Changelog
May 9, 2011 - Guide Published
May 11, 2011 - Added Champion Guide
May 12, 2011 - 1K views! Thanks guys!
May 14, 2011 - Updated item guide; abyssal scepter scenario / fixed some typos
Sep 16, 2011 - Updated items and item guide
Sep 22, 2011 - 500k views! Thanks to everyone for viewing!
Nov 21, 2011 - Updated for new mastery tree
Dec 10, 2011 - 1 MILLION VIEWS! Somebody invite Surprise Party Fiddlesticks!
Dec 25, 2011 - Merry Christmas! Updated entire guide to include item/skill info, Updated Skill Sequence ....................... guide, Moved
LeBlanc to Bad Against in Champion Guide, Generally made guide look ....................... nicer.
Jan 10, 2012 - Happy New Year! Fixed error in mastery explanation, Fixed everywhere I used "lifesteal" ....................... instead of "spell vamp."
Feb 12, 2012 - Added new champions to Champion Guide, Updated item build due to
Will of the Ancients ....................... nerf, Updated item guide to correspond with build, Fixed ability sequence mistake ....................... (/facepalm).
. Mar 5, 2012 - Fixed a wording issue, changed 15% on
Hextech Revolver spell vamp to 12% ....................... [ Riot y u nerf my items :*( ], added new champions to champion guide.
Introduction
This guide will be showing you how I play
Fiddlesticks on almost every game. Whether it be a 5v5 or a 3v3, this build will get you a win as long as you're smart. Let it be known now, the item build is not set in stone. There will be many times where you will need to mix the build up a bit in case you have some guys packing MR. This guide is really effective against squishy characters just because of the amount of damage dealt and health acquired early game. As long as you don't feed the enemies, you'll carry the team most of the time.
Pros / Cons
Pros:
- Excellent soloist (if they have no CC)
- Great early game tank (because of spell vamp; watch out for ignite!)
- Can stay in a lane fairly long because of spell vamp
- Great team player, especially in team fights (spell vamp + ult = \o/)
Cons:
- Squishy if he gets ganked with CC
- Not good at killing minions/pushing a lane
- Can get UP if enemy starts stacking MR early game
- Not good against champions with farther range than his abilities (or
Mordekaiser *shakes fist*)
Runes
Runes are completely arbitrary, so I'm just giving you what I use. I like having ability power more so than magic penetration because
Fiddlesticks's passive automatically reduces nearby enemies' MR by 10. However, that doesn't mean I go completely AP. I get some MP with the marks, and then some mana regeneration with the seals. I then use glyhps and quints for AP.
If you don't want to use this rune setup then I urge you to get AP or MP more so than anything else. They will allow you to rape early game especially if you are facing squishies.
Masteries
I don't really want to go into masteries that much, but what this build does is give one of the better mastery setups for any caster, which is 6% reduced ability cooldown time, 15% reduced summoner spell cooldown time and 10% magic penetration. It also gives you just a tiny bit of spell vamp just for that extra little kick of health you may need from
Drain at the start of the game. The masteries are also setup so that the two summoner spells (which we will talk more about later) will have less cooldown/cast time.
Items
As said in the introduction, the items may have to be rearranged or replaced occasionally with different items. However, there are items that must be set in stone to have a good early game attempt at making the other team go "WTF?!" First off, the
Doran's Ring and
Sorcerer's Shoes are a must. After you acquire your
Sorcerer's Shoes, get around 1K, then sell your
Doran's Ring and get the
Hextech Revolver. This handy little item will give you 12% spell vampirism ON TOP OF your current spell vamp. At one point it was 20%, but in a patch over the summer it was nerfed to 15%. Even so, after you get this item you should be able to turret dive succesfully (if you are smart). Of course, if they have some sort of CC, you'll probably get screwed over unless you have a teammate backing you up. Getting a
Rod of Ages is also a must, since it gives you more AP as the game progresses.
DEVELOPER COMMENTARY ON PAST BUILD
(skip this if you don't wonder why I didn't include
Will of the Ancients in the build in the first place):
A lot of people commented asking why I didn't put it into the build when I first made it (when
Hextech Revolver was 20%), and that's because it was such a small increase in both spell vamp (5%) and AP (10), that I didn't see the point of wasting 900 gold on it rather than using the gold for the
Blasting Wand for
Rod of Ages (40 AP). If we do the math, say you have
Hextech Revolver and
Blasting Wand as your only items. You'd have 80 AP and 20% spell vamp, and AP is directly proportional to how much damage you do, so 20% of 80 is 16. Now if we do the other scenario, where you have 25% spell vamp and only 50 AP because you used the
Blasting Wand gold on
Will of the Ancients, you'd only get 12.5. I realize that if you had a mostly AP damage team that could use the extra AP and spell vamp to an advantage that you'd lean more towards getting it but normally I'd be on teams where we had a tank, 2 DPS, and 2 AP.
The next items you get after you have a
Hextech Revolver,
Sorcerer's Shoes, and
Rod of Ages are completely dependent upon how the game is played out. If you have a heavy AP team, then you may want to rush
Will of the Ancients to get them that 20% spell vampirism as well as an extra 10 ability power for you. If they start stacking heavy MR, then you may want to get an
Abyssal Scepter before a
Rabadon's Deathcap to penetrate it, or if they keep screwing up your drain cycle with CC, you may want to invest in a
Banshee's Veil, etc.
There may be special occasions where you will want to replace the
Abyssal Scepter with a
Void Staff. One of these occasions is where you get an extremely tanky enemy team that's stacking a LOT of MR, and are focusing their items mostly on keeping you from dealing damage so that your spell vamp will be infective. This is one of the times a
Void Staff is wanted rather than an
Abyssal Scepter because it will lower their MR more so than an
Abyssal Scepter (If the majority of their team has >50 MR, then get this, as 40% of 50 MR is 20, which is the amount
Abyssal Scepter gives. Also, since they are tanks, you shouldn't need the MR of
Abyssal Scepter, as they should deal less damage).
I went ahead and added
Zhonya's Hourglass as the ending build item rather than
Morello's Evil Tome. I did this because people were questioning why I had the latter rather than the first. I originally put Morello's on there because I wanted people to read the item guide and wonder why. This would lead them to read that "all items you get after early-mid game are completely arbitrary" so they would kind of have a free mind to choose which items to get based on the team they're fighting. I understand that it has confused some who have had the luckiness to get to a full build, so I went ahead and added
Zhonya's Hourglass for it's awesome active as well as armor bonus.
I moved
Will of the Ancients to the end of the build because it is no longer viable due to it's nerf in a recent patch. Sure, if you have a team that's mostly AP, (and maybe a
Vladimir is on your team who is also getting
Will of the Ancients that you can stack with) then it may be viable to get one right after hextech. But in my honest opinion, I don't see 10 AP (30 AP for the teammate) and only 5% more spell vampirism being worth 900 gold if it's only going to benefit you and maybe one other teammate.
You may be wondering, "If
Fiddlesticks is so squishy, why not get him items like armor, health, or MR?" Well, with the items you get in this build now, you should have a little over 100 MR AND Armor. Also, if you get enough AP, you don't even need that stuff, because
Fiddlesticks drains life so fast with not only his
Drain, but also his
Dark Wind and
Crowstorm. Therefore, the only time you'd be screwed, is if you were ganked with CC, or if you initiated and your team didn't follow you in.
Skill Sequence
After playing with
Fiddlesticks for a while now, I've noticed that your beginning skills (up to level 5) are entirely arbitrary to your situation. If you are going into a lane with someone and are going against melee characters, then I suggest the normal skill sequence I have made for this guide. But say you are going mid, or against 2 heavy harassers in a lane, then you will want to flip flop the
Drain and
Dark Wind skill sequences. This is because they will most likely be smart enough to time their powerful strikes against you and/or gank you as your start your
Drain on a minion to heal. This makes you out of spells except for
Dark Wind and possibly
Terrify, in which case you can stop one but the other will still end your life before your teammate can end theirs. After level 6 follow the skill sequence of the guide because
Drain is still what you want most powerful late/mid game because you will have massive spell vampirism.
Terrify is not important to have high leveled until later on, because at level 1 it allows for 1 second of CC, which is more than enough to secure a kill or escape an enemy.
When you reach level 6, if you are not mid, immediately hide in the bushes. Most of the time, the enemy will not realize you've reached level 6, and so you can run in the bush, wait until they're close enough,
Crowstorm on their faces while your teammate comes in to dish out extra damage, and score at least 1 kill using
Terrify and
Drain. The trick with
Crowstorm, when it's still a laning game, is to aim for one person, rather than try to kill both people in the lane. If you can, great! If not, don't risk popping your ult for nothing.
Team Work
The key to
Fiddlesticks's
Crowstorm is timing. I can't count how many times I barely missed an opportunity because I was slightly late. You also have to be smart, you can't assume someone's in a bush, you'd better KNOW they're in the bush.
If your whole team is pushing a lane (you should have
Hextech Revolver by this time), then when you reach the turret and have minions on the way, even if all of the other team is on the turret,
Crowstorm in on them. If your team is good, they will follow you in, because you'll be tanking the turret hits if the other team stays, and, because of your spell vamp, you should be regaining health fairly quickly. If your team is a bunch of chickens and stay back, well, may god have mercy on your soul.
Summary
This is my first build, so comments and criticism are HIGHLY appreciated. I'd love to know where to improve my build and/or build upon it.
Thanks for reading!