 |
Strategy is highly subjective and may become outdated without any notice. Because of this, the League of Legends Wiki has decided to retire strategy pages and would recommend using other platforms (such as YouTube) to find guides. For more information visit this thread.
|
|---|
Champion Spotlight[]
Recommended Items[]
Tips[]
- Playing As
Fiddlesticks
- Use Dark Wind to rack up many minion kills, and try to use Drain on minions to get the maximum health drain.
- Use Terrify on enemies before starting up Crowstorm or Drain to ensure maximum damage.
- Fiddlesticks is very fragile if you build AP items. Try to strike a balance between offense and defense with runes, masteries, and items.
- Playing Against Fiddlesticks
- Avoid attacking while close to your allies. Dark Wind will bounce between you and your allies, increasing its damage.
- If Fiddlesticks has used Crowstorm, try casting a stun or slow and moving out of range until the spell dissipates.
- If Fiddlesticks is nowhere to be seen, watch out for an ambush Crowstorm from brush.
Tricks[]
- Fiddlesticks is versatile and can go on a variety of lanes, with the most common one being jungle. Due to Fiddlestick's sustain with Drain, he is one of the few junglers who don't have to worry at all with being at such low HP at the first clear, that they have to go back to base instead of ganking. In fact, this combined with Terrify makes Fiddlesticks one of the best level 1-3 gankers; he can even gank at level 2 just after taking blue if he decides to level up Terrify instead of Dark Wind.
- Fiddlesticks's jungle sustain is so good, that he might not even need a leash at all. This allows his teammates to go directly to their lanes to farm.
- However, Fiddlesticks is extremely dependent from the blue buff to jungle, especially early game, as he is mana hungry. Be very careful of enemy counterjungling.
- Fiddlesticks' ganking potential spikes even more after he obtains Crowstorm as he can make nasty surprise ganks, coming from nowhere.
- Although Fiddlesticks is good at jungle, he can go mid lane too. The advantages of doing this is that it allows your jungler to pick a tankier champion. While Fiddlesticks may seem to lose most matchups at mid lane, his Dark Wind allows him to farm and to harass the enemy laner from a long distance, and his Drain allows him to stay at lane for a longer time than many other mid champions, as long as you can manage your mana effectively. Keep in mind that Fiddlesticks doesn't push the lane very well unless you decide to max Dark Wind, but if you do that, you lose the sustain and dueling potential from Drain.
- Because Terrify is a reliable crowd control, and the fact that he can harass very well with Dark Wind, Fiddlesticks can also be used at bot lane as a poke-based support. Fiddlesticks' harass is one of the strongest and without a healing support such as Soraka or Sona, Fiddlesticks has the potential to harass the enemy ADC and support out of lane with ease. However, he is very vulnerable to all-ins due to his lack of escapes and his squishiness. Keep that in mind when facing enemy supports with a lot of CC such as Leona.
- Keep in mind that Fiddlesticks doesn't have a lot of utility outside Terrify. You may need to purchase some support items such as Mikael's Crucible to compensate for that. Do that only if Fiddlesticks is behind or if you don't really need another source of magic damage, however, as Fiddlesticks' damage potential is wasted if he goes for a support-oriented build; his Drain will be useless and his Crowstorm will do laughable damage without AP items.
- Even if you decide to build AP, however, Sightstone is still essential.
- Keep in mind that Fiddlesticks doesn't have a lot of utility outside
- At late game, it is likely that many champions have build their own form of sustain, or defenses, allowing them to 1v1 Fiddlesticks effectively. He is also prone to being bursted due to being squishy. Despite this, Fiddlesticks is extremely good late game due to his insane AoE damage with Crowstorm allowing him to devastate enemies at teamfights, especially when combined with other AoE ultimates such as Amumu's Curse of the Sad Mummy. His Terrify is also detrimental to any champion who is vulnerable to CC, this includes squishy carries such as the ADCs.
- Ability Usage
- Dread is a very useful ability. It allows you to reposition yourself after Drain or Crowstorm.
- Terrify with Drain is an amazing combo that can turn the tables in a fight. To make sure that the enemy stays within range, Terrify them against a wall, where they will be under heavy fire and under control.
- If you use Drain on enemies that go into stealth or Flash, Fiddlesticks won't stop channeling until they go out of range. Drain also continues through Sanguine Pool, Rebirth, and Playful.
- When laning, Dark Wind is an extremely effective poke. Furthermore, Dark Wind can be used from an extremely long range since you can bounce it from melee minions to range minions to the target character. Even at a closer range it silences so you can escape often without taking damage. Since Dark Wind is the last ability you should level, use it early (levels 1-5) and often to give you a lane advantage. At middle levels (6-11) this ability will be far less effective at poking from range and clearing minions, while champions with long range pokes will stop you from farming.
- When taking down opponents, consider using him as an assassin, as Fiddlesticks shouldn't take on many champions head-to-head. Sneaking up on an enemy champion then using Crowstorm, Terrify, and Drain maximizes damage. You can also initiate a fight by using Flash or Crowstorm over a wall and using the aforementioned combo onto the enemy team.
- Dark Wind is most useful for silencing enemy champions, but can do very high damage to bunched up enemy champions (especially pairs of champions with no minions around as the spell will bounce between them until it reaches 6 bounces, although it can only silence each target once). It can also be very effective for farming since it deals bonus damage to minions.
- Coordinate with your teammates when you use Crowstorm in order to maximize the damage. It synergizes well with abilities which provide area of effect crowd control.
- Use Dark Wind to rack up minion kills and try to use Drain primarily on siege minions to get the maximum health gain.
- Drain allows Fiddlesticks to jungle by almost continuously regaining health.
- Casting other abilities, getting silenced or getting stunned while using Drain or Crowstorm will stop channeling.
- Flash can be used after casting Crowstorm to quickly jump into an enemy or a group of enemies. Two blinks are twice as effective.
- A summoner spell that can be used to escape, such as Ghost or Flash, is essentially mandatory on Fiddlesticks, as Fiddlesticks lacks any ability to escape.
- Crowstorm does not make you invulnerable. Be careful about blinking into crowds with only maximizing damage in mind. Items like Zhonya's Hourglass would be helpful.
- Rune Usage
- Item Usage
- Stalker's Blade: Runic Echoes is essential for jungle Fiddlesticks to keep his mana topped up when clearing. It also provides AP and Movement Speed along with a mini Luden's Echo passive.
- When laning, starting items for Fiddlesticks should almost always include some form of mana regen. A Doran's Ring will allow you to poke constantly and keep your life up with Drain.
- Zhonya's Hourglass is a must have on Fiddlesticks. It gives you the ability to very effectively tower dive or initiate team fights with Crowstorm or block the massive amounts of CC and incoming damage that will be thrown at you whenever you choose to Crowstorm in.
- It is often best to rush Zhonya's Hourglass since a Q > W combo will give you plenty of sustain while Crowstorming in for 1v1 assassinations, and what you need is early team fight sustain since you often have to get into the frontline to deal damage.
- It is often best to rush
- Buying Rylai's Crystal Scepter will maximize your damage with Drain, as your enemy is slowed when trying to escape. It will also help your ultimate by maximizing damage and adding a large AoE slow in teamfights, giving an advantage to your team.
- Buying a Liandry's Torment can help Fiddlesticks deal with champions with high health.
- Fiddlesticks is a relatively slow jungler and it can be hard to gank until you reach level 6 and get Crowstorm. Consider buying Boots of Mobility / Boots of Swiftness to help switch between farming while your Crowstorm is on cooldown and ganking. However getting Sorcerer's Shoes can give you enough magic penetration to basically do true damage.
- Abyssal Mask is another good option, since Fiddlesticks is almost always inside the aura of the item to deal damage. The magic resistance also gives a good defensive stat against mages.
- Buying a Banshee's Veil is good idea for more survivability. It also lowers the chance that the channeling of Crowstorm will be interrupted by an enemy with a disruption CC ability.
- A Spirit Visage allows Fiddlesticks to heal a lot more with Drain, meaning that he can put more points into other abilities earlier on.
- Hextech Protobelt-01 gives Fiddlesticks health, AP and CDR which are all helpful for his playstyle. The mini dash on the active also gives Fiddlesticks a larger initiate range in combination with Flash and Crowstorm. It also improves his sub-par waveclear, especially useful if you're playing him as a laner.
- Void Staff as with most mages, should be bought to counter high MR stacking.
- Rabadon's Deathcap is a great mid-late game item for Fiddlesticks as his AP scalings are extremely high.
- Countering
- Fiddlesticks deals most of his damage from his Drain and Crowstorm and both have channels which can be interrupted. This means that hard CC, like a stun, can stop most of Fiddlesticks' damage. However, Fiddlesticks will likely disable you with Terrify's lengthy fear before channeling, making a teammate invaluable.
- A common Fiddlesticks strategy is to hide in the brush or fog of war and use his Crowstorm to suddenly appear next to you or worse yet, your team. Good warding and map awareness can stop Fiddlesticks from ganking you from typical locations.
- For this reason, don't be too confident to start a teamfight just because Fiddlesticks seemingly isn't around, especially if you don't have vision in the nearby jungle or brush.
- For this reason, don't be too confident to start a teamfight just because
- When starting a teamfight, try to save your ability with CC that can interrupt his channeling abilities.
- If you see an enemy Fiddlesticks channeling his Crowstorm, use a CC ability that can stop him (stun, silence, knockback, knockup).
- If you have vision of Fiddlesticks, Crowstorm has a distinctive 'scratching' noise while channeling. Alternatively, his pose is the same as Drain except without a green leash.
- However, the time window is fairly narrow, and you may be in even more danger of taking the brunt of Crowstorm's devastating damage if you are trying to reach Fiddlesticks.
- If you see an enemy
- Having a source of Grievous Wounds (like Ignite, Morellonomicon, or Mortal Reminder) can make Drain less effective.
- An easy way to counter Fiddlesticks is to purchase Mercury's Treads to reduce the duration of his fear or a Banshee's Veil to negate one of his spells and reduce his damage output.
- As for champion counterpicks, it is recommended to use champions who have more than one hard CC, such as Cho'Gath and Blitzcrank.
