" ...help fox your way to victory with this charming lady(fox, cuz, y'know, she's a fox....and one of her skills is charm...okay yea, I'll stop ;-;)"

Phreak, be proud of me!

You're sitting there in Champion Select, calling "jungle pref" in chat as your firstpick finishes bans and promptly locks Yi jungle. You facepalm a bit, groan to yourself "Why do we have a Yi jungle, of all things, dear god!" and go back to Champ Select, because you really don't feel like dodging. In the end, you decide to mid - but your midlane is far too stunted, and LeBlanc is banned out so you know you've got no easy fallback to go to. You scroll through your champions, and see Ahri near the top - well, who can resist clicking on Ahri, right?

You've locked Ahri, and you've just realized that you're not exactly sure what you're doing, but you like this Champion anyway. Because she's so nicely well rounded, y'know?

So now you've decided to learn Ahri, but are unsure where to start - well, then let's go ahead and figure out, shall we?

Abilities

Let's start off with a rundown of her abilities:

Passive - Essence Theft: As Ahri hit enemies with her abilities, she gains stacks of Essence Theft. However, each ability can only grant 3 stacks of Essence Theft per cast - when Ahri reaches 9 stacks of Essence Theft, Ahri's next ability will heal her for 2 plus Ahri's level plus 9% of Ability Power times the number of enemies hit.

Ahri's passive is a very not-hidden gem. With particles displaying whether it is active or not, as well as the status icon, Essence Theft is a great tool for sustain and duelling; however, it is also very predictable and can lead to disadvantageous situations. It is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is also very easy to overestimate.

Essence theft is, in my experience, a passive this is a sharp double-edged sword; to me, it is very deceptively simple. At first glance, it looks like a passive that is built for sustain - cast a few spells, hit some minions, then at some point you hit something else with your spells to regain a bit of HP and you're good to go. However, it requires a lot of careful consideration with its use, due to the unique way it is applied; not by the amount of damage dealt, but by the number of targets hit. This can be a trap in two different cases: one for you, or one for your enemy. However, that will be discussed later, as it is part of Ahri's gameplay.

Q - Orb of Deception: Ahri sends an orb of arcane energy in a straight line skillshot that deals 40/65/90/115/140 + 35% Ability Power magic damage to all enemies it passes through; then she pulls it back to herself, dealing another 40/65/90/115/140 + 35% Ability Power true damage to all enemies that cross it on its way back. Ahri also gains a movement speed boost that decays over the travel time of the orb, going from +215 to +80, from the time the orb is cast to the time the orb returns to Ahri. Once the orb has returned, the movement speed buff is removed. Orb of Deception costs 60/70/75/80/85 mana and has a cooldown of 7 seconds, as well as a range of 880 units while traveling away from Ahri.

Orb of Deception is one of Ahri's most versatile tools in her kit - it can be used to poke, farm, sustain, and chase. While the ability itself is straightforward in most of its applications, there are a few tricks that you can do with Ahri's Q that aren't obvious at first; these, again, will be detailed later on during gameplay. This ability should be taken level 1 in most cases - if you are unsure what to take as your first skill, Q is always a safe bet.

W - Fox-Fire: Ahri summons three magical flames that orbit her for up to five seconds. After a breif delay, these flames target and lock onto the closest visible enemy, prioritizing enemy champions and the target of Ahri's last auto-attack, traveling to the target and dealing 40/65/90/115/140 + 40% Ability Power on hit. However, if more than one Fox-Fire hits the same target, each consecutive flame to hit will only do 30% of the first flame's damage, adding up to 64/104/144/184/225 + 64% Ability Power to the same target. Fox fire costs 50 mana and has a cooldown of 9/8/7/6/5 seconds, and a circular range of 550 units around Ahri.

Fox Fire is Ahri's most reliable duelling tool, being one of her two abilities that guarantees damage against an enemy champion, provided Ahri is in range. For this reason, as well as the massive amount of damage it can inflict, Fox-Fire should be your priority in leveling: I recommend maxing W first.

That being said, Ahri's W can also be a tricky skill to use. Since it is a self-targeting skill - you don't choose its targets, it gets its own targets - it can be very easy to misuse and actually miss every single flame, rendering it useless. Due to the circlular range around Ahri, it is also very easy to misjudge whether it is in range of an enemy or not - that, as well as its high cooldown at earlier ranks means that it has to be used very carefully. Using it needlessly or carelessly can lead to a death, a lost duel, or a failed trade; again, Fox-Fire is a deceptively simple skill, like much of Ahri's kit.

E - Charm: Ahri blows a kiss in a straight-line skillshot, dealing 60/95/130/165/200 + 50% Ability Power and forcing to walk towards Ahri with 50% reduced movement speed, unable to cast spells, use items, or auto-attack for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds. Charm costs 85 mana and has a cooldown of 12 seconds, as well as a range of 975 units.

Charm is Ahri's simplest tool, but also her most crucial. It is her only CC without items; however, it is extremely powerful since it functions as a stun that forces your enemy to move towards you, meaning the target both cannot deal damage and is left extremely vulnerable to both you and the rest of your team. However, due to its long cooldown and single-target damage and crowd control, it should be used for duelling or fighting only; it is not a very effective, or useful, tool for farming or dealing damage to objectives. Using charm well for picking off essential members or the enemy team is what makes or breaks an Ahri player; this skill enables Ahri to always be useful to the team, fed or not fed.

R - Spirit Rush: Ahri dashes in the direction of the cursor and fires up to three self-targeting flares that focus on the closest visible enemies, prioritizing champions and the last auto-attacked enemy. Each flare does 70/110/150 + 30% of Ability Power to the enemy it hits. Each target can only be hit by one flare per cast. Spirit Rush can be re-cast twice for no mana cost for ten seconds after the first cast, before going on cooldown. Spirit Rush has a mana cost of 100 mana and a cooldown of 110/95/80 seconds.

Spirit Rush is Ahri's second spell that can guarantee damage onto an enemy target, but, once again, it is self-targeting. The parameters for the flares are similar to Fox-Fire's parameters, but Spirit Rush has a range of 600 units in comparison to 550, and only one flare can be fired at a single target per cast, meaning Spirit Rush doesn't do damage as quickly as Fox-Fire; however, adding all three casts together, it does substantially more damage that Fox-Fire, leaving Spirit Rush as Ahri's most damaging spell.

Ahri's ultimate is what makes her an assassin, in comparison to a mage. It's both her primary engage and escape; the dashes are extremely useful in situations where you need to close the gap, or make a gap, in between your and your opponent. However, that being said, with a long cooldown it has to be used effectively. Therefore, most of the time, you want to be using it to engage on an opponent, dealing the most damage you can; when used for escape, while it is a great tool for running away, means that you won't have it and you won't be a threat for the next minute or so. That being said, when you need to run away, you need to run away. It's good to be efficient with Spirit Rush, but that doesn't mean you should let a death go just to save ult. Just try to be efficient in its use - which also means, once you use one cast, be sure to use the next two casts as well.

So that's it for abilities - let's move onto a quick rundown of Runes and Masteries, shall we? I won't go into detail about every single mastery or rune I take, because then we'd be here for days, so I'll just give me general overview of each.

Image courtesy of RiceGnat

Runes and Masteries

I go 21-0-9 in masteries, focusing on dealing damage and helping my roam. However, there are many who spec their Utility tree differently; instead of having Fleet of Foot, many choose to take one into Phasewalker, Alchemist, and Runic Affinity. I prefer to have the extra movement speed to help my roam ability and help charge up Luden's Echo, which is an item I very much like having on Ahri due to the amount of roaming I do on her.

I go fully offensive in my runes for Ahri. I play her as a full-on assassin, so the extra starting Flat AP and CDR help during the earlier stages of the game, and the scaling AP help as you move towards the mid and lategame, where you have the ability to completely 100-0 an enemy champion. Many people prefer to have Magic Penetration marks instead of Ability Power marks, as it is more efficient in the use of the Runes, and I believe that the Penetration is extremely helpful as well. However, I simply prefer the added raw power.

Image courtesy of tonnelee

Gameplay

Now we get to the meat of this guide: playing Ahri.

Ahri's a difficult champion to get right. She's heavily skillshot and positioning based, and one small mistake can make Ahri completely useless in a fight or a duel. I very highly recommend first testing out Ahri in bot games or customs - she's got a pretty steep learning curve, and is not a champion that is quickly learned.

A few quick notes about Ahri:

- Great damage, great assassin and roaming midlane

- True Damage

- Scales Well

- Very difficult to play if behind

- Extremely mana hungry

Early Game and Laning

Ahri's initial laning phase is decent, but she's no lane bully or threat before level 6, since she's so reliant on her ultimate to initiate any sort of fight. My preferred method of early laning is simply farming and clearing waves with Ahri's q, until I hit level 6.

At level 6, then it's go time: with the added pressure of those 3 dashes and massive burst, I like backing, buying a few items, and then immediately all-inning my lane partner or going either top or bottom in order to gank; in my opinion, it is very difficult to solo carry a game as Ahri, so I like getting my lanes rolling early as well.

Duelling with Ahri is a very skill-based piece of her gameplay. She's an amazing duellist when she has her ult up, but without it she is rather lackluster, either not being able to finish off opponents or being unable to run away from her opponents. When duelling, it is very important to use Ahri's passive effectively; you always have to know how many targets you are able to hit, either with her Q or W; due to the heal on Essence Theft, you can very easily turn around a bad trade or duel. For example, when duelling an enemy midlaner in a lane, you can actually safely fight in a minion wave, using Essence Theft to steal back a ton of HP very quickly and turn around what seemed to be a losing fight; using Q in a minion wave during a duel with essence theft means you can hit up to eight targets at once, which can heal you for nearly 450 hp with only 100 ability power. However, if you are fighting in the jungle, where there aren't many minions to hit, you have to remember: with one target, your Q can only hit twice; your E can only hit once, but Fox-Fire, your W, is almost a guaranteed 3-time hit, which means that the heal granted by your W will eclipse the heal from your other spells. Many Ahri players tend to save using Essence Theft for their Q, but again, Essence Theft is not reliant on how much damage you deal; it is reliant on how many enemies you hit. Good use of Essence Theft boosts your play on Ahri just that much more. Speaking of Ahri's Q, there's a lot to note about it. Ahri has recently become a very popular pick, with her new buffs, and more people know about her damage output than before. but her Q can still be a very surprising factor. Due to its spellpath - the magic damage going out, and the true damage going in, Ahri's Q has the potential to be her most damaging spell against MR-heavy opponents, and is very good for making people underestimate your damage. A nifty trick with Orb of Deception is to throw it out at your opponent - then veer away and cause it to miss on the way back, which takes away more than half the damage. If your opponent is not very perceptive and fails to notice that the orb hasn't done any damage on the way back, they can very easily misjudge the amount of damage Ahri's Q does - which can give you an edge in your next trade or duel. Another thing people tend to forget is that Ahri's Q curves with her; if you first toss Q and follow up with your ultimate, you can get an angle for the returning orb to hit your opponent, even if they've dodged the initial straight cast. Finally, when poking with Q, try to hit the enemy at the end of the spellpath - this gives them no time to dodge the true damage, and will really help chunk down enemy champions. However, it is also essential to keep in mind that as Ahri, you are very squishy as well. It's important to know your enemy's damage output before going in: fighting a champion like Annie or Viktor without first poking them down is a extremely risky decision for Ahri, due to their easy-to-land stuns and Ahri's reliability on her movement and positioning, which is easily shut down by something like Viktor's Gravity Field or Annie's Tibbers stuns. Image courtesy of dutomaster Midgame and Teamfighting Once you've passed the laning phase and earlygame, whether you've decided that you want to stick in your own lane and bully around your opponent or move around the map to gank, this point in the game is where you can really make a difference. Ahri attributes a huge amount of damage and utility to teamfights, and is incredibly good at picking off individual targets in a chaotic environment. Throughout the midgame, after laning phase, Ahri's very good at picking out and assassinating individual targets. She's very good at catching the enemy in the jungle - the narrow corridors and lack of minions makes it very easy for her to land Charm and Orb of Deception, as well as making it difficult to run or get out of range of Spirit Rush or Fox-Fire. When your team is not grouped or uninterested in getting in a big teamfight, Ahri's great at roaming around and picking off individual members of the enemy, which in turn can help secure objectives and accelerate snowballing. Teamfighting with Ahri is also very important. Due to her mobility and damage, Ahri can easily assassinate enemy carries if she gets good positioning - however, at the same time, her squishiness and reliance on Spirit Rush to both gap close and escape meansn that Ahri cannot teamfight well without her ultimate. When attempting to initiate a teamfight, Ahri relies on her Charm - it's a great tool for catching out enemy squishies, allowing her or the rest of her team to burst them down, but it's a skillshot that's pretty difficult to land. In my own experience, it's better to hold onto Charm until you have a good target - casting Charm on a tank isn't very helpful. Positioning is key in Ahri's teamfighting gameplay. Being in the middle of an enemy team isn't exactly her strongpoint; you should be focusing on picking off enemy carries and skirting around the edges of a teamfight, contributing damage with Q and W before diving in to clean up or assassinate individual targets. That being said, Ahri can contribute a huge amount of damage when thrown into the middle of a team, due to her AoE abilities, but don't expect to survive for long. It's best to attempt to pick off enemy carries, and then provide sustained damage from behind your frontline. When chasing and cleaning up teamfights, obviously your best tool is Spirit Rush. The dashes and the multiple-target damage makes cleaning up fights easy, but many times you'll find that you've already used Spirit Rush in the heat of the teamfight, and chasing is made much more difficult. However, not all is lost: remember, Orb of Deception has a massive movement speed boost attached to it, so when chasing down targets out of your range, casting Q, even without hitting anything, can help you catch up to a retreating champion and take them down. However, always be careful when doing this, because a significant amount of your damage will be on cooldown. Image courtesy of Chenbowow Lategame As most assassins do, as lategame rounds out, so does Ahri. While you are still that incredibly dangerous 1v1 bursty 100-0-your-carries assassin, it's much more difficult to do as your competition ramps up in items such as Zhonya's Hourglass or Quicksilver Sash, which make it much more difficult to judge your Charm and its effectiveness, and those massive tanks(Maokai, Sion, I'm looking at you)aren't going to be assassinated. By anyone. Thus, your primary job during the lategame is to find the enemy AD carry and kill him/her; this will obviously be much more difficult with the team in the way, but it's still possible. Aside from that, setting up picks and taking out individual members of the enemy team is still high on the priority list; however, you do need to play safer as it is much more difficult to take on the enemy, even one-versus-one.

Item Build

Again, I reiterate this from my last guide, I don't like having a set item path - I prefer to be more proactive and build according to my enemies, but for those of you who enjoy having a concrete item path, here you go!

And that's that! Have fun with Ahri on the rift, and charm out some wins.Don't you trust me?
Image courtesy of Overweight-Cat