Lumbajak told me that he's never seen anyone beat an Ahri lane except when I do it. Is this a thing? Is she really hard to beat in lane?
I don't have anything to do so I thought I'd detail why I can thrash her with almost anyone. It'd help with collecting my thoughts together, and maybe others can share input too. I don't particularly like that vixen after all since she's one o' dem dere squeeshy maegess.
How I beat Ahri!1. Ahri is like Morde
Ahri is remarkably similar to Morde in lane, I find. Her movement patterns, her timing, even the damage output on a single target. Since I've fought countless Mordes before, this really isn't too hard for me to predict or flow along with. It's a difficult sensation to describe. It's like staying always out of reach of all her skills, moving parallel to her so she can never close the distance, and juking skillshots. I actually find her easier to fight in lane than Morde because of how squishy she is, the small-ness of her skillshots, and the fact that she gets weaker the more enemies she has to fight (unlike Morde...)
I'll elaborate further on the positioning. In lane, you can juke Morde by looking at his character. 90% of the time, the location of the Morde player's cursor is the same as the champion's facing. So if Morde was facing south, I'd have a good idea that the player's cursor is also south. This is innately understood by most people. What this means in lane is that as you see Ahri run a certain direction, there's a damn good chance the skillshot will come out within about a 70 degree arc around her forward facing. If you can stay on the outskirts of this arc, you can very very easily dodge any skillshots that fly out. Furthermore, if your facing is parallel to hers, it's far easier to see the shot coming and escape it. I'd probably take screenshots sometime if I can remember.
2. I always get boots 3 pots
I always buy boots 3 pots against Ahri. The only thing she can do in lane is hit her Q. Every other skill requires there not be minions around you. That Q is way easier to dodge than Xerath's. Typically, people will try to launch skillshots at you when you move in for last hits. This gives you a 0.5 second window usually to juke them. Sounds difficult, but if you get the hang of it, it's actually quite simple. It's very common in DotA where you juke in and out of a last hit. Basically just move unpredictably. This is helped by the fact that I never take Havoc in the offense tree but the kill-minions-faster mastery instead so I have a larger last hit range. That part is particularly important as it gives you a bigger window of opportunity for last hitting since if you only do 50 damage, you get about 1 second to kill a creep. With 55, the range extends to about 1.5 seconds. Again, all this sounds tiny, but it's a big deal when fights last barely 5 seconds in lane.
3. Ahri's spellvamp sucks
Considering how squishy she is, Ahri's spellvamp is actually kind of ignorable unless you leave her alone for a very long time. This means she's really susceptible to frequent harass as her heal is pretty bad and she barely has any hp. I like to take sustainers and healers against her, but if that's not possible, I'd use my skills on her instead of last hitting. Every time I would use a skill to last hit, I'd use it on her instead and last hit with autoattacks. What this means is that if I were Xerath, every single Q would be aimed at a fox instead of a creep line. Similarly, if I were Morgana, I'd aim the pool at Ahri instead of the creeps just to slowly wear her down. She can't handle this at all, which is odd considering her skillset. It's probably because her numbers aren't that good related to this.
4. Ahri sucks at teamfights
I handle every fight against her with the full confidence that she's crap at teamfights. This means I'm always confident that given equal teamfights or even slightly bad ones, Ahri won't do nearly as much as I would as a proper caster. Her ult flies all over the place. Her foxfires fly all over the place. Not particularly useful when the best thing to be done in a teamfight is instantly focusing down one person. So I'll farm, poke her down, farm farm farm and expect victory unless the whole team fails.
That's about it. Anyone else have anything to add about fighting this vixen?