Thoughts and Suggestions on Fiora's Rework

Let's start by taking a look at Fiora's old kit.

Passive - Duelist. Gains health regen for auto attacking. Can stack up to 4 times. Will only stack more than once if attacking champions.

Q - Lunge. Targeted dash. It had 2 charges, and decent range + damage. You could use the second charge within 4 seconds of using the first charge.

W - Riposte. Blocked a single auto attack and returned magic damage. Scaled off AP. Gave passive AD. Can move around during cast.

E - Burst of Speed. 3 second attack speed steroid. Also gave stacking move speed for auto attacking. Reset on champion kill.

R - Blade Waltz. Attacked a target(s) 5 times. Prioritizes different targets for each strike. All strikes counted as enhanced auto attacks. Always attacked the initial target for the last strike if they were still alive.

Fiora was originally an AD caster. Her old kit served her well in this role. But, Riot and players often complained that she was just a ball of stats, and that she had a lot of hidden power. While I don't entirely agree with that assessment, I was still looking forward to the rework.

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So, how has Fiora's rework been working out?

Her original passive was basically moved to her ult in condensed form, which means she can't duel well at all in the early game now. Her new passive, in combination with her weaker Q, does not reward extended dueling. If you go in for a vital, expect to be out-traded by most solo lane champions who have stronger abilities. And if the vital appears behind the enemy champion, you might as well ignore it entirely, unless you enjoy taking minion aggro. The only thing she can reliably do now is poke with her W, making her less interactive than she used to be.

Burst of Speed has been replaced with Bladework, which has now lost the most important aspect, the stacking move speed. That's right, not the attack speed steroid. The reason I say this is because Bladework does give a guaranteed attack speed steroid for 2 auto attacks. However, the reason why Fiora's old E was good for dueling was because the move speed allowed her to either stick to targets or run away after skirmishes. It also reset on champion kills, and partly reset on assists. That passive move speed was moved to her new passive, and only activates when Fiora hits a vital. Couple that with her base move speed reduction and you get a Fiora who spends a lot of time chasing and not dueling.

Moving on to Riposte, that ability seems strong on paper. But in practice, it's more likely to get you killed. Most champs are not going to stand in one place and allow Fiora the opportunity to stun them. But, the biggest problem is again to do with Fiora's mobility. If you are rooted, even for 0.75 seconds, that's 0.75 seconds that you are not dueling. Enemy champions can reposition, run away, or simply wait the short amount of time to land a guaranteed CC after Riposte is over. Delayed CC poses an even greater threat, because those can be combined with targeted CC to bait out Riposte. Old Riposte was weak, but it made sense. It could also be cast while lunging, for even greater damage on arrival, or to force a bad trade for the enemy champion. Its weakness was more than made up for by the passive AD. Which is also the main source of Fiora's "hidden" power.

And finally, Fiora's new ultimate ability, Grand Challenge. Once again, the main problem Fiora has while using this ability is being able to reliably hit the vital areas. Unlike Blade Waltz, Grand Challenge does not blink Fiora to the target, making it easy for her to "waste" it by casting it on an enemy champion who stays out of her reach. You could argue that ulting a target still forces them to play safe, even if you never hit them while the ult is active, but that's not much of an ult for a duelist, is it? Furthermore, because the most effective use of Grand Challenge is to apply it on an enemy champion who is almost dead anyway, it further discourages the dueling that Fiora should be played for. And finally, because Grand Challenge's healing zone stays in one place, Fiora could potentially end up taking huge risks for absolutely no reward whatsoever if her target died far enough away.

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So what should be done, if anything? Well since I've been emphasizing Fiora's identity as a duelist, let's improve that.

First comes Fiora's passive. The reward for hitting a vital is pretty low unless you build a lot of AD, which is contrary to Fiora's supposed identity as a fighter instead of an assassin. The % true damage isn't much, since it's conditional on her hitting a vital. Fiora should be rewarded simply for fighting, otherwise her passive becomes a source of "unreliable" power. Quite frankly, I think Fiora's current passive would do better as an ability passive or as a full fledged ability, one that she would choose to employ strategically depending on the matchup.

But what would replace it then? Personally, I think something that promotes dueling, but also her old role as an AD caster, would work. For example, upon casting an ability, Fiora heals for a percentage of the damage she received in combat. This change would emphasize her dueling and push her away from trying to burst enemy champions down, as once her abilities are on cooldown Fiora would become quite squishy. This would also give her the sustain she would need to be relevant in teamfights. Could this passive be abused? Well, if it scaled with total or bonus AD, probably. But, that would be a matter of balancing the ratios. Fiora's original passive had the problem of becoming irrelevant in the late game. If the heal per ability cast is reasonable, this new passive shouldn't have that problem.

Next is Fiora's Q. The biggest problems with her Lunge are due mostly to its interaction with vitals. With the current range of the dash part of Lunge, it is very difficult to hit vitals without putting Fiora into a bad position. Now, you could just ignore the vitals and use Q to poke, but then the damage is pretty abysmal. And, you would likely still draw minion aggro, resulting in a bad trade. Thankfully, Lunge itself is a pretty straightforward ability. I would suggest that the max range of Lunge's dash be increased to be more comparable to the original Lunge, and the stab's range reduced to be the same as Fiora's auto attack range. Furthermore, I would like to see different cooldown reduction amounts for using Lunge on different targets, or at least increase the cooldown reduction when Lunge successfully hits a vital. This would help Fiora greatly when she is trying to proc all the vitals on a target that has been ulted. Lastly but certainly not least, it would greatly help if Lunge prioritized whomever was closest to the cursor when it was cast, as opposed to who/what it prioritizes now. This is because it should be up to the player to decide which enemy champion (or minion) needs to be focused, rather than the game essentially playing itself.

Onto Riposte. As I stated before, the self-root is just straight up bad. But I understand why Riot added it. It's because Riposte itself is too strong. It is actually overpowered. Parries ALL incoming damage and hostile CC? Yeah, that's taking up way too much space in the power budget. Especially since the self-root can easily get Fiora killed. How do we fix Riposte? As always, focus on Fiora's dueling. Riposte should really only parry 1, count it, one, auto attack or hostile CC. When cast, Fiora should still be able to move around normally, at least until hit, at which time the Riposte skillshot should activate immediately in the direction of the cursor. What this means is that Fiora could potentially Lunge and Riposte at the same time. In which case Riposte should take precedence. But doesn't that mean Riposte can be "wasted" on or by an enemy auto attack?! Well have no fear, because Riposte's effect would be different depending on what triggers it. If Riposte blocks an auto attack, the return damage should be increased (maybe based on a percentage of that auto attack's damage). If Riposte blocks an ability, the return damage is normal. Hard CC will cause Riposte to stun, of course.

Moving on to Bladework, once again let's emphasize Fiora's dueling. What is Bladework supposed to do? Give Fiora a little burst and soft CC for sticking to targets. Does it work for dueling? Pretty well, actually. What would I change? Probably everything. Hear me out. I suggest changing Bladework to Footwork, and giving Fiora back her stacking move speed from Burst of Speed. Why? Because vitals. If Riot is serious about making vitals a core gameplay mechanic for Fiora, they need to give her the tools to succeed. Fiora already has CC in the form of Riposte. What she needs is mobility. This also means removing the move speed boost from hitting vitals. That's power which would be better used elsewhere. So where does that leave Footwork? It should give a passive move speed bonus for being in combat, and an active, stacking move speed bonus (maybe with no unit collision), also while in combat.

It all boils down to dueling and making use of vitals. Which brings me to Grand Challenge.

Just a quick aside, I had originally thought that 4 vitals was too easy to hit, considering how large they were. I thought there should be 5 vitals to coincide with Fiora's old ultimate, Blade Waltz. However, after playing reworked Fiora, I became extremely disappointed that even 4 vitals was hard to hit. And that the payoff didn't make sense for her character.

With that in mind, Grand Challenge. Since Fiora's vitals passive was replaced, let's put it here. That unfortunately means Fiora can't attack enemy champion's vitals until level 6. But the tradeoff is more damage. As I stated earlier, I don't think vitals should have a scaling AD component. It encourages players to build Fiora as an assassin, and that's what we're trying to move away from. Vitals' % true damage should scale with Fiora's level and ult rank. This would ensure she could be easily and quickly balanced, while also giving Fiora's enemies a clear indication of her power level. Whether or not hitting vitals still heals Fiora should be determined by how much power budget she has left after all these changes. The healing zone from Grand Challenge would also need to be removed, since Fiora got a more AD caster-centric version of it in her modified passive. In my opinion, Fiora's biggest contribution to teamfights should be simply staying alive and being a threat. But as for the rest of Grand Challenge, the only thing remaining that I think needs changing is to have Fiora blink to whomever she ulted, like she did with Blade Waltz.

Of course, there are other things that I would like to see changed, such as the name. Call it Blade Waltz, because that's what it is. And change the number of vitals to 5. And that walk animation, Riot pls. Ok, now I'm just ranting.

Anyways, these are my thoughts on Fiora, a champion I very much enjoyed playing and theorycrafting with when I first started playing LOL. I don't expect Riot to implement any of the things that I've suggested here, but I hope you guys at least recognize the validity of my arguments. Thanks for reading and see you on the Rift.