League of Legends: Get to the Point
By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG LoL Reporter
Welcome summoners, to the patch v1.0.0.135 article for League of Legends, the game that fights like a dairy farmer. This patch gives us more mana when jungling, improved chat functionality and Fiora, the Grand Duelist.
Fiora is a melee carry. She’s a strong duelist that uses steroids to kill enemies with her deadly auto attacks, but lacks durability and crowd control. Her goal is to get close to weak enemies and kill them before they have a chance to fight back. She’s best suited as a top lane choice, though she also makes a passable jungler. Fiora will likely be enjoyed by anyone who prefers similar characters like Master Yi and Tryndamere.
The best part of Fiora is not one of her abilities, but something that is more ‘under the hood’. Her base attack damage is very high, and her attack animations are extremely quick. This allows her last hitting to be reliable, quick to execute and with a large margin for error. Her farming is easily done, and unless otherwise inhibited, she should be able to last hit every minion in a wave without effort, even while under a tower.
The most unusual thing about Fiora is she has a very small mana pool, but also a very low mana cost on her abilities that remain at a flat cost. This makes her mana feel more akin to the energy used by the three ninjas and Lee Sin. Her mana can deplete quite quickly if you’re not economical in your ability usage but if you’re careful, her mana bar will barely move throughout the match.
The rest of her kit is built around these two pillars – High auto attack damage and frequently used steroids with a low cost. She can’t rely on any single ability in her arsenal, as her kit is built to be blown all at once. When you get near an enemy, trigger Burst of Speed [E] to boost her movement and attack speed. If they run, Lunge [Q] at them. If they fight, Riposte [Q] their auto attacks to turn their own damage against them. If they continue to attack, make use of Omnisla- Blade Waltz [R] to ignore all incoming damage while you get some free hits in.
Outside of her basic “Run at people and kill them with auto attacks” strategy, Fiora does have a few tricks, but not many. Her Riposte is a funny tool for dealing with ranged harass in the laning phase. Wait for the usual poke when going for your last hits, tap Riposte and watch your enemy go cross eyed with frustration as they get their own damage right back at them. This won’t just work on auto attacks, but also anything that triggers an on-hit effect, like Gangplank’s Parrrley. The timing on Riposte is incredibly lenient, allowing you to return damage even after the attack has already hit you, likely due to some form of lag compensation.
While it might seem daft, it can be a good idea to fight enemies behind their own creep wave, or near monsters in the jungle. This is because Lunge can only target enemies, so it can’t be used as an escape unless you deliberately put weak targets behind you to use as stepping stones. This also can be used as a form of very weak harass, where Fiora dashes past the enemy creep wave with her first Lunge, then Lunges back again to the wave once she’s bored of hitting her foe. You can double dash from tanks to weaker enemies in larger engagements, but I’d say only do this when you have your ultimate available to protect you, given you’ll be out on a limb with little means of escape.
Her starting ability will depend on who you’re against in the lane, and will also determine her leveling order. Against ranged enemies, start with Lunge, grab Riposte second and max it first. Against melee enemies start with Burst of Speed, max it first and grab Riposte second. In the jungle you can level either Riposte or Burst of Speed. The former is very slightly better for ganks, and the latter is very slightly better for clearing, but the differences are minor and more for personal preference and rune loadouts. Regardless of your leveling order, leave Lunge as your last leveled ability, as its only useful as a gap closer.
Her starting items are also going to be influenced by who you’re against, and where you are. Boots are better against enemies you think you can fight in the lane. Cloth armour, and the increased number of potions it affords you, will help your sustain against difficult match ups, so you can stay in the lane and continue to farm your lane. Vampiric Sceptre is her go-to jungling item. On dominion, start with a Prospector’s Blade, boots and potions.
Her itemization should be focused around physical damage first, with just enough survivability to stay alive once the late game team fights roll around. This means that attack damage, attack speed and armour penetration are stats to look for early, while armour and magic resistance should be picked up later on. Items that balance between the two are, of course, very good on her, so Wit’s End is a superb item for her to use. Atma’s Impaler can be a good choice, but it isn’t very useful unless she has a high health item on her already, meaning you often are forced to put the cart before the horse when building her. That said, Phage and its upgraded counterpart, the Frozen Mallet is a good pick on her against kiting enemies, since she lacks any form of crowd control of her own, and often struggles to keep foes in combat with her. The usual slew of basic damage items like Infinity Edge, The Bloodthirster, Mandred’s Bloodrazor, Last Whisper and so on all work fine on her. A rather amusing gimmick item on her is to use the active on Youmuu’s Ghostblade alongside her Burst of Speed to become super fast hyper Fiora for a few seconds. Not the best use of money, but still fun to watch.
21/9/0 masteries works fine on her. 9/21/0 is also possible if you’re afraid of a bad lane match up, but sticking to 21/9/0 is usually the best bet. Her runes should simply fit with the same stats I outlined above in her itemization. About the only constant on her is to keep some armour seals. Everything else is really down to whatever you have available. When jungling, I’d recommend sticking with some attack speed marks, just to help with her clear times, though this sacrifices the usual armour penetration marks that most people use to help with their end game.
I hate Fiora. She is a prime example of the sort of character I do not enjoy, and would avoid if given the choice. Her primary goal is to farm, get easy kills and get money money money! I really don’t enjoy killing minions for around thirty minutes until I become an unstoppable murder machine.
She also has far too much overlap with master Yi for my liking. Blade Waltz feels like an ultimate version of Alpha Strike, and Burst of Speed feels like a normal version of Highlander. While she is different enough to be her own character, I can’t think why someone who already has Yi would really want another character that acts so similarly, and given that master Yi is a 450IP character that near enough everyone already owns, I really can’t picture why anyone would want to bother.
It doesn’t matter what I think about her though, because she’s looking to be one of the most popular characters Riot have made in a while. This is despite her being more bland than a sack of potatoes. She was near impossible to play on launch day due to having so many people clamoring to lock her in first. Every one of the Fiora’s I’ve seen has functioned much the same way – mediocre laning or jungling, very strong mid game, and a completely unpredictable late game depending on how farmed she is.
I like the new chat functionality, though I can see why many people have found it annoying. The divisive issue is the newly added item notifications when you buy wards or another support item. It’s good to be able to see what your supports are buying, and to easily see who bought wards and who didn’t, but they can spam the chat box when the whole team is picking things up. The most important part for me though is I know when someone has an Oracle’s Elixir on the team and when they don’t much more easily now, which means you’re far less likely to wind up with a double elixir on the same team. The timestamps are undeniably an excellent addition though, allowing for the calling of jungle timers to be much easier to perform, with a greater degree of accuracy.
The new mana gain from jungle creeps is very nice. Not game changing I don’t think, but hopefully it’ll make manaless junglers like Lee Sin and Shyvana feel a little less dominant. It certainly has made playing Skarner much easier as of the the most recent patch, though it’s not like he needed a helping hand to stomp his way through the wilderness.
To discuss some of the changes yourselves, post in the massive League of Legends thread in the free to play MMOs section. If you haven’t tried League of Legends yet, you’re missing out.
