The New Fiora...Better, but Worse

This post DOES have a tl;dr, so skip there if you're not into walls of text.

Fiora's rework had me extremely excited when I first saw it. I could not wait to get on and main her for a month the moment she was release. However, she was disabled due to a bug (i searched and searched and could not find anything about the bug) almost immediately, which kinda made me sad. But that's a different topic entirely, and she's back! I've played nothing but Fiora for about twenty games now (except one game where i didn't get top, damn blind pick) so there's my credibility. I've also done well about 5 or 6 of those games, so there goes that credibility, lmao. Anyways, hear me out.

Fiora's rework adds a TON of utility at the cost of any real kill potential until she gets an item or three under her belt. She excels at poking the opponent through Lunge and Duelist's Dance, skirting in and out of combat and dropping off a little true damage as she does so. Her teamfight presence also shifted from "deal damage to everyone on their team" to "heal everyone on my team", which i think gives her a nice niche so that she can output damage while also providing teamfight sustain, making her a great pick for when your support is focused on engaging (Hello Nautilus, Annie). However, I feel that the rework kinda lowballed it on the numbers part. I'll explain why I think so.

1. Very little damage Normally when people see "true damage" or "% max health", they flip shit (or at least in my circle of friends), but her damage is nothing to gawk at until, again, she gets an item or three. Not only that, but being in the top lane where tanks are a common pick, (stay tanky, friends, the meta hasn't changed just yet) she never generates any sort of lane advantage. Her poke combo works, but all a smart player has to do is the same thing she does: throw stuff at her and back off (Riposte, I know, keep reading. I'll talk about that next). Having no advantage in lane, it takes her years to generate any sort of gold, and as a result really never gets a chance to put out her damage until WAY later in the game. Not ONLY that, but because of her low early damage, it feels very unrewarding to "outplay" your opponents in lane, like a duelist should, because they end up trading even though sheer damage advantage which can become very frustrating.

2. High Cooldown on Riposte I'm in love with her new Riposte. Not only can you block common top lane nuisance abilities, such as Noxian Guillotine, Blinding Dart, Counter Strike, and Demacian Justice, but now Sky Williams can't hate her for not having CC anymore. It procs vitals, it slows, sometimes it stuns, it still says you took damage for tower aggro purposes, it does everything you could possibly want it to....except be off cooldown when you need it to be. I understand there's a point to be made about using abilities wisely, but why should abilities like Playful/Trickster have nearly TWICE as short of a cooldown (8s at max rank vs 15 secs at max rank) yet nearly identical effects (plus more, two dashes? lmao)? Again, there's a point to be made about Cooldown reduction, and as i think about it while typing this it does add a nice build path duality where you can build damage and kill targets quickly or build CDR and outplay or die. However, there are very few viable items for Fiora that would accomplish this. Youmuu's could work. Cleaver? You already have Tri-force, so that passive is wasted gold. You'll probably pick up a Spirit Visage somewhere along the way for synergy with Duelist's Dance and Grand Challenge, but even that much CDR is only chopping off about 3 seconds.

The reason why this is a problem to me is that it's very risky to even use it because of how difficult it can be sometimes. Things like Wither, Crippling Strike, Ruthless Predator, and Savagery all come out SO quickly that you need the reaction speed of an atom (think about it) to be able to use Riposte to block it. Even if you try to predict, the enemy can predict as well, and will just simply not attack you until the effect is over. Even if you do manage to block something, that's it. No more block. If you get anything-d for the rest of the fight, there's nothing you can do about it. This especially rings true with her poke routine. If I Lunge in for a Vital, all the opponent has to do is engage on me and I've lost the trade. I should be able to use Riposte to save myself some damage and potentially come out on top....more than once every 15--20 seconds.

Changes I suggest: Because i know buffing damage might risk turning her back into her old self in a way, i suggest a change to her Riposte. It should reward you for properly using it to block spells and damage, just as her Lunge rewards you for using it and striking a target rather than using it as an escape. I think that her Riposte should refund a percentage of the damage in seconds off her cooldown, something like 1/100th. Say you block an ability that deals 100 damage. That's not an extremely efficient use, so you only get one second back. Now, block something that deals 500 damage and you just got a coupon for 5 seconds off. Happy savings! Maybe it could have the same effect for blocking CC, where blocking certain types of CC refunds certain amounts of the cooldown, but that could be overshooting it a bit. One of the two would be a great change, as it would keep players from feeling guilty about blocking the Apprehend when there's a 700-800 true damage dunk about to come down on them, or feel guilty about blocking the Bola Strike when a double Savagery is headed their way.

An alternative would be to give her a bit of damage, but make her work for it. I like her new ult. It's really gud. The ONLY thing I don't like about it is that it takes SOOOOOO LONGGGGG to be rewarded for your efforts. Not only that, but it doesn't deal damage. It increases her POTENTIAL damage, yes, but all the enemy has to do is simply stand next to a wall with a Vital facing that wall and they've nullified the purpose of your entire ult. That shit is frustrating as hell....anyways, what i suggest is making it so that each vital hit during her ult increases the damage of the next vital she hits, increasing exponentially. something like Vital 1 adds 5% damage to Vital 2 (okay, she got two, that's just an auto and a Lunge, no real reward there) vital 2 adds 10% damage to Vital 3 (okay, she did some Bladework, touché, as Fiora would say) and vital 3 adds 20% damage to Vital 4. No explanation needed on how much pre-planning is required to hit all 4 vitals - that's kind of her thing. Anyways, these numbers are PURELY HYPOTHETICAL. I'd have to crunch some numbers to figure out "fair" values, because we dont like over-buffs. If implemented, this change could provide her with a healthy level 6 powerspike - provided you have the skill to pull it off, which ties in with her whole theme of being a duelist and looking to outmaneuver and outplay your opponent.

tl;dr - She lacks any real kill potential due to no level 6 power spike, and her Riposte should be availble more often. Let Riposte refund some cooldown based on how efficiently it was used and/or let Grand Challenge add damage with each Vital hit.

Wow, did I just type all that off the top of my head? I'm terribly sorry. It's 2:20 a.m. and I've nothing better to do. Anyways, Thanks for reading the whole thing. Please leave some feedback in the form of votes (up or down, disagreeing is healthy) or comments to let me know what you think. Don't forget to vote, and happy dueling!