[13.11] Vicksy's Master Updated Ahri Guide (2024)

Essence Theft is Ahri's passive, and it got completely changed during her rework. Ahri gains an Essence Fragment whenever she kills a minion or a monster, and after obtaining 9 fragments, she consumes them automatically to heal based on level. Also, whenever Ahri scores a takedown against an enemy champion within 3 seconds of damaging them, she consumes their essence to heal again, but a lot stronger.

A pretty straight-forward passive that doesn't have any special mechanics or ways to play, as it's pretty automatic, however you should really pay attention to how many fragments you have for your next heal, even potentially killing small raptors to proc it!

Orb of Deception is Ahri's bread and butter ability. Ahri sends out her orb in the target direction, dealing magic damage to all enemies it passes through, and when it returns back to her it deals true damage instead.

This spell is so important for Ahri - it's her wave-clear and main damage source in one spell. Learning the range of this ability is really important because it hits twice, you want to be trying to hit enemies in lane at the very edge of its range so they can't dodge either side of it. You one-shot the castor minions when this spell is maxed at level 9, assuming you're not terribly behind.

You can also combine Flash directly after casting Orb of Deception to hide the animation and get a sneaky kill on someone, exactly like how the Charm Flash trick is performed.

Fox-Fire is Ahri's second damage spell. On activation, Ahri gains a burst movement speed decaying over 2 econds, and summons 3 spectral flames which orbit her for up to 2.5 seconds. After 0.4 seconds, the flames will target the closest enemies in range, or if an enemy has been recently hit with Ahri's Charm or basic attack, they will hit them after 0.25 seconds with slightly more range. Missles will deal 200% damage to minions below 20% health, and flames will prioritize low health minions that can be killed by Fox-Fire.

With Ahri's small rework, this ability got slightly changed. It got more base damage across every level, especially level 1, mana cost reduced from 45 to 25, movement speed for longer, and the flame duration being reduced. Level 1 will be even more important on Ahri into champions where you can be in range for Fox-Fire as she'll seriously be chunking them out now. The flame duration being reduced means when you have nothing near you to hit, the missles will fade after 2.5 seconds instead of 5 now. Fox-Fire does NOT go on cooldown until all the missles are used or fizzles, so this is effectively shaving off 2.5 seconds off of its cooldown if you have no targets nearby, perfect for using it to cover distance.

This means that when Ahri finds herself surrounded, if she hasn't Charmed or auto-attack an enemy, you'll find that your Fox-Fire bolts flying off on different targets, like so:

There are some other important things to note with Fox-Fire. If you lose sight of your target, Fox-Fire will not target them, and the bolts would fly off on other targets if there are any - this makes it super important to have vision around brushes with your Stealth Ward or Control Wards because of this. However, with the new buffs the Fox-Fire targetting will target lower health minions a lot more, also dealing 200% damage to minions below 40% health. Carmed champions are still the flames' first priority.

Another cool mechanic with Fox-Fire that many don't seem to know about is how it doesn't cancel previous orders - meaning you can use Fox-Fire during the casts of your other abilities like Spirit Rush AND you can use it while auto-attacking and it doesn't interrupt them. This makes Ahri's kit flow really nicely and it's the biggest reason why I love taking Lich Bane on her - being able to freely auto attack a tower with no down-time and instant Lich Bane procs is amazingly strong.

Charm - Ahri blows a kiss in the target direction, dealing magic damage to the first enemy hit, forcing them to walk towards Ahri and slowing them by 65%. She also knocks enemy champions down, interrupting incoming dashes.

This ability does NOT increase damage dealt to champions anymore, meaning you can be a lot more creative with ability order rather than only hitting Charm first always. They also lowered the mana cost from 70 to 50, which is a HUGE change. You can now throw out Charm a lot more in early laning phase before your first base, allowing you to get more lane pressure.

A well known trick with Charm is you can cast it then spam Flash afterwards, this makes the animation harder to see and because of that people can't generally react to it, allowing it to be hit a lot easier!

Charm being able to interrupt dashes makes some match-ups that were really difficult a lot more bearable, like LeBlanc, and having that outplay potential is great for increasing her overall skill-cap. Learning what other champions do will really allow you to use this ability to its fullest potential!

Spirit Rush is Ahri's ultimate. Ahri dashes towards the cursor, firing energy bolts to up to 3 targets around her, dealing magic damage. Spirit Rush can be recast twice more within 15 seconds with no additional cost, with an innate static 1 second cooldown. Consuming a champion's essence with Essence Theft while Spirit Rush is active extends the recast duration by up to 10 seconds, granting an additional recast, storing up to 3 recasts at a time.

This is a great ultimate to tie Ahri's kit together. You can use her ulti to dodge important abilities, cross terrain, making sure your return Orb of Deception hits, and so much more. One important thing to note when combining Spirit Rush with Flash to cross a large distance, always Flash first and THEN Spirit Rush - if you use Flash immediately after casting Spirit Rush, it will CANCEL the dash and make you waste the abilities, and also Spirit Rush bolts will be more likely to fly off to random targets if you use it first. Just like Fox-Fire, your bolts will fly to other targets if you do not have vision on the target, brushes are Ahri's worst enemy! Use your Stealth Ward effectively!

With her rework, Ahri can now gain up to EIGHT Spirit Rush charges, which is absolutely insane! This allows her to chase a lot harder than she ever used to, as Ahri without her ultimate was a sitting duck.

A common thing I see people doing with Spirit Rush is ulting right on top of the enemies character model, in some scenarios this is good to try and dodge line skill-shots but most of the time people do this without even noticing - Ahri herself doesn't do damage with the dash, she fires bolts to enemies AROUND her, meaning you don't need to get super close, and also people ult so close to the enemy they tend to make the second portion of Orb of Deception miss because of this, always be aware!

After the set of changes Ahri received a while back, there is only one way to max her spells now, and that's Orb of Deception > Fox-Fire > Charm, with a level in your ultimate whenever you can at 6, 11 and 16.

At level 1, you can actually go any of Ahri's abilities first. You should take Charm if your team is preparing for an invade and you have other CC on your team so you can easily land it, Fox-Fire if you're vs. a melee champion and you can use auto > Fox-Fire > auto for a smooth Electrocute proc. In all other situations, you go Orb of Deception.

At level 2, if I've started Fox-Fire or Charm, I go Orb of Deception. If I've started with Orb of Deception, you can choose between the two abilities here. I like to think how my lane/jungle match-up is going to go before I decide on my leveling order. If I feel like there are going to be some early fights, I want to have all 3 of my abilities at level 3. If my enemy laner has 0 waveclear and I want to be consistently shoving them under tower, I'll put another point into Orb of Deception at level 3, so this makes me take Charm at level 2. You always want to have Charm by level 3 the latest, you can ignore Fox-Fire until level 4.

You max out Orb of Deception because it's Ahri's bread and butter tool - her waveclear and her main source of damage, also scaling true damage is amazing.

You max out Fox-Fire second because it's her other damage spell. A lot of people seem to complain about her W being "boring" to play with but I disagree. When maxed it goes from a 10 second CD to a 6 second CD, going down to a 3.6 second CD with 40% CDR, allowing you to use it CONSTANTLY during Spirit Rush - the amount of damage that comes from this is not to be sniffed at, AND it's an auto-target spell. It's also the perfect spell to use to weave in Lich Bane autos as well. Now with the added 40% movement speed, you definitely want to be maxing this, lower cooldown = more zoomies!

You max Charm last all the time now. Nothing annoys me more than Ahri players fighting saying Charm max second is still good. The reason Charm max second existed was because before it had a base CC duration of 1 second, so you would max this second to bring it up to 2 seconds but still missing out on lots of damage, but now her Charm has a 1.4 BASE duration, which is absolutely amazing. Putting 4 more levels into an ability to double its duration was fine - to only get 0.6 second extra CC? That's garbage, and it also stays at a static 12 second CD. MAX THIS LAST PLEASE!!