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Why Riot refuses to change Fizz's E? (Playful/Trickster)

YumaS2Astral··2 votes·429 views

Fizz is one of the most annoying and most frustrating champions to face, as well as having one of the highest snowball potential of all champions. Riot has made lots of changes to Fizz recently, but there is something that they didn't changed yet: his Playful/Trickster.

Where's the counterplay to that skill? It allows Fizz to dodge so many skillshots, as well as projectiles that could hit the majority of champions, such as Syndra's ult. It allows Fizz to be immune to ganks and extremely difficult to chase. It acts as a second gap closer, since Fizz already has his Q. It deals a nasty amount of damage, on top of slowing you with the first part of this skill. If Fizz max that, it allows him to clear minion waves very easily. And if this wasn't enough, it has an extremely low cooldown for everything it is capable of doing. The only downside to this skill is its high mana cost. However, once Fizz has Morellonomicon and/or Sheen, this is no longer a problem.

Fizz's untargetability has no counterplay, except hitting him with DoT skills before he becomes untargetable. However, most mages, ADCs, and even tanks, don't have such skill.

Other champions can become untargetable, but all of them have a downside:

  1. Vladimir has his W (Sanguine Pool). It has a much higher cooldown, costs a painful amount of health, and the damage it does is mediocre. It can't be used to clear minion waves and does not come with a dash.
  2. Master Yi has his Q (Alpha Strike). Again, it has an higher cooldown, although it can be reduced by auto-attacking. It also requires a target, which limits the amount of things that Master Yi is capable of doing.
  3. Elise has her Rappel. However, it requires her to be on Spider form, has a long cooldown early game, requires a target to land (otherwise she will just land on the same place, making it predictable) and does not deal any damage.

There are other examples. But still, I would like to know why Riot don't just take away this untargetability and trade it for a massive damage reduction and tenacity or even immunity to CC.

12 Comments

Roaranor4 votes

His E costs literally a third of his mana pool right off the bat (90 mana at Rank 1 vs his 267 mana pool at start is roughly 33%). It's also his biggest mobility tool, and his only defensive tool in his kit. On top of that, it's one of his biggest damage tools, so using it defensively or for wave clear guts a lot of his burst. It also starts at a 16 second cooldown, a pretty long vulnerability period for a solo lane assassin. Its mana cost scales over 100 (costing more than his ult), so it's not like the ability isn't gated.

Vladmir isn't a relevant comparison using the points you made. His pool isn't supposed to do as much damage, because he's not an assassin. He excels at sustained damage as opposed to burst. He's not mana gated like Fizz, it's health cost drops dramatically the lower Vlad's hp is. Vladmir has innate sustain to make up for the hp costs on his kit. Vladmir is also ranged (Autos, and 3 out of 4 skills, the 4th being his aoe slow of a pool), so he isn't as vunerable to being zoned without having it up.

Elise's rappel now gives her a damage/healing steroid upon descending, she has an entire ranged kit, and a relatively low cd, ranged stun.

If Fizz uses it in lane, he's vunerable to a gank. If he uses it to escape a gank, he's vunerable in lane.

ADCs, Mages, and Tanks aren't supposed to have a skill meant for an assassin anyway (save hybrid roles), so I'm not sure why you even bothered to make this point.

This is literally a thread complaining that assassin has a single defensive ability that makes him briefly untargetable and is largely gated early on, so let's look at other assassins.

  • Zed has two mobility tools and ranged harass/wave clear that's close to spammable.
  • Ahri has 3 free-moving dashes and a ranged, damaging taunt that scales in duration
  • Talon has a point-click gap closer and an aoe nuke that also makes him invisible and gives his increased ms for a duration
  • LeBlanc has two free moving dashes, the potential for two chain snares, or two ranged point-click harass
  • Ekko has a free "I fucked up, let me nuke instead" ult, and a ranged point-click blink, the possibility for a shield/slow/stun (oh it's aoe too)

Sure, he's snowbally like almost every other assassin in the game. But there are better ways of nerfing him then taking out the single most important tool in his kit. To be honest, he's not even that big of a deal right now.

Erockandroll2 votes

The problem is that his E is also his wave clear. So it would completely gut him if it actually got nerfed, regardless of how annoying the ability actually is. It may have been OK if it was his Only defense. But tanky toplane smite is a thing, He can still build high CD to get his E more often. Even if he went full AP, he would still have Zonya's.

Vistha Kai1 votes

Is it really that bad for an assassin to NOT clear whole minion wave with one spell?

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

Fizz can't wave-clear with one spell. He can barely kill the caster minions with his E after getting a healthy amount of AP.

Vistha Kai1 votes

Ah, right. He can 99-0 minion wave. I'm sorry for being so wrong.

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

Neither right, nor the point.

The mere fact that he has an ability that can hit more than 1 target is what offends you, to the point of ignoring that it doesn't do that much damage. Even if he maxes it first, which wasn't the common strategy when I used to play him, it's not going to clear the back half of the minion wave without at least two completed AP items. And at that point, the game has likely moved past the farming phase, and the only reason he'd be using it on minions is to deal with stacked minion pushing.

But what do you care about facts? They're not important, right?

Vistha Kai1 votes

Facts are that any not-completely-shut-down-AP-Fizz will OHK ranged minions with level 5 E and will have to AA melee minions once with active W.

Unless AP Fizz was actually nerfed since the last time I played aganist him.

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

Facts are that any not-completely-shut-down champion with AoE spells will gib the caster minions without trouble and only need 1-2 basics on the melee minions to finish them off.

So that's absolutely normal, and it's not just a single spell to clear the wave.

Erockandroll3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Vistha Kai,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5Xa1gwie,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-06-25T20:38:41.191+0000)

Is it really that bad for an assassin to NOT clear whole minion wave with one spell?

Well, yeah, cause Assassins arn't allowed to farm Champions anymore. Not having any waveclear on an Assassin makes them feast or famine, And those type of champs arn't really able to be balanced.

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

{quoted}

Where's the counterplay to that skill?

Early game, it has a high cooldown (I think its late-game cooldown should be a bit longer personally, but it's not horrible). It has a short duration, less than a full second. It can't break DoTs or Tethers, and I'm pretty sure it can't ignore non-instant AoEs (i.e. Null Zone).

Attack him while he's engaging. Either he'll use his Q to engage and get hit for trading, or he'll use his E to avoid your single shot and be vulnerable when he lands.

Also, avoid the damn shark bait. I know, there are times where you can't avoid a skill shot, but his ideal engage hinges entirely on his ult landing. Without that, he loses a lot of damage and his only hard CC.

YumaS2Astral1 votes

A good Fizz is only really going to ult when he is sticking to you on melee range, as otherwise his ult is indeed easy to dodge.

JustMyBassCannon2 votes

But the problem with trying to get close before using his ultimate is that he either has to walk up and use his Q to get into melee range--thus risking taking damage as he goes in--or he has to use his E to get into the fight in the first place, drastically reducing his defensive capacity when he's in melee range.

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