User blog:CLK3/Thoughts on New Fiora?

About 6 hours ago, Fiora's rework got revealed (here) and my initial thoughts are that she has some really cool elements in her upcoming kit. Her kit definitely looks to run the trend Riot has published nowadays, of more unique mechanics and abilities. Looks like Fiora will be rewarded from positioning instead of facerolling and crushing the R-key. I think she will be a strong duelist, a splitpush oriented champion not having the capability to drop massive AoE-damages to delete the enemy team. Overall, I think the champion rewor... refresh looks almost great (aka RIP hair).

Passive: Duelist's Dance
 Fiora identifies the weak spots - or vitals - in the defenses of all enemy champions she comes close to. If she manages to attack her enemy’s weak spot, Fiora deals extra true damage for that attack while gaining a small heal and short boost of speed. Fiora reveals a new weak spot whenever she attacks one, or when a moderate period of time passes without it being attacked.

"Turns out that I may actually like this passive: it grants both offense and sustain to Fiora's kit and working around positioning looks really interesting."



Q: Lunge
 Fiora lunges in a target direction before striking a nearby enemy, dealing damage and applying on-hit effects. Lunge prioritizes enemy champions, and tries to hit enemy weak spots. Finally, some of Lunge’s cooldown is refreshed when the ability strikes an enemy.

"This is NOT the Ekko's dash. Fiora dashes into target direcdtion and then strikes (displayed as the AoE-indicator). I like the fast that Lunge now grants some more "range and reach" for Fiora. Cool to see if you can poke and proc your Passive while laning. The only thing I'm not a fan of, is that Lunge is now her escape... and allows Fiora to dash over walls..."



W: Riposte
 Fiora enters a defensive stance, parrying all damage and hard crowd control abilities for a fraction of a second. After she’s done parrying, Fiora attacks in a target direction, damaging and briefly slowing the first enemy champion she strikes. If she parries any hard crowd control abilities, Riposte stuns instead of slows.

"New Riposte is what I like the most so far. I think the execution for this ability is beautiful. Fiora has never had CC but now she might have if she's played perfectly."



E: Bladework
 Fiora gains increased attack speed on her next two basic attacks. The first cannot crit but slows her target, while the second is guaranteed to crit.

"Hmm... Not quite sure if this ability is enough to encourage you to build Infinity Edge but I really hope so."



R: Grand Challenge
 Fiora targets an enemy champion, gaining speed and full knowledge of their vitals. Each time she destroys a weak spot, she deals percent max health true damage. If she’s able to destroy all four weak spots, or if she destroys at least one before her target dies, Fiora creates a large and long-lasting zone under her enemy that heals Fiora and her allied champions.

"I saw people already crying about true damage and I am not sure what the percentages are (20-30%?). For Fiora-players this Ultimate will be totally new and causing a lot of varying opinins for sure. In my opinion the heal is the only weird thing about this..."



Transition into the game?
I would like to recieve some theorycrafting about her matchups, especially against Jax and Ruven.

And what I am curious to see is how people will start building her. I personally think Hydra will get replaced by BotRK as her core item and I hope Last Whisper is not unvaluable since Fiora's kit offers true damage... How would you build her?

I also want to know if you think she turned out to be able to play midlane?