"Malz players who plan ahead will still be able to make some sick space-crab plays"

If stat-checking kit holds nothing for you, then you have no idea about game health. Yes, I did not play pre-rework Fiora and I had a reason - let me quote myself: "I would never touch that toxic bullshit ever." The skill you are talking about entirely revoles around tracking enemies cooldowns and knowing when to go in and if you have enough damage to kill them and to know how to kite, which are the basics of every champion, otherways her kit was "click on them with all your spells and kill them or die". As you said, there were some things you could do against her, like standing grouped and let the damage soak, but that's another toxic design, because it removed Fiora player's agency from the game. Not talking about her unbearable snowball-depending playstyle, which means if she's been fed, she destroyed the whole team with that ult so the counterplay went away again (except for having Zhonya's) (your sheild argument is countering/countered issue again, not every champion has a shield), but if she was behind, she was so useless she could AFK aswell.

The Vital mechanic is not gimmicky at all, it is perfectly explained in her lore and pushes the swordsman theme to it's limit, couldn't be better. The true damage and heal is a reward for hitting it, which is reasonable. There's only one thing that diverges her theme and that's the ult heal, but I was not able to come up with any better reward for hitting all Vitals which wouldn't be toxic, except the heal effecting only Fiora, but this way it gives her a teamfight presence and team utility I guess.

Overpowered as fuck when her numbers are high? Easy treatment, lower them - which wouldn't be possible with the old Fiora, that'S the flaw of the stat-checking kit, if the numbers are high, champion's broken, if the numbers are low, champion's useless.

You enjoy her less than pre-rework because now she needs skill? Yeah, that's basically what I said in the first comment. The problem is Riot may understand that you enjoy her, but I'm sure every Kassadin main enjoyed Kassadin with his silence. Or LeBlanc. Or release Xin and Zyra. It's nice you enjoy something, but if it's toxic it can't stay because noone else has fun in the game.

Fiora is still the same champion: AA based skirmisher with a dash that rewards agressive usage, parrying ability, AA enhancer and an ultimate which let's her jumping around her target to deal high amount damage and making her survive in a fight. She was just modernized, rework gave her options and interactive gameplay (which "having a shield" isn't) and removed toxic stat-checking (thus unbalancable) and counterpick-revolving elements.

Compared to a few of our recent updates, we launched Fiora pretty darn recently. Still, she’s one of them tricksy melee marksmen/fighter types who was supposed to be a fleet-footed fencing duelist, but who, once she had a few items, could just lunge up to the other team’s squishies and smack ‘em for a quick and easy - and unstoppable - kill. That was her single gear, really, and because Fiora was only good at killing, when she didn't have the damage to do her single job, she couldn’t do much of anything.

Taken from Fiora rework release, bolded is what screams stat check.

Fiora was literally the textbook definition of stat check,and it was the very reason why she was reworked.

Either she outstatted you and wrecked your entire team or she didn't and was completely useless. Are there other cases of champions relying on statcheck? Sure, but Fiora pre-rework was the queen of stat check champions.

You may not like her post-rework, but she hands down in a much healthier state then she was before, if you disagree then I'm sorry but you know very little about game balance. Before either she stomped or she was completely useless since all she brought to the table was damage and more damage, this is bad game design.

Now she has utility and tools which allows her not only to contribute in any situation, but also to act as leverage points for if Fiora becomes too UP or OP.

Youre confusing balance with successful reworks.

A champion can be perfectly balanced but still be on the table for a rework, because Riot takes more than just balance into account. They seem to be on a trend of creating kits that are multi faceted, more interactive for the player, and more interactive to play against. They create kits that contain more options for counterplay and also contain more options to counterplay against.

Whether or not their numbers are balanced is a different thing. Any champion, from one dimmensional like Garen to having many options like Riven, can be broken or useless by numbers alone. However, what makes a champion multi facted or one dimensional is usually their kit. Riots reworks are aimed at making champions have more options, so when I say they are "successful", they create meaningful options for split-second decisions or skill order that have to be taken into account depending on the situation instead of "run at them and kill them if you reach them".

Not even close to most of the reworks. Here, let me remind you exactly how many times Riot has reworked champions, since your memory seems to only stretch back two years:

Tryndamere - AP Tryn cancer is gone. Rework successful. Jax - Managed to keep his identity even after dodge was completely removed from the game. Rework successful. Master Yi - % missing health scaling on Meditate made it infinitely more useful on AD Yi. Only 70% reset on kills instead of 100 took away press Q to Penta. No more AP Yi, no more random chance on Q to kill minions. Rework was phenomenal. Karma - Her old kit was incredibly confusing and no one played her. After her rework she built up enough of a following that people actually got angry and loud when Riot removed her shieldbomb. Rework is probably the best one done so far. Sion - His old kit was either AD or AP, but you felt like you were missing half the kit, and his infinite health scaling made you want him to be a tank but he had no tanking abilities. His new rework is super fun to play with a lot of skill expression. Rework successful. Tristana - She can attach her E to turrets now. How fucking awesome is that? Rework successful. Draven - Draven's old passive was toxic as hell. This one is pretty minor but I still count it as a rework because he got a completely brand new ability that changes the way people play Draven forever. Rework is good. Evelyn - Evelyn used to be stupidly ungodly the best champion in the entire game period. Then they removed her stun and her winrate fell through the floor until invisible pink wards were removed. Rework failure. Kassadin - Ninety fucking percent ban rate. Ninety percent. You think Ruot can't rework shit? People can play Kassadin now. That's a huge step up. Rework successful. Olaf - Absolutely dumpstered because of his successs in competitive play, took Riot two years to get him back to any sort of viability. Rework failure.

So yeah, you don't know what you're talking about.