How you should be playing Fizz on 5.2 Patch
Hi guys, I've mained Fizz since the day he came out (November 15, 2011 to be exact :P ). I've played him thousands of games and have probably build every item imaginable on him at this point. Now that this patch is out, he's gotten a lot of really significant changes that completely change the way you play him. The way I think is best now is something most people probably aren't very familiar with, but it's a build I've been doing since day 1 and I'm happy that it's probably going to be seeing some actual use for once.
So first of all, I'll go ahead and explain how his AP build was affected and why I think it's most likely going to be a dead build at high level/pro play now. As an AP Assassin, he's always been a high risk, high reward champion that had absurd amounts of damage and mobility, in exchange for having no range and sustain when trying to do things like farm or siege towers. These changes in the 5.2 patch have done two major things to Fizz:
- His AP ratios were significantly reduced. So much so that even with his ult's damage amp, he's not doing more damage than before unless he's getting tons of W autos off (which he won't, because he's building very squishy and will have to be finding a way out of the middle of a team right away after he jumps in and does his burst). When not ulting someone, or when he misses, hits someone else, or they counter it with some item, his damage is much, much lower.
- They've made his damage less reliable, both by putting more of his damage into his ult and by making his Q dodgeable (this was true last patch actually, but because most people didn't know this it was not abused much at all).
These two things combined effectively kill his AP build. All his damage nerfs make it so that he's not doing high enough damage to make up for his lack or range or sustain, and all of his spells are easily dealt with now by competent players, oftentimes leaving him vulnerable in melee range if he doesn't get them all off successfully. Additionally, his damage nerfs leave his already weak laning phase in even worse condition, ensuring that he loses in farm to almost every other mid laner. His lack of grievous wounds on his W also means that he'll have a harder time keeping up in sustain during laning phase than before, because he can no longer use it to cut off people's healing from health pots (even just cutting into people's natural hp5 matters too. If you ever lose to someone in lane and they get away with 20 hp or so, you would have killed them had you had grievous wounds still). Also. your sustained damage is almost unaffected by AP anymore. His W only has AP scaling on its passive, which is around .45. If you are constantly hitting someone, this damage is being reapplied before it finishes, so it's only around .15 per hit total or so, which is just flat out bad. So I wouldn't expect to see him picked as an AP very often at high Elo anymore, and I definitely wouldn't expect to see much of him in competitive play either.
Now that probably sounds really awful, but I don't think Fizz is entirely dead yet. There is another way to play him that used to be outclassed by his AP build, but this patch's changes benefit this playstyle of his perfectly. I'm talking about bruiser Fizz, commonly mislabeled as AD Fizz even though it's not good to be building a lot of raw AD on him. This playstyle puts less emphasis on one-shotting carries with your burst, and more on sticking to people and killing them with your W active, being difficult to lock down and kill, and just being a really good duelist overall. The closest champion I can think of in playstyle is 
.
For runes, I generally run:
Marks: Hybrid Pen Seals: Armor/Health (both flat and scaling work depending on matchups) Glyphs: MR/AP/CDR (again, both flat and scaling can be used although I'd definitely go scaling if you choose cdr) Quints: Hybrid Pen (Attack Speed and AP are both viable as well, I just don't prefer them)
For masteries, you'll want 21-9-0. Having 9 in defense is really useful for the health, and for the flat damage reducation from autoattacks which scales decently with your passive.
Summoners are up to you, I've run everything from 
to 
and had success, it all just depends on personal preference. If you can get used to odd summoner combinations, they honestly aren't that bad because you'll learn how to abuse your better all-in while your lane opponents most likely will not be used to it and underestimate you in fights.
For your skill order, I almost always go R>W>E>Q. W's base damage is great this patch, and after that you'll want to get your E's CD as low as possible, leaving Q as your last spell to max. Obviously you'll want to put points into your ult whenever possible.
For builds, your first item will usually want to be a damage item, either 
or 
. I usually get the Trinity Force first just because I like Fizz's crit animation a lot, but both are viable. Trinity has better burst and general mobility, while BoTRK has better sustain, good sustained damage and can let you stick to people well with the active.
For your second item, you can either build the second damage item that you hadn't built yet, or you can start building some tank items. Tank items you can think about building are 
, as well as other items potentially if the situation calls for it. Other damage items you can build after your first one are 
, but I would almost always buy one of those first two items as your first item because they work extremely well with your Q and give you really good chasing/escape potential compared to the other ones.
For boots, you can pick pretty much anything, usually 
, depending on if you need the defense or CDR more. Sorcs is a viable option against teams that have very little MR, as it gets your W close to doing true damage against them. Against enemies with lots of MR, you would be better off getting if you are not doing as much damage as you'd like.
Using this setup, you'll still deal very good damage while being tankier and harder to kill than your pure AP counterpart. This is important because your burst is not nearly as reliable as it once was, and is also less, meaning it's now important to be able to survive long enough in fights to make use of your W active. This damage is pretty much the same now regardless of your AP, so by building tankier, you survive in a fight longer and end up doing more damage anyway. If you are very insistent on building AP, some possible builds that can still work would be something like:
or
I haven't really messed around with AP builds much this patch, but something like those probably wouldn't be too bad. You definitely do not want to build glass cannon regardless of build on this patch, because your burst is just not reliable enough, and too often you will end up not killing someone end get turned on and instagibbed yourself. Regradless, bruiser Fizz is a really fun playstyle, and now that it's been buffed to not fall off completely after 20 minutes, it's perfectly viable and I would highly recommend playing him this way. Whether or not this and his AP builds are properly balanced is up for debate, but I personally would never build AP on this patch and believe it to be overnerfed way too hard, especially at high level play where people understand how to play around all his abilities easily. But that's not going to stop me from playing him since he's still my favorite champion and always will be :P
