Fizz Change Heading to PBE

Hi all,

I’m NeuroCat, a Game Designer at Riot. I previously worked on Remake and Honor, and I’m now working with the Champions team on some smaller projects, starting with Fizz.

We’re shipping some small Fizz changes to PBE for feedback. Since the Assassin Rework, we’ve heard a lot of dissatisfaction from Fizz players around his current W. The waiting game around the charging bleed mark is healthier (by increasing Fizz’s burst window), but feels awkward to use and unintuitive to a lot of you. Our primary goal with these changes is to replace the mark charging mechanic and Fizz’s current W with a more satisfying and intuitive version of W (while maintaining the delay on Fizz’s full burst).

Current Changes to W

• REMOVED - W passive marking targets for 6s (note: the 3s bleed DOT still exists!)
• REMOVED - W active dealing triple damage when hitting a mark-primed target
• NEW - W active now has second cast, similar to the first, but dealing more damage (especially against low health enemies)
• Bonus Damage on Hit:
  • First W: 10/20/30/40/50 + 40% AP
  • Second W: 35/50/65/80/95 + 50% AP (+0-100% increased damage based on enemy % health missing)
• 1s lockout on recasting W
  • Using W on a target slowed by Chum the Waters allows W to be recast instantly
• Mana refund amount reduced 20/28/36/42/50 >>> 10/14/18/22/26
• Mana refund applies to both casts individually
• REMOVED - Cooldown reduction when killing any unit with W active

The updated W has two casts, both reset Fizz’s auto-attack and deal bonus damage on hit. The first deals lighter damage; the second deals heavier damage, especially when the enemy is low on health. There is a lockout between the two casts, so you’ll need to stay in combat if you want to get your full damage off (or play around priming his W casts). We still want you to be able to unload your full combo onto enemies you hit with your shark, so you’ll be able to recast instantly when you W a “sharked” target. Along with these changes, we’ve also tuned his damage a bit so Fizz’s ability to scrap in lane at early levels should be higher (instead of having to sit back and wave clear until 6).

Keep in mind, with these changes, we’re not looking to update Fizz or make large scope changes, just smooth down a consistent pain point for Fizz players. We’ll be listening to feedback and iterating as we let these changes sit on PBE for a little while, so to be clear, these changes will not ship in 8.13.

If you play with these changes on PBE, please leave some feedback if you’re able. Thanks!

-NeuroCat

 

    6/21/18 Update

First, I want to thank you all for the feedback, especially for you who have had a chance to try him out on the PBE. I'm trying to read it all, even if I don't have time to respond to it all.

I'm going to try to summarize the broad themes of feedback I'm hearing from you all, and my brief thoughts:

• "Revert Fizz's W to pre-Assassin Rework"
• We aren't planning on doing this, since we believe that this model isn't particularly healthy, especially with a high AP assassin. While I agree that the deceptive damage and 'whittling-you-down' feeling around the empowered bleed do feel "tricky" and playing into Fizz's nature, we ultimately want to make Fizz's windows of power and burst more clear and consistent to Fizz players and opponents.
• "Make Melee Range Shark Viable/Revert the Shark changes"
• We aren't bringing back the old R, but we intend to make your melee range ult a bit more effective with these changes. In the case where you do land a melee range ult, you can unload your W burst immediately, which should make this case feel more powerful/give you more options.
• "Will this change make Tank or On-Hit Fizz crowd out AP Assassin Fizz?"
• We will be trying to make sure we aren't shifting too much power away from AP Assassin Fizz. You'll notice in some of the changes below we're shifting more power into his AP ratios.
• "His Damage Seems Low"
• From the PBE testing we've seen, we think his damage numbers are around where we intended, but it doesn't feel as impactful, due to the missing health execute damage on the second W. I'm trying an iteration below where we remove this in favor of just flatter damage on his second W.
• "Without the W reset on kill, his laning/farming under turret is going to be terrible"
• We tried some iterations of the new W with this, but they either had really unintuitive interactions or gave him a lot of strong wave-clearing power with no real downtime for his opponents to play around. So we aren't currently planning on adding this back, but want to make sure his laning phase and ability to farm still holds up without it (even if it might be less safe to just farm with it under turret). Below I'm increasing the mana refund on his W, and I'll be looking for other ways to increase his farming ability if we find it insufficient - keep in mind, the second cast is free, so this change will effectively make it mana neutral for him to last hit with it.

Here are some changes that will land on PBE tomorrow:

• Mana refund on kill with W: 10/14/18/22/26 >>> 15/20/25/30/35
• W2 Damage: 35/50/65/80/95 + 50% AP (+0-100% increased damage based on enemy % health missing) >>> 35/50/65/80/95 + 90% AP

Thank you again for your feedback so far. Over the weekend, please give it a shot on the PBE and let me know how it feels. I'll likely have another update like this sometime next week.

 

    6/25/18 Update

Hey all,

I want to thank you for all the feedback being posted. On these Boards, Reddit, Youtube, Twitter - we've been listening to your thoughts on these Fizz changes.

Our initial goal with the new W was to make a lightweight change and see if Fizz players enjoyed a different input for W. But from what we've heard from the majority of Fizz players, you enjoy the current live W over the experimental changes. So we're going to be pulling these changes out from PBE. If there is a clear opportunity for the right Fizz changes in the future, we're open to it, but we don't want to force changes to live that Fizz players don't want.

Thank you again for your input.