User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Elise, the Spider Queen/@comment-24795478-20141217074329/@comment-1330314-20141217084346

Elise's Human Form Q and W take a long time to deploy because, unlike most other mages and assassins, she has two forms of hard crowd control as her basic abilities. That's also why I don't want her to use spells while channeling Q, because otherwise the whole channel time would be made irrelevant with an E stun midway through. It's also why I reduced the stun duration: I don't want Elise nullifying the counterplay to one of her abilities with another ability. However, I think Elise with the above kit has enough tools to contribute to ganks even if she misplays, if only through the use of her E. The unreliability of her kill potential is a deliberate decision here: I purposefully don't want Elise to kill in Human Form, or have access to full Spider Form burst 24/7, because giving her reliable access to both crowd control and burst would imply making her not so good at one or the other (or either).

Likewise, I deliberately want to try out non-tanky Spiderlings because I think they need clear, straightforward counterplay. The counterplay to them isn't how much damage you can sink in within the 3 seconds, but rather how you choose to deal with them in the 3 seconds where both them and Elise are attacking you. Since they no longer hang around Elise, it's usually going to be an either-or situation, rather than a "you all die to AoE" situation. I don't think Elise needs to juggle monsters or even be remotely tanky, because there is nothing I see in her that requires tankiness. She is a fragile, high-risk mage coupled to a squishy melee assassin, who is currently being built as a bruiser due to a mismatched kit and poor scalings.