My In Depth Analysis of Miss Fortune and How to Improve her (from a 300k mf main)

**TLDR= Miss Fortune is fun and balanced currently, but her kit falls short of feeling complete. She doesn't feel like a marksman and shifting power away from her front loaded passive/ultimate into her W and sustained dps will make her feel more accurate to not only her class, but her thematic as well **

I want to preface this by saying I am an MF main of over 500 games across multiple accounts these past two season. I picked her up post marksman rework when they gave her the current passive and insanely high damage ultimate.

Here's a screen cap so you know I'm not just blowing smoke here:

http://imgur.com/a/9Jriv

the point is not to say "I'm a good MF" the point is to say "I love MF and I play her A LOT"

So Miss Fortune is an interesting champion who does have a unique identity, is relatively balanced due to her lack of mobility and short auto attack range, but has some strong strengths. That said, the higher up in this game you get the more it becomes clear why MF is not an "OP" pick even when she is seemingly overtuned. The same strengths she has in low elo do not necessarily apply to higher elo in the same way since better players know how to play around her.

Now I'm not saying that to imply there's anything wrong with that. But as I've climbed with our big boobied marksman I've realized what is good about her design and what is unhealthy and takes up far too power budget. I've had some highs with Miss Fortune like my wombo combo pentakill with Zyra/Sejuani back when I was in Gold last season and I've had lows as well. There are many games where I've felt useless and not even because I'm performing poorly (those games do happen as well). And that is why I'm making this post. I want to talk about the highs and lows of this champion and how I think you can mini rework her to fix her.

HIGH LEVEL STRENGTHS:

=Very strong upfront damage with Passive =Excels in short trades with Q and Passive, as well as W active. = Can wipe an entire team with a well timed and well placed ultimate. =Q crit gives her massive poke in lane.

MODERATE STRENGTHS:

=Decent at tower taking by swapping between tower and minions to reapply love tap over and over and keeping W up the entire time. =Can potentially deal a lot of damage to multiple target IF she can swap targets safely. (not often) =Can rotate faster than any adc with her Strut, essentially mobi boots she can get on command.

WEAKNESSES:

=horrible sustained damage on a single target, basically does no damage after her first auto and Q, especially early =decently bad at taking objectives like baron and dragon even when built crit due to her W having lower uptime when not able to swap targets =zero mobility and short range autos means it is very risky to go in to auto attack =Ultimate may be strong, but is a self root that leaves you vulnerable and could be useless if the enemy team has enough disengage or dive to react =cannot duel due to trash tier single target dps until very late game where she can burst someone down

Miss Fortune can be built one of two ways, full armor pen/lethality. (duskblade/cleaver,ghostblade, etc.). Or you can go a standard ADC build with infinity edge, shiv, essence reaver, etc. The strengths of the first build are that your Q poke is very strong, your first auto is decently strong, and your ultimate will MELT the entire team. This has been the go to build for a while because its pretty braindead. build lethality, look for Q crits and try to get a good ult to fuck the entire team.

The crit build benefits both your auto attacks and your ultimate. early and mid game your ultimate will do significantly less damage (you won't be melting anyone, but it still does good damage due to hits very high ratios). However, late game your crits on the ultimate make up for your lack of armor pen and it does only a bit less than the armor pen build. It scales better, but you sacrifice MF's main strength which is her early and mid game to build it. This is a dilemma in the sense that you can build her crit but you are building a champion who should be strong early and mid and optimizing her for the late game. It's definitely an interesting trade off. I mean you can build for the late game but an MF with the same items as say a regular ADC like Varus, Ashe, or Xayah (and obviously hyper carries) will simply get more out of it.

But why? well her base ad is the lowest in the game by a mile. and that's because her passive is legitimately a broken mechanic. the upfront damage from your passive is way too high. 50% ad ratio early, to a 100% AD ratio. thats basically a free crit on top of your crit if you do crit. insanity. combine this with a shiv and you will 2/3 health a squishy who hasn't built any armor at 3+ items. This means by popping W you can and will melt a squishy. It's an awkward power curve because the passive is SO front loaded. You basically cannot duel, do dick damage after your first early and are mostly an ult bot for the early and mid game, but once you get 3+ items you become a monster who can shit on anybody in a duel if they haven't built armor just because you will do so much up front burst you can start to duel sort of. you basically just walk up and auto Q auto and they blow up. if you need one more autos no worries, your 100% attack speed steroid will ensure that.

but that steroid only lasts 3 seconds, once that steroid is down even with two attack speed items (zerkers/shiv) you will have terrible sustained dps unless you can get your W back up. you chunk someone, then do nothing. It's very obvious the vision Riot has for Miss Fortune. they want her ultimate to be her core identity with her secondary unique auto attack style to be switching targets. Thematically it does fit her, but in a practical sense it just doesn't work. It doesn't suit a MARKSMAN which is what Miss Fortune is. People will seemingly always favor the armor pen (note: I don't, I like the crit build) because why even pick Miss Fortune currently if your plan is to auto attack when you can pick any other marksman and do it better. Its also completely unnatural for a marksman to want to swap targets with such a short auto attack range. it makes zero sense.

And that is where the problem lies. Miss Fortune has too much power in her passive and not enough in her SUSTAINED damage. Her up front burst is so high that if she ever has sustained damage, despite her mobility she will be broken. So what do I suggest to fix this? What do I think would make Miss Fortune more like a marksman rather than a lethality ult bot that she currently is with an option to build crit even though its sub optimal.

NERF OR REWORK HER PASSIVE (Love Tap)

= simple explanation here, either reduce the ratio dramatically, give it more conditions like a lock out on a single target, or instead change the passive to an attack speed steroid that applies when you first auto attack a new target. This would make her Q less oppressive in lane (may need to slightly buff so its not completely gutted ofc, but it wont be dealing the 1/3 to 1/2 health that it is now if the passive is balanced).

BUFF HER BASE AD AND SCALING AD, SLIGHTLY NERF ULTIMATE AD RATIO (only if passive is nerfed)

=with weaker ratios on her passive or reworking it altogether you can then finally give her normal AD scaling comparable to marksman like her whether it be varus, ashe, or xayah or someone along those lines. this would buff her single target dps to be more like the other marksman and not make her a total joke outside of her ultimate in terms of DPS output. the ultimate should melt teams and it should have a crazy high, but currently it takes up A LOT of her power budget. With this buff/nerf she has the same strengths her class should have (can take objectives quicker, and can melt a single target if built with multipliers (crit). The ad ratio going down and relying on crit would push her away from the armor pen builds, while still leaving them viable.

REWORK HER W

= this is my most extreme idea but I wanted to share it since I am aware of thematically what Riot wants out of MF. everything I've read said is they want her to feel like a "gunslinger" shooting targets all over like the character she is in her lore. Currently her W encourages swapping targets to fulfill this fantasy, (it keeps up a 100% attack speed steroid which is huge to her overall dps) but because she has short range 550, it means she can almost never reliably or safely do this in a team fight. sometimes it happens, but more often than not you do the same thing all the other marksman do and that is focus one target (highest priority, closest to you) until its dead. My rework of the W would still fulfill this fantasy while making it more practical and interesting for Miss Fortune.

W: Guns Blazing (Cooldown 12)

(passive: strut is the same)

Active: For 4 seconds, Miss Fortune gains 40/55/70/85/100% attack speed, gains 50/75/100/125/150 attack range, and maintains strut's passive move speed even when hit for the entire duration. In addition her auto attacks become a targeted skill shot that can miss. (think like twitch ult, but doesn't pass through other targets; also can't be body blocked, basically its a very fast targeted auto attack that can miss, but can't be blocked by allies and doesn't do damage to champs it passes through besides the target)

Guns Blazing's cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds for each new target hit (or if love tap stays, each time love tap is applied to a new target).

MY THOUGHTS: This would give her 100% uptime in a team fight so long as she can swap targets 4 times in its duration similar to live when you have Essence Reaver. When at max rank Miss Fortune has late game Tristana, the same nasty attack speed steroid, and has mobility for the duration. However it lasts a relatively short amount of time like on live unless you can keep swapping targets. With the huge range and mobility as well as the burst of attack speed, this will make her feel like a mobile gunslinger running around a team fight trying to swap targets and hit everyone she can. Making the autos able to be "dodged" like twitch ult I feel is to help balance it. this may not be necessary, but I intentionally made this ability A LOT strong in exchange for nerfing her passive/ult. (mainly passive). In terms of practicality this actually allows miss fortune to swap targets since she has a much bigger range to do so. Currently with 550 range its borderline suicide to try to swap targets in team fights most of the time.

And that's it! thoughts?