The recent nerfs to Ahri on PBE are NOT the way to balance her. They do not address the core problem.
by Kagormund
I've been a long time Ahri main (playing her since s3 and maining since early s4) and while I agree that Ahri incredibly strong right now the direction that riot is taking in balancing her is not the right way.
At the moment the things pushing Ahri over the top are the insane movement speed buff she gets on Q and the very high burst damage on Foxfire. Implementing heavy mana gating and reducing the range on Foxfire will ruin her build diversity and will not solve the problem.
Traditionally Ahri's biggest weakness has been her vulnerability to ganks pre-6, her lack of mobility while her ultimate is on cooldown and her lack of tanky stats. The problem right now is that her mobility weakness has been removed throughout the entire game with the movement speed her Q gives.
Increasing the mana cost on Q will not solve the problem of her ridiculously safe early game. Instead it will simply make playing her frustrating for both the player and her opponents.
Riot needs to give Ahri back her old weaknesses, so that her opponents have windows of opportunity to shut her down. Namely, make her more vulnerable to ganks pre-6 and while her ultimate is on cooldown.
For the reasons above I suggest the following:
Tie the movement speed boost on Q to her ultimate rank. At rank 0 it gives exactly 0 movement speed. This makes Ahri almost exactly the same early game as she was in 5.1. She will be very vulnerable to ganks and easy to shut down. Additionally she will no longer be able to use the movement speed boost to be a strong lane bully.
At rank 1 ultimate allow Q to have 1/3 of the movement speed boost it gives now, rank 2 have 2/3 and rank 3 to have the full movement speed boost it has in 5.2. This makes Ahri's mobility scale with the duration of the game and ensures she still has her utility lategame.
This solves the problem of Ahri being impossible to shut down early game. Now make it so the movement speed boost her Q gives is cut in half if her ultimate is on cooldown. This makes Ahri much more vulnerable if her ultimate is down which is exactly one of her biggest weaknesses in 5.1. It also has the side effect of including decision making into the usage of her ultimate. Do you use your ultimate and lose out on half your mobility or save it to kite around better?
On to the topic of her insane burst now. Riot has a good idea in lowering the damage of Foxfire back to 5.1 levels while decreasing the cooldown by 1 second. However decreasing the range by 150(!) is insane and will make the cooldown buff essentially useless. Keep in mind that Foxfire does not go on cooldown until all the bolts have fired. Additionally individual Foxfires have their own range. At 600 range the furthest Foxfire will only fire if Ahri is within 350 range of her target. Irelia's stun has 425 range. This change literally makes Foxfire have a lower effective range than Equilibrium strike. It also has the side effect of making the skill essentially useless aside from procing Rylai's.
I would gladly take the damage reversion and have Foxfire stay at 5 second cooldown max over having it's range reduced to useless levels. In fact a range reduction of 50 might even be fine, but 150 is complete overkill. Aside from that, if the Rylai's interaction is still too strong, change Foxfire to apply the AoE slow instead of the single target slow.
In addition to all of this, kite mages are supposed to die if caught. A solution could be found in making Ahri squishier so she is punished harder for getting hit (with her insane mobility she really should not be) and makes her lategame much more fragile.
Whatever you do, do not go through with the current changes on PBE. While they might not "Olaf" her, they will definitely make playing her a pain for the player as well as doing nothing to address the problems of the players playing against her.
TL;DR: Riot's balancing approach does not solve the core problems. Make Ahri vulnerable early game by tying her Q mobility to her ultimate rank and cut the mobility in half if the ultimate is on cooldown to make her vulnerable during key windows. Do not reduce the range on Foxfire, it will have lower effective range than Irelia's stun which is ridiculous. Change the Rylai's interaction to AoE to reduce the slow and lower the damage as the burst is too high. The cooldown can stay at 5. Make her squishier lategame to punish her if she gets hit since she is a kite mage.
Edit: Also please change the movement speed boost particles to match each skin. They are so ugly on Firefox Ahri.
Edit2: I have now responded to Phreak's arguments and ideas to further explain and clarify my points. (Warning my response is 10000 characters long and there is no TL;DR)
Edit3: Thanks for the gold stranger!