So now that Fiora's visual's are being looked at, I wanna talk about her Kit.

Now, Disclaimer, I'm not above admitting that maybe I just really suck with her. With that being said:

Yeah. Not digging it. It sounds and looks good on paper, but the execution seems weak.

They nerfed her damage for the sake of giving her more survivability and utility but then didn't give her that much more utility or survivability. Her Cooldowns are too high and her new damage is too low relative to the amount of effort you have to put in to get it to work. Unless the person you're fighting lets you hit them as opposed to just walking away.

From what I've played, she doesn't seem to be particularly good at either of the things she's supposed to be. She's supposed to be a duelist but her ability to duel anyone sucks now. They changed her to be more of a Supporty Bruiser but she doesn't have the stats or steroids to do that either.

[PASSIVE: Duelist's Dance] I didn't think it was possible to have weaker lane sustain than before but she does, unless you get lucky and the Vital appears where you can hit it with a Q. And it's not like a Quinn Scout where all you have to do is hit them. You have to attack from a super telegraphed location now. If you can't get too it, goodbye lane sustain.

[Q: Lunge] Her Q Can be cast wherever you want now, but the cooldown is much more punishing for using it for mobility or just straight up missing for w/e reason. Since it's on-hit, it no longer has the benefit of letting you attack through blinds or attacking without drawing aggro. Even if you do hit, at max rank you still have to wait like 4 seconds before you can cast it again, whereas before, if you played it right, you could Q in then Q back to a minion or something. Which lowered the damage but allowed you to sustain, harass and not draw aggro, which was the only way to fight some champions in any feasible manor (Like Jax when he E's or Teemo when he blinds. Now, the fight with Jax is wholly dependent on using your riposte to block his stun, meanwhile he get's free autos for the duration as you try to read the Spin).

[W: Riposte] Her W is subjectively worse because it's a skillshot Self-stun now with a really high cooldown. It's cool that it can hit a wave now, but you'd be an idiot to actually use it for waveclear because it does practically no damage and you lose it for between 15-18 seconds. Unlike before where you at least got the passive AD, you get no benefit to it being down.

• As a potential buff, if Riot is deadset on keeping Riposte the way it is, maybe consider adding a CDR refresh for hitting a Vital.

[E: Bladework] Her New E is straight up weaker for any kind of extended duel because the 2 hits doesn't help as much as the mvspd and ad the old one gave. It's also odd that her Q doesn't proc her first E attacks Slow despite being on-hit now. I don't really have much to say about this ability except that it feels like an unnecessary nerf for a champ who's supposed to be built around dueling someone. Her E Slows down and then crits an enemy, but the crit has to scale up from 145 - 200%, so at early levels, the 2 extra attacks is weaker than the ASpd from before with the added penalty of not actually letting you speed up unless you also happened to , again, get lucky with vital placements.

[R: Grand Challenge] Her ult, Grand Challenge, seems to me like the biggest disappointment of the kit. The extra movespeed it gives doesn't really seem to be as helpful as is intended over other useful stats like defense or healing or slowing the enemy or even, though they don't want to, damage. Yes, it has the potential damage, but the ways to stop the damage from occuring relative to the ways Fiora can proc it, such as CCing her, killing her, body blocking her or, in some cases, just walking away, means that unless the enemy just stands there and lets you hit them, it takes a considerable amount of effort to pull off her ult with, in my opinion, less of a "Aw yeah, I DID IT, BITCH!" morale boost over just being happy that I could pull it off without dying first, sigh of relief, kinda morale boost.

My recommendations for potential changes to the ult are as follows:

• Give her some sort of defensive steroid in her kit or on her ult (either passively or when she casts it) similar to how Jax, her biggest competitor, gets more on-hit damage passively and huge defensive steroids on his ult.

• Have the Grand Challenge slow a fleeing enemy a la Tryndamere's Chicken Shout. I'd even go so far as to say maybe give the enemy a mspd boost for running towards you as well if the mspd drop seems op.

• Have a fleeing enemy take damage for being outside of Fiora's Presence. The way I see it, if the heal from winning the duel is symbolic of the morale boost it applies to her allies, couldn't the damgae a fleeing Challengee takes be symbolic of a wounded ego for running from a fight?

• Make the Grand Challenge a cage that locks in Fiora and her target to make them 1v1.

[Conclusion] To me it seems like she's getting the worst of all the recent trends with Riot; she's the one being experimented on for their new style. Her appearance is arguably worse (Less so now that they started fixing Headmistress Piggy and Royal Guard McManface)and her kit now feels awkward, with less tools than recent champs that get a billion different passives along with lower cooldowns in their kits. I'm glad they're at least trying to move away from their "3 stacks passive" style of gameplay, but I don't like this new minigame focus.