Originally Posted by
EJM
Seeing how elise's human form has quite nice burst early game, I usually don't start with doran's in a mid game nor in another lane.
If it's a mid lane with a bit less mana usage, I usually immediately start building a rylai, with her being quite quick with the minion farms (both W abilities), I end up with an early rylai.
If it's another lane, I usually start rod of ages having it not being too expensive and isn't too horrible in terms of damage. Then continue on to the rylai.
After that, it all depends on the game, elise is probably the only champ I don't have a solid build for mostly every game.
Anyway, great trick I learned about elise, which I noticed not a lot of people even noticed it, is while being chased with a low-ish healthed champ (by that I mean it won't be worth trying to engage on him/her), turn into spider form and start your W while running away, your spiderlings being a bit behind you, they will automatically start baiting the hell out of the champ, fast enough to land a kill without them being able to start running away (especially if you got all 5 of em). If not, they will at least have poked the enemy nice enough for your ally to finish him.
I meant start boots, farm to about 1000 gold, b, get two dorans and some more pots/wards, start building to rylais. She definitely benefits from it because she doesn't have the aoe damage or aoe cc that most ap champs will have, so she needs to make up for it somehow. I've had stellar results with rylai's every game I've used it.
I never start a dorans :s and by mid game, I mean 20 minutes in, not playing in mid lane.