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Honest talk about Fiora

Bronze II Yasuo ··32 votes·4,155 views

At one point she was the most banned champion in League, and still continues to be one of the most popular and played champion for solo queue unless banned. At one point she even had a 90% win ratio in LCS and hasn't really seen much nerfs. I get she's suppose to be this 1v1 duelist that wins when split pushing but don't you think her kit is a little too oppressive to deal with?

Looking at her nerf history.

5.20 R - Grand Challenge

DURATION: 5 seconds ⇒ 2 seconds
VICTORY ROSE: Heal duration goes up by 1 second for every Vital Fiora strikes beyond the first
MAXIMUM DURATION: Unchanged

6.4 W - Riposte

COOLDOWN: 19/18/17/16/15 seconds ⇒ 24/22/20/18/16 seconds

E - Bladework

COOLDOWN: 15/13/11/9/7 ⇒ 13/11/9/7/5 seconds
LIMITED BLADEWORKS: Cooldown now starts on cast ⇒ after second hit

6.6

Passive - Duelist's Dance

BASE TRUE DAMAGE: 3% of the target's maximum health ⇒ 2% of the target's maximum health
RATIO: 2.8 - 4.5% per 100 bonus attack damage ⇒ 4.5% per 100 bonus attack damage

E - Bladework

SLOW: 40/45/50/55/60% ⇒ 30%
BONUS RANGE: 50 ⇒ 25

After 6.6 those were the nerfs that supposedly made her worthy not being ban worthy and completely fine by Riot. Ever since then she's received small buffs and some QoL and bug fixes. How exactly is her kit fine?

129 Comments

VivaLaKitten24 votes

because technically you can still kill her even though she currently can deal as much damage as a full build build adc and still build some tank items while having that annoying dash and slow that lets her kite nearly everything, true damage and % max hp damage, letting her shred everything and an ability that blocks ANYTHING if timed right . . . I mean ye

RlP K0BE14 votes

You know it's bad when a champions counterplay is "Just get the fuck away from them"

Kledy McKledFace10 votes

{quoted}

You know it's bad when a champions counterplay is "Just get the fuck away from them"

Yeah we all hate those champs Camille Darius Fiora Graves Illaoi Nasus Olaf Rengar Riven Yasuo

almost all most hated champions I wonder why... and who designed them...

The Sword Saint9 votes

It almost sounds like when you list 10 or so champs who are good at something it becomes a class in its own right and not a 'random outlier'.

Maybe you should try not fighting a champion who specializes in something on their own turf.

KVbqbFsC8e14 votes

Also, one thing you have to remember is the QSS nerf. It used to remove her ult. That was actually a huge buff for her.

Supreme Senpai6914 votes

I just don't think she should be able to riposte ignite.

Like why is that even a thing

Critmaster Garen13 votes

the phase where she was most banned was during the time she ran with a bruiser build though. and as far as i can tell after her scaling changes that phase is over.

Bronze II Yasuo 3 votes

6.6 was deemed the patch where "bruiser Fiora was officially dead" heck even a post made it to the front page of how it was dead that patch. So my question being is how exactly did that 1% negate her from building bruiser?

Critmaster Garen7 votes

{quoted}

6.6 was deemed the patch where "bruiser Fiora was officially dead" heck even a post made it to the front page of how it was dead that patch. So my question being is how exactly did that 1% negate her from building bruiser?

its not just the 1% reduction to her passive.

they also changed the ad scaling part to scale up less on its own and more with bonus ad. basically by reducing the base damage on her passive shes required to build ad to get the same damage out of it as before.

iFearedAMinion9 votes

I support this post. Down with Fiora.

Melledoneus8 votes

I audibly groan when I see the enemy laner is Fiora. Even if she doesn't hit your vital with her Q she gets a CD reduction, a decent chunk of damage, a free walk back and visibly no mana used.

Not even Darius zones me that hard.

Dethflash8 votes

Max health % true dmg seems like a very unhealthy mechanic for any champion

sirwaterfles3 votes

I kind of get in on vayne (even though i hate that champ with every bone in my body). She got short range and if you cc or burst her she is death. But on fiora that is tanky and can turn that cc back to you it just leaves me hopelessly hugging tower and crying over how i can do nothing to counterbuild her on most champions. Unless im on my swain on a good day. In that case : LETS DANCE BIATCH!!

The Sword Saint3 votes

You're not supposed to counterbuild her, you're supposed to man up and build damage if you want to duel her. If you want to passively stack defences thats fine but you are giving up your ability to duel her and thats intended.

sirwaterfles3 votes

Cool except that only a handfull of champs can actually do that and hope to win and you can compleetly forget it if you ever fall behind.

The Sword Saint2 votes

Then don't duel her? Making a poor choice in champ select aside, there are man other aspects to this game than dueling - like teamfighting, rotations, sieging, objective control, side lane pressure, etc.

Believe it or not, you don't actually have to keep throwing yourself into a 1v1 fight to the death with your lane opponent for 40 minutes and hope you come out ahead.

Kaioko7 votes

It's always the ones who don't play Fiora who complain about her. She actually has some pretty huge weaknesses that you can take advantage of but reading and actually experiencing them yourself are two completely different things.

She used to give me issues. I picked her up about 4 months ago and now have yet to lose a lane against her or even late game in team fights.

Big Lincoln9 votes

She actually has some pretty huge weaknesses that you can take advantage of but reading and actually experiencing them yourself are two completely different things.

that's a pretty good way to excuse yourself from explaining her weaknesses, lul

ChaoticPinecone5 votes
  1. The most important tip for laning - vitals drop when you get out of range. If there is a easy vital for her to hit (the ones right in front of you), you can walk out of range, drop the vital, then walk back into range to have it reappear somewhere else. I'm not 100% sure, but I never seen the vital appear in the same position twice. A lot of her poke in lane is Q'ing to a forward-facing vital. Dont give it to her.
  2. Her W is on a long cooldown, especially since she maxes it last. For most champions, the ability that she blocked will be back up before her Ripose is back up as long as it isnt an ult.
  3. You can prevent her from proccing her ult's 4 vitals by standing next to a wall. Requires you to be able to actually dual her, but its good to know.
  4. Her Q cooldown is pretty high early if she doesnt hit an enemy. Unlikely to happen without some active mindgames on your part, but if you can get her to miss one Q youre in a great spot.
  5. She doesnt build AS and relies on "bursty" engages. Not complete burst but not complete DPS, but similar to an Akali - she engages in, does a ton of damage, backs off, then engages again. You can straight up dual her if youre playing another melee hypercarry that relies on DPS (Jax, Tryn) as long as she doesnt Ripose-stun you or something like that.
  6. Her level 3 is actually kinda weak. Champions with strong laning (Renekton, Garen, Darius, Yorick) actually win all-ins at that point. Post 6, it depends a lot on the Ripose - if she has nothing too important to Ripose (e.g. Yorick), she will almost always lose as long as she doesnt proc all 4 vitals.
  7. And as a general thing against most melee hypercarries, they can be kited pretty hard. Play a champion that can kite and poke, using the knowledge that they need to be in melee range to actually damage you. My default would be Singed, but I can see Swain working as well.
bbQsauçe2 votes

[deleted]

ChaoticPinecone1 votes

It isnt too hard of a matchup anymore. 1-3x dark seals into Ninja Tabi into Zzrot/Thornmail. The only time she was his "hardest" counter was when she was pick/ban and countered everybody toplane. Nowadays its a much more manageable lane.

You cant go into it not knowing how to play the lane, but as long as you dont let her get free Vitals (maybe even taking health seals + armor quints instead of the movespeed quints), you just ignore her and push after you get one item.

bbQsauçe2 votes

[deleted]

ChaoticPinecone1 votes

You dont know how to Singed then. What are you doing, sitting there autoattacking her? You seriously just need to press Q and run away, throwing a W in your own path so she cant chase through it.

If you get run down by a Fiora as a Singed, you have to be doing something like proxy farming, taking too much poke in lane, or going for an AP heavy build. There is no way that a Fiora chases a Ult+Ghost Singed with 3x Dark Seal, Ninja Tabi, and Thornmail without a very heavy lead.

bbQsauçe3 votes

[deleted]

ChaoticPinecone1 votes

You obviously dont know what youre talking about, so there really isnt much point in responding to you any further. Why dont you visit that reddit page yourself - youll find that most "vs Fiora" threads are 6-12 months ago, when Fiora was destroying everybody. Since her nerfs, she is a lot easier to deal with.

I gave my opinion on what I play into Fiora. I gave my opinion about what to do in lane to survive vs a Fiora, both as Singed and as a general matchup. Take it if you want or not.

bbQsauçe2 votes

[deleted]

ChaoticPinecone1 votes

You dont know what youre talking about. I looked at those threads - why dont you actually click them and read them instead of posting about them.

  • "I have no problem against fiora in low dia"
  • "It's tricky when I have to play against pro Fioras, but you can make it work."
  • "If you hug a wall and bait her riposte its not rlly hard. You need confidence in this matchup in order to win."
  • And for the lolz - "You shouldn't use this site at all...If you used this site back in 2014 I guess it was fine but these days nothing on it is useful anymore."

And what did that "highest elo singed player in NA" (he isnt - hes D3) do? He did pretty much exactly what I said Singed would do - ignore her and push. You arent getting solokills on her unless she is stupid, but she shouldnt kill you.

So there you go - instead of just linking a bunch of information you THINK helps your point, why dont you actually look at your own links.

Bronze II Yasuo 3 votes

Please enlighten me. I mean this post aslready proves a lot about her weaknesses and counterplay

Anidan5 votes

Hmm.. why don't you try listing out some weaknesses and then we'll see what can be added on. If this is an honest discussion then you should be able to look at it objectively too, right? No ulterior motives to attend to? Because it looks like this isn't an actually honest conversation; it's pretty tilted in one direction and you're trying to disguise the fact. You didn't even try to post about any actual weaknesses in her kit, you just pointed at a few nerfs and then mentioned some buffs and.. that's all you said.

Melledoneus6 votes

Weaknesses: Has a skirmishing style, meaning she cannot stand there and fight as effectively as all-in champs like Xin or Trundle. Also has a relatively long CD on her only defensive mechanic, and she relies on positioning to deal her utmost damage.

Her overpowering damage even at early levels, however, renders these weaknesses almost obsolete.

The Sword Saint3 votes

Weaknesses also include a lot of things you aren't mentioning. For example, she is weak to targeted low cooldown ranged harass such as from ranged champions or pantheon because she can't dash to avoid targeted harass and her riposte cooldown is long, so she can't just parry it all. Even if the harass cooldown is similar to the parry cooldown, if the harasser has a strong all in and cc on another spell fiora can never afford to parry the harass because it opens her up to being cc'd so she just has to eat the harass or get zoned.

She's also shit at sieges because her q range isn't that long and without a target to hit to reset the cooldown she will never be able to force her way past a barrage of poke from mages and adcs camping under tower next to their tanks.

She's a melee carry so definition she gets snowballed on hard if she falls behind as well.

There's plenty more, and they more than make up for her strengths. That's why shes barely at 50% winrate against skilled players.

Melledoneus2 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Sword Saint,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=fE4qgEWA,comment-id=00020001000000000000,timestamp=2017-03-24T14:55:46.172+0000)

Weaknesses also include a lot of things you aren't mentioning. For example, she is weak to targeted low cooldown ranged harass such as from ranged champions or pantheon because she can't dash to avoid targeted harass

I'm pretty sure almost everyone has this problem.

and her riposte cooldown is long, so she can't just parry it all. Even if the harass cooldown is similar to the parry cooldown, if the harasser has a strong all in and cc on another spell fiora can never afford to parry the harass because it opens her up to being cc'd so she just has to eat the harass or get zoned.

Can't she just jump on her opponent? You can dash into parry with animation cancelling.

She's also shit at sieges because her q range isn't that long and without a target to hit to reset the cooldown she will never be able to force her way past a barrage of poke from mages and adcs camping under tower next to their tanks.

Most melees without CC suck at sieges unless your name is Illaoi.

She's a melee carry so definition she gets snowballed on hard if she falls behind as well.

Like almost every melee...

There's plenty more, and they more than make up for her strengths. That's why shes barely at 50% winrate against skilled players.

Or because the bot lane carry defines the game...

Most of these aren't even weaknesses of Fiora, but characters in general. You didn't really mention anything particularly weak about Fiora as much as melees, which she makes up for with her demi-godly mobility and dueling potential in lane.

The Sword Saint3 votes

No. There are plenty of other melee champions who have a better time dealing with low cooldown ranged harass than fiora. Wukong for example would eat a quinn alive, especially once he hits 6 and has his ult. Champions who are more tank and sustain heavy can also shrug off ranged harass far easier while still being relevant later in the game, like shen, poppy, maokai, etc.

There are also tons of top lane champions with 55% or higher winrates all the time, including gangplank right now. So the statement that 'oh a 50% winrate is because botlane is so strong' is also weak when there are plenty of tops who carry games.

Fact of the matter is that you seem to have a lot of strong opinions about how top lane works, but not a lot of actual successful experience or knowledge about how they actually work. I hate to pull the rank card, but when you are a multi season bronze player poorly nitpicking all of the well reasoned statements of a higher ranked player who has significant experience and knowledge of the topic at hand it gets kind of silly that you don't seem to want to concede any ground in an argument.

Kaioko2 votes

{quoted}

Please enlighten me. I mean this post aslready proves a lot about her weaknesses and counterplay

I'll explain them but like I stated earlier the best way to learn how to counter a champion is to actually play several games with that champion and see how you struggle.

Fiora weakness comes from the fact that she at no point is actually that strong. Her early game laning is actually pretty weak. Her sustain is crap and her true damage without any AD is entirely useless. She's an auto attack reset champion but without her auto attacks actually hurting she won't do well. Any immediate CC screws her over and considering riposte is 24 seconds long at level 1 and it's the last skill you max you've got plenty of time to abuse her after she uses it. Early armor also goes a long way against her. Champions like Darius, Poppy, Illaoi and Renekton can completely screw her over.

Then we get to mid game where she'll try to make a pick and get fed. if your team groups she's essentially lost the game. At the point all she has is hydra and black cleaver or Triforce. She'll be too squishy to actually do anything in a full fight but will beat anyone 1 vs 1.

Late game it's more of the same as mid. Her true damage actually starts to hurt now typically 12% per vital up to even 14% for a squishy fiora full build; but again she can't deal with team fights. Her dash is great but it's not good enough to get around peel and riposte in the middle of an entire teamfight unfortunately just doesn't cut it especially as the only source of CC.

You counter Fiora by abusing her early and grouping late. If you play her split push game and try to 1 vs 1 you deserve to lose considering you're trying to duel "The Grand Duelist."

Blåbæret6 votes

There are so many broken trash champions in this game and you chose to cry about Fiora? Oky bud, lol.

Bronze II Yasuo 6 votes

No surprise someone who plays Fiora doesn't want her nerf. The irony LUL

The Sword Saint5 votes

What a lazy argument. If you looked at that guys profile you'd see that he's played 3 fiora games, 2 of which are losses, and over 100 games as other champions so far this season.

But not, he has fiora somewhere in his match history, clearly its logical to LUL at him and try to dismiss him because he disagrees with you.

Protip: people like me who actually do play fiora when she is decent aren't playing her right now as much because she's performing at barely 50% winrate and there are just more reliable picks at the moment.

catgrill6 votes

My complaint about her is her movement speed. Way too fast with her dash and phage. She can out duel me, out run me, and stop my cc. Not cool :^))

Inuyasha999993 votes

THIS RIGHT HERE. I WAS SINGED WITH ULT DEADMANS AND GHOST AND RYLIES AND SHE STILL CAUGHT ME

Sasogwa6 votes

The problem with Fiora is that she has a such a kit that when she's good, there's no reason to play any other splitpusher toplane. Why play Nasus when you can play Fiora? Why play Jax when you can play Fiora? Why play Tryndamere when you can play Fiora? Why play Aatrox when you can play Fiora?

etc.

DevlinCrow6 votes

Why is everyone suddenly jumping on Fiora?

Taliyah Rocks4 votes

People consider her broken for the same reason they consider Illaoi broken: They try to 1v1 her.

You can't even 1v2 her if you're both squish and without cc.

Kha'Zix and Gangplank walked into a bush where Illaoi or Fiora is hiding.

Surprise they both died.

tXQbsPrjN53 votes

The reason I don't play top anymore is because of Fiora. There's nothing entertaining about a champion that will just do 60% of your hp as true damage regardless of what you do.

Toastersaot2 votes

The only things I can think of that Fiona lacks is a ranged ability, innate waveclear, and in-Lane sustain, but she can negate two of the three things I listed above with a simple item 3074 purchase first item, so yeah she's pretty strong right now.

If Riot nerfed some other Top Laners or made split pushing even a tiny little bit better than it is now (Its not a bad strategy, I'm just talking about indirect buffs like buffing/changing Rift Herald, Health and Armor on turrets, minion spawn times, champion experience distribution, etc.) and a full splitpush meta arises, she will probably break the game.

ilsimptico2 votes

...I can think of that Fiona lacks is a ranged ability...

Fiona?? https://themarshallreport.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/fiona-1.jpg?w=660

Toastersaot6 votes

{quoted}

Fiona?? https://themarshallreport.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/fiona-1.jpg?w=660

Looks the same to me

ilsimptico2 votes

xD

MunchCrunchLunch2 votes

remove the attack speed slow. REMOVE IT

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