Throughout the history of Teamfight Tactics, we have witnessed many powerful champions, but also quite a few weak characters. This is an inevitable part of the game as champions will have strengths, skills, or mechanisms that fit a specific phase of the match. However, Riot has also created many champions, traits, and systems with mechanisms that are too “absurd” and have caused them headaches in balancing the game.
Recently, the Project Director of Teamfight Tactics – Riot Mortdog, stated that Elise in Set 7 is one of the champions with an annoying mechanism and is among the strongest in history. The reason is that this champion’s skill not only allows Elise to deal a lot of damage, has low energy usage, but also makes her untargetable. This results in very few counter strategies against Elise, unless the opponent defeats themselves by misbuilding items or failing to roll for a 3-star.
Riot Mortdog: “Elise is truly an extremely strong champion, even one of the most annoying among the champions we’ve ever created. The crazy thing is that when Elise uses her skill, if it defeats an enemy champion, she will swing up, change the opponent’s target, then land again and repeat the process. You will see some videos where Elise keeps going up and down and takes out the whole battlefield. I must admit that a 3-star Elise with the right items is something incredibly annoying to deal with.”
Not only does she have a powerful mechanism, but Elise’s current playstyle seems to also go against the Whisper trait. This trait is essentially very strong in extended matches as it can stack attack stats if hitting champions that have previously had their armor and magic resist reduced. However, with Elise’s “one-shot” playstyle, the Whisper trait’s effect is not applied at all because this unit eliminates opponents too quickly.
Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising if Riot heavily nerfs Elise’s damage in the near future. Perhaps when she officially launches, Elise will no longer be the champion that can “one-shot” opponents as easily as she currently does and will return to the long-fought nature of the Whisper trait instead.