User blog comment:CrazyMori/One the Improbable/@comment-4290320-20130316122535/@comment-5859769-20130316203301

She's in an odd place, like Riven. She scales hard with attack damage, but I was extremely careful to make liberal use of Bonus AD scaling, which limits the effectiveness of her Q and E early on. She actually has slightly less CC than Riven does, and because of the way her Q works, slightly less damage when it comes to head-on fights.

She trades that, however, for a harass with solid damage, with less range and a slightly longer cooldown than many similar AD assassin/bruiser harass tools (Zed's Q has 900 range, 6 second cooldown at level 1, and is effectively manaless). Most of what makes her strong is her level 6 game, much like Riven, Vi, and Akali. She gains the ability to pressure in key locations, and to turn around losing fights with Aleph baits. The damage is strong, but the key with her ultimate is the slow/speed, and the potential to sacrifice half of the ultimate's damage for a slow/speed refresh.

In short, her long cooldowns early game put her into a careful melee assassin early game,  but her level 6 game, along with hitting her first fully leveled Q, W, or E, give her significantly more options. She scales hard with AD, but her lack of strong CC options means her sticking power is heavily reliant on her Q passive, which doesn't help much if she's jungling, but would help significantly in extended fights. Other sticking options for her include Frozen Mallet and Blade of the Ruined King, but those items don't give her the AD she desperately needs haha. I think the choices you have to make on her alone help to balance her.