It’s no secret that competitive play in league of legends, the game that the pros play is entirely different than soloqueue ranked that all of us scrubs play. By analyzing which champions are played at the highest level you would notice an interesting trend: One type of champion; One class of champion has always struggled to make its way into competitive play, which is the melee carry. This is a specific type of melee champion, though these are not the Rivens, Irelias or even current Fiora. No, these are different types of champions… These are the Master Yis, Tryndameres and Yasuos and I think Yasuo is the only exception of a melee carry that is truly usable at the highest level, unless you count Gangplank, but even then, he’s kind of partially ranged.
These champions are not about being a bruiser, a hybrid of damage and tankyness with Black Cleaver and Death’s Dance. On the contrary, this is about damage and a lot of it. this is about a champion who would rather build 6 infinity edges than be caught building even one tank item.
Good is relative. Overpowered is relative. Being terrible is relative, but bad design… Is that relative to all the other champions too? Or is it objective? are melee carries objectively poorly designed in this game?
It’s hard to say and I will leave that up to you to discuss but without a doubt there is one melee carry who was poorly designed. A champion so bad at the highest level according to game of legends, she was never picked in competitive play. Not even one time. This is the story of one of League of Legends forgotten fighters named Fiora.
Looking at the champions released before February 29th, 2012, one trend that you will notice is that all the true melee carries like Master Yi, Tryndamere and, Nocturne were all male champions. While it’s true, we did have a few fighters like Irelia and Riven, who are female, no true carries.
Fioras design was around being specifically the first melee carry female. One who would not opt for health resistances and items to help you stay in the fight for a long time, but instead be master yi’s 1v5 sidekick. Her time would come on leap day February 29th, 2012, and from the champion spotlight Riot hits pretty hard at how aggressive the champion was supposed to be. With the recommended items being completely damaged oriented.
Overall, she was pretty hyped coming into her release with one article noting how there’s been a huge influx of mage champions at the time and it was getting a bit stale so a true melee carry would spice things up. We also had articles on PC gamer in a round table discussing league’s newest champion from the very beginning there was hope, but unfortunately, sometimes in life hope is not enough because Fiora sucked. Generally speaking, Fiora was just underwhelming. Balance and power are relative like we said. For example, I don’t necessarily think that Master Yi is that good of a champion right now, but if Riot removed all hard CC from the entire game, well, you know what, he might literally become the best champ in the game.
It’s important to compare League of Legends champions to one another because it matters a lot. This is not a PvE game mode. You always must fight against other champions. It’s not really a game where you’re just fighting Baron one-on-one with Fiora. By just looking at her kit it doesn’t look so bad at first. Her passive was pretty nice, helping her out by giving her sustain; Her Q did help you chase down people because you got to use it twice and her Riposte blocked an auto attack and dealt some damage back to them, as shown in the champion spotlight against a champion like nasus if you block his Q, it’s pretty favorable for her. Finally, her E gave her a nice steroid plus the phage passive, which allowed you to run people down. However, this is superficial.
League of Legends games are not won on paper. They are not won in the numbers, but rather in execution and when looking at champions who fulfilled similar niches to Fiora, it’s no competition. Her ultimate was her only saving grace. This ability was extremely good and iconic for the old Fiora there was even a bug with Tiamat that made this ability let her single-handedly win games, but we will get back to that in a bit.
About her passive, the numbers were extremely low, and even though it was a solid idea for a passive. However, it’s boring because the healing wasn’t comparable in any way to other sustainability’s in the game, so it was written off as mediocre.
Her Riposte, again, although super cool in theory because of the nature of fencing and being a duelist was, unfortunately, completely outclassed by other champions’ defensive abilities. Jax’s counterstrike does damage to but also stuns people and blocks all autos for a few seconds – not just one auto.
Obviously, champions like Tryndamere also have insane ultimates, effectively making him infinitely tanky for a few seconds. Master Yi could go untargetable on a basic ability that also resets its cooldown. His Meditate has always been underrated for a defensive ability because when it’s used properly, it gates a lot of damage.
Yasuo has a passive shield and a Wind Wall and hard CC. Of course, Nocturne has a spell shield and his built-in passive sustain was much stronger. Plus, he has hard CC with his fear.
For Fiora, though, it felt lame. Although the movement speed was pretty good and the attack speed was awesome, it didn’t last for very long.
When you think about “press R” type champions in League of Legends – you know those ones that pop off by just pressing one button – you didn’t have to look any further than Tiamat stacking Fiora. You see, Tiamat used to work differently than it does now. It allowed the passive, which is the cleave effect, to stack up multiple times the more Tiamats that you got. I don’t know if this was a bug or it was intended but the point is it worked. It was ridiculously good on champions like twitch when he pressed R. Yeah, it worked on range champions but there’s also a famous clip of wings of death doing it on Shyvana to completely one-shot Penta kill the enemy team.
However, no other champions synergized that well with Tiamat stacking the same way Fiora did. It was famously OP for her.
Back in 2014 Gbay99 released a video called “The Fiora effect” and he outlines an effect that he describes as being okay or not too bad for soloqueue but absolutely terrible for competitive play. As he continues on he notes that Fiora can still snowball if you get going with a few kills and because of her massively impactful ultimate, nothing could stop her if she got a lead. If you couldn’t snowball, you could still win games but because of her lack of any crowd control, mobility that was only just ok on her Q but nothing special and a lackluster passive in E, she will never be utilized by any pro players.
He wasn’t exaggerating either. For Fiora, when she was released in 2012, if you look at game of legends, they do not have a single game listed. There is no data for Fiora up until her rework. All of the other AD carries at least had some stint in competitive play. Tryndamere had a time as a top laner in early seasons and then was pretty strong. At one point with AP tryndamere. There was also a build for Master Yi. you may have heard of it called AP Master Yi, which was so broken it had to be completely gutted out of the game. But Fiora? No games whatsoever.
Again, it’s not that Fiora was so unlikable. There were players that did play the old Fiora, but the champions suffered from some serious unhealthy design. Until Aatrox, eventually, received a mini rework, he was Riot’s most neglected champion of all time. Fiora was honestly a close second.
Let’s take a look at her patch history. Her release was late February of 2012. On the next patch, two weeks later, she got a bug fix. After that she had several months of being pathetically bad so she got a cool-down decrease on her R. Great.
At the beginning of season 3 on patch 1.0.0.153, she got a very small buff, which was honestly more of a bug fix. On 3.11 she, again got another quality of life change, which is helpful but not the biggest deal in the world. On 3.15, she got a bug fix. On 4.1, she got a bug fix. On 4.4, she got a bug fix. On 4.5 – Wow – a buff of 4 armor! Okay, great.
It’s been more than two years now of being terrible, so she finally got a buff to her early game. Okay, maybe Fiora is going to be good soon. But then, on patch 4.20, for whatever reason, Fiora got like a net neutral change which was sort of a nerf in other ways, so I guess 4 base armor was just too OP… Too much to ask for.
And that’s it. That is literally it for all her changes.
She would then be reworked the next year on patch 5.15, so she was out for more than 3 entire years and she got 2 small buffs, a net neutral change that was basically a nerf, and a few bug fixes. Talk about a champion that Riot really doesn’t want to be good.
Riot’s ultimate goal with her rework was to make her viable in some capacity. Don’t leave the champion to be terrible for years and years on end. Give her the tools to outplay her opponents. Let the pros express some skill on her, and somebody please pick her in a competitive match. To their credit, they achieved exactly what they set out to do.
Fiora’s new abilities and kit was leaked in the summer of 2015 and the rework launched very soon after. Immediately, the design choices leap out at your screen. Fiora’s Riposte was now a real ability; a true defensive ability and the fact that you could not only slow their attack speed but also reflect crowd control onto your target was a fresh idea that perfectly aligned with her thematic.
Her passive received a full overhaul and while it’s still built-in sustain into her kit, this approach introduced us to Vitals.
These Vitals have had quite the lifespan in League of Legends. They are one of the more cool mechanics in the game but also one of the most frustrating. For the Fiora player, there are a lot of bugs attached to these Vitals, making it counterintuitive to play and use correctly. For the players playing against Fiora, sometimes the randomness of their location on your body did feel really bad to play against since it’s such a significant help to Fiora in a 1v1 to proc Vital after Vital after Vital.
To this day, it’s been somewhat remedied as the code has been reworked and cleaned up and now more often than not, it’s easy to know where the next Vital will be because it usually just flips to the opposite side. However, from what I understand it’s still pretty buggy.
Her new E kept along the same attack speed theme but now for only two auto attacks. However, you get a guaranteed crit on the second one, so if you get off both auto attacks, you’re instantly rewarded.
Her kit and build now resembled much more of a fighter than a true melee carry.
With building items like Black Cleaver, Guardian Angel, Spirit Visage and Death’s Dance becoming way more normal rather than Infinity Edge and crit. Ravenous Hydra is still core to this day and has almost always been an item that she has loved but with her new Q applying on-hit effects in the enemy champion now and loving cooldown reduction, this paved the way for fewer to try building Trinity Force, which is now also a staple item.
Also, this is totally off-key and not at all objective, but I really feel like they ruined the Royal Guard skin with this rework. Do you guys agree with me? I mean, this used to be one of my favorite skins in the game but now it’s one of her worst skins – I don’t know – she just looks weird, but you know what, at least she has really nice skins nowadays. I guess I can’t complain much.
Towards the end of season 5, we got the world championship. However, this would end up being one of Riot’s biggest screw-ups ever. It was laughable what they did.
For whatever reason, they decided to just blow up the meta and introduce 6 brand-new reworks, tons of balance changes and new items right before the tournament started.
Fiora along with gangplank and the juggernauts were no exception to this, even though they knew that her kit would be much better, that really wasn’t the question. The question was how much better was Fiora.
Well, the pros answered that question very quickly because Fiora was OP. In general, she was never hit as hard as the others were and it really showed because Fiora’s peak came right along the years of 2016 and 2017.
She cemented herself as the best top laner in the game for most of those seasons and even during some of that time, she was probably the single strongest champion in the game. In fairness to Fiora, it’s not just that she was strong but also the meta was perfect for her.
This was during the rise of the tank meta in season 6 and season 7. Because you were mostly playing against tanks every game, that really allowed Fiora to shine.
Fighters and bruisers in general were pretty bad but she had the best chance, by far, to deal with the tanks as she’s always been an excellent pick into tanks. At the time, we suffered from the likes of tank Ekko, top lane Maokai and Poppy. These champions would build Ice-born Gauntlet, Sunfire Cape and Grasp of the undying. They were completely unkillable.
For any other bruiser if you even dared to try champions like Riven and Renekton into these tanks, you had no hope of killing them. After one item they would start killing you and diving you under your tower.
Fiora on two items, though, could easily Riposte Ekko’s W. She could definitely deal with Maokai and out class him but sometimes the Poppy player could still smash her.
This was also during the time that NA teams started to import a lot of Korean top laners, such as Ssumday and Flame. These guys would set the bar extremely high for the standard Fiora. Players in NA LCS they would really show up the competition.
There was also another Korean top laner who was relatively unknown at the time but would put himself on the map because of his insane Fiora play and his name was Khan. I would say of anybody’s Fiora that I’ve seen, Khan might be right up there in the argument for being the best. He shows what true mastery of this champion looks like and he’s pulled off some of the craziest things we’ve ever seen at the highest level because of her. Sheer domination over the top lane.
Fiora would be nerfed into the ground for months on end. The champion, though, didn’t want to die and tanks were still prevalent, so she continued to be strong.
However, it all ended for Fiora in patch 7.14, which was the last nerf that we’ve ever seen for her. This was released on July 19th, 2017, so it’s been more than two years since we’ve seen any news to Fiora. The hit was hard. Her ultimate completely losing its movement speed was a bigger change than you might expect at first. The amount of movement speed lost alone on your passive made it difficult to proc your Vitals and dance around your targets, not really letting Fiora be the champion that she’s supposed to be.
However, losing that during Grand Challenge, entirely introduced a lot of counter play to her kit. This movement speed made her so strong before because it allowed her to dive people under Tower with ease by swinging in and out of the tower aggro. They would partially buff this back on patch 7.16 after many complaints from the fewer players that this patch literally killed the champ but there was something interesting on patch 7.18. Riot would completely revert their change and buff what was lost on Fiora.
So, at this point you’re probably thinking that Fiora is just going to go right back to being top tier. If you think that, you would then be wrong because Fiora had a problem and it was one item. Not even a completed item but just a component that would completely negate a lot of the champions power.
This was the introduction of Bramble Vest on patch 7.14. The same one as the original Fiora nerf.
We would be introduced to a new reworked Thornmail, subsequently a new component called Bramble vest for only 900 gold, you were given 35 armor, the ability to reflect damage onto your attacker and then applied Grievous wounds, which if you know anything about Fiora, seems like Riot essentially created an item to counter her.
After bramble vest was introduced Fiora would be dropped down not 1 or 2 notches on the tier list but more like 4 or 5. Tanks and more specifically the ones that built Bramble Vest would clobber the top lane meta and bruisers for the rest of season 7. Eventually, bramble Vest would be nerfed directly and tanks themselves would be nerfed too, so you really think that it would be time for Fiora to come back.
Once we got to season 8 and with the introduction of a new rune for bruisers, that being Conqueror. You really think it would be time for her to shine. This, however, was not the case because up until recently, Conqueror had true damage. A lot of its power budget meaning how much power it can have was really tied into that true damage. This was not only redundant for Fiora, as the champion already has true damage, but it would also kill off all the tanks in the meta. As we saw in season 6 and season 7, Fiora thrives in the tank meta being the prototypical fighter that can cut them down.
Being honest though, for most of season 8 and honestly, most of season 9, she was really, really bad. Other bruisers were stronger, like Jax, Riven and Renekton. Tanks were non-existent.
If you take a look at her buff since late season 7, it’s pretty crazy. She’s been buffed almost 10 times since then.
Which brings us to today.
For season 10, Conqueror has now been reworked and it acts very similarly to the way that Fervor of battle used to. On top of that, a huge portion of its power was removed with the loss of true damage but instead converted into more healing and that alone is a monster change for Fiora. This means that with the loss of true damage, tanks are back in action with champions like Ornn making a full comeback this preseason but Fiora also received a ton of buffs last year because of how bad she was.
Riposte is now a two second hard CC on reflection, which is gg for most fighters. If Riven ever third Q’s right onto Fiora, she’s as good as dead. On top of that, Fiora has now made her name as, not only the best 1v1 split pusher in the late game, but also, she’s now the fastest tower killer in the game too. She received 2 direct buffs to her tower pushing, her Q now procs on towers which is not only great for Sheen but it also reduces the cooldown and her E crit works on the tower.
For season 10, take Conqueror Fiora with Demolish and the Resolve tree secondary and watch yourself start 1v9 in games. She’s easily an S tier top laner these days.
I asked the Fiora mains, what their favorite part of the champion is and what they like about her. I think the thing that draws people to play Fiora the most these days is pretty nicely summed up by a response from SQorpio13. “Because of her Riposte, Fiora can turn almost any lane into a skill matchup. She can outplay almost anybody, even if the matchup is unfavorable. For example, if the jungler tries to gank you and CC you, there’s a chance you could Riposte it, turn it around and get a double kill.”.
Fiora is the best split pusher in the game and it’s just fun to dance around proc vitals in 1v1 people, even though she isn’t a very good team fighter like other fighters. That’s in the name of balance or at least you would hope as a champion who late-game can 1v2 your side laners, she’s always a fun pick to watch.
You never know if a pro is going to go ham on Fiora and win the game by himself in the side lane. You never know what kind of backdoor nonsense that you’ll see from her and that really keeps the top lane role exciting and important.
To be honest, I don’t think she’s the most balanced or even the fairest champion in the game. Not by a long shot. However, she’s clearly one of the most fun and most rewarding champions in the game and there’s something to say about that too.
