The Fiddlesticks Changes are bad. They don't make sense, and they don't add anything to the game.

Please stop nerfing Fiddlesticks.

Passive

The old passive of magic resistance reduction was still at least a decent idea because a scarecrow should be feared and MR reduction is useful to Fiddlesticks. This old passive tended to increase his total damage output albeit the number should have scaled to a larger amount as the game grew longer. If Fiddle gets fed, a classic solution would be to build magic resistance. Substantial quantities of MR go a long way, as all of Fiddle's damage is through abilities that register as 'repeated attacks' 'over time'. Every time there is a separate instance of an attack, resistances are able to reduce damage individually at every tick.

Now that this passive is gone, Fiddle's total damage output is significantly weakened in every area. 3 out of his 4 abilities are now weaker as a result of this change. They are all, in fact, -10 MR reduction weaker for the 5 separate times that they attack per usage. This is pretty significant, and one would think that it would be only fair to simply tweak the damage numbers in his abilities in order to make up for this lost damage. They have not done so. In the end, this is a huge nerf.

The New Passive

This simply does not make any sense thematically or practically. Firstly, scarecrows stand still, they do not run and get faster briefly for strange reasons. If a Fiddle is committing to drain, he is standing still. Drain is about positioning yourself in time and space correctly to win a fight. Once you've begun draining there's no 1.5 seconds of anything that's going to help you run away. If they're tanking your drain, they're close to you and they're doing damage to you, hopefully your healing can keep up. One of Fiddlestick's major weakness is his lack of mobility. If you are a player that can learn good positioning and deal with these weaknesses of low movement speed, low health, single damage type, no gap closer, high mana costs, difficult ultimate, high cool down times, only 1 viable but extremely risky itemization path, then you might not feed, as much, as the average Fiddle.

This new passive, creates a new thing for Fiddle players to work into their play style but for very little benefit if any. You're not exactly going to get the jump on a target with a 1.5 second speed burst. You're definitely not going to run away from a fight that you were already involved in.

A burst of speed for 1.5 seconds while you're crowstorming is better than nothing but if you fundamentally lack the damage output to kill someone to begin with, everyone can stay in your storm all day and not die. Fiddle does much less damage now, running around briefly is not going to help all that much. Even with the old passive it was becoming increasingly difficult finish off targets even if you landed the ult, and full combo for all seconds. This problem is compounded by the general strength of tanks right now anyway.

Drain

The whole point of drain is that champs with no cc who choose to stand in drain, tanking the damage, while attacking Fiddle, should die. They have done something stupid for attempting to fight Fiddle that way and they deserve to lose. Drain is the only real strength that Fiddle has damage wise. Other champions should respect it. Thus, Fiddle has to have enough fundamental power to win a 1v1, draining the whole time against an opponent that is roughly of similar strength. There are so many ways to beat drain that there should be no need to weaken the damage of drain as an ability. Any champ that has a cc that can break drain can do this. You just put it on cool down just like that.

Permadrain really isn't that big of a deal either. Fiddle is supposed to be a slow but safe jungler. Now he's like really slow and not as safe. The mana costs are so high with drain that Fiddle can only realistically drain a couple of times in a fight before he won't be able to do it again anyway. A lot of people may not realize this but all you have to do is put drain on cool down. You could cc him, and if you don't have cc, all you have to do is simply walk away and then come back. It's really that simple. Also, ignite will typically insta-win any drain-off you might have with most Fiddles. It's really not that hard and only complete noobs will complain about how drain is so op. It's really not and it did not need to be changed. It also did not need to have its damage reduced by way of removing his old passive.

In the new mandatory 3 seconds between drains, Fiddle will be bursted down where he was barely staying alive with permadrain and popping health pots the whole time.

3 seconds not so long?

Terrify

There was a time when max fear was 3 seconds long. Everyone cried so hard late game saying - omg, 3 seconds feels like an hour. "I was just feared for an hour" etc.

This was a long time ago.

Since, Fear has been nerfed into oblivion. There used to be a time where you had options as Fiddle, you could sacrifice a little of your healing sustain and damage for potent cc that could provide utility to your team.

The days of Fiddle support have technically been over for a very long time. 1.25 seconds is a garbage starting point for an ability that costs 65 mana and does zero damage in addition to its effect. Everytime you upgrade the Q you get a whopping .25 more seconds. 1 quarter of a second. Mobile champions will literally shrug this off and gap close whoever they want anyway. Fear has been close to worthless for a very long time. Even if you fear someone with perfect timing and perfect positioning, you will still get snarky comments from your teammates like - why didn't you fear him Fiddle? Obviously right after you just did, because they were expecting some kind of a noticeable effect. This is basically a result of them not fully understanding and planning on how shitty it is an ability.

Also, I get this comment a lot, "why didn't you fear them" - it's a single target ability and it always has been, I really don't get how so many people seem to have such unrealistic expectations of an ability that everyone knows is pretty underpowered.

But, that's fine, go ahead. 1.25 second fear is OP I guess, go ahead and nerf the range. The range of fear is never something that I'd ever heard an opponent complain about ever. It doesn't make any sense and it's merely making an unplayable champion worse. Fear is the quintessential Fiddlesticks ability. He already had to get pretty close to a champ in order to fear it. This puts him in a significant amount of danger to begin with. Now it's going more to a place where a Fiddle fears the right target, begins running away, only to get mauled by that target as the first morsel on route to game ending pentakill. Have you seen gap closers these days? Have you seen movement speed altering item actives these days? Have you seen everyone taking swifties no matter what these days? Holy crap.

Thus, it's pretty ridiculous that terrify is thought of as 'too strong' to the point where they're nerfed the range. All you have to do is keep track of its horrendous cool down, bait it out, and then kill Fiddle and everyone else at that point. It's really not that hard. If you want to nerf a champion, why don't you actually target a champ that everyone already knows is obviously OP and bad for the game. The game is not any better now that an already weak champion is now weaker.

Also, please note that when Fiddle dies [this might be a glitch] - any remaining terrify effects immediately end. There should be a play for Fiddle players to get that fear in even right before they are going to die. It might serve the purpose of saving a life or securing a kill. There should be room for this kind of play in the game. There are all manner of external objects and lingering effects in this game that function after a champion is dead. It does not seem fair to stand by a rule of - everyone else can do it except Fiddle. This has been happening for a very long time by the way. Please address this.

Dark Wind

The only arguable buff in this recent patch for Fiddle is something that I don't even agree with. I think it's a terrible idea. Dark Wind is a point and click. Playing against it is like paying the Fiddle tax every time there's poke happening.

With only 5 bounces, there's a real art to bouncing it at the right time to the right target to maximize your harass or even secure a last hit kill on a champ.

7 bounces is really dumb, and it doesn't take added skill or thought. The lesson is - spam this.

The trade off is terrible. Now that the Fiddle passive does not reduce MR any longer, every crow bounce does less damage. Crow bounces already suffered from low damage problems.

I would gladly give my 2 bounces back for the damage back per bounce. I think more bounces than 5 introduces more garbage into the game. The only thing that controls the other 6 bounces is random programming. Thus, there's less intent in throwing a crow. It's crow spam.

2 more bounces at reduced damage does not help all that much.

I want the strength back to the abilities that I know how to use as a Fiddle player. Everything I do is intentional. I don't want my intentions to be nerfed while random unrelated garbage is buffed.

Currently, Fiddle is not what most people would consider viable as a mid or support. Every recent change has contradicted a stated intention to make Fiddle more or less 'supportlesticks'. These changes make him less useful than ever.

The only advantage to the extra crow bounces is added lane pushing power, this is something that is not a part of the Fiddlsticks play style and it's not something that Fiddle players really need to focus on in order to be successful. If everything else gets nerfed while this gets buffed, it basically works against the very core of what his kit's about and that's very sad to see.

Zhonya

Okay, that's fine. Apparently, Zhonya is OP. Okay why do you have to nerf this AND nerf pretty much every Fiddle ability at the same time?

It just doesn't seem right. The cool down on Zhonya is really long now. I'm not going to say that it's not fair, but it really does put champions that depend on that item at a great disadvantage.

The low AP that you get out of Zhonya is really hard to deal with. Fiddle needs to acquire overwhelming amounts of AP just to be successful. AP contributes to his healing. In this sense Fiddle is kind of a one stat champion. The champion was also designed with Zhonya in mind. The changes have produced a conflict of interest. You say that that zhonya is perfect for Fiddle, but then you just can't get the AP needed to be successful and get zhonya at the same time. Building an early Large Rod is actually going to hurt you rather than help you. This doesn't make sense.

In The End,

Before this Fiddle rework there was much talk that he 'seemed old' or like 'he needed a rework'.

I never thought this at all.

The only thing old and needed was that he was and has been egregiously underpowered for quite some time.

People aren't avoiding playing Fiddle because they don't like him. They avoid playing him because he doesn't win games anymore.

I think that Fiddle, before these recent changes, was a very elegantly designed champion that provided a very interesting alternative play style experience that is unique and extremely different from the experience of playing most other champions.

I dont like playing champions and feeling like - oh, this champ is just like this other champ except this and this.

Fiddle already was good, the surprise factor is fun for all.

The problem now is that even very good Fiddle players are struggling with his strength considering the current state of the game.

Fiddle doesn't need to be more like other champs, other champs need to be more like Fiddle.

I think that everyone at said game company does not fully respect how well Fiddle was designed. I feel that, often these kind of changes get made without thought or respect or proper consideration of something that is obviously already quite complex to begin with.

I think that this rework, albeit relatively small, is a disaster. I think that it was sculpted out of a failure to fundamentally understand the champion to begin with.

The new passive is especially worthless and completely irrelevant.

Thank you.