How I would nerf Fiora as a Fiora Main

Hello I'm gubigubi. Maybe you have seen me feeding in one of your ranked games before! I'm a Fiora main with around 680k mastery on Fiora. I read a lot of comments every time Fiora does well in a professional setting about how she is very strong and needs to be nerfed for this reason and that reason. Now I see Riot is thinking about nerfing her. But I'm here to tell you how to go about nerfing Fiora in a way that will make her more fun to play against without dropping her back down to 42% win rate. Or nerfing something on her kit that wont solve long term problems. I have several options that could be looked at in order to balance her in a way that makes her more fun to play against while also keeping alot of what makes Fiora fun to play in the game.

First off I believe a little clarity could go a long way in balancing Fiora out. And by that I mean making it more clear to the enemy when Fiora is weak and when she is strong. To achieve this I suggest adding some kind of animation, sound, or particle effect to her Q (Lunge) if she misses a target and it goes on the long cool down. This will alert opponents to when Fioras main damage and escape ability is offline for longer than its normal cool down. I also believe doing the same with her W (Riposte) could go a long way in alerting opponents on when W is on CD. I suggest like with Q giving her W some sort of particle effect or animation (like a parrying dager on her back or a blue glow to her blue steel rapier) when her W is ready to be used. I think adding these alone would be enough to make Fiora a lot more fun to play against. However if that is not enough. Then we can move onto the next level of changes.

For the next level of changes to Fiora I would target her early game weakness and late game power. I believe as a duelist/skirmier she should be able to fight at all stages of the game instead of being weak early and strong late. It doesn't feel good to crush a Fiora in lane only for her to be unbeatable in 30 minutes anyways. And like wise as the Fiora it doesn't feel good knowing that you can't fight until this magical 30 minute timer goes off and you have 2-3 items. I believe she should be fairly average early, mid, and late game.

How would this be accomplished? This is harder to do than adding clarity but I believe the first place to target this change would be in Fioras W (Riposte).

The change would look something like this.

W (Riposte): Attack speed slow 50% -> 30%

Cooldown 24-22-20-18-16 -> 18 at all levels.

I believe this would allow other champions to have a more fair fight against Fiora as the 50% attack speed slow is hard to overcome in a lot of 1v1 situations even when you don't have CC that can be redirected back at you. The reduced cool down would give her a smaller window of weakness in lane phase but if the clarity changes I mentioned above are implemented it would be easier for opponents to take advantage of the window even if it is a smaller one. Even without the clarity changes the reduced attack speed slow on the W would weaken the spell enough that I think the reduced CD is justified but maybe to a lesser extent of 20 at all levels.

I have a lot more ideas on how to balance Fiora but most of those involve making her manaless or energy based around hitting vitals to restore energy which I don't have worked out enough to bring up. In the end I think the changes I bring up here would do a lot in making Fiora more fun to play as and against without actually changing all that much around in her kit.

TL;DR

Add particles, sounds, or animations to Q when its on the long CD. Add an animation to W(Riposte) when it is on/off cool down to better show when Fiora is weak. Reduce Fioras W(Riposte) attack speed slow from 50% to 30% and decrease the cool down from 24-22-20-18-16 to 18 at all levels.

And the numbers of the nerfs are numbers that can be changed. If Fiora is too strong after this then maybe change it to something like W 20 seconds at all levels and nerf the attack speed slow even more or remove entirely. But this is the type of nerf/shift in power that I think will go very far in making Fiora more fun to play against.