User blog comment:Nhan-Fiction/(Champion Remake) Fiora, the Grand Duelist/@comment-1330314-20131229172717/@comment-1330314-20140107203003

I completely disagree with you. You're comparing to the likes of  and, when in fact she's much closer to  and. Sure, if she builds enough damage items she can burst down squishies, but her damage is autoattack-based, not spell-based (even her Q acts as a double autoattack reset). Zed and Kha'Zix are AD casters: their abilities are meant to deal the bulk of their damage, and occasionally they get to weave in a few basic attacks. Fiora is the opposite: all of her spells are meant to enhance her damage potential through autoattacks, and the sustain on her passive combined with the defensive capabilities of her W and attack speed steroid of her E all point to her being designed to do well in extended fights. Her ultimate can only burst down isolated enemies: in teamfights, she specializes in applying on-hit effects to the enemy team before going for the priority target. Giving her more spell-based damage is not the way to go, which is why Q v2 is a significant improvement over the first.

You also pointed out another flaw in both Fiora's design and your own intentions: you want her to snowball. Currently, that's the only way she remains relevant to her team. It's also a terrible way of balancing champions, as snowballing is by nature extremely binary: either your champion does so well it's overwhelming to the enemy team (e.g. Fiora dashing into the squishy and killing them with her ultimate without them being able to defend themselves, even if they're surrounded by their teammates), either they become useless (e.g. Fiora not having enough damage items and dying every time she initiates a teamfight). That's why Riot has made huge efforts to curb snowballing in this preseason. You goal shouldn't be to make it easier for Fiora to snowball, it should be to allow her to contribute to her team even if she falls behind. has crowd control, and even and  can soak up a lot of damage in teamfights. Again, that is why I think you should focus on her providing on-hit utility for her team.