Once considered an off-meta Support, but now a high-level pick favoured for a strong early game and high damage unmatched by other Supports. Learn with Isles on how to play like the best with Elise Support.
In this guide, we break down Elise Support, a pick that recently gained popularity in higher levels of play. While Elise has fallen off from the flavor of the month status with adjustments to push her back into the jungle, she can still be a capable Support that fills a powerful niche for the team, with some of Support’s best-in-class diving abilities and the ability to push early leads into snowballs. With Jonah “Isles” Rosario, we’ll discuss how you can pick up and play Elise Support.
Although Elise has mainly been known as an early aggressive Jungler, she has been seen in the Support role. Players like Lehends climbed to rank 1 in Korea with Elise Support when she was considered off-meta, and Elise occasionally reared her head around high elo solo queue games as some players’ unorthodox comfort pick. Elise in the past went more from an AP bruiser to a tankier build, with famous old players like Meteos being known for their Elise play as a Jungler. However, patch changes throughout the years pushed Elise into a more AP assassin playstyle, benefiting her quite a lot in the Support role, where she can deal a significant amount of damage in the early game.
Isles: “The ability for Elise to dive sidelaners, especially tanks and harder to dive champions without extra help from Junglers is what made her especially popular. Previously, if you had a champion like Kai'Sa or an ADC with high damage, even like Ezreal or Kalista. If you had these champs plus a jungler, plus a Support, you could dive most champs (except maybe like K'Sante). But with Elise, you're able to negate towershots, you're able to navigate these tower dives a lot more easily, and she offered so much damage.
Elise is not that popular anymore, she's still played occasionally, though not so much in Competitive. She was largely popularized by the laneswap meta. A lot of small stuff [brought Elise to Support]. Bloodsong was pretty good on Elise, Electrocute got buffed. There were other buffs that happened a while ago, like you can E-flash on Elise now, you can end your rappel without having a target.”
Synchronized Souls will give you better roaming and easier back timings, two key features when applying as much pressure on the map as possible as Elise especially in the early game.
Sorcerer Shoes grants you more burst, giving a cheap source of magic penetration that Supports can more easily afford.
Isles suggests focusing primarily on damage, starting with Bloodsong. When playing Elise as Support, you should prefer the cheaper damage options like Stormsurge, which grants all the stats Elise prefers (AP, magic penetration, and movement speed). Elise tends to fall off as the game enters into late-game teamfighting, which makes her primarily a pick built around picking off targets and bursting them down.
Isles: “Her entire niche is dealing damage, tower diving and one-shotting people during the Cocoon CC duration, so I think just building items like Stormsurge. Some people go Protobelt, but I'm less of a fan. I prefer Stormsurge, just because having the threat of one-shotting a squishy champion is kind of what made her useful. It makes it so that champs without Flash or Cleanse are vulnerable. Because Support Elise offers nothing besides damage because her CC is so limited, it's important to have that niche to threaten squishy champs.
If you go something more tanky, you'll survive slightly longer, but your damage output is limited when you don't have additional gold. Elise does do a lot of damage after the Bloodsong upgrade, especially if you get a few kills and snowball early, which is what she excels at.”
Unlike many traditional Supports that opt into more defensive items, Elise will primarily focus on her capability to burst down targets. However, Isles emphasizes your items being the most important due to how Elise scales into the game, emphasizing cheaper magic penetration and AP items over more haste-oriented builds.
Isles: “Elise is pretty much the same champ for the whole game [past level 3], it's items that make the whole difference, which is why people play her in Support, because she doesn't scale off anything except items. You never get two Cocoons off in a fight anyway, so people don't build haste on her often.”
Isles suggests starting E (Cocoon/Rappel) or Q (Neurotoxin/Venomous Bite), explaining the reasons and situations where you would pick either.
Isles: “The reason why some people start E is because Electrocute is so strong. Even though her E does not deal damage, if it connects, you can auto twice to proc Electrocute. If you E someone in a bush, it grants vision now, so you don't need to put a ward or open yourself up. It also gives you the opportunity to dodge critical spells and damage from ADCs as well. E also costs 30 less mana than Q. I think survivability from E is oftentimes good in melee matchups. However, Q does more damage. In ranged matchups where you need to deal more damage, it makes sense to start Q.”
Elise lacks a strong level 1 in spite of having the advantage of two early abilities from transform due to wanting to do short bursty trades, which are only accessible when she can put points into her other abilities.
Elise’s strongest is level 3, when she has access to all of her human form and spider form abilities. She can create tons of pressure from dealing lots of damage with this basic combo.
E – Cocoon > Q – Neurotoxin > W – Volatile Spiderling > R- Transform into Spider form > Q – Venomous Bite > W – Skittering Frenzy > E – Rappel (when needed).
Keep in mind that her spider form Q (Venomous Bite) can be used as a short gap closer. You can consider focusing on autoattacks if you are in range before ending with Q instead to maximize the execute damage. Venomous Bite is on a 6 second base cooldown, so it may potentially be used twice in the event your opponent is trying to get away/fight back, but otherwise it is your finisher.
Consider Rappel as a multi-use tool, where you can use it to catch champions trying to escape, or as a way to escape yourself. Save Rappel if you hit the cocoon, because you can usually safely walk up to them while they’re stunned unless they are in a difficult to reach location (e.g across the wall).
Isles: “She'll deal extra damage when she hits level 3. Her [spider form] W got buffed since Elise got changed to much shorter cooldowns, so it's pretty spammable if you find yourself in melee range often.”
Elise also has some unique peculiarities when playing Support. Her spiderlings are very annoying for certain laners to deal with due to blocking Elise's hitbox but can be detrimental in other scenarios like Miss Fortune guaranteeing her Double Up bonus damage through hitting Elise’s spiders.
In a more traditional laning phase and past level six, she struggles a lot against champions that pick off and burst her down, like Blitzcrank. (If you’re caught, Blitzcrank is likely silencing you, removing your ability to try to escape in that window with Elise’s typically squishy build as Support.)
Elise benefits best with champions that love to follow up on her Cocoon. In particular, Draven pairs well because Elise often does not finish off her victim leaving them low enough for Draven to claim his League of Draven Adoration cashout.
Elise combines two traits that give her immense value in the Support role: High base movement speed in spider form and the best tower diving kit for a Support.
Isles: “Elise is pretty much the best [at tower diving]. She has the highest damage of Supports that are good at diving, particularly if she hits the Cocoon. Other champions, even with a higher HP pool, they're never able to fully negate more than one tower shot. Tower shots nowadays, even if you're a tanky champion, deal so much damage. Elise is not a level 6 Alistar who can tank like 7 shots, but in the early game, she's definitely the best.”
Mobility around the map is a key factor in a Support’s ability to impact the map. Isles emphasizes the Domination tree with Electrocute as it also grants access to Relentless Hunter to further empower Elise’s ability to impact the map.
Similar to playing Elise Jungle, she has incredibly strong burst/ganking, but with the added benefit of being still powerful on a Support budget. You get to take advantage of one of Elise's signature abilities that kept her relevant as a Jungler for many years (Rappel) in the Support role, enabling tower dives/more riskier plays.
Keep in mind a feature of Elise’s Rappel is that it grants vision in a small area while she is in the air, allowing you to reach places where you may not have vision. Take advantage of this to avoid common ward paths and in events where you need to retreat/reach areas. You can be particularly creative with knowledge of where you can jump. You can rappel onto plants, across the wall to dragon, jungle camps, and even Voidgrubs/Baron at certain angles.
When tower diving as Elise, you want to be taking aggro from the tower first, as you have the greatest amount of safety in the tower dive with Rappel. Isles describes the basics for diving as Elise, hitting the Cocoon while dumping your current health damage abilities early, before following up with her execute damage in spider form and rappelling to safety.
Isles: “She has the highest damage of Supports that are good at diving, particularly if she hits the Cocoon. It depends if she misses but let's say, best case scenario you hit everything. You W first, E, hit the human Q for current HP damage, you start with that. Then transform where she has execute damage, tank one or two tower shots, then rappel the third shot [right before it hits].”
While Elise excels in the early game, she falls off heavily especially in situations where she is forced into a 5v5 teamfight. Isles emphasizes simply playing to what strengths Elise has in the situation that the game has not snowballed with Elise’s early pressure.
Isles: “Elise past the 20 minute mark is always difficult. If you haven't snowballed the game out of control, your utility could just be very limited. You might just be kind of playing to follow up CC. Hopefully, you have some champs who benefit off your Cocoon. Try to bait out spells with Rappel. It’s true that in a 5v5 Elise is kind of outscaled, but if you have snowballed the game early and you have a decent amount of gold, Elise still has a high damage threat. if you can connect a Cocoon, you can offload damage, and if you're winning the game, you have a tempo advantage, so you can set vision by yourself.”
You might be able to get vision or wards to set up for picks, but in a full standoff, 5v5 Elise will generally be weak. That's not how you want to operate if you can avoid it.”
The important part to take away from Isles’ advice is to use Elise’s mobility around the map to focus on making picks and setting up vision. Ideally by picking off targets, you can avoid full 5v5 scenarios and create advantages for your team with controlling the vision around the map.
You also have the kit of a Jungler, with access to % HP damage that is really valuable for dealing with key objectives around the map. You can assist much more at speed clearing earlier and later objectives. Another advantage Elise has is her spiderlings, which can take aggro from objectives to let your teammates stay healthier while clearing them.
We conclude with Isles’ thoughts on Elise as a pick, with the reasons why you might want to pick her up, what weakened her as a pick with patch changes, and Isles’ general thoughts on unique Support champions like Elise in both solo queue and competitive play.
Isles: “Elise in high elo it made sense, it’s best when exploiting vision pockets, tempo, making people match basing first, utilizing high movement speed and high burst, but poor scaling. It's something that I think was kind of reserved for high elo, because they made the most of it. In solo queue, it was a great pick despite there generally being little to no level 1 laneswapping, but even so, Elise has the potential to work in high elo. I just don't prefer it anymore because they nerfed Elise ever since she was the most popular, they transferred damage from her Q to jungle scalings, where her W is stronger, and auto attacking more.
It's always refreshing to see something new at times, but I mean there's generally a reason why traditional Supports offer utility. Although Elise has a niche, she doesn't offer the same utility. I think it's ok for small periods of time for flavor of the month picks, but yeah I don't think Elise was designed to be a Support, so it makes sense that Riot would move her away from that class. You don't want champs to be too flexible if you can avoid it, it's definitely unhealthy for competitive at times.”
We thank Isles for his time in discussing Elise Support, and hope others can improve with his valuable insight on the pick.
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