@Meddler/@Scarizard: Can we talk about Fizz?

The Fizz changes have been in for multiple patches, and yet we haven't heard a single thing from Riot since. Are they happy with his new playstyle? Is a rework incoming? Are they going to try to shift him back towards the assassin playstyle?

To be honest, I don't like his new top lane bruiser style. I don't think it offers any kind of meaningful gameplay choice- he's a splitpusher like Jax who will be picked over other splitpushers of that type purely based on if they're in the meta, and if he happens to be stronger than them. There isn't any real differentiation there- they're just going to try to 1v1 you out of lane and then take a turret, and have fairly weak teamfighting and similar itemization.

I feel like he's been completely stripped of his identity. Before he was played as a champion with a weak laning phase, as it was reliant entirely on starting and winning fights and didn't have any good fallback patterns (while being heavily mana gated) but transitioned into an assassin with the ability to pick off multiple targets in a late game teamfight as the tradeoff. Regardless as to whether or not his numbers were too high, he had a niche. You'd pick Talon if you wanted reliable AoE burst, Katarina if you wanted AoE snowballing, Akali for a better lane phase against bruisers and for good snowballing but limited to single target pick offs, Kassadin for the most versatile mobility and safe laning phase as well as strength against a multi-AP champ pools, and Fizz is you wanted a champion with a good late game scaling, high outplay potential, and a more reliable ability to pick off stragglers than Akali and Katarina but limited by the lack of a fallback pattern on a champion with an inherently risky play pattern.

That identity does not exist anymore. Instead, he's been turned into an autoattacker that starts squishy, gets a notable powerspike with sheen and again with the finished trinity force, and has good powerspikes at levels 9 and 13 allowing him to 11 exceptionally well. I might as well be describing Jax or Irelia, but Irelia happens to be the strongest (due to her free tenacity allowing her to teamfight well, and the raw burst that equilibrium strike has and allows her to set up) so you won't really see Fizz as often, but he fulfills the same role fundamentally. There isn't any new meaningful gameplay.

Is this really the direction Riot wants Fizz to go? We've had about a month and a half of nothing but silence.

This bothers me a lot, because I was told personally by Scarizard on Reddit that his progress would be monitored in this post.

I'm not asking for buffs, or to bring back 5.2 Fizz or whatever. I just want to actually have a discussion on it, because we haven't been given anything. And this isn't just "oh he's underpowered", it's his entire playstyle. It feels like the changes went through, assassin Fizz was gutted and made him into an obnoxious but decent 1v1 top laner and then Riot decided to shove him under the table so they can revisit it in 2019 with Urgot, replays, and the fighter rework.