Talk:Fiora/@comment-25267058-20150820122935/@comment-25267058-20150906214748

I mean, I played her a lot and the only truly functional paths I found for her (in top lane, mind you, I wasn't jungling her or anything) were to either build full damage and at least two LS items or build one and go crit.

The reason crit builds worked was they more or less doubled your lifesteal due to the nutty (if unreliable) spike in damage. Problem is, none of the crit items really clicked into her kit besides Infinity Edge and Youmuu's to a degree, so trying to fit them in was awkward.

Also, ulting defensively was so commonplace, it was better to have that massive healing potential so you could come out of the untargetable state refueled and ready for action, not to mention you could typically lifesteal back to full in less than a second with an E>Hydra>AA>AA>AA combo.

Another thing is that since Hydra was (and still is) more or less mandatory, seguing into building crit halfway through the match wasn't nearly as convenient as just piling on more LS with a BT or BORK, and grabbing a Mercurial more than made up for the loss of flat damage Infinity Edge afforded you.