Talk:Elise/@comment-26454228-20150601042113/@comment-24613667-20150601163733

And, despite the % health damage on her Q, she still can't deal with tanks because she needs a Void Staff to deal with all their MR, which means she'd be too squishy (lose/lose). She also runs out of mana quite easily in lane since you need to harass tanks, but mana regen items are impractical in most cases (stacking mana is decent though). Full tank is unsatisfying and you don't offer a whole lot, but losing any of those stats means you die pretty quickly.

I've had mild success with getting an early Zz'Rot Portal (yes, really), it gives a big chunk of stats and let's you build into health+damage items like Haunting Guise and Rylai's while not gimping yourself in one area or another. The only downside is the lack of CDR with those items, but I eventually pick up things like an Iceborn Gauntlet/Frozen Heart (depending on how much armor I need) and Banner of Command (help the team and yourself). Abyssal Scepter can work its way in there sometimes, but it depends on how much AD/AP I'm facing and how tanky the enemy team is. Basically, a bit of everything seems to work okay.