Why is Ahri’s win rate and popularity surging after her rework?

A partial Ahri rework has led to the nine-tailed fox’s popularity and win rate shooting skywards after this effort at modernizing the classic champion.

The Ahri rework wasn’t a full visual gameplay update that rebuilt her from the ground up. Instead, Riot Games chose to modernize Ahri’s kit ahead of her Aesthetic Sustainability Update. ASUs are meant to be mid-scope changes to the visual look of a character that help polish them up without starting over from the ground up.

Ahri rework leads to surging win rate

The changes made to Ahri were previewed by designer Riot August in late January, showcasing the developers’ plans for the charming mid lane mage. The core goals of the update were to increase her mobility through her ultimate, buffing her passive’s usefulness, and making her feel more interactive in the laning phase.

We've got an Ahri refresh going to PBE soon for feedback
Goals:
-Lean into her mobile mage identity by allowing R to partially reset, giving her more opportunities to carry fights
-Passive reworked to be more useful throughout the game
-Make her spells feel better to cast in lane pic.twitter.com/0vLqJqOlS2

— August (@RiotAugust) January 19, 2022

For a long time, Ahri has struggled to have a healthy identity in the mid lane. When she was released, she was a wave clear machine able to delete a wave and roam into the fog of war to find picks. Over the years, her linear nature turned from a strength into a liability. Ahri’s dependency on her only piece of crowd control and her limited tools apart from damage meant she became a feast or famine character with limited utility in most team compositions.

The rework has hit live servers and fans are already loving it. The ability to use Ahri’s dash more often, as well as the buffs to her laning phase, have given her a huge boost to both popularity and win rate numbers. Ahri’s ASU will land later this year and will likely look to emulate her more recent appearance in the Ruined King game as well as in Legends of Runeterra.

These designs have leaned more into her new and distinctly Ionian look. With a flowing white and red robe, the new aesthetic fits League of Legends’ modern aesthetic much better than her original 2015 design.,