What it's like playing Fizz.
Summary: Another rant regarding fizz's late game issues with teamfighting. He loses out late game to defensive item/stat counters preventing him from killing targets then dies to his linear mobility and lack of disengage.
He wins on feast and famine (the reason for his apparent success and high win rates) but if games are allowed to be drawn out to late game, the enemy itemizes like they should, and the comp isn't wacky then he becomes FAR less reliable than any other assassin. His last resort is to use his engage capabilities and hope his team can take care of the rest. Assassins typically can't one shot in these situations any way but others are given much more flexible kits that allow them to still outplay these situations with powerful mobility mechanics.
What it's like to play fizz:
Completely 1 sidedly stomp lane, and proceed to actually do things around the map. Our botlane lee sin and teemo of course hard lose lane VS Kog and Janna. Kog has barrier btw.
Come mid game my entire team collectively starts chasing kills, pressuring no objectives besides pushing a lane then leaving it, then lets our objectives go down for free.
With no team backing me I can't do anything to the enemy team roaming as a squad and very quickly the gold lead settles then rises in their favor. Defensive stats get stacked (even anivia builds tank items), janna gets her support items and I'm left in a position for the rest of the game where it's physically impossible for me to kill anyone on my own regardless of if I land my rotation right WITH max range ulty.
The team continues to chase around the enemy for quick skirmishes and trying to chase kills while still letting the enemy gain more and more map pressure. No real teamfight was ever actually had so it was mainly a game of catching a single person out with our side always losing pressure regardless of which side died more. With no chance of assistance from my team it made it completely impossible for me to do anything on my own against their champions and tankiness.
By late game I've completely tilted at the hopeless situation I'm in and start missing ults in fights because why in gods name does it matter if there's no way I can burst anyone even in optimal conditions. I tilt even harder and inevitably get flamed by my team and the enemy for missed ults.
What is the point of this? The fact is that Fizz (Akali as well for that matter) still doesn't have a counter to this brainless stat stacking. The enemy bought loads of MR and now I can't kill him but will die to him due to my own lack of defensive stats. Interactive counterplay. The assassins were touched and fizz was brought up to the chopping block because they had "Un-interactive gameplay" through 1 shot bursts yet the meta is filled with just as much Un-interactive mechanics such as shield supports and defensive items granting more power over champions building actual damage.
Analysis of the Late game teamfighting:
You have a pure melee range assassin with a 1 dimensional mobility pattern. If you land your shark then you have to use some combination of mobility spells to follow up. In almost all situations this REQUIRES the use of your E which is 1/3 of your kits damage and your only survivability. If by some other means or just due to the situation you do manage to get on the enemy and use your E for damage, if the target doesn't die you're still left with nothing. No way to finish the target, no way to escape, and not a damn bit of tankiness to survive what is about to come your way. Your only other option is to understand this from the getgo and not go in or hope your team will go in for you to follow up and hopefully do something.
Hourglass is an essential item for this very fact but Fizz's E was specifically nerfed so that you had a full 2 second window after coming out of stasis for your E to come back up to get to safety. Most bruisers can kill you in less than 1 second, and ADC's will definitely beable to kill you in that time. You're basically forced into a position to suicide just to blow cooldowns on the enemy, throw your ult on someone who you can't even damage, or not fight at all.
In the end if the game comes to this (which alot do) then you don't have any counterplay or outplay potential. You hope your team can do something or you sit back and accept defeat.
Someone somewhere will say this so I'll reply to it right now. The reason he has a high winrate AND is played in the LCS is for 2 reasons.
The first one is because he's the epitome of feast or famine. If he gets ahead in lane his ability to snowball the game is extremely high, because he can initiate a fight from a much longer distance than other champions he can actually do something with it. Of course as anyone knows though if he falls behind or it reaches the point where the enemy starts getting defensive items then no person who actually knows the game will deny that he becomes deadweight.
Except in LCS which is the next reason. The LCS is not solo queue and never will be. These are all players who are at the top and play in coordinated professional teams even if you'd like to call some of them bad just because they aren't the best of the best. The ability to initiate a fight from an extreme distance on the professional side of things is priceless. If the team makes the right call for an engage and a shark lands then the other 4 members of the team will actually know how to utilize the opportunity and start a winning fight. They can take advantage of Fizz's initiation strengths and his weakness's don't matter at that point.
But solo queue isn't like that. 90% of the time it's 5 different people all playing their own game and hoping the rest of their team doesn't screw up. In alot of cases they might not even be able to hold their own weight on the team.
Though this is also why fizz has always been better in lower elo (as are most assassins) because people in lower elo will pick stupid matchups, not know how to play them, and not know how to itemize properly.
So in the end it comes down to an assassins ability to actually do something on their own and In that regard I say fizz is far less capable than other assassins.
Yes it's very true that not all assassins can just outright one shot people but what other assassins have that fizz doesn't is proper disengage. Your Q is a targeted dash and your E is on a relatively long CD (with 40% CDR which isn't exactly easy to get in an optimal build) and always going to be unavailable to escape after an initiation because in most cases you have to use it to start said initiation. Alot of champions just chase you down regardless if you E away of not.
In my opinion there are 3 things that need to be looked at.
The first is fixing his mobility and giving him actual options for how he can approach a fight. Perhaps changing his E and giving him reset mechanics, maybe even ditching the untargetability because as long as that exists within his kit he'll be gated due to the the ability having the potential to be broken.
The second is to rework how his R and W works. One of the reasons fizz is so stiff with his options to fight is because of the stupid mark mechanic that was introduced that made it impossible to fight properly without your ult to stack the mark. Most damage champions will kill you before you can even activate it and then it comes back to being an issue of "Can I shot this person in my single rotation or will I fail and die".
The third and final thing to do is add in proper AP assassin itemization that we've been waiting on for ages. Would be a perfect time to actually introduce a strong passive/active item mechanic that counters shields. Of course making the items melee only, because the main reason why things like strong magic pen items haven't been introduced was the effects it could have on AP mages.
