Examining the Problems of Miss Fortune through Itemization and Comparison to Similar ADCs

**Disclaimer: Wall of text incoming. There is a tldr at the end, but I feel that it fails to capture my point, it is mostly meant to capture the interest of people who don't want to read through the whole thing before they know what it is about. ** On April 3rd, 2014, Riot rolled out patch 4.5, which included long awaited changes to Miss Fortune, the former champion of AoE team comps. While she had previously been known as a lane bully that maintained presence in later stages of the game thanks to powerful area of effect damage potential in team fights, the changes put into place in patch 4.5 had the proposed goal of tuning down some of the lane bully potential, while boosting her late game damage potential. These changes have clearly not had their intended effect, as she is still a rare sight in games. Another goal of the reword, stated when it was first hinted at, was to preserve Mage Fortune, an even more uncommon Miss Fortune build advantage of her many AP ratios. Overall, the changes left Miss Fortune as an immobile AD carry with potential to do massive hybrid damage, but through bizarre scaling ratios, has no way to effectively take advantage of it. This is farther explained by breaking down each of her skills by showing pros, cons, and the most effective itemization for that single skill. This is done to show how diverging the goals of each of her abilities are.

Double Up (Q) Target Selection This spell received reductions to both cooldown and mana cost (largely a modernization of the champion, bringing her main trading tool in the lane more in range with some of the other skills out there). The base damages of the spell were reduced, while the scaling was slightly increased. The rationale behind how the ability, which damages the targeted enemy unit then bounces to another, selects the second target, was also changed to the following parameters:

• The second shot follows a priority order on targets within 500-range:*

1. Enemy champions in a 40° cone with at least one stack of Impure Shots.
2. Minions and neutral monsters within a 20° cone.
3. Enemy champions within a 20° cone.
4. Minions and neutral monsters within a 40° cone.
5. Enemy champions within a 40° cone.
6. Enemy or neutral units within a 110° cone.
7. Enemy or neutral units within a 150-range 160° cone. While this new method of shot selection was initially hailed as much better than the previous iteration, it still has some glaring flaws. Because the second proc (the target the shot bounces to) deals much more damage, getting the ability to bounce to a champion is important when trading in lane. While having the highest bounce priority be towards champions marked with impure shots is useful to this, the fact that the ability will then prioritize minions before unmarked champions is frankly silly. This makes it effectively impossible to reliably use the second damage proc in situations where Miss Fortune cannot move into her relatively short auto attack range without losing the trade. Although Double Up has the same range as Miss Fortune’s auto attacks (550), the second shot can bounce another 500 units, giving the spell an effective range of 1050, but, because it will only prioritize champions that have already been hit by an auto attack from Miss Fortune, this potential benefit is lost. Swapping the target selection to choose unmarked champions before minions will allow Miss Fortune to use Double Up to reliably get damage on targets that say out range her, or that she cannot get too close to due to something like a pick oriented support sitting in the bush nearby. Dueling vs. Trading Problems with the target selection aside, the ability has yet another flaw, one that was not addressed in the rework, in that its value is greatly diminished when trading outside of the laning phase, such as in duels. If Miss Fortune is fighting a single target alone (without minions around), she will not get the additional bounce on her opponent as there is nothing to bounce it off of. Because the first proc has less than 100% AD scaling, and casting interrupts Miss Fortune’s auto attacks, when she has enough attack speed, using Double Up in duels actually constitutes a loss of DPS. Itemization Being a (single target) spell that scales off of AD and deals physical damage, itemizing to maximize the effectiveness of Double Up lines up nicely with Miss Fortune’s primary identity as an AD carry. Attack damage and armour pen are both beneficial, and because the ability both activates and procs the damage from spellblade, something like a sheen into trinity force can help increase the value of the spell during duels in the midgame, when Miss Fortune does not have enough attack speed to make the ability obsolete. Possible Solutions  Allow Double Up to critically strike, increasing the value of Crit chance, which Miss Fortune will already be building due to its current power.  Swap the ratios on the first and second proc. While this reduces the power of long range, spell only trades, having guaranteed 100% AD ratio on the spell will make it much better in duels.  Make Double Up an activatable auto attack modifier. This could work in a number of ways, such as causing each, say, third auto attack to deal bonus damage and then bounce to another target as double up currently does. Not only does this change incorporate the two ideas listed directly above (at the very least, the initial auto attack can still crit, and, by virtue of being an auto attack modifier, would have at least 100% AD scaling) it allows Double Up to continue to be useful into late game duels, when it can deal it’s damage without costing valuable auto attacks. While this change would certainly require the ability to be rebalanced, it is setup to take advantage of all the core stats being built by an AD carry, Attack damage, crit chance, armour penetration, and attack speed.

Impure Shots (W) Active Portion Moving onto the next spell, we have an ability with both a passive and active component. Impure shots causes Miss Fortune’s auto attacks to deal bonus magic damage based on her total AD, with the bonus damage dealt increasing every auto attack up to a certain point. The active portion of this ability temporarily increases attack speed, and causes attacks to apply grievous wounds for two seconds. On its own, I feel that this ability is actually is in a decent place, but, in application is rather lacking. The active portion of the ability is fine, although the application of grievous wounds does show the age of the champion (Tristana, another AD carry that used to have an ability that applied grievous wounds, was but one champion that has recently had that portion of their kit removed). Passive Portion The passive portion of the ability is one that suffers from Miss Fortune’s identity crisis. Like Kalista, and Twitch, the passive portion of Impure Shots rewards Miss Fortune for repeatedly auto attacking a unit. In this aspect, it is actually quite useful in duels, as you are essentially auto attacking the same unit until the duel is over. However, both in the laning phase and in teamfights, the relatively short ranged (550) Miss Fortune lacks the mobility and/or the resistances to be able to make the most use out of her passive, by attacking the squishier targets. Although she can auto attack a tank that is coming after her, Impure Shots lacks a true tank killing portion (% Health, True Damage) and has low enough rations that it is rarely a threat on its own. The 4.5 rework attempted to offer a solution to this problem, by causing her ultimate, Bullet Time, a conical-high DPS channel to also stack up Impure Shots. This allows Miss Fortune to rapidly build up the stack count of Impure Shots against a large number of enemies, but, the problem still remains, then what? Ideally, after getting a good channel of her ult, Miss Fortune can continue to attack before the stacks reset, but as discussed above, and factoring in the fact that Miss Fortune usually activates her ultimate way out of her auto attack range of targets (so it cannot be disrupted) this is an unlikely scenario. Twitch’s ultimate has a similar goal, but, thanks to contaminate, which deals damage based on the number of stacks, he can take advantage of maximising stack count without needing to continue to proc the ability. Consider Twitch, who also has a passive that stacks with auto attacks. Twitch’s deadly venom deals with tanks by doing true damage, and he can reach the backline thanks to the ability to go invisible and gain increased movement speed. Like Miss Fortune, he can also apply this passive to the backline thanks to his ultimate, which greatly increases both the range and the speed at which he can proc the passive. Kalista, another champion who’s rend deals increased damage based on how many time a target has been repetitively auto attacked by the champion, has near infinite mobility thanks to her passive, which allows her to leap after every auto attack. Although Graves and Lucian both lack passives that reward them for auto attacking the same target, they are both short ranged AD carries, and both have a short ranged dash with a relatively low cooldown, as well as one other ability granting them increased survivability (resistances for Graves and speed for Lucian). The point is that Impure Shots is simply outclassed by other abilities with a similar stacking mechanic. Itemization Impure shots is most effective with high AD values, and also benefits from attack speed, and magic pen. Although magic penetration, in the form of sorcerer’s shoes, is quite effective on some AD carries with abilities that deal magic damage, another problem of Impure Shots is that it benefits from both attack speed and magic penetration, making the right choice of boots difficult. Possible Solutions I feel that impure shots is a core portion of Miss Fortune’s identity, and fixing it seems to be a daunting task, that said, here are several different to finding a better way to approach the problem, some more radical than the others.  Remove the application of grievous wounds and increase the attack speed gained for the duration of the active.  Switch the bonus damage dealt from magic to physical damage.  Increase the scaling, or add some kind of tank killing portion to make the passive more of a threat to frontliners.  Go the way of Twitch and Kalista and remove the attack speed boost, instead granting some sort of detonation mechanic such as expunge. o Personally, I think this would work, but is rather uninspired and unoriginal.  Remove Miss Fortune’s current passive and make the passive portion of Impure Shots her new passive, replace the active component with some kind of ability that increases Miss Fortune’s mobility, balance accordingly. o While I like this idea most, I feel that for the passive portion of impure shots almost needs to be powerful enough to be an actual ability to truly be useful, lest it run into the problem of too strong early/too weak late and vice versa. That being said, with the high value passives of Bard, Yasuo and Kalista, balancing the champion around a powerful passive is possible, although it has proven difficult for the champions already mentioned.

Make it Rain (E) Make it Rain is a general utility spell for Miss Fortune that deals magic damage in a large area over three seconds while also applying a slow. This ability, more than any, has become a victim of Riot trying to please everybody by trying to keep AP Miss Fortune in the game. As an AD carry, the ability does very little damage, and because the slow only gets truly relevant at later levels, it cannot serve as a one point wonder for self-peel as well. While it can synergise well with her kit, keeping people in an area for her ult and letting her catch, or disengage from targets. However, the ability is lacking statwise to do this really well. It also benefits from magic pen and ability power, neither of which are truly effective for Miss Fortune’s other abilities or her nature as an attack damage carry. While there are several approaches to making this ability better, it is not the biggest problem with Miss Fortune’s kit, and, if other changes increase her power, could even be left as is. However, here are some things that could be done:  Give the ability AD Scaling  Swap the damage type to do physical damage  Make the max rank slow available from the first point of the spell, reduce or remove the damage component.

Bullet Time (R) The iconic Miss Fortune spell, making her an AoE menace when given the right engage, of all the changes Miss Fortune received, removing the AD scaling and causing the ability to apply Impure Shots instead was my least favourite. Although the changes were meant to make impure shots more meaningful, this came at the cost of fragmenting the damage dealt into both types (Physical and Magic). It also ties the power of Bullet Time to the power of Impure Shots, which can make balance decisions difficult. In addition, even if it she receives more changes, heavy AoE teamfight comps have kind of fallen out of the meta. This could mean that taking some power away from Bullet Time and using it to bolster another aspect of Miss Fortune could be the best approach to giving her viability in the current meta. One way that the power of Bullet Time could be left as it is currently intended (a huge source of AoE damage) would be to remove its waveclear capabilities, allowing it to only affect champions. Lucian’s ultimate, another channeled ability that fires multiple shots, fits a similar profile, and, before nerfs to its cooldown, gained value solely from the ability to rapidly clear large minions waves, which Bullet Time is also capable of doing. Due to its mixed damage nature, Bullet Time benefits from ability power (It has an ap ratio) attack damage (making impure shots better) and both types of penetration.

Strut (Passive) An AD carry with a passive that provides no utility in combat? What a conundrum! In all seriousness, this passive is pretty bad, and with its current design needs to be way more powerful to provide much. Something along the lines of it getting better after certainly levels are reached, such as with Garen’s passive, could be an idea, but something new would likely be better than any buffs. What type of passive could replace Strut? Besides the idea of Impure Shots becoming the new passive presented above, creating a suitable replacement for strut depends on what future changes are implemented, and the power level of the champion considering those changes.

Conclusions Although the changes in patch 4.5 were meant to bring some much needed changes to Miss Fortune, she is still in a pretty weak spot. Her abilities lead her in several contrasting directions, and were she to be over tuned, she could be a jack of all trade. Her diverging goals make it both easy to come up with ways to improve her, but difficult to determine her true identity. Ideally, instead of extensive theory crafting, and trying to determine what the perfect set of changes, a couple of different ideas could be implemented, either internally, or on the PBE, to determine what feels right.

TL;DR  Miss Fortune has been in a pretty weak spot in both power and popularity for some time now.  The bizzare choices in damage types and scalings on Miss Fortune’s abilities lead to diverging optimal itemizations for each spell, and makes her ideal item build difficult to nail down.  Double Up has poor target selection on the second shot, and is not useful in mid-lategame duels.  Favourite Change: Every Xth auto attack deals bonus damage and bounces to another target.  Miss Fortune lacks the mobility, range, or resistances to make the most use out of the passive portion of impure shots.  Favourite Change: Replace Strut with the passive portion of impure shots and give Miss Fortune a new W (some kind of mobility spell).  Make it Rain lacks the crowd control at level 1 to make it a one point wonder, lacks meaningful damage scaling. However, it can be kept as is to gate Miss Fortune’s strength.  Allowing Bullet Time to apply Impure Shots fragmented the damage of Miss Fortune’s iconic ability. This change should be reverted, and Bullet Time should gain AD scaling that fits with the power of her other abilities.  Strut is not very useful, but can be kept as is as a means of limiting the power of Miss Fortune. If not, it should be replaced entirely.