@Morello: Thoughts on Fiora

Introduction

Hi. I was hoping to contribute to the whole Fiora rework thing (when I started out in LoL, Fiora was the first champion I bought and I mained her top lane until about level 20). I feel that she could really benefit from a rework, and while you'll probably want to keep quiet about your plans after the delay, I hope that this might help in some small way to get the ball rolling again.

I designed this around making Fiora fit her theme better, giving her escape ability and making her more demanding to play via a skillshot and an ultimate that requires player participation (inspired by Guinsoo). The numbers are a best guess affair - I'm afraid I don't have the resources to balance this myself. I've also summarised her kit at the end.

Character Specification

Health .................. 450 (+85) Health regen. ....... 6.5 (+0.8) Mana ................... 220 (+30) Mana regen. ........ 6.5 (+0.5) Range ................... 125 (Melee) Attack damage .... 54.5 (+3.2) Attack speed ....... 0.672 (+3%) Armor ................... 19 (+3.5) Magic res. ............ 30 (+1.25) Mov. speed .......... 350

Passive: Duelist Every five seconds that Fiora has continuous vision of an enemy champion she gains a buff 'Targeting Weaknesses' specific to that champion, stacking up to five times. These stacks fall off if Fiora dies. Each stack adds a bleed ('Exsanguinate') to all basic attacks against that enemy that deals 10% of her total AD as physical damage over 5 seconds, restoring this to Fiora as mana. This bleed stacks as many times as Fiora has stacks of Targeting Weaknesses for that champion.

Q: Lunge Mana Cost: 60 Cool down: 15/13.5/12/10.5/9 Fiora dashes forward in a straight line (up to 600 range) dealing 50/75/100/125/150 (+ 100% bonus AD) physical damage to every enemy she passes through, and stopping upon hitting an enemy champion, whom she impales, dealing 60/90/120/150/180 (+ 120% bonus AD) physical damage, applying three stacks of Exsanguinate and slowing the champion by 40/50/60/70/80%, which decays to 10/12.5/15/17.5/20% over 1 second before falling off. If she hits an enemy champion, the cooldown is halved.

W: Riposte/Disengage Mana Cost: 50 Cool down: 12/11/10/9/8 Fiora dodges all single target and linear direction-targeted attacks from champions, large minions and monsters for 1 second during which her attack speed is halved, before dashing to the last enemy dodged within 500 range (prioritising champions), stabbing them for 100/125/150/175/200 (+ 50% bonus AD) physical damage, placing the debuff Wrong Footed for 1 second and, if a champion is hit, applying one stack of Exsanguinate while increasing the max possible stacks of Targeting Weaknesses by 1. This increase stacks until death, at which point the max number of possible stacks resets. Until another ability is used, Fiora can consume Wrong Footed to use the free ability Disengage (max range 150), causing Fiora to kick off her opponent, back-flipping away to safety (300 range), dealing 20/40/60/80/100 (+ 20% bonus AD) physical damage and knocking back her opponent by 100 range.

E: Exploit Wound Mana Cost: 50 Cool down: 20/19/18/17/16 Passive: Attack speed increased by 10%/20%/30%/40%/50% for 3 seconds after damaging an enemy with any other of Fiora's activated abilities. Cannot stack. Active: Fiora targets a previously inflicted wound with her dagger for maximum trauma, dealing 50/75/100/125/150 (+ 20% [+ 2% per stack of Exsanguinate] bonus AD) physical damage and inflicting Grievous Wounds for 5 seconds. Can only be used on champions with the Exsanguinate debuff.

R: Blade Waltz/Coup de Grace Mana Cost: 25% maximum mana Cool Down: 100/90/80 Fiora gains 25/40/50 AD over 5 seconds. Can reuse the ability once per second to dash to an enemy within 600 range, finishing at their opposite side and dealing 100/150/200 (+ 100% AD) physical damage. Other abilities can be used during the ultimate. Each ultimate dash places a stack of Harried on the target, halving subsequent dash damage per stack. At three stacks, Fiora's next dash to that target is a Coup de Grace, dealing 150/250/330 (+ 10% AD per stack of Targeting Weaknesses) (+ 20/25/30% of target's missing health) physical damage (ignores Harried). If she scores a kill or assist during the ultimate its duration is refreshed.

Gameplay/Counterplay

Just a quick theme analysis, feel free to skip the paragraph. This rework is inspired by the idea proposed by Guinsoo that Fiora should fit the duelist slash fencer fantasy. This is all about staying out of trouble and making your hits count. While not directly engaged in combat, Fiora will be searching her opponents for weaknesses - chinks in the armour and vulnerable spots. And using a rapier, she'll be poking holes in them, so logically they should bleed. As a duelist she excels against single opponents, advancing with great speed to pin down her lane opponent so that they cannot run away, and should they try to reply with burst damage, she has the agility to avoid attacks that she can see and therefore parry or dodge but she’s not magical – she can’t dodge AOE. Then, she can Disengage and either leave her enemy to reconsider their tactics or lunge straight back in to finish them off. As a duelist facing multiple opponents, Fiora has to focus more on not being pinned down herself, as she cannot stand up to the combined might of the enemy team for long. Therefore she will be focusing on dashing from one opponent to the next using her Q, W and R, potentially using her W as an engage and her Q as an escape. And she will certainly be taking advantage of her opponent's open wounds to cause more grievous injuries, hence the E.

In terms of gameplay, her new Q as a skill shot introduces more flexibility, a bit of natural wave clear and the potential to screw up. Conditional cool down reduction rather than a free follow up further demands skill and spatial awareness, and causes further mana drain, taxing her passive for mana regeneration, while the slow handles the 'sticking to your opponent' issue and provides some CC to help her team whether that be in ganks or teamfights.

The passive itself provides great potential for counterplay, as stealth and tactical bush use can completely prevent Fiora stacking in lane, at the slight expense of CS. Further, without base damage and with such a small multiplier, it is difficult to get much real damage from it, and being physical can be reduced with the same stats as all her other attacks (read: this is no Darius Haemorrhage). Rather, it serves more to impede sustain and modify her other abilities, and to regen her mana. Obviously, weaving in and out of bushes completely denies this to Fiora, severely limiting her damage output. Denying her stacks forces her to play conservatively lest she run out of mana. It has a far more tangible impact than her current passive by providing damage modifiers, enabling her E and allowing her a degree of scaling through her W, which rewards her for choosing fights carefully (like an assassin – she is a fighter/assassin after all). Her current passive has the issue of becoming rather ineffectual after level 5, which is not an issue with this passive. It could be made even more effective by modifying it to infinite scaling (urk!) or so that the stacks fall off after the enemy is killed, forcing Fiora to be even more strategic about her engages.

Following into the W, it provides an escape opportunity, negating a lot of damage depending on the situation and taking her out of melee range, though not quite out of ranged range. Obviously the counter play is to run under your turret so that the dash gets her wrecked, as she can’t prevent herself dashing in, only abort very quickly, and she’ll still take a turret hit or two. Away from turrets, you’ll want to run towards teammates and save any CC for after her backflip. Ranging her would be difficult, however, as she is still fully mobile through the duration. In a ganking situation, this is perfect for knocking your hapless opponent towards your own turret, followed by a Q slow to provide the best possible situation for you and your jungler to wreck them. This is benefitial over the current W, as riposte as it stands negates no real damage against casters, and most auto attack champions will have enough attack speed in mid-to-late-game that one auto blocked every six to ten seconds becomes insignificant. Further, the returned damage being magic makes no sense thematically, and it being AP scaling means it never does scale for Fiora, so it does very little actual damage as an ability, which makes no sense thematically either as successful ripostes tend to be fairly devastating.

The E passive is more situational than the current W passive, obviously, but probably nets a bigger damage boost. The drawback is that it only affects autos, which require melee range, whereas an AD boost would empower her other abilities and bleeds. The active does less or similar damage to Tristana’s Explosive Shot depending on how many stacks Fiora has, and as this damage is also physical it is countered by armour as is the rest of her kit. Further, it requires a stack of bleed in order to be used, which means that Fiora has to have already engaged the enemy and gained a passive stack. Therefore weaving in and out of bushes prevents her from using the ability at all. However if she is able to get it down, she can seriously interfere with the enemy laner’s sustain. This could force the enemy laner to play safer and wait for a gank if on low health, therefore denying Fiora mana regen and use of the E, or all in and kill Fiora before she can bully too much. The long cooldown means that good Fioras will make more use of it by using it when sustain is triggered, for instance the Volibear passive or Mundo ult. Further, along with her Q slow it lets her contribute to teamfights rather than being purely damage based. The change makes her less of a turret-killing monster than before, but by Q'ing minions she can still get an attack speed buff.

The new ultimate demands more player involvement, and can reward tactical gap closing but also makes Fiora very vulnerable to CC and damage focus. If she makes good use of her W and life steal, she may however survive to do massive damage to one target or significantly chunk the enemy team. It also provides her a way to quickly get to the enemy back line, diverting enemy attention away from your allies and allowing them free damage. Obviously the lane counter play is to run into a bush/turret, which will either lose Fiora an ultimate dash or two while she regains vision, force her to burn the excess AD on minions, or get herself wrecked under the turret, as the ultimate itself provides no escape, and she would need to have her Q up to get out of range. If you over extend against a level 6 Fiora, however, you'll be duly punished. Obviously the advantage to Fiora is more control and the introduction of both an execute and resets, but she will be killed before she can use them unless she's very smart. The skill cap on this ability is very high.

Summary

Passive: Duelist Fiora gains stacks of Targeting Weaknesses while she has uninterrupted vision of a champion. While she has stacks for a champion, her basic attacks apply physical bleed damage to that champion.

Q: Lunge Fiora dashes forward in a line, dealing physical damage to all enemies she passes through, stopping on hitting a champion and dealing additional physical damage and bleed stacks. Cool down is halved if it hits a champion.

W: Riposte/Disengage Fiora dodges all single target attacks and linear skill shots for 1 second, suffering halved attack speed for the duration, before dashing to the last enemy within range that she dodged (prioritising champions), dealing physical damage and applying a stack of bleed if the target is a champion. She can then Disengage, kicking off the enemy and knocking it back slightly while doing physical damage. Works against champions, large minions and monsters.

E: Exploit Wounds Damaging an enemy with an ability increases Fiora's attack speed for 3 seconds. When activated, attacks a bleeding enemy for physical damage, inflicting Grievous Wounds.

R: Blade Waltz/Coup de Grace Fiora gains AD and a new, high physical damage gap close on a short cool down that deals decreasing damage if used on the same target but unlocks an execute. Duration refreshes on kills and assists.