Fiora Champion Design Rework - The Even More Grand (Actual) Duelist

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Fiora - The Grand Duelist (Champion Rework)

Design Philosophy: Fiora currently lacks a feeling of identity as a fencer, and does not promote healthy gameplay or counterplay. She currently has a low skill ceiling and zero skillshots. With this rework I'm seeking to create a new sense of identity and a reason to pick her over other melee DPS champions, while giving people who play Fiora a chance to separate themselves as great players through use of her abilities and her new unique resource, Resolve.

Unique Resource - Resolve: Fiora's resolve strengthens as she fatigues from prolonged combat, increasing the damage of her abilities while reducing her attack speed. Resolve builds while Fiora is in combat, dealing damage, and decays when out of combat at an accelerating rate. The rate of generation/loss scales with level, allowing her to more precisely manipulate encounters.

Passive - Insight/Fatigue: A lifetime of fencing has sharpened Fiora's mind and body. Her insight into her opponent's attack patterns and openings grows, increasing the damage of her abilities. As she fights, her agile maneuvers fatigue her body, reducing the speed at which she strikes.

Concepts: Fencing involves constant intense movement and knowledge of your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. As Fiora fights, she learns about her opponent; knowing when and how to strike to deal the most damage. As a balancing point to this, the strain from her acrobatic tactics reduces the rate at which she can strike as battles rage on.

Notes: Originally I thought that fatigue would reduce her auto-attack damage, but I felt that it didn't quite fit given the circumstances. Still, it could be an easier thing to balance while still easily justifiable and could be used in place of the attack speed reduction.

**Q - Lunge: Straight-Line Skillshot, Low-to-Medium Range, Long Cooldown. ** Fiora lunges in a line, thrusting her foil with expert precision dealing A/B/C/D/E Damage (AD Ratio). Lunge deals damage based on the distance traveled (starting at a value > 100% to X). Striking an enemy champion with Lunge reduces the cooldown, striking a minion or monster reduces the cooldown by a lesser amount. Lunge generates X resolve and applies on-hit effects.

Concepts: The Lunge is a classic offensive strike in fencing. It promotes forward, linear movement, and has a high-risk, high reward feel to it. The lunge should be Fiora's main form of all-in attack, rewarding accuracy by refuding a large portion of the cooldown upon a successful connect. This cooldown refund could scale with either her Q level or R level to balance it accordingly.

W - Feint: Fiora enters a defensive stance for 1 second, and is unable to auto-attack during this time. If an enemy hits Fiora with an auto-attack or single target ability, Fiora blocks it and strikes back against her assailiant dealing A/B/C/D/E (Magic? Physical?) Damage (? Ratio). After striking back, Fiora gains a short movement speed buff (A/B/C/D/E) and can activate Feint again in a short window to leap away from the target. Feint generates X resolve.

Concepts: By giving Fiora a conditional defensive ability that also creates distance from her target, it cements the feeling of quick, hyper-efficient combat that fencing embodies. Locking her out of her auto-attacks forces her to choose the best time to feint wisely, as you would imagine. The movement speed is used as an assistant to the leap to make positioning feel good and rewarding. I also questioned whether or not Feint should apply on-hit effects but felt it would be too strong, given what it already offers.

E - Beat Attacks/Remise: Passive - Fiora's unrelenting blows wear down her opponents. Her Lunge and Feint apply a (A/B/C/D/E) movement speed debuff and (A/B/C/D/E) armor shred to her targets. This debuff can stack twice (Once for each). Additional application of this debuff will only refresh the duration (x) times.

Active - Fiora lashes out with astonishing speed, striking her opponent dealing (A/B/C/D/E) damage (AD Ratio) and dealing extra damage if the target has recently been affected by Feint.

Concepts: I wanted to give Fiora some passive offensive stats, but avoid the big, balance limiting chunks of AD she currently gets. A foil should strike quickly and with precision, so it makes sense that this stat be Armor Shred. The synergies here are obvious, it's an auto-attack reset and rewards proper use of her Feint in an offensive way, mitigating some of the DPS loss from being locked out of your auto-attack. Also, it gives her some small form of soft CC which she otherwise (for good reason) completely lacks, and is separate from her other abilities giving her a more smooth power curve/level.

Ultimate - Blade Waltz: Fiora gathers her resolve for a dizzying dance of strikes which sweeps her across the battlefield. Blade Waltz deals (A/B/C) physical damage (AD Ratio) to all targets in a given area, scaling with her Resolve. If Fiora runs out of targets before finishing her Blade Waltz, it ends and a portion of the cooldown is refunded (based on duration remaining).

Concepts: Blade Waltz has always been a point of contention with Fiora. Thematically, it's a really cool and strong feeling ability. In practice, it's frustrating to balance and play against since it entirely lacks counterplay. By changing it from a single target ability to an AoE, it gives opponents a chance to flee before being cut to ribbons. In my vision of Blade Waltz, Fiora is targetable but dashing quickly in a pre-defined pattern (Up, Down, Left, Right Konami anyone?) making it difficult, but possible to counter (Think Zed, Yasuo). Furthermore, it rewards proper timing to a Fiora who goes in after all CC has been blown after darting in and out of the fight to clean up.

Closing Thoughts: This is my first time doing a Champion Concept, so I'm not going to throw out absurd-looking values. Rather, I'm trying to re-define what it means to play as Fiora. Personally, I feel that her current state is rather disappointing given the potential. Now we've seen great thematic champions such as Gnar, Yasuo, Zed, and Rek'Sai and I think Fiora can achieve that too. Fiora should be the Grand Duelist, darting in and out of the fray before dashing in, weaving through enemies to stab at the heart of their team and do a little more than Double-cast her Q, Ulti, and hope to follow up by right clicking until everyone's screen is gray. Any input would be greatly appreciated! (Especially from Fiora mains. Hello? Anyone out there?)

Bruce Bangnar, Your Friendly Neighborhood Gnar Savant