Impetus: Riot takes League of Legends character Fiora to the wood shed for a doozy of an update, both gameplay and visually.
Anyone want to take any bets on how I feel about this?
If you guessed “Danny hates it,” you’d be right. Granted, it’s safe to assume that I’ll hate most things, because I’m kind of a cynical person, but the fact of the matter is that I really am disappointed in Riot for what they did to a character that I was pretty partial to.
In terms of gameplay, I agree that Fiora had been progressively left in the dust throughout the passage of time since her release, but it’s not like she was complete crap; for everything about her lack of mobility, escape or crowd control, she has always hit like a ton of bricks, and no matter what, if a game went long enough for her to get two or three core items, she is annihilating people, especially at the scrub-tier level in which I play.
With the way she was redesigned, Fiora has kind of been pigeon-holed into being nothing but a jungler. I suck at jungling. I suck at top-laning too for that matter, but in the few times in which I do play top, Fiora is one of the champions that I had played.
Seriously though, given the fact that her passive and ult rely on her being able to essentially walk around her opponent in hit them in any side of them aside from their front is pretty asinine. There is no champion in the game that moonwalks or walks sideways like a crab, when an opponent is facing you, they are fucking facing you. Nobody in their right mind, other than a deliberate feeder, is going to stand still, and let you waltz around to their backside or their flanks, and get in an auto attack, to proc Fiora’s passive or her ultimate ability. No, they’re going to be rotating and facing you, so they can one, defend themselves, and two, blow you up, because this new kit is bigger bullshit than her former one.
Through jungling, and getting sneak attacks in, will Fiora’s kit of needing to attack random sides of a champion other than their front, be often doable, but the rest of her kit has been turned down to where she might not really be that great of a jungler, either.
Anyway, the bigger issue for me is the artistic rework. Obviously, I’ve had my objections to the Miss Fortune visual rework, especially the no-longer Secret Agent skin, but Fiora is a champ that I didn’t think needed any visual updating at all, period.
Honestly, I just don’t understand why Riot did it. Other than an innate desire to have some visual uniformity throughout their character roster, I can’t think of any reason why they would go change her physical appearance. Frankly, I’m not that big of a fan of the painterly-style they’re going with all new champions and visual updates, and I think they’re kind of copping out a lot of the time with artwork by sandwiching multiple champions into a single piece, and slicing out character portraits from them. I get that with perhaps the special occasion skins, but it’s looking like it’s a matter of time until there’s going to be a visual update where all of House Demacia is one portrait, all of Noxus is one portrait, and then they just jerry-rig a bunch of champions and call them Bilgewater, regardless of if the lore ahead of them stated no affiliation.
The bottom line is that Fiora went from an aerodynamic-looking fencer, to a weird, tunic-wearing older woman, with lips full of collagen, and about eight years of age underneath the eyes. To say that I am a fan of such a redesign would be like saying that I enjoy skipping my weekly weekend Willy’s burrito.
GG Rito, way to bastardize a champion that wasn’t relevant in the first place, and somehow manage to create even more reason to not play Fiora anymore.
