easily kill him due to his lack of mobility and squishiness. Something to note about fighting Heimer is that you don’t ever want prolonged engages. His Turrets will rip you apart if you are fighting him for too long and Ahri isn’t good at extended fights anyway. Fight him in bursts, in and out in a few seconds and this will result in minimal damage taken from his Turrets. His Turrets can be a pain sometimes because they can quite easily block Charm, but because Ahri’s Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush can hit up to 3 targets each, they are great for destroying his Turrets simultaneously. You will be destroying his Turrets without actually intending on going for them too which is a good thing.

Because this lane will mostly be passive, and Heimer will likely look to push and farm with his Turrets, it can be a good idea to take Teleport against him. Teleport can come in handy for when you need to back but would miss a lot of gold and xp from being shoved in. It can also allow you to roam more and TP back to lane, or just farm mid while looking for an opportunity to TP gank.

Don't focus too much on killing his turrets while you only have 1 or 2 Ranks in Orb because you will just end up using too much mana and going oom, especially if they place their Turrets to the side of the minion wave so you can't farm minions and kill the Turrets at the same time. Once you get 3+ levels in Orb and start getting some AP you can make quick work of his Turrets though and pretty much instantly take them out when he places them down.

So with mid lane Irelia, I've actually played the reverse a lot of times (me as Irelia mid vs Ahri) and I can definitely say it's one of the easiest mid laners to face as Irelia. Because Ahri isn't much of a bully, she can't really shut Irelia down and you probably know that Irelia is one of the strongest scaling champions come mid-game and once she gets her first core item or two she becomes a monster. To make it even harder to do anything to her early-game, she has healing via Hiten Style and so trying to auto attack harass her is much less effective. With that said, the only time where you have some slight advantage is in the first few levels as that is where Irelia is weakest. They will typically just play safe though and farm with Bladesurge. Irelia has an extremely easy time farming against Ahri and it's easy to get a stun off on her too simply by creep surfing with Bladesurge. What I mean by 'creep surf' is that she can Bladesurge to a low health minion and it will reset the cooldown allowing her to then jump to you or another minion. If the Irelia maxes E ( Equilibrium Strike), you're in trouble because the 2 second stun means that you will be dead by the time the stun runs off.

Most will max Hiten Style, but even then you can still be stunned for a second which is often all she needs to kill you, or get you low enough to chase and finish with Bladesurge. This is why I always buy Mercury's Treads whenever I see an Irelia because her stun can really be disastrous for Ahri.

You have to be very careful with Irelia and her ability to close a gap because if you get ganked, even if Irelia is half the lane away from you, she can just creep surf and get right in your face to stun or slow you and without Spirit Rush this can often mean your death. It can actually be a good idea to just let her farm, and farm yourself. Ahri has a weak early-game as it is, but you scale just as well and eventually even better than Irelia does and you will always be more useful in a teamfight.

The benefit to just leaving her alone means that she'll have a hard time getting the stun off on you. The way that her Equilibrium Strike works is that it will only stun if the target is at the exact same amount, or lower health (percentage wise). Pre 6 while Ahri has no Spirit Rush, you have no way of dealing with Irelia getting close and stunning you. Because you'll be locked up by the stun, you won't be able to Charm or run away with Orb.

The trick to beating Irelia is to save your Charm for when she either Bladesurges to you or is right in your face about to stun you. Rylai's greatly helps in this matchup because outside of Irelia's Bladesurge, she has no way to get on you and it's a very high cooldown at rank 1, resulting in her being easily kited. Even if she does jump to you, as Ahri you can just jump back and then she has no way of closing the gap a second time. This is again why I go Treads in this matchup, because it lowers the time she spends in your face hitting you and Irelia has some serious burst with the likes of Trinity Force. Rylai's is also great at generally countering Irelia because she has mixed damage with Equilibrium (Magic), Bladesurge (Physical) and Hiten Style (True Damage) and health is the best counter to mixed and especially true damage.

Her ultimate isn't anything major so that's good, but it's still added damage and healing. Transcendent Blades is often used to clear a minion wave and heal from it. Her ult and Hiten Style means that she has quite a lot of healing which is why I take Ignite in this matchup, despite Exhaust and Cleanse being good alternate choices.

When you're facing Irelia, you need to get a Rylai's quite early in the game. You can also choose to go first item Protobelt here instead of Luden's because Proto also grants bonus HP which is vital to have against Irelia. Irelia's Passive, Ionian Fervor means that any form of crowd control is reduced on her. This means your Charm duration won't last as long, so keep that in mind. Luckily it doesn't really do much in terms of Rylai's slows because of how often you can apply the slow. A huge thing you need to watch out for is low health minions on your side. Basically, stay away from them or be ready to Charm because Irelia will probably attempt a creep surf. When I play Irelia I even walk up to a ranged creep and auto it low to set up the surf, then back off again. The only other thing I can point out is that you will want to keep the minion wave about even or slightly pushed to you, but not in range of your tower. This is because pushing to tower against an Irelia is never a good thing as she is one of the best champions in the game for last hitting under tower and if you're pushed up and she goes on you with a jungler, you will very likely die.

Ideally you don't want to let an Irelia farm, but as Ahri isn't much of a lane bully it's incredibly hard to stop her and so the best thing you can do is just farm up yourself and become more relevant come mid/late-game. Once you hit 6 you can start pressuring her and going for kills because you will have all the safety of your ultimate, but make sure that you never all-in her when Spirit Rush is down. If she gets on you without your R, you're dead, it's as simple as that.

Jayce is an average matchup for Ahri. Jayce has very good poke with his Acceleration Gate + Shock Blast combo and he always has a good way to get to Ahri with his Hammer form To The Skies!. Most Jayces will stay far back in ranged form, using their combo when it's up to try and poke you down and it makes it very hard to do anything back to him. For Jayce to kill you, he likely needs to go into Hammer form to make the most use out of his kit though. When he is in Hammer form, he will probably look to jump on you with To The Skies!, you should save your Charm for when he does this as you can often land a very easy one while he is jumping towards you, much like with Akali and Diana. If the Charm misses then you are likely going to take a lot of damage as most of Jayce’s damage is in bursts. If you do miss Charm then you can use Spirit Rush to back out of the fight. There isn’t really much to watch out for when it comes to Jayce, but 1 thing that you do need to be aware of is his positioning at all times. This is because they will often go out of sight to try and hit you with the Acceleration Gate + Shock Blast combo and if you don’t see it coming, you won’t be able to dodge it.

The only other major thing you need to be aware of is his melee form Thundering Blow. It’s a mini knock-back and so if he manages to get behind you he can quickly push you back into the enemy team or just to get you further away from safety. This can be very effective when paired with a gank because you could be knocked back into the enemy jungler. They can also Flash behind you to ensure that you will be knocked back and you won’t have time to react, similar to a Lee Sin ‘InSec’.

Jayce is quite a mobile champion overall in terms of speed. His Acceleration Gate and also his Passive Hextech Capacitor both grant him quite a lot of movement speed. His gate will also speed up any allies that pass through it. Because of his speed, it can often be hard to chase him down, even with multiple dashes of Spirit Rush. It can also make it harder to land Charm and Orb when he has the speed boosts. Jayces tend to build full damage, but an item that they will almost always get is the Hexdrinker. It is very important that you are aware of when they complete the item and that you don't get baited by the magic shield it provides. Like all AD matchups, you aim for the Seeker's Armguard as your first item but upgrading it to Hourglass isn’t too important here. You mainly need the Armor to reduce the amount of damage you take from his poke and the burst from his all-ins. Also, it can be a good idea to buy potions every time you back or a Refillable Potion on your first back to heal up from any damage you take from his combo.

The best way to play against a Jayce is to play safe and farm up. Because of how far back Jayce can play you might not be able to even harass with Orb of Deception. Try to dodge as many of the combos as you can and you will transition into mid and late-game well with enough damage to kill Jayce quite easily.

Karthus is in my opinion Ahri's most favourable matchup. Karthus is one of the most immobile champions in the game and he is also extremely squishy, to the point that if he gets hit by 1 Charm he is just dead to an all-in from Ahri. Karthus has a very hard time even hitting Ahri with his Lay Waste, especially when she is dashing around with Spirit Rush. Ahri's ultimate can also be used to quickly get out of Defile which is one of the main sources of damage as Karthus. Early-game, all you have to do is dodge any Lay Waste he might throw at you but some Karthus players will just farm with it instead of going for harass. If you find yourself against a Karthus that farms with Lay Waste, you’re going to have a good game. The major thing you need to watch out for in the lane phase is his Wall of Pain combined with a jungle gank as the wall slows by quite a lot and if you get hit by it at the time of a gank, you can very easily die. Play somewhat safe when you have no vision or knowledge of the where the enemy jungler is until level 6 and then you can have as much fun as you like.

You also need to be aware of his passive, Death Defied. His passive makes it so that when you kill him, he can still cast his abilities while immobile for 7 seconds. If you aren't careful, he can easily kill you or get a lot of free damage on you while in this state, so make sure that you move right back after he dies. He can also cast his ultimate while in his passive and there is no way for you to prevent the damage unless you have an Hourglass.

Zhonya's Hourglass is a great item to pick-up against Karthus for the times where you can't interrupt his ultimate or when it's used in his passive. You can time the Hourglass Stasis so that you completely avoid all damage from his ult. The Stasis is also very handy for when you're in his Defile and also for situations where you kill him when he's right next to you. Karthus should almost never be able to get a lot of damage dealt to you via his Defile simply because you can immediately dash out of it with Spirit Rush. The only time where he should be able to kill you in a 1v1 is when you don't have your ult. Because of this, you should play safe while your ult is down and never engage in a full fight with him. Ahri can interrupt Requiem quite easily with Charm and it doesn't take long for her to close the distance with Spirit Rush. Try to keep vision on Karthus whenever you can to make sure that he doesn't walk off to ult your team though. Deep Wards are very good for gaining vision on him when he sneaks off to ult. A small tip is that when Karthus hits level 6, you will be the first to know. As soon as he does hit level 6, tell your team that he has his ultimate up so that they become aware that he could use it from then onwards. From this point onwards it can be a good idea to constantly shove mid lane in to keep Karthus at his tower and in sight.

The only part to the game that can be even slightly challenging is the very early-game as he can do quite a lot of damage with constant Lay Wastes on you. Come late-game and you won’t even need to Charm Karthus in order to blow him up and he can’t ever get away from you. Just make sure that you get an Hourglass at some point, because his ultimate can deal half your health when he gets a lot of AP.

Karma is a pretty average matchup for Ahri. Karma has quite a lot of damage with her poke from Inner Flame, especially when she uses the Mantra version Soulflare. Karma can also be quite mobile with the speed buff she gets from Inspire which gives her a shield on top of the speed, allowing her to trade quite favorably in a lot of situations. The best thing you can do as Ahri is try to avoid her Inner Flame as that is what she will be poking you with. Karma can be quite hard to hit a Charm on because of the speed boost she can give herself, so when going in for a kill, it can be a good idea to wait out the speed boost as it only lasts for 1.5 seconds. By waiting out the speed boost you will have a much higher chance of landing Charm and killing her. Another thing to be aware of and not get baited by is the Mantra version of her W which is Renewal. It's a pretty big heal and she gets the heal twice if you get rooted by the tether. This makes it extremely important to make sure you try to avoid being rooted. Without Spirit Rush, that's a hard task, but Orb's speed boost can help.

This is also why i take Celerity against her. The bonus movespeed is super helpful at breaking that chain and generally dodging her main source of damage.

The majority of her damage comes from her Inner Flame, but most importantly the Mantra version. When she fires it at you, it will explode on impact, but also leave a circle on the ground that slows you. After 1.5 seconds, the circle detonates and you take even more damage. It is very important that you get out of the circle as quickly as possible, because getting hit by both parts is how you'll lose a trade.

The only other major thing to watch for is her snare, Focused Resolve that starts as a tether to you. As Ahri, when you have Spirit Rush it is very easy to break the tether but pre 6 it can be very deadly if you are caught by the tether and get ganked. Sometimes Flash won't even break it if Karma speeds herself up while the tether is on you. When you don't have your ult, be careful not to go too close to her. You should also never fight or even go near Karma while you don’t have Spirit Rush for that matter because she’ll be able to very easily snare you and burst you down. Karma can be quite easy to gank because she has no form of dash. All she has is her speed boost and it doesn’t last very long. If you get a gank and catch her with Charm the chances of turning that into a kill will be very high. At the very least you will force her out of lane or she will be very low and you can start to zone her. Karma’s can, and usually do play quite aggressively early-game because they do have very good and quite easy to land poke and this is where you can struggle. Post 6 the matchup becomes a lot easier, but be careful pre 6.

Your best bet is to farm pre 6 and harass with Orb of Deception when you can and once you get your ultimate you can look for a chance to all-in her. During a fight, with your Spirit Rush you can also easily dodge her Inner Flame and break tether so Ahri has a clear advantage in post 6 fights. Karma will be harder to kill compared to other squishy champions however due to her shield and possible heal, so always be aware of this.

Alternatively, you can just roam and look for plays elsewhere on the map. Sometimes a Karma lane will become very passive and you might not have much kill potential on her. These cases are where it's best to just ignore the Karma, shove mid and roam.

Kassadin is another very tricky matchup for Ahri, which may come as a surprise as most champions can usually deal with Kassadin quite well. The reason that Ahri cannot deal with him very well is because Kassadin's Null Sphere makes it almost impossible for Ahri to trade every time it's up due to the magic shield. Ahri's early-game damage with Orb of Deception isn't great and the fact that it is a skill-shot makes it even less reliable. It does do true damage though and so you will hurt him a bit when you hit the true damage part to Orb, but the magic damage part will be absorbed by his shield. Kassadin on gets to point and click with Q (Null Sphere) to do damage and get a shield. The only way that Ahri can out-trade Kass is by hitting the double Orb of Deception paired with an auto attack or 2. You won't win brief trades against a Kass and so you must pressure him with auto attacks and a proc on Electrocute in order to come out ahead..

Auto attacking Kass is the best way to trade with him in lane. He’s melee, and his Null Sphere shield only blocks magic damage, so you’ll be dealing the full amount with autos. If you manage to auto attack him enough in a row, you can actually sometimes get an early kill on him, or force him way back which gives you the advantage. This is typically your only window of opportunity to set Kass behind and get some kind of lead.

Unfortunately, there is no real easy way that Ahri can shut down a Kassadin early-game by herself. She needs jungle help to completely shut him down and if you don't get any, your best bet is to try and farm as much as possible so that you are of equal power level heading into mid-game. Junglers should ideally focus on trying to shut down Kass Pre 6 though as once he gets Riftwalk there's next to no point in trying to gank him.

His W, Nether Blade is nothing to worry about Pre 6. It's an empowered auto attack and so he won’t have many chances to use it on you without his Ultimate. Once he's 6 though, he it adds a lot of damage to his burst when he ults to you. There isn't really any way to avoid taking the damage either unless you immediately Charm him and back away. Even then though, he can just ult to you again almost right away.

Try not to spam your abilities too much as it will only fuel Kassadin's Force Pulse and give him even more to use against you. If you can catch him with a Charm mid/late-Game then you have a good chance of being able to burst him down or at least put him very low, but if you miss Charm, I don't think there is any way you can win a fight realistically, it would be better to back off immediately if you miss your Charm. You should also not use any abilities while he has the magic shield active from his Null Sphere as it will just be wasted damage. Wait for the shield to time-out before throwing your own spells back at him. In terms of items, if you are struggling then going a defensive route of Banshee's Veil can be a good idea and it should prevent a lot of Kassadin's damage from all of his abilities. You should always try and fit in some magic resist against Kass at some point, because once he starts to get his items he can deal some serious damage. His passive also helps him in the matchup because he takes 15% reduced magic damage, making it even harder to kill him.

What makes Kass so hard is not so much his early-game and sometimes not even his mid-game. It's late-game where he becomes an unstoppable monster and he out-scales Ahri by a very large margin. Even if you get ahead and are doing well early, fast forward 15-20 minutes and Kassadin will destroy you in a 1v1 and be doing more for his team.

99% of Kass players will take Teleport as their second summoner. Because of this, it can be a good idea to match his TP with your own in order to counter TP gank him. You can also shove lanes faster, so it can be effective to shove in mid and look for a roam instead. Taking TP means you have much less kill pressure on Kass though, and you probably won't be able to shut him down in lane. Just hope that the game doesn't go to late, or else you're in trouble and there isn't really a whole lot you can do as Ahri unfortunately.

Katarina is largely a skill matchup in my opinion, it can go either way and I've had many games vs Kat where I have won and many that I have struggled in. This matchup is almost completely reliant on hitting the Charm when Kat uses Death Lotus. If you hit it, it will stop her ult and you will most likely win the fight, and if you miss then her ult will likely shred you and you will drop very quickly. I would say Ahri has the tiniest advantage in this matchup from a bit of leeway of being able to Spirit Rush out of Death Lotus, but I still think the matchup can go either way. Kat can be very annoying to lane vs and even though she is melee, she is very hard to get decent harass off early-game as most Kat players will tend to just farm with their Bouncing Blades while being safe from ganks with Shunpo. Bouncing Blades will also auto-push the lane to your tower if you don't push back. This can be a good thing as it opens up more room for a gank on Kat but she is very slippery with Shunpo. When you see Kat throw her Bouncing Blades at a minion, make sure you move back so that there's very little-no chance of a Blade hitting you. This is also Kat's main harass in lane so by avoiding them you'll stay healthy.

Another thing to note about her Bouncing Blades is that after bouncing around, the dagger then lands on the ground. Whenever Kat moves to a dagger, she will do an AoE slash and damage all nearby enemies. Preparation is also used to place down a dagger only at her position and grants her a huge movespeed boost. It can be a good idea to wait out the boost before attempting to hit her with an Orb or Charm.

Because of the way her daggers enable her to deal extra damage and grant her extra mobility, it's extremely important that you always stay away from any dagger that's down. Doing so will stop her from being able to get a large portion of her overall damage on you. The daggers last for 4 seconds, or until Kat touches one and does her slash.

When she picks up a dagger, it also refunds almost the entire cooldown on Shunpo. Because of this, don't be fooled when she uses Shunpo and it goes on cooldown as she can very easily get it back instantly just by picking up a dagger.

The one thing I will say for this matchup is abuse your auto attacks towards her. Kat is one of the easiest melee champions to abuse with auto attacks because in the first few levels, she can’t really do anything about it other than throw a Blade and run away either because if she Shunpos to you, she has to commit to an all-in. Something to keep in mind with this matchup is that when Kat uses Shunpo on you, she can choose where to jump to. Because of this, it's best to dash away before attempting a Charm as you won't know if she'll jump in-front, behind or to the side of you. If you miss the Charm then you should dash well away from her with the 1st or 2nd charge of Spirit Rush and then if you want to go back in you can use the 3rd charge to do so. Zhonya's Hourglass is one of the best items against a Katarina because it acts as another way to essentially stop her ult. When she jumps to you and ults, you can immediately activate Hourglass and that will prevent you from taking any damage from it. Then when the Stasis ends, you can go all in with your moves, and Kat will have Death Lotus on cooldown.

Exhaust is also an option for shutting down her ultimate, especially in a teamfight. An un-controlled Kat in a teamfight can melt your team in seconds, so it's very important to try and cc her or Exhaust her to minimise her impact and shut her down.

If you play the matchup to Ahri's strengths then it should go well, but if you get caught off guard or out of place by Kat for even a second she can likely kill you. Just remember to stay well away from any of her daggers.

LeBlanc is a hard matchup for Ahri. The early-game can be very tough and she is a burst mage by very definition. LeBlanc also has hard cc with her Ethereal Chains and a lot of mobility herself with Distortion. She also has very good wave clear meaning that you can't just shove her to tower to stop her from being able to bully you in lane. LeBlanc can start to out-trade Ahri as soon as level 2 and so it's often best to play very passively until you get some magic resist. What you should always keep in mind is that after LB uses Shatter Orb on you, she will walk towards you ready to use Distortion and that is when you need to back away from her. This will prevent you from taking a ton of free damage because of Sigil of Malice and there is literally no way to win a trade if she gets a Q, W combo off on you. When it comes to actually killing LB, it can also be quite difficult and this is due to how slippery she is. LeBlanc can have 2 dashes because of Mimic on Distortion which can put a lot of distance between herself and Ahri, and she can return to either point that she dashed from.

Because of her ability to return to the starting position of where she Distorts from, it can be quite hard to hit her with Orb and Charm. It's best to wait until she's used Distortion, or when she can no longer return to where she jumped from before casting Orb and Charm. This will minimise the chance of the LeBlanc being able to dodge them.

The best way to kill a LeBlanc is to act as quickly as possible, getting all of your skills off immediately so that she does not have time to dash away. Luckily for you, they tend to build as a glass cannon and so when you do catch them with Charm, you can often kill them from full with Ignite.

LeBlanc's ultimate Mimic is where her insane mid/late-game burst comes from. It copies one of her abilities and ends up dealing a ton of damage with the added proc of Sigil of Malice. She can also use Mimic to summons a clone at a target location anywhere on the field, which then approaches the closest visible enemy champion and casts a non-damaging version of her most recently used ability.

This can be used to deceive you, or make you think that LB is somewhere she isn't. It has a massive cooldown though at 160 / 140 / 120 seconds based on level. LeBlanc used to have very poor wave clear but this is no longer the case. If Shatter Orb is the ability that triggers her Sigil of Malice, the damage from Shatter Orb bounces to other nearby targets affected by Sigil. This means that if she uses Distortion on a minion wave, she will be able to Shatter Orb one of the units to bounce the damage and hit every target affected, very quickly shoving the lane. One thing Ahri does have over LeBlanc though is sustain. LeBlanc has no innate sustain and so between the time that she uses her last potion and then goes back for the first time, any damage that you do to her will stick and you can end up getting a massive advantage by abusing the fact that you can heal with your passive. When this situation occurs, it allows you to play the lane as you wish. You can freely farm without having to worry too much about being out-traded, or you can apply some pressure and possibly look for a kill since LB will have no way to heal the damage you deal.

The main way that this matchup is won is through early MR. I highly recommend that you buy early magic resist in this matchup, even if you are ahead of LeBlanc. It should almost always be an early Banshee's Veil. Mercury's Treads are also definitely an option in this matchup because LB does have hard cc with her Chain, but also the extra MR is insanely helpful.

Lissandra is a fairly average matchup for Ahri. It's a weird one because in terms of a 1v1, Ahri fairs quite well. However, because of Lissandra's insane hard cc she can be a problem, especially when other enemy champions are involved. She has a very short casting range which makes it easy to poke her down with Orb of Deception and she likely always be in range of a Charm. Another reason that the matchup can go well for Ahri is because of how you can interrupt Glacial Path with Charm, preventing Lissandra from being able to travel to the destination. The main things that you have to watch for with Lissandra are her Ice Shard and the amount of hard cc she brings to a fight with Ring of Frost and Frozen Tomb. In lane phase, Lissandra will most likely use Ice Shard on minions every time it’s up. Because of this, you must stand to one side of the minions rather than directly behind them so that when a minion gets hit by a Shard the split won't be able to hit you. Because you will be standing to one side, it would be a good idea to Ward that side to watch for jungle ganks as you will be slightly further away from your tower and closer to one side of the jungle.

Lissandra players will always try to position themselves so that when they Ice Shard the minions it will hit you too. Make sure that you always watch their movement and counter it so that you are out of the Ice Shard’s path. You can also just play further back so that it won’t ever be in range of you.

Because of her Ice Shard, she will often be always pushing the lane towards you and so it can be a good idea to counter push with Orb so that you don’t end up trying to last hit under tower. As mentioned, Lissandra has quite short range so when you throw Orb down the minion wave it’s easier to aim it so it hits Lissandra too.

Lissandra's crowd control is the biggest problem that you will face. It's very easy for a Lissandra to lock you down for a good 3 seconds which is more than long enough to kill or get Ahri very low. Pair it with a gank or roam and you’re just dead, simple as that.

Because of this, I highly recommend Mercury's Treads to prevent her from being able to lock you down for as long and give you more of a chance at getting out after the stun has ended. She can also just Flash ult you at any time which can really screw Ahri over so I can’t stress enough how important Treads are in this matchup.

It can also be a good idea to take Cleanse in this matchup as removing her hard cc will stop her from being able to get free damage on you and it will likely save your life if you get ganked but have Cleanse at the ready. When in lane, if Lissandra ever uses her Glacial Path towards you, immediately move back because it could mean that you are about to get ganked and she is going in for the stun on you. It could also just be for farming the minions, but you should always prepare for the worst so that you don't get caught out. Lissandra is relatively easy to kill throughout the game, the only thing that slows down the time it takes to kill her is the stasis version of her Frozen Tomb and she will sometimes have an Hourglass as well. As Ahri, you can wait from a distance and prepare for when the stasis ends with Charm and Orb of Deception at the ready. Just make sure that if she does self-cast her ultimate, back away because it does damage to anyone standing near her.

People have the misconception that Lissandra counters Ahri, but Ahri actually has quite an easy time against her in lane. It’s the hard cc that counters Ahri and Lissandra has a lot of it which is why she can sometimes be a problem. When it comes to a 1v1 though, Ahri can often come out on top.

Lucian can be quite a tough one for Ahri. This is mainly due to how slippery he becomes and how much damage he can deal in a short amount of time. Most of it is unavoidable damage too because a lot will come from auto attacks via his passive. Lightslinger makes it so that after using an ability, Lucian's next attack is a double hit. On someone who builds a lot of AD, this ends up giving him a lot of bonus damage that's entirely unavoidable as they're auto attacks. Because of this, Seeker's Armguard is a must in this matchup as the armor will greatly reduce his overall damage output. Lucian is incredibly slippery because of his E, Relentless Pursuit. It's a short but very fast dash and because of how fast it is, it's very easy to dodge Orb and Charm with it. Not only that, but it becomes a very low cooldown dash because its cooldown is reduced by 1 second (2 against enemy champions) for each Lightslinger (passive) shot landed. It's not uncommon for a Lucian do dash multiple times in the space of a few seconds, especially when he gets some of items.

His main laning tool is his Q, Piercing Light. Something that Lucian players will always try to do is line up this ability with a minion so that it hits you at the same time. To avoid this from happening, it's best to stand away from your minions. You can also mirror Lucian's movmements so that he can never get a straight line between a minion and you.

He can quite quickly start to push mid in from level 1 because of Piercing Light and his passive. If you see a Lucian try to push right away, it's important to immediately counter-push with Orb. This will achieve 2 things for you. Firstly, it will prevent you from being pushed to tower and losing cs, and secondly it stops Lucian from hitting 2 way before you and his level 2 is very strong.

Lucian's can level there dash at level 2 and go on you straight away to which you can't do anything about if you aren't yet 2 yourself. If he does hit level 2 before you, you must back off right away because you can end up taking a very unfavourable trade against a Lucian.

his W isn't too much to be worried about, but it will still get him another double hit from his passive. Ardent Blaze is a small projectile that deals AoE damage. It doesn't do much damage though and it's mainly used for the double hit or to push a wave quicker.

His ultimate can be quite dangerous for Ahri and it's very strong in lane against her. A lot of Lucians will constantly use there ult at seemingly random times in lane against you and it can deal some serious damage. There will even be times where you'll have to waste Spirit Rush in order to get away from the channel. When he uses The Culling, if any minions are near you, you should immediately move behind them. If there are no minions around, you should throw an Orb and back off right away. You can sometimes break the line of being hit by moving sideways, but Lucian can simply follow your directional movement to keep the channel on you. It can often be best to move diagonally back, rather than straight back or straight to one side. Spirit Rush makes it super easy to dodge it, but in-lane you don't ever want to be using your ult just to avoid being hit by his unless you're in a full on fight. Out of lane, his ult won't be anywhere near as effective against you and you can always avoid it in a 1v1 because of your 3 dashes. Zhonya's Hourglass can actually be pretty good here because you can just stasis his channel, stopping all damage from it.

Like other AD mids, you shouldn't trade with auto attacks. Against Lucian this is extra important because of his double hit. They will also likely take Heal or Barrier so make sure you're aware that they have more effective HP than their max.

The final thing to note is that when you do all-in Lucian, you should wait for him to use his first dash before Charming. You only have a short window of opportunity to get the Charm off before his dash comes back up though, so you have to react quite quickly. Hitting Charm is very important too because of how much damage Lucian can deal in a short amount of time. If you miss Charm, it can often be better to just back out of the fight because your chances of winning go down significantly.

Lulu is a hard matchup for Ahri, mainly due to how difficult she becomes to kill at 6 with her Wild Growth and Help, Pix!. Lulu also does quite a lot of damage with her Glitterlance and auto attacks from her passive Pix, Faerie Companion. On top of all that, she can render you useless with Whimsy for up to 2.25 seconds. LuLu can very easily bully Ahri from as early as level 2. She does this by using her Help, Pix! on you or a minion and then firing a Glitterlance at you shortly after. She'll basically be trying to hit you with at least a Glitterlance every time it's up and the cooldown without any CDR is quite low at 7 seconds. A good way to try and avoid the damage from the shot that comes from Pix is to pay attention to where Pix is. The second bolt comes from Pix, so try to move to where it might not hit you. Lulu's will often try to farm and hit you with Glitterlance at the same time too, so make sure than you stand well back from her so that she can't do this. They'll often walk into melee range of the minions when they are about to try it so it isn't too hard to watch out for it.

Lulu also has a built in Movespeed buff from Whimsy when she self-casts it that actually gives her a lot of movespeed. Because of this, it's very easy for her to get in range to Pix you and then Glitterlance for even more poke. To counteract this, you should use Orb and with the movespeed you get yourself, you should be able to keep your distance and stop her from hitting you. This movespeed can also be cast on her allies too, so watch out for a jungle gank paired with Whimsy because it won't take them very long to get to you.

Because of how fast she moves when she self-casts Whimsy, it can be quite hard to hit her with a Charm and so it's often best to wait out the duration of her speed buff and then Charm after. Whimsy does last quite long though at 3-5 seconds depending on what rank it is.

The other use of Whimsy is when Lulu casts it on you instead of herself or her allies. This will Polymorph you and render you unable to cast any spell. On top of that, you will also be slowed, so basically you'll be completely vulnerable and unable to react. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot you can do to counter it because it's a point and click spell so once you're in range, you're getting Polymorphed. Just be aware that it can happen and either keep your distance or wait until she uses Whimsy on herself or an ally.

She also has another use of Help, Pix! which is again when she either self-casts, or casts it on an ally. It basically gives them a shield for 6 seconds and whenever they auto attack, Pix will also attack that target for extra damage. This is what can make Lulu pretty much impossible to solo kill. The shield, paired with her Ultimate means that you have to deal so much extra damage on top of her whole Health pool in order to take her down. Her Ultimate, Wild Growth is also a pain to deal with in general because once again, it can be cast on her allies. This means that anyone you try to assassinate, or anyone you try and kill in general will always get ulted by Lulu, preventing you from being able to kill them. It's also worth to note her ultimate does knock you up if you are standing next to who she casts it on. Lulu's will sometimes even Flash onto you and self-cast ult to get the knock-up. This tends to be done when you're getting ganked, and it can often result in your death.

Because of how hard it is to pin down and kill Lulu I play this matchup very passively and farm. The chance of a solo kill on Lulu post 6 is very, very low unless you manage to poke her down with multiple Orb of Deception. Generally speaking though, without jungle help you should look to roaming to get kills instead.

Lux is an average matchup but it's not too hard because all of her abilities can be quite easily dodged by Ahri's Spirit Rush. Lux is also very squishy all game so landing 1 Charm on her is usually all it takes to secure the kill. During the lane phase most Lux players will try and harass you with Lucent Singularity and it’s quite an easy spell to hit. Sometimes they will throw it straight at you, but other times they will try to hit your minions and you at the same time. It’s very easy to avoid this though because all you have to do is stand away from your minions and then the Lux has to decide on either harassing you with it, or farm with it. If you do get hit by a Lucent Singularity it is extremely important that you immediately move back as Lux will run up to try and auto attack you to proc her passive Illumination. Her passive does quite a lot of damage, so avoiding the auto attack is important as you will likely lose a trade with her passive on you. It lasts for 6 seconds, so after that you can move forward again and go back to last hitting/poking with Orb of Deception.

When playing vs Lux you need to be aware that her snare, Light Binding can hit 2 targets and it can travel through a minion that takes the first bind. Lux will most likely try to bind you if you are behind 1 minion, remember that you are only safe behind multiple minions.

Her Snare is also the main way that she can kill you. if you get hit by one, she can follow up with her full combo and it can often end up killing you from full health. Because of this, Mercury's Treads are my go-to boots against Lux, and Cleanse is also an option. Lux's only reliable way to kill you is via her snare and if you can deny that, you have a major advantage.

Her ultimate, Final Spark shouldn't be much of a problem as you can use Spirit Rush to dodge it, the only time where you will get hit by it is when you get caught by a Light Binding. It has a massive range too, so when you are low health at any point, make sure you back in a non-obvious spot to prevent her from sniping you. The only other thing you need to be aware of is her shield, Prismatic Barrier. Her shield travels out like a projectile, and then returns to Lux, much like Orb of Deception does. The thing you need to be aware of is that she gains a shield for both parts of the shields travel. She gains an immediate shield when it is cast and thrown out, and then another when it returns to Lux. Because of this, when fighting Lux it can be better to back off, or try and wait out her shield because she can absorb quite a lot of damage and it also enables her to trade favorably. Luckily, when she's caught by Charm she cannot cast it which means she can be bursted down before getting the chance to use it.

The matchup is only slightly troublesome in the early levels due to Lux’s poke with Lucent Singularity but once you get Spirit Rush, you have an nice advantage and can pretty much dodge everything she has. Just be very careful not to get snared by her, or it will often mean you'll get insta-killed by her combo.

Malzahar is a very annoying matchup. This is mainly due to his ultimate Nether Grasp and ability to full combo you and there isn't anything you can do about it. Most Malzahar players will simply push waves and farm up with Malefic Visions until they get Nether Grasp at 6 where they can start to pressure you for a kill, or push you into tower and them roam. The only thing you can do early-game as Ahri is farm and play passively. You can try to harass with Orb of Deception but then you run the risk of being hit by a Malefic Visions that gets passed on from a minion. I would suggest farming up and staying away from him when he has his ult up. The best way to deal with Malz is from Jungle help because as Ahri, you have plenty of damage to kill him, you just can’t get close to do the damage or he will combo you and likely kill you. Once Malz has his ultimate, you must be very careful of jungle ganks because it’s a 100% dead Fox if you get caught in nether Grasp while getting ganked.

Make sure that you have Wards up and if you don’t, play very far back because a Flash ult from Malz isn’t uncommon either. If you ever see him aggressing on you, just back off because it’s not worth the risk and it’s so easy to die to Malz when he has his ult.

Malahar's passive, Void Shift is very annoying. It blocks any kind of crowd control (Charm) and basically prevents him from taking any damage from the first thing that hits him. The best way to deal with this is to try and proc the passive with Orb of Deception because you can do it from quite far away, and the true damage also doesn't get mitigated. If you unload all of your spells on him at the same time while his passive is up, you'll end up dealing no damage. Once his passive is down, you can look for a fight.

His Call of the Void can be a problem for Ahri too. Being silenced is bad news because it means you can't cast any spells or dash away with Spirit Rush. Treads can be an option to help lower the time you're silenced for, but since it's not a stun or snare they aren't as crucial. It can often be dodged by Spirit Rush or the movespeed on Orb before it hits you too. His Void Swarm usually isn't much of an issue because you can effectively kill and get away from them with Orb. With that said, they can often get in the way of Charm, or absorb the damage from Fox-Fire or Spirit Rush instead of it all going onto Malzahar if he's slightly further away than your ability range. They'll also be adding to the damage you take when you're ulted and have no way to get out. Ignite is quite important in this matchup in my eyes. This is because of situations where you have an all-in fight and he ults you, but you get your Ignite off and it ends up killing him mid-ult, thus releasing you from his Grasp and allowing you to back off and likely live.

The final thing to note about this matchup is that Triumph is a very good Rune here. This is because after a kill, you get some health back and you'll often have a Malefic Visions left on you still dealing damage. The heal after takedown is an effective way of countering any lingering damage over time and it can often save your life.

Usually this matchup will turn into a farm lane and as long as you stay away from him until you get some major items, you should be ok. Just make sure that you don’t fight him early or at 6, as you will most likely lose. This is one of the matchups where you could be roaming a lot and just abandoning your lane because it’s just so hard to deal with Malz in a 1v1.

Morgana is a fairly easy matchup for Ahri and most of the time it will end up a farm lane. Morgana can be hard to deal with because of her Black Shield as it will make your Charm useless, but Ahri has quite a nice kit against Morg. This is mainly because you can Spirit Rush out of Morgana's Soul Shackles chain and then dive right back in. Spirit Rush is also great for dodging Dark Binding and that's all Morgana really has for lockdown and her Tormented Shadow is pretty useless when the target is not locked down. The main thing you have to watch out for in this matchup is Dark Binding. If Morgana hits you with one, she'll likely be able to get her ult off as you can't dash out. Because of this I highly recommend that you buy Mercury's Treads to reduce the duration of the root and damage taken by Tormented Soil if you do get rooted. In the lane phase, Morgana will likely push a lot with her Soil and so it’s a good idea to use Orb a lot on the minion waves to counter her push. If you let her push you in all the time, you will fall behind on cs and she’ll get even further ahead by going off and farming jungle camps as it’s very common for a Morgana to do this.

Because of her Black Shield, ideally you'll want to hold off on the Charm until it ends because it will have no effect if you use it on the shield. Black Shield can last up to 5 seconds, but you can also remove it just by doing enough magic damage to it. If you are going all-in, just hold off on the Charm for 1 second so that you can damage the shield first.

Morgana is similar to a lot of champions in the way that you should never get close to her while Spirit Rush is down because if you get hit by a Bind or even the tether of her ult, you will die. Morgana loves to Flash ult too, so when Spirit Rush is down just stay away from her and farm up until it’s off cooldown and it can be a good idea to time her Flash. Banshee's Veil is a fantastic item to counter Morg because the only way that she can proc the spell shield is by hitting you with a Bind or casting her ultimate. When you have the ability to so easily dodge everything she has and also block one of her 2 most crucial abilities, it becomes very easy to beat her in a 1v1. Her passive, Soul Siphon is simply just Spell Vamp. This allows her to sustain up in lane and it can make poking her down a task. It also means that if you have a fight and you both live on low HP, she'll be the one to start healing back up immediately whereas you have to wait for Essence Theft.

It can be very hard to roam in this matchup because of how quickly Morgana can shove a wave with Tormented Soil so you will most likely have to stay mid a lot of the time. But, you do have quite a high chance of getting a kill on Morgana post 6 with a bit of poke prior to going all in.

Nidalee is a simple matchup for Ahri, she isn't very hard to kill as she tends to build full damage for her Javelin Toss. Early-game, all you have to do is stand behind your minions to dodge the Javelin Toss and that's pretty much all she'll do for harass, if you do get hit by a spear then you should move back so that she cannot Pounce to you. Nidalee players will often try to hit spears on you from an angle or from the fog of war, so make sure that if you don't have vision on Nidalee you are behind minions or far back to avoid getting hit. If you do get engaged on with Pounce, it should be quite easy to land a Charm as she will be right in front of you. From there you can hit her with Fox-Fire and Orb of Deception which should chunk her quite well and win you the trade. When it comes to lane phase, you likely won’t be able to push a Nidalee out of lane or poke her down a lot because of her Primal Surge. The best best way to kill her is to all in her at level 6 with Ignite to cut her healing. I would try to hit 1 or 2 Orbs before going all in though to increase the chances of a kill.

Because of Nidalee’s heal, Morellonomicon is even better in this matchup than it usually is as the Grevious Wounds will cut her Heal by a lot and you won’t be fully reliant on Ignite to apply the healing reduction. Nidalee will likely place down a lot of traps with Bushwhack. Make sure that you avoid stepping over a trap because not only will you take damage, but you will also be revealed to the enemy team for 4 seconds. Be careful when entering a brush too, because that's where they tend to put a lot of their traps. If you step on a trap, it will also enable her passive, Prowl which is what allows her to leap to you and she also deals more damage to anyone that's marked. It's vital that if you ever do get marked either by Spear or a Trap, you must back off immediately. In terms of items, some magic resist is a good idea because of how much her Spears can hurt late-game. Without any MR, she’ll likely deal over half your entire health pool with 1 Spear. A mid-late Banshee's Veil is a great item to get against Nidalee because it gives you quite a lot of MR to lessen her damage but also gives you more damage.

You should definitely pick up an Oracle Lens against Nidalee because it will reveal her traps and allow you to destroy them.

Once lane phase has ended, you should keep good vision up with Wards so that you can see where Nidalee, that way you won't lose half your health to a random Spear you didn't see coming. Just remember how squishy Nidalee is and how easy it is to blow her up. Catch her with 1 Charm and you’ve already won the fight.

Orianna is hard matchupand it's because of her ability to ou-trade you from level 1. Orianna has a very easy time poking in lane with her Command: Attack and Command: Dissonance, so it is important as Ahri that you stay well back to avoid getting hit by her ball. Orianna has the advantage Pre 6 because she has a shield with Command: Protect and her auto attacks do a lot more damage due to her passive, Clockwork Windup. Post 6 however, I think that Ahri gets the slight edge from being able to dash around Orianna and her ball with Spirit Rush. As long as you keep an eye on where her ball is placed and use Spirit Rush reactively, you can easily avoid the ball and even dodge Command: Shockwave, giving Orianna a hard time trying to successfully ult you. In the early-game, some Orianna players will start with Command: Protect and immediately try to auto you with the shield on them. If they do this, avoid trading with them because you will lose. The same goes for trading auto attacks at any point, do not do it, just turn and run. Her auto attacks deal way more damage than Ahri's so it's not worth it.

It’s good to play slightly reactively in this matchup as mentioned because of her ultimate, Command: Shockwave. If you dive right in for her, she’s going to be able to quite easily catch you in her ult and it deals a lot of damage. Also, never, ever tower dive an Ori while she has her ult because it can go horribly wrong if you get pulled in by her ult while being hit by the Tower.

The same goes for when you get ganked. If you get caught in her Ult when you are being ganked there’s a high chance you’ll be dead before you even get the chance to Spirit Rush away. If you are quick enough, you can actually avoid Ori’s Ultimate by immediately dashing away from her ball as it starts to pull everything in. There is a tiny delay between when she activates it and when you get pulled in and it’s just enough time to avoid it if you react fast enough. As for her Command: Dissonance, outside of doing extra damage to anything near her Ball, it slows anything hit and speeds up allies that are next to the Ball when she uses the ability. Because of the insane burst damage Ori can pull off with a full combo, I usually get a magic Resist item in this matchup. Typically it's just a Banshee's Veil, but I don't tend to get it until later in the game because it's not vital as a first item. Without any bonus MR though, Ori can quite easily insta-kill you.

Mid/late-game it shouldn't be too hard to kill Orianna as they tend to be fairly squishy. They do have their shield, but your damage will be high enough to quickly kill her in a 1v1. Do not underestimate her damage though, as she deals a lot if you get caught in her ult.

She can kill you just as fast as you can kill her, you just have a slight edge because of your mobility. Use that to your advantage and don't get too close or she will be able to get off an easy Command: Shockwave.

Riven is an interesting champion to see mid lane. It doesn't often happen, but there are occasions where she is played mid and that means bad news for Ahri. Riven is a serious pain. She is one of my most hated champions in the game as Ahri and if she gets anywhere near you, you're pretty much dead if you don't have ult. She's also extremely difficult to catch and hit with anything because of her insane mobility and amount of small dashes with her Broken Wings and Valor. As Ahri, you have to play very far away from Riven Pre-6 and literally every time you don't have Spirit Rush. It takes Riven no more than a couple of seconds to close a gap and get on you. Once she's on you, you'll get hard cc'd and killed very quickly. In the early-game against Riven, there isn't much point in trying to harass her because of the shield she has on Valor. It's resource-less and spam-able so there's often just no point in wasting mana on trying to poke her down.

Not to mention, you'll miss most Orb's or at least the return damage on Orb because she'll instantly dash to the side. The same goes for Charm. It's extremely hard to catch Riven with Charm because the projectile is too slow to really catch them off guard and they will just dash away from the projectile.

The best time to cast Orb and Charm is of course when her dash is on cooldown, but Riven's tend to max out their CDR anyway and her shield ends up on like a 4 second cooldown so there isn't a very big window.

The way that you play against Riven is similar to how you play the Zed matchup. You have to play reactively, countering their moves rather than making the first move yourself. The same goes for how to Charm Riven. Throwing out Charm at max range is never going to work.

The way that you Charm Riven is by either waiting until she's right next to you, or using Spirit Rush to position for a close range Charm, and then dashing out after. This is the only time you should ever be close to Riven and even then it's risky. The only major thing Ahri has going for her is that she can dodge Riven's Ultimate, Wind Slash. You can often manage to dodge it with a dash of Spirit Rush, but this is only the case of when they cast it from quite far away. Most Riven's will cast it at the end of their Broken Wings combo, meaning you'll be cc'd and won't be able to dodge it. If you know Riven then you'll know all about her cheesy early all-ins and burst potential. Because of how weak Ahri is early-game, you have to play really far back. Like other AD matchups a Seeker's rush is standard. You don't have to immediately upgrade to Hourglass, but you should ideally do it sooner rather than later. The reason that you do upgrade to Zhonya's Hourglass against Riven because a well-timed Stasis can avoid the damage of her ultimate, or a the last charge of Broken Wings.

The most important thing in this matchup and I can't stress it enough, is to never, ever, ever fight Riven when you don't have Spirit Rush up. You will never win and it will always result in your death. Even if you had something like Rylai's, you just can't kite Riven because she has way too much mobility from dashes and jumps.

Ryze is quite a hard matchup overall. The main reason is because he has a point and click snare with his Rune Prison. It's unavoidable and if you are marked by Flux from his Spell Flux, the snare duration is 2 seconds as of level 1 Rune Prison which is insane. Ryze also has very good poke with Overload and it's on a short cooldown. Mercury's Treads are a good item in this matchup because Ryze can easily lock Ahri down with his Rune Prison as mentioned already and because you cannot prevent yourself from being hit by Rune Prison, reducing the duration of the snare is the best you can do. Luckily, the range on Rune Prison is quite low at 615, so when Ryze is walking towards you to cast it you can often throw out an Orb for some free damage and back off. It also makes Charming him easier as he'll need to get quite close and will likely be out of the protection from minions. Ryze can even out-range you with Overload as it is 1000 range to Orb's 880. This means that you don't have the range advantage either which is usually Ahri's strong point in a lane phase.

His E, Spell Flux is what applies Flux on you, which empowers his abilities when used after. If he casts Spell Flux on the same unit a second time, it will spread the damage and apply flux to nearby units. This means you have to watch out for any minion he marks with Flux, and basically stand away from anything marked to avoid taking the spread damage and also getting marked yourself.

Flux will also spread to nearby enemies if Ryze kills the marked unit with another ability, so he can very quickly cast Spell Flux and then Overload to kill the target and spread the Flux damage and mark. It's generally a good idea to keep away from your minions at all times because of this.

Ryze is also able to very quickly push a lane by constantly spreading his Flux around a minion wave, dealing damage to all affected minions every time. If you see a Ryze doing this, try and counter push with Orb, but don't stand too close to your minions for too long or you'll get hit by the Flux spread. His main damage tool is Overload. The way that Overload works is that it gets completely reset after Ryze uses another spell. This means that he can very quickly cast multiple Overloads on top of his other abilities, resulting in a lot of damage in a short amount of time. If he ever manages to get a Flux empowered Rune Prison on you, you’re in trouble and this is why I go Treads in this matchup. You should never fight extended battles against Ryze because of how often he gets to use his spells. His damage is high and very consistent and he will always win a fight that lasts more than a few seconds. As Ahri, you typically thrive in short bursts getting in and out, then waiting for your cooldowns. It is very important that once you use a rotation of spells, you back off immediately and wait for your cooldowns. There's no point in continuing a fight against someone like Ryze with just auto attacks and 1 more Fox-Fire, you will lose.

The final thing to note about Overload is that when he casts either Rune Prison or Spell Flux, he gains a Rune which stacks up to 2. The next time he casts Overload he consumes the Runes. If it's only 1 Rune then it does nothing, but if he consumes 2 Runes, he gets a large Movespeed boost and also a shield. This can make him fairly hard to kill because not only will you have to deal more damage due to the shield, but the speed boost will make it harder to land Orb and Charm.

A major thing you have to be aware of is the Flash Rune Prison combo. Because Rune Prison is an instant cast, the second Ryze is in range you will be getting snared. Flash makes it so that you have no time to react and get out of range from the snare and it can be very deadly when paired with a gank. His ultimate, Realm Warp teleports himself and any allies in the circle to a target location after a 2 second channel. You must be aware of this at all times because a blue circle will appear where they are going to port too. Ahri can deal with this quite well because you can time a Charm and Orb to hit right after they teleport. It's generally a good idea to back right away from where they will port to though if you can. One big weakness Ryze has is his low mobility and that means he’s quite vulnerable to ganks. Some Ryze players will even play very aggressively early-game and it is very easily punished if he gets ganked. You must also be careful for being ganked yourself though because Ryze has a guaranteed snare on you if he gets in range and that can set up an enemy jungler quite nicely. If you see Ryze starting to aggress on you, move back a little because you could be getting ganked.

Ryze becomes quite hard to kill mid/late-game because of the way he builds, yet his damage is still high enough to easily take you down in a few seconds. The only stage where Ahri has a real advantage is at level 6 because Ryze doesn't have a combat ult, so try to look for an all-in when you are about to hit 6.

Swain has been reworked. Matchup will be re-done at a later date.

Syndra is a hard matchup for Ahri. This is because of how her kit allows her to blow up targets quite easily with Dark Sphere and Unleashed Power. Her burst can be aided by her stun, Scatter the Weak but she doesn't even need that to 1 shot squishy champions such as Ahri. Syndra has very good early-game poke with her Dark Sphere and it can be very hard to dodge. Celerity is very good because of the extra movespeed to aid dodging her abilities. I recommend that you build quite a lot of magic resist early in this matchup otherwise you will not survive her ultimate. It would be ok if there was some way to outplay a Syndra, but because her ultimate is a lock on spell you need the magic resist. Zhonya's Hourglass is the only way to nullify her ultimate and so it can be a very good option later in the game. Positioning is quite important in this matchup because of how her stun works. Make sure that you are never in line with her and her Spheres because you’ll be very easily stunned. Syndra often needs to hit her stun in order to get a good full combo off and so dodging her stun means you have a fighting chance.

Early-game, you're going to want to get an early Null-Magic Mantle as it's the only sure way to survive her burst and stop her from poking you down with Dark Sphere. Without any magic resist, even if you outplay the Syndra and kill her, if she presses R on you right before she dies, she'll take you with her.

Because of her ridiculous early poke, it can also be a good idea to get a Refillable Potion on your first or second back to keep you healthy in lane.

Along with Dark Sphere, she'll also use Force of Will to try and harass you. It's a bit easier to dodge this one since there is more of a travel time, but she'll end up throwing a minion at you quite often.

It also slows you if you get hit, which then makes it easier for her to land a Dark Sphere right after. If you do get hit and slowed, it can be a good idea to cast Orb to try and return some damage but also gain the movespeed to compensate for the slow. Something important to note about her ultimate is that it does more damage based on the amount of Spheres that are on the ground. This means that you should avoid fighting her when there's a lot down, but the flipside is that it can be a good time to fight her when she has none. I highly suggest building Mercury's Treads for your boots in this matchup to reduce the duration of her stun and give you even more magic resist to lower her damage output and potential to 100-0 you in 1 combo. Exhaust is also very good in this matchup because it will greatly reduce the amount of damage you take from her burst and mainly Unleashed Power. You do have less kill pressure without Ignite, but Ignite won't be much use to you when you get 1 shot.

At level 6, do not try and fight Syndra unless you have managed to poke her down with Orb of Deception or unless you hit a nice Charm. Fighting straight up with no advantage will just get you killed. Even if you do catch her, she might still be able to trade kills with her ult + Ignite. It is best to play passive until you see a good opportunity to go in such as a jungle gank or Charm hit.

Taliyah is quite an easy matchup for Ahri. This is due to being able to dodge pretty much everything Taliyah has. The only time this matchup can be slightly troublesome is in the first few levels as she has very good poke with Threaded Volley. These are not too hard to avoid, but she will deal a lot of damage to you if you can't move out the way fast enough. She also has the ability to push a wave in very quickly so you must be prepared to counter push with Orb. The movespeed Ahri gets from Orb is great for avoiding her main source of damage and it's often worth using Orb on nothing to help get away from her Volley. Orb is also a good tool for getting out of her E, Unraveled Earth which is another thing you need to keep an eye on. Basically, you never want to stand on her field of boulders and so if you're ever on or near it, back off immediately to avoid taking extra damage and being slowed. It's also worth to note that you should never dash through her boulder field because they detonate instantly, causing you to take a lot of damage.

The third thing you need to watch out for is her W which is Seismic Shove. When caught by it, you'll be pulled towards Taliyah and it perfectly sets her up for the rest other abilities. They will often use this move and Unraveled Earth together so that you'll be pulled towards her boulder field, causing you to take a ton of damage. You'll also be heavily slowed which allows Taliyah to easily hit you with Threaded Volley.

That's why it's extremely important to stay away from her boulder field. Her Seismic Shove isn't always the easiest move to dodge, but you can usually expect one when her boulder field is down which can be good warning.

Taliyah's ultimate is Weaver's Wall. It sends a massive wall of impassable terrain and she can travel down the wall at 1500 MS, allowing her to get to a certain location extremely quickly. The impassable terrain isn't a problem for Ahri because you can simply dash over it. It's essentially a roaming ultimate and she'll likely look to gank top or bot with it when it's off cooldown.

It's important that once Taliyah hits 6, you warn your team and from this point onwards you should keep an eye on her whereabouts at all times. Deep Wards can help with this, but make sure ping missing when she wanders off.

It is also a good idea to start constantly pushing mid in post 6 if she's trying to roam a lot with her ult. This will either force her to stay mid, or start losing a lot of gold and xp. The final thing to note about her ultimate is that it's a non-combat ult. This means that at level 6, Ahri has a massive advantage in a 1v1. Level 6 is also where the matchup gets easier for Ahri because Spirit Rush can be used to avoid everything Taliyah has. The is one of the kind of matchups where Spirit Rush is best used reactively. Timing each dash to dodge Taliyah's abilities is how you effectively win a fight. If you just spam R for the damage then you might get caught by her abilities during the brief downtime on dashes. While spamming R will probably still work, there's just no reason to risk getting caught and losing the fight because you were impatient.

That's pretty much all there is to this matchup. Just be careful early, stay away from her boulder field, keep tabs on her post 6 and remember that Ahri has a clear advantage with Spirit Rush due to the fact that Taliyah has a non-combat ultimate.

Talon isn't too hard for Ahri to deal with, but he can still be trouble. He has a lot of burst with his ultimate Shadow Assault, but pre 6 should be quite smooth for Ahri. The main thing you need to watch out for during laning is his Rake. It's very hard to avoid the initial part to his Rake, but it's not so hard to avoid the return damage as it doesn't come back immediately. Avoiding the return is more important though because it deals more damage on the way back and it will prevent taking an extra stack of his Blade's End. Rake also slows, which aids Talon is hitting both parts. Because there is a small delay before Rake returns, Ahri can sometimes make use of the movespeed boost on Orb to help move away if you're quick enough. Talon's Q is Noxian Diplomacy and it's how he'll be able to quickly get on you. He also deals bonus damage with this ability and it's part of why he can have such high burst. He won't tend to jump to you very often pre 6 unless he's going for an all-in because he has to fully commit or risk losing a trade due to ranged vs melee.

The best time to Charm Talon is when he does jump to you with Noxian Diplomacy. He'll be right in your face so it'll be a point blank Charm which are usually much easier to land. This will allow you to then cast Orb and immediately back off, preventing Talon from getting multiple auto attacks on you.

Talon's E is Assassin's Path and it's a very good ability in terms of mobility and escaping/catching power. He can vault over any piece of terrain which can make it incredibly hard to get away from him, or chase him down. You must always be aware that he can get over any piece of terrain and your positioning should change based on this. It does have a huge cooldown though luckily, so once he's jumped over a wall, he can't do it on that same wall for 160 seconds at rank 1. It will be at rank 1 for most of the game too as it's maxed last.

He'll likely look to roam a lot post 6 and he has a very high success rate due to his ability to jump over any piece of terrain. Wards are very important against Talon due to his roam potential, and it can also be a good idea to constantly push mid in each wave. This will either force him to stay mid for longer, preventing or delaying a roam, or he'll just miss out on gold and xp.

If you know he's roaming and decide to follow, be very careful on your way to top or bot because if he knows you're following him, there's a good chance he will wait in a brush to ambush you. Talon has insane burst and if he catches you by surprise, he can often kill you before you get enough time to react and get out.

Shadow Assault is his ultimate, and it's where most of his burst potential comes from. It can be very hard to win a fight against Talon when he's the one who engages with Shadow Assault. He gains invisibility and a huge movespeed boost which makes it very easy for him to get to you and deal his entire burst. You should always be aware of what his ultimate can do, and you shouldn't randomly go all-in when he has it up because he will either easily escape, or use the invisibility to turn the fight in his favour.

His invisibility lasts for up to 2.5 seconds, which means 2.5 seconds of having no idea where exactly he could be. One thing that can give you the means to deal with this more easily is the Oracle Lens. When you activate the Oracle, it will highlight any invisible units in a red outline. It will not reveal them, but it will allow you to get an accurate idea of there position. This can enable you to throw out a more accurate Orb or Charm, or reposition yourself to a better spot based on where they are.

Talons will often go into the fog of war before casting their ultimate and rushing towards you. Because he would have casted it out of sight, you won't see any animation and you'll have no idea that he's coming for you until he's already on you. This is where Zhonya's Hourglass can come in huge with the active stasis.

It will allow you to immediately Hourglass when he jumps to you which not only prevents a lot of his damage from going off, but it then allows you to counter attack with full vision on him. He'll have just used his ultimate too, so there's no easy way for him to escape from this point. Also, if he ever uses his ult for the invis mid fight, hold off from throwing Charm and Orb immediately because there's a high chance it'll be wasted. The final thing to note about his kit is his passive, Blade's End. Whenever you get hit by one of Talon's abilities, you will get marked by Wound. Once you are at 3 stacks of Wound, the next auto attack from Talon will consume the stacks and cause you to bleed for quite a lot of damage. Rake will apply 2 stacks of Wound too, so he can basically get the bleed off with just Rake and Noxian Diplomacy, resulting in a lot of damage. During the lane phase, you don't have to worry too much though since you will usually only be getting hit by Rake. It's still a good idea to back off slightly and wait for the stack to time-out on you though which takes 6 seconds.

Talon has a very high first blood rate because of his scary burst at level 2 with a Rake, Noxian Diplomacy and his passive bleed. That, paired with Ignite is often more than enough to melt almost anyone in the game. If he hits level 2 before you, make sure to back off right away.

The last thing to note about this matchup is that if your Spirit Rush is ever down, do not engage in a fight with him. Spirit Rush is your main tool for getting away from him once he's jumped to you and if you ever miss Charm without your ultimate, you're 100% dead.

Like other AD matchups, you should aim to get Seeker's Armguard as soon as possible. As mentioned already, it's also a good idea idea to upgrade it to Zhonya's Hourglass too because it can be used to prevent a part of his Shadow Assault damage and possibly either or both parts of Rake, as well as damage from his bleed.

Twisted Fate is one of the easiest matchups for Ahri due to how squishy and immobile he is. He is extremely easy to kill at every stage of the game and he has trouble getting away from Ahri in time. His only chance is pulling a gold card from Pick A Card, stunning you and running away, but Ahri can still usually catch up to him. Something that a lot of TF players will do as soon as the lane phase starts is Red Card your minions. They will likely try and hit the minion closest to you so that they also hurt you with the area damage. Make sure that you stay well away from your minions to stop TF from getting free damage on you while farming. This will also result in the lane being pushed so if he is constantly Red Carding minions, you can throw Orbs down the wave to counter-push the lane. The whole lane phase can be a bit of a pain vs a Twisted Fate if he just shoves waves with Wild Cards and he won't run out of mana due to his Blue Card. This is fine because it will allow you to farm up til 6 which is where you can look for all-ins.

When TF hits level 6, you should immediately tell you team and try to keep an eye on where he is from now on. As soon as TF goes missing, call it in chat or with pings because there is a high chance that he might be looking for a gank with Destiny. A good thing to do is also put Wards in the enemy jungle so you can see where he is going and warn of his ult, or follow to possibly aid your team or clean up.

It's also a good idea to start constantly hard shoving mid post 6. This makes it so that if TF wished to roam, he will be losing a lot of gold and xp, as well as his tower if you decide to pressure mid rather than roam yourself.

Ahri can stop the channel of Destiny by hitting Charm. If you have vision on where TF is heading, you can quickly get to him to try and stop the teleport. When it comes to mid and late-game, you should have enough damage to kill TF without even needing to hit Charm too. The best time to go all in on a TF is when he’s either locked in a Blue/Red Card (so that he can’t stun you), or when he’s just used his Pick A Card. This basically means that he has no way to stun you and get out and you’ll be free to unload everything onto him without much retaliation. Because of how often TF will be looking to roam with Destiny, it can be a good idea to take Teleport against him. This is so that you can match his TP, rather than following on foot and being very late to the fight that will likely already be over. You will have less kill pressure on him, but a lot of the time TF will simply shove and roam anyway. The main thing I recommend you buy it this matchup is Mercury's Treads, simply because his Gold Card (stun) can severely hinder Ahri and if you get Gold Carded in a teamfight or when you get ganked, you’re as good as dead with no Tenacity.

Banshee's Veil is the other situational item that works very well against TF. He only has 2 ways to proc the spell shield which is either his Pick A Card, or Wild Cards. You can usually dodge his Wild Cards quite easily, so his only sure way to proc your Banshee's is by wasting his main tool on it, which gives Ahri a massive advantage.

Late-game TF can do a surprising amount of damage, so make sure you don't think he can't kill you. Most of the time you'll be able to delete him before he even gets the time to Pick his Card because of how squishy TF’s are, but stay well away from him when he has a Gold Card at the ready.

Veigar is a hard matchup for Ahri because of his entire purpose of deleting mages in an instant with his Baleful Strike and Primordial Burst, aided by a stun from Event Horizon and sometimes a hit from Dark Matter. Despite Veigar being a hard matchup, the lane phase is actually quite easy for Ahri and it's more of a farm lane than anything else. You sometimes get Veigars that will choose to harass with their Baleful Strike, but most will tend to farm with it to start ramping up their AP. The main thing to watch out for during lane phase and Pre 6 is a jungle gank paired with his Event Horizon. It is very easy for Veigar to stun someone with Event Horizon and if there is jungler like Lee Sin or Jarvan IV to follow up, there could be a very dead Ahri. It can be quite obvious when you are getting ganked though as Veigar will start walking towards you in order to get the stun off. If you notice him start to walk up to you just back off and wait it out because it’s not worth the risk and you can easily die to a gank.

One of the most important items in this matchup is Mercury's Treads so that you can break out of his stun sooner. It makes it so that you can often break out and move by the time Dark Matter goes off, which will save you a large chunk of your health. If Veigar hits a max range stun then breaking out sooner can also mess up his combo attempt.

Cleanse is a very strong summoner against Veigar for the same reason as Treads. Breaking out of his stun means that Ahri can proceed to dodge Veigar's Blateful Strike and Dark Matter, opposed to being stuck in place taking the full damage, likely resulting in your death.

The third option that is crucial for countering Vegair and his stun is Banshee's Veil. The matchup goes from hard to easy when Veigar's stun is out of the equation. Ahri can very easily dodge his abilities and the only thing you're guaranteed to get hit by is hit ultimate. The magic resist from Banshee's also means that the times where you do get hit by a full combo, you'll often survive.

Those 3 things are they keys to making this matchup much easier for Ahri. Without his hard cc, he can't lock Ahri down and Veigar tends to have a hard time getting his damage off on mobile targets. It's very easy to avoid Dark Matter and dodge Baleful Strike with Spirit Rush. This is why there is such a high emphasis on doing everything you can to minimise the chance of being stunned. Typically, you're going to want some kind of magic resist before Veigar hits 6 like other AP burst matchups. An early Null-Magic Mantle will usually be enough to make it so that they can’t nuke you in 1 combo. Zhonya's Hourglass can be quite good too because a well-timed stasis can prevent the damage from his ultimate, but it's not as good as Banshee's. One thing you also need to be aware of is the interaction between Event Horizon and Spirit Rush. You WILL be stunned if you try to dash through his wall and so if you are trying to escape or aggress for a kill, make sure you Flash the wall so that you do not get stunned.

Because the lane phase should go pretty smoothly, you will be well farmed moving into the mid-game, just make sure that you avoid a direct fight while you don't have any magic resist because you will just be bursted down. Similar to how you deal with Syndra, the only safe way you can go in for a fight is if you land a good Charm or get them low with Orb of Deception.

Vel'Koz is another very easy matchup for Ahri. Ahri can dodge everything Vel'Koz has with Spirit Rush, especially his ultimate, Life Form Disintegration Ray. In fact, I actually believe that Vel'koz would have a better time if he never used his ult. It sets Ahri up with the perfect Charm as Vel'Koz is stationary while he is using it. Ahri can simply Spirit Rush to the side and throw a Charm at Vel'Koz, followed by every other spell to blow him up. Like a lot of champions Ahri is good against, Vel'Koz has no mobility and is very weak to ganks. When it comes to late-game, if you catch him with a Charm it pretty much becomes a free kill. You won't even need Charm to kill him a lot of the time, but Charm does make sure that he can't get away with Flash or get help from his team. Early-game, Vel’koz has some nice poke with Plasma Fission and Void Rift, but it’s not too hard to avoid them and you don’t have to start boots or anything like that. It can take a while to get used to how his Plasma Fission works because it will travel straight and when it is activated again, it splits the bolt in two, each of which fires in opposite directions. It basically makes a T shape.

Celerity is a very nice Rune against Vel'Koz. The additional movespeed is very helpful for dodging pretty much all of his abilities and it will naturally make laning easier against his poke.

As for his Void Rift, there’s 2 parts to it. Make sure that you move away from it because a second wave of damage is applied in the same area. It can often be hard to avoid taking damage from the initial part, but simply walking out of the area stops you from being hit by the second part.

A lot of Vel'Koz players like to start the lane by immediately casting Void Rift down the minion wave. If you see them do this, you should throw an Orb down the wave yourself to prevent being pushed into your tower.

His passive, Organic Deconstruction is another mark and stack based passive. Every time you're hit by one of his spells, it will apply 1 stack. At 3 stacks they are consumed and the target takes true damage. This makes it extra important to avoid the 3 stacks because being true damage, it will hurt. If you're ever at 2 stacks you should back off right away and wait for it to time-out. The only other thing you need to watch out for is his Tectonic Disruption. It’s a displacement ability and it can be quite dangerous when you are caught with it. Luckily for Ahri, it’s extremely easy to dodge with Spirit Rush, but when you don’t have your ult it’s not so easy to avoid. If you get hit by it when you are being ganked it can often lead to your death too. The only point where Vel'Koz is quite hard to deal with is when he is sieging at your tower as he is a very good champion in terms of poke and siege potential. His abilities do deal quite a lot of damage too, so you still need to focus on avoiding them as best you can.

All you have to do is play somewhat safe until 6 and as soon as you get Spirit Rush this lane becomes very favoured towards Ahri and you can start to look for all-ins which he won’t be able to do much against.

Viktor has a huge advantage early-game due to his poke and the matchup is quite brutal because of this. He does have a lack of mobility and Ahri can quite easily avoid his Arcane Storm and Gravity Field with her Spirit Rush, but because of how rough the early game is, it's a very hard matchup. As I said, Viktor can give Ahri a very hard time in the early-game as he trades very well with his Siphon Power and the empowered auto attack from it. His Hextech Ray is also a very good tool for poking Ahri down in lane phase and it will outrange anything you can do in return. Just from the fact that he has 2 great trading and poking abilities to your 1 means that he will almost always come out ahead from trades. When he goes in for a Siphon Power on you, make sure that you try not to let him het the auto off as well, because it will do quite a lot of damage and you won't be able to trade back very well. While he has the empowered auto, move well back and wait for him to use it, or for it to run out. There's literally no point in trying to trade or fight him after he uses Siphon Power because not only will he hit harder, he gets a shield too so any damage you do will be mostly negated.

His Hextech Ray is the other tool he has for poking in lane. It's a laser that travels along the ground at quite a fast pace but because it does have travel time it's not the hardest to dodge. The good Viktors will try to angle the laser so that it's harder to dodge or predict and that usually means that it will be diagonal rather than just straight down the lane.

Something that they will also try and do is hit you while they farm with it. They'll try to line up the laser to hit the minions and you at the same time so if you see him advancing or getting within melee range of the Minions, move back and wait for him to use his Death Ray or move back again.

When he upgrades his Hex Core, his Death Ray sends out an explosion along the line of the laser that deal additional damage. It is very important that you move well away from the laser as soon as you see it to prevent being hit by both parts.

Celerity is a great Rune for extra movement speed and it will make it easier for you to dodge his Death Ray. Early boots is also advised because Death Ray is his main source of damage and so dodging it is paramount to surviving this matchup.

The only other thing you need to watch out for pre 6 is his Gravity Field. Without Spirit Rush, you won't have such an easy time getting out of his Field and you can often get stunned by it. You can throw out an Orb and with the movespeed get out of the Field but if Orb is on cooldown you could be in trouble if it's paired with a gank. Because of this, and generally how much of a bully Viktor can be, you should play very safe and far back pre 6. Once you hit 6 the lane becomes a bit less rough. Spirit Rush is fantastic against Viktor because you can basically avoid or dodge most of his abilities. You can immediately get out of his Gravity Field, dodge his Death Ray and dash away from his ultimate, Arcane Storm. Viktor also has no mobility and so it's very easy to set up a Charm and all in via re-positioning from Spirit Rush. The final thing to note about Viktor is their Flash all-in surprise attacks at 6. If they manage to poke you down with Death Ray, they will likely try to go for a Flash ult and quickly burst you down before you get a chance to react. Just make sure that you stay really far back if you are less than half HP and he has his ultimate up.

Because of how rough the lane is, it's a good idea to buy potions every time you recall, or a Refillable Potion on an early back. You will be taking a lot of damage in the lane phase and so you'll be needing a lot of sustain to ensure you don't fall behind or get killed.

Basically, even though you have many advantages over Viktor Post 6, because of how rough the early levels are it is a very tough matchup. You have to play very safe early and prepare to take a bit of a beating. This matchup is literally all about surviving the early-game.

Vladimir is a difficult matchup for Ahri. He trades very well from level 1 and it can be very hard to actually kill Vlad at every stage of the game due to the health he gets from his passive Crimson Pact and his ability to dodge everything you have with Sanguine Pool. Not to mention the constant healing from his Transfusion. There are many reasons why Vlad is hard for Ahri from the start of the game and it all comes down to his kit. The only thing that Vlad doesn't have is hard cc, but his raw damage more than makes up for that. From level 1 Vlad can start to harass Ahri with Transfusion and since it is a point and click ability guess what? You can't do anything about it. Oh, and did I mention it gives him life back? Because of how Vlad's Transfusion works it makes it extremely hard to trade with him in lane because you have to hit Orb of Deception to trade even damage back, but then he can just get that health back with another Transfusion. It's even worse when they start Boots because it gives them extra mobility to dodge Orb and Charm but it also allows them to move up for harass and get in range of a Transfusion and Tides of Blood much quicker and the 4 health pots start just add insult to injury.

You simply cannot poke down a Vlad and force him out of lane because of how much sustain he has. On top of all this he has no mana to worry about so he can forever cast his Transfusion to get his health back up.

it is very important that you try to avoid being hit by his empowered Transfusion. Each cast of Transfusion grants him 1 stack of Bloodthirst and at 2 stacks, the next transfusion he uses will deal double damage and heal for more. You must not let him use this on you, simply back of and wait for him to use it on a minion.

Another reason why this is such a hard matchup is because of Vlad's ability to pretty much dodge everything you throw out with a well-timed Sanguine Pool. There is a slightly good thing to this though because when he casts pool it consumes 20% of his current HP and Ignite damage still hurts him while he's in-targetable. Be very careful when you are low on health under tower because Sanguine Pool makes for a very easy tower dive and escape because of how Vlad becomes in-targetable and so turret aggro is dropped.

Vlad's Ultimate, Hemoplague is incredibly strong and it amplifies the damage you take while you have it on you. You must never fight until it pops, because you will only be putting yourself at an even bigger disadvantage than before. The damage amp isn't just from Vlad's damage either, it can be from any source.

Zhonya's Hourglass is very good against Vlad's ultimate because you can enter the stasis right before his ult pops and you won't take any damage from it. Kind of similar to Death Mark only Hemoplague takes 4 seconds before it will detonate on you. The other reason that Vlad is such a pain to deal with is because of his passive. Crimson Pact is in my opinion one of the strongest passives in the game. It allows Vlad to become extremely tanky because the more AP he builds the more free health he gets and any health he buys gets him free AP. Ahri is not good at dealing with high health targets and it makes killing him a very tough task. The best way to deal with a Vlad is to lock him down with hard cc. Allies with some form of stun or snare work very well with Ahri because it allows you to chain their stuns with your Charm and it means that he can't Sanguine Pool and avoid your Charm. They will also always be pushing the wave as a result of casting Tides so a jungler with a stun or snare can be very effective against Vlad. Realistically though, there won't be many times in a game where you can easily 1v1 a Vlad and kill him unless he majorly messes up.

Your best bet in this matchup is to play safe and try not to fight him very often. You can out-range him with Orb but because of his ridiculous sustain it won't do much in the long run. Play safe, farm up and look to roam instead of trying to 1v1 Vlad.

Xerath is a fairly simple matchup again because of his lack of mobility and that all of his skills can be easily dodged by Spirit Rush. Xerath does have some very nice poke with his Arcanopulse however which makes the lane phase the hardest part. As soon as you hit 6 however, it becomes a very easy matchup. If you can avoid being harassed by Arcanopulse during the early-game then Xerath doesn't stand a chance when you both hit 6. It is also important that you dodge his stun, Shocking Orb because if you get hit by that, you will take an Arcanopulse and an Eye of Destruction which will do a good amount of damage to you. This is why I always go Mercury's Treads against Xerath. His stun is really the only way to reliably kill you and so the sooner you break out of it, the sooner you can get back to dodging his abilities and killing him. Because of how much range Xerath has, you probably won't be able to harass him much in the early-game other than from Orb alone, so it can be better to take Summon Aery or Arcane Comet to increase your trading potential.

Most Xeraths will push the minion waves so roaming is hard against a Xerath, but luckily once you get your ultimate you can start to play very aggressively and try to get a kill on him.

Celerity is great against Xerath as the bonus movespeed will allow you to more easily dodge all of his abilities. Celerity is arguably better vs Xerath than anyone else because all 4 of his abilities are essentially skill-shots and can be avoided via moving alone.

It can be a good idea to get early boots in this matchup too, which will help in dodging his abilities, but most importantly for dodging his ultimate, Rite of the Arcane. Ahri is very effective at shutting down Xerath’s ultimate too. Rite of the Arcane causes Xerath to be completely immobile and he can’t move while casting it. This makes it very easy for Ahri to Spirit Rush towards him and get a perfect Charm off, very similar to Charming Karthus while he is casting Requiem. Xerath is very vulnerable to ganks because he has literally no mobility. Another thing that makes him so weak to ganks is that a lot of Xerath players push for most of the early-game and so it can be quite easy to get a successful gank off on them. Something that Xerath players like to do is similar to what Jayce players do. They will go out of sight and use their insane range to hit you with Arcanopulse. When you see Xerath wander off, make sure you stay away from the area he went to. It can also be very good to get the Farsight Alteration against Xerath so that you can scout for him using his ultimate or trying to get sneaky shots off with Arcanopulse.

Overall, the matchup is usually quite easy with the only troublesome part being the first few levels. With Treads and bonus movespeed via Celerity and items it is very easy to dodge everything he has.

Yasuo is a very annoying champion to play against as Ahri. The reason for this is solely because of one single ability, his Wind Wall as it literally blocks every single one of Ahri's spells. Yasuo is quite easy to poke down though with Orb of Deception and auto attacks and if they play very aggressively, they can be very weak to ganks. I play against quite a lot of Yasuo players that play ridiculously far up and they get ganked and die, it seems to be almost the play style of most Yasuos. One key thing that you should do in this matchup, is make sure you auto attack him once whenever his passive Way of the Wanderer shield is up so that it starts to drain it. Once the shield is gone, you can then poke him for the full damage with Orb of Deception and Fox-Fire. One thing that you should watch out for is his knock up from the third active of Steel Tempest. When he has it ready, stand well back and try to dodge the tornado as that is the only way that Yasuo can proc his own ultimate, Last Breath which is the main part of his nuke. It also greatly limits his trading ability in lane when he can't hit you with the Tornado.

Something that you must be aware of with Yasuo's is their aggressiveness with Sweeping Blade. They can very quickly get from one side of a lane to another by surfing through creeps. They will often surf creeps to get in melee range of you, especially when they have their knock-up at the ready. When you see them dashing towards you, throw an Orb and back off because you won't win a trade when he's in your face.

Because of his Wind Wall, you should try not to use your Charm until he has used his Wind Wall, or the Charm will often be wasted. You can usually bait out a Wall with Orb of Deception and Fox-Fire. Finally when you are fighting and he places down his Wind Wall, don't cast any spells and back off from the Wall because what Yasuos will do is stand inside their Wall so that no projectile can hit them. Once the Wall has ended, feel free to dive back in and kill him. The most important key to winning this matchup is early-game through sheer auto attacks on him. Always proc his shield, then a couple of seconds later go back in for a proper trade. Hitting an Orb and a couple of auto attacks is often enough to do some serious damage and greatly win a trade, especially with Electrocute. As with other AD matchups, Seeker's Armguard is the Item to rush. You don't need to upgrade it to Hourglass against Yasuo immediately though because it doesn't tend to help you that much, but it's still a good option later.

Overall, the matchup can vary quite a lot depend on the aggressiveness of the Yasuo, but make sure to abuse them early with auto attacks and never use your abilities while his Wind Wall is up.

Zed is quite a difficult matchup for Ahri due to how slippery he is with his Living Shadow and Death Mark. The entire matchup can be based on whether you manage to hit Charm after he uses Death Mark on you. When Zed uses his ult on you, he will appear behind you like Katarina and her Shunpo. This means that you have to throw your Charm backwards in order to hit him with it, but sometimes it is not that simple because of how Zed can jump between his Shadows. Zed has very good early-game harass with his Razor Shuriken, especially when paired together with Living Shadow. Even though he is melee, you should treat this matchup as ranged because they will all stay back and only go forward to last hit or poke with Shuriken. This makes it very hard to try and poke Zed yourself and they can just safely farm with Shuriken if you're pressuring them when they go in for CS. Zed definitely has the ability to out-trade Ahri if he hits both Shurikens, and since he has no mana to worry about he can do it every time it's off cooldown. When Zed's use their Shadow to help them harass however, it means that they have no mobility or way to escape from a jungle gank. If you find yourself up against a Zed who uses his Shadow offensively every time, inform your jungler immediately.

Seeker's is the immediate rush in this matchup and once you get the armor from it, the lane is a lot less brutal and you take a lot less damage from Zed's harass. Once Zhonya's Hourglass is completed, the matchup becomes a lot easier, but Zed is a hard champion to lock down and kill so it is still quite difficult overall. Zed also has the ability to dodge a lot of Ahri's abilities with his ult, as it takes him out of phase for a split second.

Perfect Timing is an amazing situational Rune for this matchup. It basically nullifies Zed's first use of his ultimate and it will always be at a time where you don't have Hourglass yet.

In terms of when to use the Hourglass Stasis, it's better to use it as he's mid jump to you. this will prevent Death Mark from even being applied to you and so there is no risk of miss-timing the stasis and still getting hit by Death Mark just as the Stasis ends. The only form of crowd control that Zed has is a slow via his Shadow Slash paired with Living Shadow. Keep in mind that only the targets hit by the Shadows cast of Slash are slowed. Ideally you will want to just farm up for Hourglass and then you will be able to fight Zed knowing you can counter his ultimate rather than leaving it all up to 1 Charm. Make sure that when you are close to 6 you are ready to react. Zeds will often try to all-in the second they get their ultimate, and if they get theirs before you it can go very badly. It's also important to note that you should never, ever fight a Zed when Spirit Rush is down. You will not be able to win a straight up fight against him with your ult down. Just keep your distance and poke with Orb until Spirit Rush is back up.

One last thing to note is that Zed is a good roamer, and he will often try to roam bot and secure kills with his ultimate. Post 6 it can be a good idea to constantly push mid and then look to roam yourself. if you are ever following a Zed's roam however, make sure you are very cautious as he could stop and wait for you if he knows you're following.

The overall difficulty of this matchup can greatly depend on the skill of the Zed, but also the aggressiveness. The very aggressive Zed's can really bully Ahri an advantage come 6, whereas the more passive Zeds are easier to deal with.

Ziggs is an easy matchup for Ahri. He is very easy to kill for most of the game due to the way that they build and he has very limited mobility with his Satchel Charge that often won't be enough to get away from Ahri and her Spirit Rush. Ziggs is only really a problem during the laning phase because he has some of the best poke in the game with Bouncing Bomb and he does a lot of damage with his passive auto attack, Short Fuse. The way to deal with Ziggs in lane is to stand far away from him when he has his passive auto attack ready, wait until he uses it on a Minion and then you can go back in for cs and harass with Orb of Deception. If he gets to use his passive attack on you every time it's up you will quickly lose a lot of health. Ziggs can also play very passively from very far back, farming with his Bombs and always being safe with Hexplosive Minefield and Satchel Charge, so killing him in lane phase is sometimes almost impossible.

Once you hit 6 and get Spirit Rush however, you can start to look for all-ins against Ziggs. Because of his low mobility, catching him with a Charm can often lead to his death. Even if he manages to knock you away with his Satchel, you can very quickly get back via Spirit Rush.

The only major thing you need to watch out for in lane is his Satchel Charge because it can be used to knock you forwards or to one side. If this happens to you while you’re being ganked, it can easily lead to your death. Once you have Spirit Rush, avoiding Satchel is easy but until then, watch out for any sudden aggressive movement from Ziggs. His Hexplosive Minefield is quite simple to avoid. Make sure that you don't ever walk over it or accidentally dash onto it because it can hurt quite a lot. Ziggs can use this to essentially block off a choke point and prevent you from going past an area. When this happens, do not cross the Minefield even if you need to be somewhere. Wait for it to run out, or go a different route because not only does it do a lot of damage, but it also slows you putting you in further danger. His ultimate, Mega Inferno Bomb isn't too much of a problem for Ahri and it can be very easily avoided with 1 dash of Spirit Rush. The only time where you need to be careful is when you're on low health. Make sure that if you ever recall while low, do it in a less obvious spot and always watch where you are before opening the shop.

Late-game Ziggs can deal a lot of damage with his abilities, but it isn't too hard to dodge them with Spirit Rush and kill him very quickly as he'll be squishy. When you are trying to fight a Ziggs, try not to have a poke war with him as you'll likely lose. Instead, the best thing to do is just go all-in to take away the advantage he has which is range and poke. Most games vs a Ziggs will end up being a farm lane until 6, at that point you can start to roam or maybe get a kill on Ziggs after harassing him down or landing a Charm.

Zoe is a pretty easy matchup for Ahri and it's mainly due to the fact that Zoe's only real source of damage comes from a skill-shot. Her only form of crowd control is also a skill-shot and so Ahri has a high chance of being able to dodge both of her main abilities with Spirit Rush. During the lane phase, the main thing Zoe will do is try to hit you, or farm with Paddle Star. This ability collides with the first unit hit, so all you have to do is stand behind your caster minions and Zoe will have a hard time hitting you with one. It does some serious damage though and it will quickly result in pushing the wave in to you. Make sure that you counter-push with Orb if she is using Paddle Star on minions every time. Zoe only has Paddle Star as her main damaging ability, but her passive More Sparkles! does grant her some additional bonus damage on autos after using an ability.

While it doesn't give much bonus damage early-game, it is still bonus damage and you should try to back off and avoid being hit by it. It does take 5 seconds to time-out though, and it's not that bad if you do get hit by it due to its low damage early-game.

Her second ability is Spell Thief and this is where it gets weird. Whenever Zoe's enemy champions cast a summoner spell or item active, a spell shard will drop for 20 seconds that will allow Zoe to pickup and then use for herself within 1 minute. Not only this, but some minions spawn with spell shards that will drop when Zoe kills them.

The spell shard from minions can contain any spell or item active and this is where the matchup can become unpredictable and sometimes even unfair. Your lane could go very well, or quite badly depending on what Zoe gets as her random spell drops. It shouldn't change the outcome of the matchup too drastically, but be prepared for some unfair scenarios where you get outplayed by RNG.

The final thing to note about Spell Thief is that when she casts the Spell Thief active, or her own summoner spell in general, she gains a boost in movespeed and summons 3 bubbles. The 3 bubbles orbit her and get hurled at nearby enemy units. This is quite a lot like Fox-Fire funilly enough, but the damage isn't very high at the low ranks.

Since it's your minions that drop a spell shard, it will be closer to you than Zoe most of the time. This gives you the opportunity to zone Zoe away and stop her from being able to pick the spell shard up. You do have to keep her away for 20 seconds though so it's no easy task , but it's important that you don't let her get it for free. If the shard drops in the middle of the lane, or on your side then it's a good idea to hard shove the wave to force Zoe to her tower. Just be careful of being ganked while you're pushing for 20 seconds.

Her ultimate is Portal Jump and it works kind of like LeBlanc and her Distortion, only Zoe has to go back to where she jumped from. The main use of this ability is to get more range on her Paddle Star or Sleepy trouble Bubble. Other than that, there isn't too much to worry about except for the potential use to dodge a Charm or Orb. Because you know that she must return to where she cast it from, you should aim your Charm for where she will go back to after 1 second.

Her other main ability is Sleepy Trouble Bubble and this is what pairs with Paddle Star to deal her main load of damage. It's a skill-shot that sends a ball to the location, dealing magic damage and making the target drowsy. After a brief delay, the target falls asleep for 2 seconds. When you are asleep, you take double damage from her Paddle Star, so it's crucial to avoid being hit by this move. This is where Cleanse and Banshee's Veil come in big and help to counter what she is capable of.

Cleanse and Banshee's are both extremely good ways to counter Zoe's kit. In order for Zoe to deal major damage, she needs to hit you with her sleep and then Paddle Star. Having Cleanse means that you can immediately break free from her sleep which already reduces the damage you can take by 50%. By breaking the sleep, it also gives you the chance to dodge the incoming Paddle Star shot too. Banshee's works in a similar way, but it's slightly less reliable. In some situations, the spell shield will actually be able to block her Paddle Star which is her main source of damage. Another situation is that the shield blocks her sleep which would result in the same situation as Cleanse. The third scenario is where she is closer to you and she can proc the shield with either an item active she has from Spell Thief, or the orbs that follow. The third scenario isn't ideal, but it could still be blocking something like a Protobelt or GLP active for example. The magic resist from Banshee's is also a huge factor in countering Zoe simply due to the fact she only has 1 major source of damage.

Zoe is a weird champion overall and she is a lot different to play against than most champions. Ahri tends to have a pretty easy time naturally because of her kit, but being able to counter Zoe via Cleanse and Banshee's is very helpful and it means Ahri should have no trouble at all.

Zyra is an easy matchup for Ahri for the same reasons as the other easy matchups. She is ridiculously squishy and has no mobility. On top of all this, Spirit Rush can be used to dodge pretty much everything she has. At any point in the game after 6, you can just ult in basically whenever you see her and you'll be able to kill her and get out. The only thing you have to watch out for is her Grasping Roots because Zyra can do a hell of a lot of damage if she catches you. During the lane phase, just farm up, poke with Orb of Deception and as soon as you hit 6, you can look for a kill, it's honestly that simple. Like I said, just be aware of the damage she can do and try not to get too close to her as it will make dodging her abilities a lot harder. Make sure you stay away from her plants formed by Rampant Growth as they'll do a lot of damage and they are quite awkward to kill, they have limited range however so as long as you stay back they won't be able to hit you. That said, Fox-Fire does do a very good job of taking out her plants, but usually only 1 at a time. You can also out-range her plants with Orb.

You should never try to kill her plants with auto attacks though because you'll take a lot of punishment for it. Either stay away from them, or use spells to kill them. You should also never fight Zyra when she has a lot of plants up because they can block Charm and also absorb the damage from Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush. It's important that whenever you see a seed on the ground, walk over it to destroy it. Be careful when doing this though as Zyra can quite easily quickly summon the plant. When it comes to Post 6 fights, the most important thing that you need to make sure you do, is get out of the circle of her ultimate. Stranglethorns does initial damage and then knocks-up every target in the circle and this will leave you very vulnerable for follow-up abilities such as her snare and by that point you’ll pretty much be dead, especially when multiple enemy champions are involved. Spirit Rush enables Ahri to get out of her ult area very easily so don’t hesitate to immediately dash out, even if you’re dashing away from her.

The only other thing to mention is that Mercury's Treads are very good against Zyra because it will reduce the amount of time you spend trapped in her Grasping Roots if you do get caught. Getting caught by her snare is often the only way that she can actually kill you.

The early-game is all about the laning phase and facing off against the enemy mid. When it comes to the lane phase, the 2 objectives are farming minions and trading with the enemy laner. With Ahri, there is a much higher focus on the former. In terms of overall strength, Ahri is at her weakest point in the early levels and especially around 1-3. This is because she is not a lane dominant champion and her main damage source comes from Orb of Deception which isn’t exactly the most reliable of spells. Orb isn’t the easiest skill-shot to land and even when you do land it, you need to hit both parts in order to deal sufficient damage. Ahri is also incredibly squishy. To give you an idea of just how squishy she is, she has the 30th lowest base HP at level 1 which puts her in the bottom 25% of champions. Because of Ahri’s weak early-game, most of the lane phase you will be primarily playing somewhat passively and focussing on farming and powering up. Her Orb can also be used at any point to trade with or poke the enemy laner but because Ahri is a very strong scaling champion and her power comes from post 6, solely farming until you have your Spirit Rush is also a perfectly fine thing to do. It’s not her job to be a lane bully and harass down the enemy laner and so don’t ever think that you have to be trying to damage them in lane. Just remember, you’re more than likely going to out-scale them and gain a huge advantage at 6.

Farming is a very vital part to League and it’s the main source of xp & gold income. Getting the kill or last hit on a minion is extremely important and the early stages of the game are where it is the hardest. Come mid and late-game, you can farm minion waves in seconds with Orb of Deception, but in the early-game this is not possible. For most of laning phase, your primary way to farm minions is via auto attacks and that means you have time the attack in order to get the killing hit on each minion.

Mages often have a harder time last hitting than melee or AD champions. The more AD you have, the easier it is to last hit because you can kill the minion from a higher amount of health and you don’t have to time your attack so closely. Mages are ranged champs which means their auto attack has some travel time before it hits the attacked target. This means that you have to also take into account the travel speed of your champions auto attack in order to get last hits. Most champions have a pretty fast travel speed or auto attack animation, but unfortunately Ahri doesn’t have the best.

Her auto attack animation is quite clunky and this is because she has a tiny wind-up with each attack. Once you get used to it, it isn’t much of a problem but it can take a lot of practice. It can often cause you to have some games where you miss a load of cs within the first couple of waves. There used to be ways in which you could help with last hitting minions. Things like bonus damage towards minions and a small amount of AD or attack speed used to be obtainable with the old Runes and Masteries system. This is no longer the case however and you now have no way of aiding your auto attacks for last hitting minions. The only way you can aid yourself in last hitting is from visually timing your attacks, rather than guessing or timing based off of experience. What you can do is click on the minion you're going to last hit, and then look at its amount of health. This can give you a better idea of exactly when you will be able to finish the minion based on your attack damage. While this can be a good way to get better initially, it's not ideal to do this all the time because it will take a lot of your focus off other things and it can cause you to tunnel vision and get hit by an ability for example. Orb of Deception is also a very large part to farming with Ahri. Early-game it won’t ever kill the minions from full HP, but it can help to set-up last hits with auto attacks or it can be used to kill multiple minions at once. The only thing you need to be careful of with early Orbs is that it can often cost you cs due to the low-ish amount of damage on it in the early stages of the game. You may kill one minion with it, but put another very low that then gets stolen by your minions.

You should also treat Orb as a 2 part spell when using it on minion waves because it’s not going to deal both parts of the damage right away except to maybe the caster minions. It will do half on the way out and then half on the way back in. This is where it is quite likely to mess up some cs and so it’s often better to only use Orb when 1 or 2 minions are very low, or when they are all quite healthy. Fox-Fire can also be used to farm with and the 2 most common situations for this are when there are up to 3 very low minions, or when your auto attack is on cooldown. Fox-Fire now has brilliant target acquisition and so if you are standing next to 3 very low health minions and activate W, it will more often than not grab you all the minion kills. The only other case where Fox-Fire is commonly used is to last hit a cannon minion. Don’t be deceived though because Fox-Fire does very low damage at Rank 1 and you actually almost do more with an auto attack. You can time it so that your auto and Fox-Fires hit the cannon at the same time though which can ensure you get the kill. The final note to make about last hitting is that a good way to get better is to actually go into a custom, or AI game and practice. Last hitting with any champion is all down to getting used to and familiar with their auto attack animation.

Trading with the enemy mid laner and poking then down is the second objective in the early-game lane phase, but there are much more technicalities and things to watch out for compared to simply killing minions. Ahri's Orb of Deception is a fantastic tool for trading with champions and at the range of 880, you can often completely out-range your opponent and get free damage on them. As mentioned before though, Orb isn’t fully reliable because it’s a skill-shot that can be missed or dodged and both parts of the damage ideally need to hit. The best way to ensure you get both parts of the damage is to try and hit your target at max, or almost max range. Both parts of the damage are immediately applied when an Orb connects with a target at max range. While you are champion level 1/2 with Orb only at Rank 1, don't worry about trying to harass too much as the damage (even if you hit both parts) isn't really worth the mana it costs to use and it won't take long for the enemy to simply regain the health from even their basic health regen. It’s perfectly fine to use a couple though and especially when it would be used for counter harass if the enemy were to go aggressive on you very early. Basically, you never want to let the enemy damage you for free unless you really have no choice and you can definitely fight back in this stage of the game. Once you hit level 3 and get the second point in Orb, you can start using it to harass the enemy laner a lot more.

The most efficient way to use Orb for trading is to line it up with the minion wave so that the Orb travels through all of the enemy minions and then hits the champion at the end, applying both parts of the damage to them in the process. The reason you should do this is because if you miss the enemy, you aren't just wasting the mana and cooldown as you will be damaging or killing some minions at the same time. If you cast Orb to try and poke the enemy but it misses them and also the minions, it would be like you just lost a chunk of mana and can’t cast Orb for 7~ seconds, for literally no reason.

For the timing and aiming of Orb, you can get a lot of information by simply observing your opponents movements and you can often predict where they will be based on the health of your own minions. If one of your minions is very low on health, know that the enemy laner will almost certainly go up to last hit it. You can use this knowledge to your advantage by narrowing down where they will be standing (completely still) while they last hit the minion. This can enable you to throw out a more accurate Orb that has a much higher chance of hitting compared to using it while they are constantly moving around. You can get a lot of opportunities at doing this while your minion wave is at their tower as they will be going up for each last hit once the tower has prepped the minions. You can often deny a cs or 2 by threatening to throw out an Orb as they go up for the last hit. Be careful of jungle ganks when you're at their tower though and if you don't have any vision around the river areas, I wouldn't suggest you try and harass them under their tower. Getting 1 hit of Orb of Deception isn't worth it if it could cost you your life or summoner just because of playing too far up with no vision or backup.

Other than Orb, the only major tool Ahri has for trading in lane are auto attacks. You might not expect a mage to have auto attacks as one of their primary sources of damage for trading, but early-game they really do add up. Even with her base AD of 53, Ahri can dish out quite a lot of damage from consecutive auto attacks on an enemy champion and they will actually end up dealing more damage than her abilities this early while also costing no mana. Just remember that even though you’re a mage, auto attacks are still a very big part of your kit and a high source of damage in the early stages of the game.

When it comes to lane phase with Ahri, you basically only have your Orb as an ability. You should NOT be using Charm this early because it will do more harm than good and Fox-Fire does just about as much damage as an auto attack at Rank 1. With Charm, not only does it cost 85 mana, but the damage is very low at Rank 1 and even if you hit it, you have no follow up and blowing an E, Q, W combo as early as level 4 will just drain your mana pool and you won't even be close to killing the enemy. You usually won’t put Fox-Fire to Rank 1 until level 4 and it is a very low damaging ability at Rank 1. Using it is just a mana drain and that mana is much better spent on your main tool, Orb. There are only 2 occasions where Fox-Fire is OK to be used at Rank 1. The first occasion is when you are between 6 and 8 charges of Essence Theft and you need the heal. Casting Fox-Fire will get you the remaining stacks to activate your passive and then you’ll be able to immediately heal with Orb down a minion wave. The second occasion is in a close ranged fight or all-in but as Ahri this won’t be very common at level 4 unless you’re against an aggressive melee champion such as Yasuo.

A level 4 combo of Orb, Charm & Fox-Fire costs 205 mana which is almost half of her entire mana pool at that point in time. The only exception to using such an early Charm or E,Q,W combo is when it is used in conjunction with a gank or if the enemy mid laner is already around or below half health. Using Charm recklessly early-game also means that you are extremely vulnerable to a gank while it is on the 12 second cooldown. Be smart when using Charm so early and don't just randomly throw one out at the hopes to connect with the enemy. Save it for when it is really needed to get away from a gank or follow one up or if you have an almost guaranteed chance to hit and pick up a kill.

Ahri has a great passive for the laning phase of the game too. It allows you to stay in lane for longer than most champions because of the health you can get back from Essence Theft. When I have the passive up but I'm at full HP, there's a little trick that I like to do which ensures the heal isn't wasted. Basically, I will purposely walk up to the enemy to try and force them to hit me with an ability and take 'free' damage. The reason that I do this is because I can then simply walk back and Q the whole minion wave and regain all of the health I lost in the 'free' damage I took which essentially results in your opponent wasting mana and cooldowns.

I see no reason to not do this because if you only have a tiny bit of health missing, you will just be wasting your passive heal. You can hold the Essence Theft but then that means you can't use it for farming or harassing without also wasting the passive. When doing this, some people do actually realise what you are trying to do and they sometimes won't hit you which gives you the opportunity to hit them inseatd and get some free damage on them. Her passive kind of works as a zoning tool in this sense, but at the very least you will force the enemy to either back off or waste mana and cooldowns.

Predicting ganks based off of your opponent’s behaviour is also something that you should be aware of. It can sometimes be very obvious when they enemy jungler is close because the enemy laner will likely start to move up or start playing more aggressively than before. If it is a champion like Veigar they may even start moving very quickly towards you to try and land their stun for the Jungler to follow up on. In the cases where you suspect something is up, just move back and play safe for a minute until you see the enemy go back to the play style they were at before. It's not worth risking your life to maybe get a cs or two. There is also the flip side to this, when the enemy starts playing almost too safe as they might be trying to bait you in closer for the jungler to then come from behind you. If the minion wave is on their side and you think you may be about to get ganked, simply stand further back and only go up to last hit when you have to. You can even use Orb to last hit minions in this situation as 880 range is a lot higher and safer than Ahri's 550 Auto Attack range. The tricky ones are when they don't change their play-style at all when they are about to receive a gank and there isn't really any way for you to tell because everything seems normal. This is why wards are so important. They prevent you from guessing and acting on instinct or suspicion which can cause you to lose out on cs and xp.

A large part of the early-game is also about dodging your opponent’s abilities. The movespeed that Ahri gets from Orb makes it very easy to dodge abilities whether they are skill-shots or not. Unfortunately you can't dodge a targeted ability, but the speed that you get from Orb allows you to move back out of range so that they can't even get the ability off. For the skill-shots, most of them have some form of animation or wind up such as Xerath and his Arcanopulse so it can be very easy to throw out a Q to get the speed to dodge the ability. Another way to help prevent being hit by abilities is to play further back. What I mean by this is that you shouldn't really be standing too close so that you can always attack the enemy minions. A lot of the time I like to weave in and out when last hitting or throwing out a Q. I see no reason to stay in range of the enemy minions or champion when you are not last hitting or trying to poke with Orb.

You also need to be very aware that when Orb is on cooldown, you basically have no way to win a trade and your opponent will often know this and start to play very aggressively after you use it. Make sure that you play safe and don't try to fight while Orb is on cooldown because in the lane phase it's almost all of your damage for trading.

If you are in a lane matchup where you get out-traded such as Syndra, Azir and Viktor it is often better to not even try to trade with them as you will only get lower and lower. It might mean you miss a cs here and there, but if they are focused so much on trading with you then they will also miss some last hits. If you are against someone that is REALLY trying to trade with you and pushes you back to your tower then you can call for a jungle gank, which should end up in either a kill or you will blow their summoner spells. Common matchups where I find the opponent to be extremely aggressive and overextend are Ryze, Viktor and Yasuo. Just remember what I said about never taking free damage. Even if you do get out-traded, it is still better to at least return some damage rather than only receiving it.

What I will sometimes do in a tougher matchup is immediately push the first 2 minion waves with Orb of Deception and once the minions hit the enemy tower I will go and place my ward on the side that I think the jungler will be. That side will usually be the Red Buff side for Red team and Blue Buff side for Blue team as most junglers tend to start at the side of their bot lane so that they get the most help. The reason that I do this is because the chances of a jungler ganking right after their first camp are very low, and so by pushing the first 2 waves quickly you shove your opponent back accomplishing 2 things. Firstly, you can make them miss some cs from the tower hits and secondly, it stops them from being able to trade with you. Against someone like LeBlanc this can be very beneficial as she will be wanting to trade once she hits level 2, but with the minions at her tower she will not be able to. The minion waves will reset after you do this and you can only really safely do it for the first 2 waves as you must be careful of the jungler from that point onwards. If you want to keep shoving, make sure you back off right after and wait for the next wave.

Ahri is quite vulnerable to ganks early-game so you should never be too aggressive or far up the lane pre 6. Even with the huge movement speed buff on Q, it’s still very easy to lock Ahri down and kill her Pre 6. Orb can greatly help with escaping ganks, but it cannot be completely relied on as there is a cast time to Orb and a lot of junglers will wait for you to cast Orb before going in anyway. Once you have your ultimate you can be a lot more careless due to Spirit Rush acting as a 'get out of jail free card'. If you lose your ultimate to escape a gank though, you will lose a huge part of Ahri's kit and your ability to do anything is greatly reduced. It also means that you are a sitting duck when you get ganked again so you should always play smart and try not to ever overextend. Buy an early Control Ward and make sure that you always have your Totem Ward down to minimise the risk of being ganked.

The last major part about the early-game is your auto attacks towards enemy champions, especially vs melee. When against Zed, Yasuo, Talon etc. you will be able to auto attack them quite a lot as they go in for last hits and as I said before, even though you are a mage and do very little damage with autos, they do add up. 2 or 3 consecutive auto attacks can do as much, or more damage as an Orb of Deception at the cost of no mana early-game. You must be careful when auto attacking though because enemy minions will instantly aggro on you and those caster minions can really hurt so early into a game.

The trick to minimise minion aggro is to weave in and out with your auto attacks. Once your attack goes off, move back so that the minion aggro will reset to your minions and you won't take much or any damage. Then you can go back in and auto them again. This results in only a brief moment of minion aggro as you will already be moving out of their range. You can also make it so that you don’t even take any aggro by backing off as soon as the auto attack projectile leaves your champion. By the time that it hits the enemy, you will already be out of range for the minions to aggro to you.

Mid-game is where the real fun starts. Once you have Spirit Rush you can start to make plays either by killing your opponent or roaming to top, bot or even the enemy jungle. When roaming, it can help a lot to know the whereabouts of the enemy jungler and mid laner to minimise the risk of anything bad happening. If you have no vision on them then they too could have roamed, or you could end up blindly walking into them. One of the most important things to do before roaming is to shove your lane before leaving it as it forces the enemy laner to stay for the cs or they will miss out on an entire wave. Ahri is very quick at pushing waves when it comes to mid-game too because of her Orb of Deception. Another very important part to roaming is to make sure that you are out of sight from the enemy team. That means out of sight from their champions, minions and towers. Of course, it’s ideal to also be out of vision from their Wards but that’s something that isn’t in your control for the most part. The best thing you can do to minimise being seen by a potential Ward is to try and avoid the common Ward places while roaming to top or bot.

Despite what you might think, roaming isn't always the best thing to do. If you are winning your lane and you can get almost guaranteed kills on your opponent then it can be better to snowball yourself and shut down the enemy mid instead of chancing a roam which might not work out. For the times that you do roam, I would highly recommend that you have your ult up. Ahri is nothing without her ult but everything with it and in order for her to make significant plays and take out enemies with ease you NEED Spirit Rush. Personally, I will only Roam if I have my ult up or if it is around 15~ second away. The one exception to this is when the enemy or enemies are low but even then, Spirit Rush eliminates almost all the risk of things going wrong. Roaming is a very good way to help out and possibly snowball your team and it's one of the best ways to carry a game as Ahri. It's all well and good getting kills on your own enemy laner, but if your team are losing or falling behind then you're going to have to deal with someone else that is very strong. Essentially you have a choice, either get really strong yourself and shut down the enemy mid, or help out your team to stop them from falling behind and potentially snowball the game via your whole team being strong rather than just you being very strong. Roaming also has the possibility of objective control which is almost always better than just getting a solo kill. If the enemy team is quite tanky then I would definitely look to roaming a lot and getting my team strong because Ahri has a very hard time dealing with tanks. If the enemy team consisted of a lot of squishy targets then it would be easier to solo carry a game but roaming is a more reliable way to ensure that you won't have a tough game from weak allied champions and there won't be as much pressure on you to carry.

That being said, there will be games where it just won't be possible to Roam and these games are typically when you’re facing someone that is very likely to, or has the ability to push very fast. Xerath is a very good example for this. It's very common for a Xerath to just constantly push the wave in with his Arcanopulse and it's very easy and safe for him to do this due to the range on it. This basically forces you to sat Mid until he goes back and that might not be very often. For these situations, forget about Roaming and focus on trying to solo kill your laner.

Roam paths for when you are on Red side (top side)

Roam paths for when you are on Blue side (bottom side)

Below will be a clip of one of a roam that had a very successful outcome. I will explain why it was successful and what I did you maximise the chances of it working.

Because there are so many factors that can change the outcome of a roam it is very important that you understand each of the conditions and you also need to be able to determine the good conditions from the bad ones. It isn't as hard as it seems though and once you understand everything that needs to be taken into account when roaming or planning a roam the chances of it being successful will be much higher and the risk of it failing will be very low. Below will be 2 lists, 1 for the Good roam conditions and one for the Bad roam conditions and they are all of the things that you need be aware of or ask yourself when attempting a roam.

Good Roam Conditions

♥ Enemy mid just backed. ♥ You have pushed in mid and the enemy is at their tower farming the wave. ♥ You have vision on the enemy jungler and they are not anywhere near the lane you intend to roam to. ♥ There is a Control Ward bot/top so you know they have no vision of that area. ♥ Your team communicates where Wards are and what summoners are up or down for allied and enemy champions. ♥ You have your ult+Ignite (Flash not as vital in a roam). ♥ Enemy bot/top lane are overextended or at least half way up the lane. ♥ Enemy bot are also at least somewhat damaged and not full HP. ♥ Your team have a decent amount of health and mana. ♥ You go into fog of war before leaving mid lane. ♥ Take a more dangerous but effective roam path to bot lane when you are Red Team (top side) as I will show below:

The one thing to note when you take this path is that when you reach the red buff bush look at where your team's bot lane minion wave is because if it is passing between the inner and outer tower the enemy minions will see you walk past. Look at your wave and once it passes the gap into bot side jungle it is safe to move out.

Bad Roam Conditions

♥ Enemy Mid is present and pushing the lane. ♥ You have no idea where the enemy jungler is or could be or if they are near where you intend to roam to. ♥ There are little or no wards for your team in the river or top/bot bushes and there are no Control Wards anywhere. ♥ Little or no team communication so you have no clue whether your allies or enemies have summoners. ♥ Enemy bot/top are on full health. ♥ You don't have ultimate up or it won't be up soon. ♥ Your team have no mana or are extremely low on health.

If any of the 'Bad Roam' conditions are present then I would probably not even attempt roaming because there is a high chance it could go horribly wrong. It would be better to stay mid, farm up and wait for a better opportunity. What I say about decision making in League is that if you are ever unsure or have even the slightest doubts of what you are thinking of doing then just don't do it.

Apart from roaming to get a game rolling, Ahri can start making picks on champions out of place as soon as she gets her ultimate. The most common picks you will make in the mid-game are going to be on the enemy Jungler. You may be able to catch them out going through river or in their jungle if you have deep vision on them. Getting a pick on the enemy jungler is very impactful on a game because it means that your team can likely get an objective out of it such as Dragon and there will be no threat of a smite steal. It also might result in a buff or two for yourself which you can then take to your lane and press the advantage gained from those buffs. A quite significant benefit to this is that it also relieves a lot of pressure elsewhere on the map for your team as they won't have to worry about the jungler for a short while and it enables your jungler to freely gank a lane without the possibility of a counter gank.

Other things you can do to make picks include waiting in a bush that you have cleared via a Control Ward or waiting around a corner in the Fog of War and catching your target by surprise. The advantage to waiting in the Fog of War is that you can get an opportunity to Charm your target while they are basically clueless and won't be expecting it. If they aren't expecting it, they can't dodge it and you'll be able to unload all of your spells before they can even use a single one of theirs. By this point, even if they Flash away you can simply chase them down with Spirit Rush. You can also go for the Oracle Lens once you hit level 9 and use that to clear an area and then wait to ambush your prey. The Oracle Alteration allows you to clear a huge area of any wards which can allow you to setup a perfect ambush for when the enemy comes to ward again.

A very major part to the mid-game is while you're in lane and approaching the 6 mark. What you start aiming to do is try and hit your opponent with a couple of Q's so that as soon as you hit 6 you can immediately Spirit Rush in to get a kill. This can take a lot of practice to know how much Ahri is capable of because you need to make the decision in an instant as you hit 6 and every second you wait decreases the chances of the surprise all-in working. When you are about to hit 6 and possibly go for an all-in, use Ctrl + R to instantly level Spirit Rush. Doing this means that you don't have to mouse over the plus to level the ability and it will save you a couple of seconds. This is very likely to catch your enemy off guard because the second you hit 6, you're already dashing towards them. The reverse of this can also happen though so be aware of the times that they might hit 6 before you and try the same. If you think they'll hit 6 before you, make sure you play very safe until you also get your ultimate. If it's a champ that has a very impactful ult such as Viktor or Zed you will not want to be near them when they hit 6 before you.

Late-game with Ahri is all about making picks and cleaning up fights. By late-game, the lane phase is well over and both teams will likely be roaming around the map looking for picks, fights or objectives to take. As Ahri, one of your main jobs is to try and pick a key target with Charm so that they can be locked down and killed. This is much easier said than done when it comes to team fighting due to the key targets usually being at the back and they will be almost always protected by their support. They can sometimes be out of position though and as Ahri you can quickly close the gap with ult into a Charm or Charm Flash combo. There will definitely be games where you can't get to the enemy carries and this will often be in a full blown team fight. In order to get to the enemy carries it usually means going through their front line tanks and also their support. For these situations, it can be a better idea to not go for the pick and rather poke and peel for your team, dealing consistent damage to everyone you can hit. Peeling for your other carry can also be just as good as catching theirs. For the times where you aren't team-fighting, it's extremely easy for Ahri to pick of a squishy target simply due to Spirit Rush and most champions will have a hard time getting away from Ahri.

Below will be a clip that demonstrates how you can quickly close a distance and make a pick using Spirit Rush into Charm Flash.

As you can see, the speed in which you can close a lot of distance and catch a target with Charm is insanely fast when combining Spirit Rush and the Charm Flash trick. Plays like this can be made all game by either ulting into a Charm, or Charm Flashing. When games come to a halt and both teams are moving back and forth in a lane looking for an engage, one thing that I do a lot with Ahri is stand off to one side, out of sight of the enemy team but still close to my team to try and get an angle on a Charm. Charming at an angle can often bypass the enemy team's front-liners and hit someone further back and they will often not see it coming. To do this successfully you must make sure that you are not standing on a Ward though, so placing a Control Ward or getting the area swept by an Oracle Lens take care of that.

When it comes to a full on teamfight, Ahri has multiple ways of playing it out and each one is vastly different. The 3 ways that she can be played in a fight are: Aggressive, Passive and Full Assassin.

Aggressive

One of the ways that a fight can be played out is in an Aggressive fashion with Ahri being the one that initiates the fight by diving into the enemy team. You may think I'm quite crazy for suggesting this style of play, but what may come as a surprise to some is that Ahri can actually be a very good engager if you have the Zhonya's Hourglass and this can be a very good way to win a teamfight. The Hourglass active enables Ahri to Spirit Rush into the enemy team, unload every spell and then immediately use the stasis on Hourglass. While you're invulnerable and un-targetable, your team should follow up and once your stasis has ended you can either dash back out to safety, or clean up any low health enemies if the fight went well.

This will completely disrupt the enemy team as for one, they probably won't expect an Ahri to dive in 1v5, and secondly the enemy team’s immediate reaction would be to use all of their cooldowns on you, but because of the Hourglass active you will be invulnerable. Your team will then have an advantage in the team fight because not only will you have wasted some of your opponent’s cooldowns, but you will have also done quite a lot of damage spread among the team because of Ahri's kit being almost all multi-target. For this to work properly you MUST have the Zhonya's Hourglass active up. If you go diving into the middle of the enemy team without the active Stasis, you'll be locked down and blown up in a matter of a second. This style of play is definitely the most risky style because there is a huge reliance on your team to follow up after your engage. If they don't go in after you, there's an extremely high chance that you'll just be caught and killed once the Stasis has ended.

Passive

Another way that Ahri can play out a team fight is a much more Passive and strategic approach. It is also probably the most common and effective way to play out a fight too. Basically, the idea is to stay on the outside of the fight, throwing all of your abilities into the enemy team and using Spirit Rush to position accordingly to either stay out of danger from their front line champions or to land a Charm on a key target. Something to keep in mind when playing Ahri is that you don't always have to try and assassinate the enemy ADC or Mid laner in a team fight. Because of how fragile Ahri is a lot of the time you will just end up dying without taking out the target you go for if you carelessly try to go in and assassinate them. It may feel wrong to play way back as Ahri but it can often be the best way to play out a 5v5 fight.

Ahri is a fantastic champion at kiting with Q and peeling with E and she can be very effective at protecting your ADC by Charming the enemy front liners. You have to be very aware of everyone’s positioning when you play Ahri because you are one of the few champions in the game that can punish people for being in the wrong place thanks to Spirit Rush. Stay on the outside of the fight and wait for the perfect opportunity to go in, either when the enemy team has used all of their hard CC and cooldowns or when you see a key target out of position. There will likely be an enemy Tank or Bruiser that will try to get on you and lock you down in a fight. Orb + Charm are fantastic tools to prevent these champions from sticking to you. The Movespeed on Orb makes it very easy to get away from them and the Taunt/Slow on Charm gives you plenty of time to back off too. Pair them together and you can basically get away from anyone!

You may end up never even going all in when it comes to a team fight. Many times you will end up on the outskirts of the fight for the whole duration, dealing damage with Orb and Fox-Fire and Charming champions that are in your teams face. You don't HAVE to Charm an enemy carry. Charming a tank can be just as important as it will stop them from getting onto your other damage dealers and it can prevent a lot of CC and disruption for your team.

Full Assassin

The final late-game playstyle for Ahri is what I like to call Full Assassin Mode Ahri. This style comes into play when you Charm a very squishy target prior to a fight starting and go for the assassination, diving in to take them out and then diving back to safety. Who that target is does not matter, all that matters is that they are squishy enough to burst down and common occurrences of this are when the enemy team have a very squishy support champion such as Janna Nami Soraka Sona or Morgana. Catching them with a Charm Late-Game will almost definitely result in their quick death and then the fight is a 5v4 in your favour.

Full Assassin mode team fight Ahri is a probably the rarest way to play a team fight because it relies on the enemy being out of position or you catching a very squishy target with a Charm, but it can happen and although people say that Ahri can't assassinate people anymore, they are wrong. A Late-Game 5-6 item Ahri can very well still assassinate and you often don't even need to hit Charm to 100-0 a squishy champion in a second, the Charm just acts as insurance. This style of Ahri is similar to the Aggressive play style in the sense that you are diving in, but it is more strategic and situational and it also doesn't require an Hourglass or the reliance on your team to pull off. The only thing you need to be careful of after pulling of a pick is that you might not have Spirit Rush up for the possible 5v4 team fight. You just need to make sure that you don’t go too deep and basically continue the fight with the Passive approach, staying in the back lines providing Support and damage from a safe distance.

Another thing Ahri is great at in the late-game, is waiting patiently in cleared bushes near Baron or Dragon and if an enemy walks near, it is almost a guaranteed Charm into full combo or just an Orb of Deception and Fox-Fire. At this stage in the game, you'll almost certainly kill the target if they haven't built tanky and you often won't even have to hit Charm on a squishy target to instantly burst them from full to nothing. You also don't necessarily have to hit a squishy target with a rotation of skills. Hitting a tank with Charm is not all bad as you will still be able to deal a decent chunk of their health from the sheer amount of AP you will have and from the aid of the true damage from Orb of Deception. This could also force the enemy team to play safe as their tank would have lost a bit of health and likely won't want to engage without full HP. The final note about late-game is that when you're max build and have an Elixir of Sorcery going, something you can actually do is sell your boots for either a Spellbinder or Lich Bane if you don't yet have either. The reason that it's ok to sell boots for one of these items is because you make back most of the movespeed you lose from those 2 items as they both contain a percentage increase. Spellbinder gives you 33 MS and Lich gives you 23.1. This also works well if you have either Celerity or Relentless Hunter as your movespeed will already be very high. The only time it's not a good idea to do this is when movespeed is highly valued to prevent getting caught out or needing to dodge skill-shots. You'll be gaining a ton of damage though, so it's usually very effective.

This section of the guide will be dedicated to all the cool things and neat tricks you can do with Ahri such as ability flashing. It will also contain general tips such as Ward spots, and advice on certain things to do and not do on Ahri.

Here I will show where to put general purpose wards for gaining vision on the river and watching for ganks. I will put images in showing exactly where to place them for when you are on both Red and Blue sides of the map. Blue and Red team general Ward spots.

Here I will show some good places for deep Wards for when you are facing against a roamer such as Twisted Fate or Kassadin. These Ward places are always good ones to use because they give a lot of vision into the enemy jungle and you will often see where their jungler is. Blue Team deep Ward spots.

Red Team deep Ward spots.

These are the Ward spots that I use for setting up a Charm over a wall or from out of sight. They are not as good for gaining vision on the enemy Jungle but their purpose is for gaining vision on common areas that champions walk past, allowing you to wait in a bush or off to the side to land a sneaky Charm on the opponent. Blue Team Charm Ward spots.

Red Team Charm Ward spots.

Slow pushing lanes result in a huge buildup of minions that carries will want to go and farm. Because of this, you can slow push a wave or go to a lane where the wave is already building up and it won't be long before someone shows up to farm the buildup of minions. To slow push a wave, all you have to do is kill about half of the minion wave, usually the caster minions and then your minions will slowly start to push and build up from numbers advantage. The minion waves will sometimes naturally start to push towards the enemy too. The downside to this is that it can be very dangerous venturing into the enemy jungle top or bot side alone. If you are planning on setting a slow push wave up or are heading to try and kill who they send to clear the lane then make sure you have deep Wards in the jungle, or know where the enemy team are. It will usually only be 1 person clearing the wave, but there can sometimes be more because of situations like a support needing xp or players fighting over farm.

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you when playing Ahri is to avoid fights that take place in bushes. Lack of vision is Ahri's worst nightmare as your Fox-Fire and Spirit Rush must have vision of the target in order to home in on them. It isn't as bad with Fox-Fire because it lasts for a few seconds which gives you time to gain vision but if you use a charge of Spirit Rush and lose sight just as you dash, the damage will be completely wasted. A common occurrence of this happening is when you roam to bot lane; the enemy ADC and Support will likely use the brushes to stay hidden and try to get away. The best thing you can do is ward the bush but if you don't have any wards there is something else you can do with Spirit Rush. If you Spirit Rush into the bush that the enemy is in, the damage will go off as you will gain vision of them while mid-dash. Just make sure not to dash out of the bush once you are in or you could lose vision and waste some damage.

Another tip I can give you is when to use Charm. Most of the time, when you Spirit Rush in for a kill, you will throw out your Charm straight away. There is nothing wrong with this and I mainly do this too, but it can be better in some cases to hold on to the Charm for your second dash of Spirit Rush. This is because it stops you from rushing the Charm and missing. By waiting a couple of seconds it gives you more time to position and aim with the second dash. Not only this, but it can also bait out the mobility spells of your enemy such as Arcane Shift from Ezreal or just a general Flash. Your opponent will likely expect you to try and Charm them straight away so not immediately using it can catch your opponent by surprise and they won't know when to expect it. Most of the time you can and will just throw the Charm straight away, but for cases where Charm is very important to win the fight it can be better to hold off for a few seconds. This will often increase your chances of hitting it and also bait out an enemy dash if they have one.

Something that I find very effective to do when using all of Ahri's abilities in a fight is after using the first 2 charges of Spirit Rush, sync the 3rd charge with the rest of your cooldowns so that you can hit them with a full barrage of spells at the same time. Your opponent will likely not expect you to have a second round of burst either so it can catch them by surprise. Once you cast Spirit Rush, you have 10 seconds to use up the remaining charges. This essentially gives you up to a 10 second window to wait for your other cooldowns and sync them with the (usually) final charge of Spirit Rush. Once you have 20% CDR (Luden's worth), Ahri's Q, W, & E will all be under 10 seconds for their cooldowns with the highest being Charm at 9.6 which means that you can easily launch another whole rotation of skills within the time gap of Spirit Rush. Even without Charm being under 10 seconds, you will always be able to sync another dash with at least Orb and Fox-Fire which can be some serious burst.

This is something that I feel as though not a lot of Ahri players do, or at least I don't see many do it. When using Spirit Rush in a charmed combo, I will actually spend the first use on the same spot that I am standing on. This basically means that you don't dash anywhere and but you still get the damage off. Think of it as a second Fox-Fire because Spirit Rush basically is just Fox-Fire with a dash. The reasoning behind Ulting on the spot is because when you Charm someone, they will be walking towards you and won't be very far away. After sending out Q and W, you will want to also use the damage from R to burst them down as much as possible. Most players will dash in any given direction to get the damage off as part of the nuke. The problem with dashing in a direction is that if you dash to the side, you run the risk of missing the return damage on orb as they will likely not be at max range. If you dash backwards you could likely dash out of range for the damage on R ,and if you dash forwards you are putting yourself in melee range of your opponent. Dashing on the spot maintains your position while guaranteeing the damage on Spirit Rush and the return damage on orb. At the same time, you are also not putting yourself any closer to danger. Just because Spirit Rush is a dash it doesn't mean that you have to use it to travel distance. Using it on the spot is perfectly fine if all you need is the extra damage.

When playing against a melee mid laner, there is a nice Charm spot I use when I am on Red side and they are Blue. It becomes available when you push to their tower and they start to last hit. Below will be 2 screenshots that show the place to stand and where to aim your Charm, 1 will show the spot where there are enemy minions there and the other will show it without any enemy minions.

From this spot, the enemy player will not have vision on you unless they have the bush warded because you are around the corner. As you can clearly see, it is very easy to line up a Charm so that when the enemy mid laner, in this case Zed goes for the caster minions you can get an easy shot and they will not see it coming. They will probably think you have backed off or recalled. This will only work when you are on Red side because the distance between the place to stand and tower on the other side is greater than here.

Ahri's ultimate, Spirit Rush is a fantastic tool for getting over terrain. With the Quality of Life buff it received back in Season 5, Ahri can now dash over almost every wall in the map and it feels very smooth when doing so. Below will be an image showing every wall that Ahri can easily dash through using 1 charge of Spirit Rush. There will also be a video tutorial of Ahri's Hardest Wall Clear.

Out of everything in this section of the Guide, this is the one that you most likely didn't know about. It's not quite as effective as the Skill + Flash trick and most of the time it isn't practical, but it can certainly have its uses and it allows for some very clean gameplay. The trick boils down to being a partial animation canceler of Charm/Orb, as well as allowing for faster movement and more fluidity in a play. Think of it like a Charm Flash, only the Charm still gets thrown from where it's cast, and you can't enhance the distance with it. It can be quite helpful for escaping, or for when you need to Spirit Rush to dodge something, and Charm at the same time as shown briefly at the end in one of my old URF clips in the video below. The way that it's done is by immediately casting Spirit Rush after the Charm/Orb, and you also have to be very fast with moving your cursor to where you want to dash to. Keep those 2 things in mind, and you'll pull it off with ease!

This refers to when you cast an ability before flashing rather than after. The general idea for certain abilities in LoL is that you can flash, and then use an ability in order to basically extend the range of it. A common example of this is with Blitzcrank and his Rocket Grab. However, with some champions, you can actually cast the ability before you Flash and then immediately flash after you use the skill. The end result is the same in terms of gaining extra range on the ability you are casting, but you essentially take out the cast time, making it a much faster and smoother process. Due to it being faster, it can catch your opponents by surprise, instead of them seeing you flash and then start to throw an ability. Ahri can actually do this with 3/4 of her spells. Orb of Deception, Charm and even Spirit Rush can all be cast right before you flash instead of after. You can also use this trick to Charm over a unit in order to hit something behind rather than having to walk to the side or past the unit, it is much harder to pull this one off though, and will take a lot of practice to get used to. Once you get the hang of skill + flash with Ahri it becomes very fun to do and very satisfying when you pull it off. Below will be 3 demonstration clips showing what each ability + flash looks like and you will be able to see how fast it is, with a 4th clip to show how you can Charm over a unit like I mentioned above. After the demonstration clips there will be a video with multiple clips of myself using the Skill + Flash trick in real, high elo games and real situations where they enabled me to get a kill or make a play that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

I have had many breaks from League over the years, but the one thing that always kept me coming back was Ahri. This is the first Guide I have ever made and so I wanted it to be for a champion that I love. I tried my best to make it as detailed and appealing as possible to make sure that anyone who wishes to learn Ahri or get better with her can do so from the knowledge I have gathered over the years playing her. Overall, the original version of the guide took me just over 50 hours to complete. With updates over the last 3 years that number is now well over 300 hours and I don't regret an hour of it. I wanted to make sure I included every single detail there is to know about Ahri and I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read it. I enjoy every minute I spend working on this guide and I'll continue to constantly update it for as long as I can. Feel free to ask me any questions in the comment section, I will be more than happy to answer and I'll check it daily to see if anyone has posted anything :) Also, if you want to be part of a new Ahri focused Discord, come join this one! I'm always personally active and you can chat with other Ahri players and nice people about anything and everything.