Fiddlesticks Build Guide by Magger123

Introduction - Background

Hello fellow summoners. My name is Magne, better known as Nashors Son on EUNE. Currently sitting at 1724 elo on the solo queue ladder, where one of my most played champs is Fiddlesticks.
I've been meaning to write a guide for a long time, since I don't really feel that any of the other guides out here on the web and specifically on Mobafire includes everything that you have to know about this sweet scarecrow, so here goes.

NOTE: This guide focuses on something that I found out was possible with the right runes and masteries: *TITLE SPOILER ALERT* Yes, the early dragon. This guide will teach you how to kill it at level 3, at around 4:10 timemark.

Feel free to comment, rate and add me on EUNE for further questions/feedback.

Pros / Cons

Pros:
- Ultimate dealing HUGE AoE damage
- Good sustain in jungle
- 3 Second Fear (Longest disable in game)
- Solo dragon level 3 like nobody else
- Surprise Party Fiddlesticks

Cons:
- Extremely squishy
- Bad farming
- Slow clear time in jungle after first clear
- Easily counterjungled by fast junglers with AOE clears

Runes

The runes . . . aaaah the runes..

For Marks I take 9x Greater Mark of Magic Penetration, since that is the most common choice for all Ability Power based champions.

For Seals I take 9x Greater Seal of Resillence, because it helps doing your route without having to pop one of your precious pots, which would ruin the entire thing + without these runes you wouldn't stand a chance at the early dragon.

For Glyphs I take 9x Greater Glyph of Ability Power, since that is the better choice when your CDR (Cooldown Reduction) is already capped at 40% from having 10% CDR from masteries, 20% CDR from Crest of the Ancient Golem and 10% CDR from Elixir of Brilliance.
They don't scale well into late game, but if late game never comes from your massive early dragon control and game dominance, then what does it matter? ;-)

For Quints I take 9x Greater Quint of Potency, which is by far the better choice on Fiddlesticks, and you wont be able to kill dragon if you take anything else than this.

Prove me wrong.

Masteries

The masteries varies quite from what the normal Fiddlesticks builds I've seen so far.
I'm taking 4 points in Mental Force for some more flat Ability Power, 4 points in Sorcery for the 4% CDR, and 1 point in Arcane Knowledge in the offensive tree to make you hurt even more with your magic spells.

Combined with Abyssal Scepter, Dread ( Fiddlesticks passive), Sorcerer's Shoes and your 9x Greater Mark of Magic Penetration's this will in most cases make your spells do true damage to the enemy targets, if they don't build heavy Magic Resist.

In the Utility tree is where things get tricky. Here I take 1 point in Summoner's Choice for reduced cooldown on your Flash.
3 points in Expanded Mind for some extra mana per level, since you wont be building anything that gives you flat mana until very late in the game.
Then I grab 3 points in Meditation for some bonus mana regen combined with 2x Doran's Rings this will almost be enough for you to clear jungle and fool around, in the scenarios where you wont have blue buff.
After that, I put 4 points into the Swiftness mastery.

"Why?" Because it's crucial that you make your clear time as fast as possible, and when we can't afford to have 3x Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed in our runes, well then we have to take this. "I still don't get it, I mean ... It's nice and all to run fast and clear the blue/red camps fast, but how does running fast help me clear dragon?" Ohh friendly summoner, I'll explain that later.

Next I choose to take 3 points in Transmutation , since that is the only useful place to spend your points at this moment. It also helps you take out dragon without almost dying from it, and well it's kinda nice to heal 100-200HP in a teamfight from just your ult. Not that great, but still the better choice.

As every jungler speccing in the Utility tree I take Runic Affinity , which is crucial to have, since if you don't, then your blue buff will run out while you are doing drag, and you will go OOM (Out of mana) and wont have enough CDR to instant drain.

Then I choose to only take 2 points into Awareness , even though you don't really need it early for your first clear it still comes in handy for later in the game.

After that I grab the 6% CDR from Intelligence to make your CDR cap, together with Sorcery , Crest of the Ancient Golem and Elixir of Brilliance, you will now have 40% CDR.

20+10+4+6=40

The last point is spent in Mastermind which is overall a good mastery for further reduced cooldown on Flash, and a reduced cooldown on Smite

Items

This is the tricky part, since you don't start off with the traditional Doran's Ring or the Amplifying Tome.

No, since you are such a hipster, you want to start out with Elixir of Brilliance, and grab 2 Health Potions. You will now have around 180 remaining gold in your pocket. Save it!

Then after your clear before dragon (will be explained into detail later) you buy a Doran's Ring.

After drag you want to pick up Boots of Speed. Then you grab an additional Doran's Ring, since it's too good of an item to only have one, AmIright? In all seriousness, it's a great item for early sustain, since it gives you some additional Mana Regen, should your blue buff be stolen, or the guy playing mid wants it desperately. The Health is nice too, since you won't be building anymore of that for a long time.

When you have enough for Sorcerer's Shoes, you grab them and start running like Forrest Gump did. When you have them you want to build a Zhonya's Hourglass, which is inarguably the best item on Fiddlesticks.

Crowstorm -> Terrify -> Dark Wind -> Zhonya's Hourglass = Confused enemies, with no one to hit. (Assuming it's in a teamfight where you will get focused. If not then replace with the following combo:

Crowstorm -> Terrify -> Dark Wind -> Drain

After Zhonya's Hourglass it gets situational. Does the enemy team have some heavy AP?

Yes?: Build Abyssal Scepter to give you some Magic Resist + the magic resist reduction on enemies stacks with Dread!
No?: Build Rabadons Deatbcap for great damage output.

Now we'll be looking to get some HP, AP and an AoE + Single Target Slow - Rylai's Crystal Scepter. It's such a good thing on Fiddlesticks, that you need to get it. Start out with the Giant's Belt when building it.

At last you'll want to build a Banshee's Veil for some additional mana and health, AND the unique passive, that makes you block 1 spell in 45 seconds. This is kinda great on Fiddlesticks, since he won't greatly benefit from other defensive items like GA or QSS.
Banshee's Veil will protect him when channeling his ult, and then suddenly a wild Sion appears, wanting to stun you, but nope, wont happen. You'll already be in the middle of his team, tearing it apart.

Skill Sequence

Dread - Not the best passive out there, but with a slightly useful one, Fiddlesticks would be blatantly overpowered.
NOTE: The 10 Magic Resist reduction on enemies will show as a debuff above their skillbar, and they might notice it when you are standing close to them, but that is only if they are very skilled that they think of that.

Terrify - A 3 second fear. Longest stun in the game. Even without silence on his Dark Wind or something like that, he would still be OP because of this. This is Fiddlesticks bread. Grab it after you get level 4 from killing dragon.
Max this second.

Drain - You want to max out Drain (of course prioritize ult when possible (6,11,16) huehuehue). A damaging spell, that also heals you almost for the same amount that is damaged? That's incredible.
Max this first (as already explained why)

Dark Wind - Grab this spell at level 2 since you want as much damage on Dragon as possible, and since you can't Terrify dragon anymore (you once could), this is the way to go. + It makes your cleartime less of a pain in jungle.
Max this last.

Crowstorm - This is Fiddlesticks butter. getit? :-) A damaging AoE spell that is loud as f**k and can give anyone a shock when he jumps from the bush to kill you.

Summoner Spells

Flash - Pretty mandatory skill on Fiddlesticks, since if you fail with your ultimate -> Flash like nothing happened and kill that silly bastard.
Smite for jungle control and faster clearings.

Ranked Play

I have been playing Fiddlesticks for a LONG TIME. He was even my main on my NA account back when I played there in season 1, and he got me to around 1700 elo, ONLY by playing him.

This Season on EUNE I didn't play him quite as much, but as the picture below shows, I still got it, with a winrate about 66%.

If possible, then try to make one of the lower picks pick him if you are first or second pick, so that they don't counter him hard with punishing junglers like Shyvana, Dr. Mundo, Udyr, Lee Sin, . . . You get the point; Fast AoE clearing junglers.

Also try to avoid disengaging support champions like Janna and Alistar. Especially Janna. That girl will most likely ruin your day :-(

Creeping / Jungling

1. Buy Elixir of Brilliance and 2 Health Potions and move to Wolf camp. Tell your teammates about your plans, and make them guard blue and red for you. Don't expose yourself to the enemy team, since they will see your Elixir of Brilliance, and might know that something fishy is up.
Tell your teammates that you wont need any damage or leash.

2. Pop your Elixir of Brilliance -> Autoattack big wolf 2 times -> Drain -> Autoattack

3. Kill Blue Golem, get level 2, level up Dark Wind and instantly kill the 2 small lizard guys.

4. Move back to wolves where you left the 2 small ones. Drain one of them when there is around 3 seconds cooldown left on your Dark Wind, then instantly when it comes up you will want to Dark Wind the one with full life, so that it bounces back on the one that should have around half HP (You stop your drain when it's about half HP if you did drain it too fast). They should die from this.

5. Move to Red Camp and follow the same procedure as at blue buff. When you have killed it, Recall immediately. At the end of your Recall you should have exactly 475 gold, if everything went right. This leaves you with Doran's Ring]9 and 2x [[Health Potions.

6. Run to Dragon, and tell your team, if you didn't already, that they shouldn't help you, since the enemy team might get suspicious if they see mid and bot leaving. Also pay attention to if the enemy support warded dragon.

If you are on blue team, then DON'T go through tribush to get there, since they surely will have warded river if the support is any competent.

7. Now this should be how it works for you to kill it: Dark Wind -> Drain -> DRINK YOUR HEALTH POTIONS WHILE DRAINING. VERY IMPORTANT. -> Drain -> Dark Wind -> Drain -> Drain -> Dark Wind -> Drain -> Drain -> Smite.

(ALWAYS save your Smite for the killing blow of jungle creeps, to avoid things getting stolen.)

BAM! 1.000 global gold for your team. Time the dragon and write it in chat. Would be something along the lines of "10:14d" to be able to look back in the chat, and easily could tell when it's up again.

After that, you should start focusing on ganking and helping your team since you at this point just got your Terrify which actually makes you able to gank, and you are able to afford Boots of Speed.

From here you should keep farming if nothing happens and get your ult as fast as possible, then what I like to do, is to go through the lane wards in the bot lane when your bot lane is pushed to the enemy tower, and wait for the enemy to 're-push' the minions to the middle of the lane. Crowstorm in and pray that your bot lane follows your move.

Team Work

As Fiddlesticks you should rarely engage teamfights with ult, since most of the time you will get instakilled, that is, until you get your Zhonya's Hourglass, which you should have around when the lanes break up, and teamfights start.
When you have it, it's a total different situation. You are ALMOST free to engage anywhere with your Vladpool-like-trollhourglass.

If the enemy team wards a lot, it can be worth it for you to buy an oracle if your support or tank doesn't, to make sure that you are not stepping on a ward when you are getting ready to channel your ult. Since most players fears the ult of Fiddlesticks they will try to stun, or in any way interrupt your ult.

Knowing the best position to ult from/to will come by experience, but one thing must be noted: Target enemy AD Carry or enemy AP Carry with Terrify and Dark Wind (maybe Drain, before activating Zhonya's Hourglass.

NoteNote: That is of course, if there's not a 21-3-7 Fiora or something like that which is a bigger threat to your team.

Farming

Farming as Fiddlesticks is a real pain (that is why, getting dragon is also such a great thing for little Fiddle)... Generally the thing you want to do when holding a lane when one of your teammates are back, ganking or dead, is to just try to lasthit, but since he has almost no AD, and a very wierd auto attack animation, you can just Dark Wind and cross your fingers, in hope that you get some gold.

The first damaging tick on Drain is almost instant. Use it if you're a little insecure about lasthitting as Fiddle.

Summary

All in all, try this out. If you already play [Fiddlesticks] a lot, this will most likely be a great addition to you normal jungle route and make you a more versatile jungler.

Also, always just focus whoever is the biggest threat in the enemy team.

Give me some feedback if you like to, since I've been working really hard on this. Cheers!