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Fiora rework breakdown

Sethiroth24·7/27/2015, 5:33:48 PM·7 votes·2,027 views

The point of this post is to show and discuss what the new Fiora rework has improved at and failed at. My opinion is the passive is a strait up buff. Q is a fair trade along with the W. E is worse but counter balanced by the passive being better. The R is by far the worst change being weaker less cool and uncharacteristic of a duelist. Note-if not a reader skip to last paragraph

Starting off ill be pointing out all the things Fiora lost and Gained threw the rework to help show what I feel are good changes compared to bad

The passive- I consider this the best change to her both in play-style and identity as a champion. Her old passive was she gained 7 + her level in health over time from basic attacking champions stacked 4 times. Her new passive is leaps and bounds ahead of her old one and a huge buff to her in that area giving her true damage, sustain and mobility while defining her as a duelist. The only complaint I have is that her new passive doesn't support her in the jungle. I would love to see her passive working in the jungle, jungle camps have weaknesses too.

The Q- Lunge lost its second use and auto targeting decreasing her chase potential also a damage reduction, but gained a lower cooldown if an enemy is hit adds on hit affects while providing a more reliable escape tool. Fair trade if you ask me weaker but more versatile while adding a skill component to her kit making her not as punishing of a champion.

The W- Riposte loses its passive AD gain 35 ad in total, low cooldown and mobility while in use. Fiora enters a defensive stance, parrying all damage and hard crowd control abilities for a fraction of a second. After she’s done parrying, Fiora attacks in a target direction, damaging and briefly slowing the first enemy champion she strikes. If she parries any hard crowd control abilities, Riposte stuns instead of slows. Again a fair trade although the loss of passive is rather sad but fair.

The E- changed completely burst of speed gave up to 120% attack speed for 3 seconds while gaining up to three stacks of movement speed for every time damage is dealt up to 45% and also reset on champion kills half cooldown for assists to increased attack speed on her next two attacks. The first cannot crit but slows her target, while the second is guaranteed to crit. Not a bad change but a definite nerf

So we have a buff in the passive two trades for Q and W and a nerf for e. Finally, the R- what it lost... Aoe damage, Untargetable for duration, stick to target, tower dive, tower safety, survivability, burst, initiation, distraction. Changed to boring target enemy champion attack 4 vitals for percent max health true damage with conditional Janna ult without the knockback. boooo the heal makes zero sense. I don't mind the targeted vitals thing but the heal is out of place for a duelist. Where is the Finesse the flare the bad assery that we expect from a Fiora ult that puts fear into the enemy squishy champions eyes. The new ult is suck, bring back Blade Waltz or try again with something a bit more befitting of the Grand Duelist!

16 Comments

BlackEyesBlue7/27/2015, 5:51:22 PM8 votes

Blade waltz was a TERRIBLE ult in that it was too crutch on the character. The whole point of this re-work was to change her from just being a walking execute into a champ that actually plays like a precision duelist!

Replacing the new ult w/ something else? I'm fine with that! Giving back her old one! nopenopenopenopnope!

Good article overall BTW! :D

Marthian7/27/2015, 7:34:40 PM2 votes

bring back Blade Waltz

They will never bring it back. It's very obvious why it was so toxic and needed removed.

Donovan Du Bois7/27/2015, 5:53:37 PM2 votes

I really dislike how losing blade-waltz has completely changed the way Fiora plays. Shes supposed to be fast paced burst attacker, with some sustain from her passive and items, but in team fights you NEED some AoE, some way to contribute to the fight. Bring back something that lets her dash apart the enemy team.

junglerboy167/27/2015, 5:47:09 PM2 votes

Yeah, definitely don't bring back blade waltz, (that thing was the most cancerous ability in league), however, I think they ought to change up her PBE ult a bit. I think while it's active, her lunge should have a much lower base cooldown (say half at each rank, still resetting 60% of the remaining cooldown on hit like the base ability). there should be more marks to proc (say 8 marks) each dealing substantially less bonus damage than now (possibly with each mark triggering for more damage than the last one?), and also not requiring you to hit all 8 for the heal, but maybe something like the heal increases for every mark popped during the ult. the duration should also be increased as well. The idea of dancing around your opponent to trigger all the marks is great, but I feel like each mark deals so much damage and the duration is so short and the heal so large that the only use looks like it would be to tag a low health target for an easy team heal.

NorthernDruid7/28/2015, 12:09:51 AM1 votes

The main problem I have with her ult is that to reliably proc the AoE heal you need to be ahead, and the AoE healing field is only really useful when you're behind.

Ideally of course, if you're behind you can proc the passive 4 times and then you have a rallying point where your team is stronger than the opposition because of absurd healing. However, if you're behind it's hard to get the benefit because you're squishy by nature making it harder to proc when you're behind (relegating you to being a melee assassin without a solid ability to initiate).

If you're ahead, as soon as your team gets a kill or two, the enemy will start scattering, fleeing/regrouping rather than staying and fighting a stronger opposition, so you won't be fighting in the area where you have the advantage anyway.

In a situation where your team is weaker, an AoE healing field can turn it around and create a massive advantage for your side as you get a strong advantage in that area.

In a situation where your team is stronger, by the time the healing field comes up you'll generally have them on the run anyway so staying to heal will mean giving up momentum.

Both situations are problematic, and that is before touching upon situations where the target dies only after they manage to retreat away from the battlefield anyway, so the healing area is useless.

It's also problematic that the boost you get from your ult combat-wise is really not very strong compared to most steroids.

It adds relatively little, giving you three extra vital zones to hit, but since they refresh quickly anyway the benefit there is relatively low unless you're already on top of your target and can dance effectively with your new Q to hit all 4 vitals in 2-3 seconds.

The only real upfront benefit, is the passive movement speed you get when you're close to the target. Everything else is locked away until you get in a rapid series of hits.

They only need to kite you for 8 seconds to make your ult wasted by the way.

I love the concept of a sort of finishing move series of strikes which ramps slightly up with each movement in a signature duel-ender series of moves.

Not to mention that the Grand Duelist's ultimate is a big sign for the whole team to agressively butt in and focus fire.

It's not Fiora's moment to shine, it's a callsign for her team to come in and help her.

It's really bad thematically, a focus fire benefit has no place on a duelist. Her ult should emphasise her own power to defeat her opponents, not her team's ability to swarm one unlucky target.

Not to mention it's a tool best used on squishy mages, supports in particular, since the faster and easier the kill the earlier you get the heal-zone...

I'd imagine her ultimate ability be something that aids her in taking out big contenders, other duelists, bruisers and tanks, not something which rewards her team for ganking the nearest squishy.

The most immediate fix if they wanna keep the "healing-on-kill-because-victory/adrenaline rush/inspiration" gimmick, is to make it an AoE buff around Fiora instead of a field centered around her target.

So that it's rewarding even when you overwhelm the enemy and chase them two screens away from the initial fight.

AshenChaos7/28/2015, 12:12:54 AM1 votes

Well when i think Grand Duelist, winning a Duel i think crowds cheering, Money and Roses being thrown to the victors feet? additionally it would make more sense to have the ulti similar to what Poppy's is currently? the whole point of a Duel is a 1 on 1 fight, with no interfering from outsiders, that is essentially what Poppy's ulti already embodies.

CaptnJakSparrow7/28/2015, 11:31:44 AM1 votes

im trying to figuure out how many people would even let Fiora hit them in all four places.

Sethiroth247/27/2015, 7:23:12 PM1 votes

I agree Blade Waltz is to strong with her new kit and a cheep ability overall and needed to be changed but not completely thrown out and I have an idea that could work. New blade waltz= fiora dashes to and marks an enemy champion with vitals and puts down a field around the targets location gaining the ability to dash around to all targets within the field dashes do no damage and have a one second cooldown after use. This addresses the untargetability and also provides an escape for the target. Is all they have to do is get outside of her field. Lasts 6 seconds giving her roughly 5 dashes within the fields range and the ability to attack other targets also making her nimble in a fight. also thanks for the comments! :)

xl Kirito lx7/27/2015, 10:29:07 PM1 votes

I don't mind the ult as much, but her passive is something that I'd like buffs / nerfs to. As it stands, it marks a champion based on a cardinal direction, north, south, east, or west, and then requires you to strike there. My problem with it is that it's not marking a specific area of the champion to hit, but a direction. For instance, if Fiora passive marks someone facing north, with a north side mark, Fiora's effectively aiming at their torso. But if that champion turns around, facing south, Fiora can strike in the back, and still count for the passive. The other questionable part about her passive, is that the enemies can see where you're going to strike at. Like, I understand this from a balance point, but still leaves me with a bad taste.

The ult is fine imo, they're trying to give Fiora the option to teamfight without the amount of damage that Blade Waltz did. In turn, I wouldn't mind seeing the older reworks ult revived, where it empowered her basic abilities, and gave large amounts of CDR for X abilities cast. That seemed much more duelist based.

gubigubi7/27/2015, 10:35:22 PM1 votes

Okay as much as I love blade waltz. F#@king love that spell. It is the main thing that needed to be redone with Fiora. It has ZERO counter play aside from dumb stuff like stacking 300 armor and zhonyas. Or if you are lucky she will mess up and you can drag her back to your tower.

Her new kit is really fun to play but she did lose a lot of her damage during the rework. I think her ult needs some buffs but I want to see its win rate in live before I start demanding buffs. Her new kit is pretty fun but other Fiora mains you have to understand that Fiora as you know her is gone, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.