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Fiora Build Guide by Pelikins

Fiora likes it in the backdoor...

Fiora likes it in the backdoor...

Updated on August 2, 2012
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League of Legends Build Guide Author Pelikins Build Guide By Pelikins 6 2 8,009 Views 9 Comments
6 2 8,009 Views 9 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author Pelikins Fiora Build Guide By Pelikins Updated on August 2, 2012
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Spells:

LoL Summoner Spell: Teleport

Teleport

LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

Intro:

Yes, I did just use sexual innuendo to draw you in to reading my guide.

I don't think it's my fault that you have sexual fantasies about beautiful, sassy French women...and I don't think less of you for it either.

But since you are here, you should read the guide...
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Fiora Basics

Fiora is a melee carry. That means fast paced, high risk, high reward game play.

Unlike most other melee champions which build tanky dps, Fiora builds items similar to those used by an AD ranged carry, but with more emphasis on burst damage being solo effective.

Since Fiora's ult applies on hit effects, it can be used to refill hp and drop focus in a fight. In a duel, her ability to use her ult to apply Black Cleaver stacks is devastating.

Fiora can either solo top or go bot lane with a support.

She has the ability to jungle as well but her effectiveness scales with her income.
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A mathematically driven early game

This build is designed to give you every possible advantage in the early game to help snowball Fiora effectively.

Anyone who has played melee carries in the past, knows how important their early game is. If a melee carry gets fed early on, they tend to steamroll anyone who gets in their way. While if a melee carry gets denied cs and experience early, they tend to struggle the whole game.

Since early dominance is so important, we are focusing on stats (via the runes and masteries) that help her be successful early, so that she can more easily get to that stage where she is dominating later.

In a nut shell, melee carries are stat dependent, gear has stats and gear can be bought with gold. Therefore, melee carries are gold dependent. Their income will determine there strength.

So what we need to do is setup our Fiora to get the most gold possible.

To get the most possible gold, she needs to be able to farm the whole game.

Being a carry means having a fairly weak early game, offensively. So since we aren't going to be murdering our lane opponent (usually) we need to be able to farm. The key to farming is being able to keep the opponent from denying you last hits and that means being able to eat his harass.

Unlike ranged champions, melee champions are easy to harass because they can not last hit minions from long range. Hence they need sustaining power to mitigate incoming harass.

The absolute best sustaining power stat in the early game is health regeneration.

Because this is true, we are going to increase Fiora's health regeneration through runes and masteries.

Getting 3 Greater Quintessence of Vigor will result in a health regeneration increase of 8.1 hp / 5sec or 1.62hp/sec Fiora's base hp regen is 5.5 hp/5 second or 1.1hp/sec meaning these will over double her hp regen rate. Also, getting 3 points of Vigor along with Vampirism will further help her sustaining power.

HP regen will work passively meaning that Fiora doesn't have to push her lane to gain the hp like she would with life steal. In total Fiora will have 3+5.5+8.1= 16.6 hp/5sec regeneration at level 1. This means that she will regenerate her total base health of 450 hp in about 2.5 minutes. This will greatly help her farm and shrug off harass early on.

Many people will complain that this setup is a waste of gold because hp regen isn't effective late game.

But, to rebuttal this let's put a gold value on the stats we trade for.

Our options are between 3x Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage or Greater Quintessence of Desolation.

That's 2.25 AD x3 or 3.33 Armor Pen x 3 (6.75 AD or 10 Armor Pen).

To assign gold values for this we look at items with these stats. For AD there is the Long Sword offering 10 AD for 415 gold meaning that 1 AD is worth 4.15 gold. For armor pen we use the patter for the brutalizer giving 5 AD, 10% CDR and 15 Armor Pen. From Kindlegem it's said that 10% CDR is worth 322.2 gold and the 5 AD is worth 20.75gold so the 15 armor pen costs the difference of 164.05 gold.

That means armor pen is worth about 11g per point hence the armor pen quints are worth 110 gold. The attack damage quints are worth only 28.01 gold (don't use AD quints, this is why!).

As you can see though, the 3 quints are worth 4-5 CS in gold value. If the hp regen allows us to last hit 5 more minions than with out it (due to being zoned or not being able to take harass) then they are worthwhile.

The odds are that this early game advantage will be worth dozens of CS.
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The Strategy

This build features incredible dueling/objectiving capability coupled with the ability to show up where it would be most valuable and then get away after the damage has been done.

The idea is to pick off lone players, knock down turrets and control jungle objectives while avoiding the attention of more than one or two enemies at once.

This strategy gets harder and harder to pull off as players get more and more skilled at the game. But it's still very hard to defend against if played correctly, especially in a solo que environment.

This type of play-style is referred to as guerrilla style or "back dooring."

Examples of how this play style works are:

"back dooring" turrets when one is left exposed to a minion wave/unguarded.

Hunting down someone who enters your jungle alone.

Intercepting a player who is on his way to a team fight / skirmish before he can get there.
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What do I do in a team fight?

Melee carries are unpopular because they aren't as safe as ranged carries in a team fight, while they can't be fat in the melee line like a bruiser.

So what do you do as a melee carry?

First off, stay invisible until you are ready to strike.
If they know where you are going to come from, they will save a nice fat damage burst for your face.

Second, ult sooner rather than not at all.

You can not waste Fiora's Ult, you only run the risk of it not being as effective as possible.

Don't get nuked and not land your ult because you were "saving" it.

Third, keep your finger on your Quicksilver Sash. You need to know each visual graphic and each debuff icon. If you get Soraka silenced and aren't ready to cleanse it, chances are you just lost the team fight.

Fourth, don't go in first, but don't go in late either.

I like to time my entry right after the enemy AP carry's first volley. The AP carry setup their focus target and it was not you. Time to strike.

Fifth, positioning positioning positioning.

This is the reason you run flash. Figure out your best entry way to get at their AD carry and go in that way. You likely will be using flash to jump a wall to come in from the side.
Have riposte up as you enter to mitigate the carry as much as possible. If he's good he will be switching targets and looking at you.

If he flashes away from the fray, chances are that's what you want. A nice safe 1v1. Take him out.

If he goes into the fray, good, now he's a melee carry too. Chances are you'll want to ult immediately as their team will be focused on you. While you are in your ult, you should soften up their team and their AD carry should go down.

The worst thing that carry can do is stay put. He'll be out of range of your teammate but you'll be in their teams range. This gets dicey. You'll need to make the right decisions and fast. If their AP carry has spells with travel times, I like to wait until it casts them at me and I ult to avoid them. Be careful not to get chain cc'd. Be especially careful if champions like Alistar are around with uncleansable instant cast CC.

AVOID ALISTAR WHILE HE HAS THAT CD, I REPEAT DO NOT GO NEAR HIM IF HE HAS Pulverize.

If your team does a good job, your distraction and destruction from Blade Waltz should be enough to out contribute the enemy ADC.
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So why does Fiora like it in the backdoor?

Well, you know how those French are...

But seriously, why would Fiora back door anymore successfully than any other champion?

Her kit is practically designed for it.

Burst of Speed is an incredible short duration attack speed buff. This ability allows her to knock down turrets arguably faster than any other champion in the game.

Riposte also helps her back door. It passively gives her bonus AD that is effective against towers.

On top of this, she's very well suited for fighting in tower range with her ultimate Blade Waltz. This ultimate allows her to deal heavy damage to a target while being untargetable, allowing her to secure kills under her enemy's tower. As an added perk, the tower forgives and forgets that you just blew the **** out of its friend and won't attack you after your ult ends until you deal to it again as long as there is a minion to target instead.

All in all, Fiora is likely the best back door champion in the game due to her incredible dueling ability past the early game.
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Fiora's 10 Commandments

1) Thou shalt use thy head. Thou shalt not linger too long and get caught.

2) Thou shalt watch thy mini-map and have better awareness than thy enemy.

3) Thou shalt only engage when thy has thine advantage.

4) Thou shalt never buy a Tiamat!

5) Thou shalt invest into the best tools for thy job. (Rush a QSS if it's needed)

6) Thou shalt not get hit by skill shots!

7) Thou shalt not cluster with thine allies or thy shall get rocked with AoEs.

8) Thou shalt not forget to use thine item actives!

9) Thou shalt not forget about PVE targets or PVP targets.

10) Thou shalt strike first or thy shall not strike at all.
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Mastery Page:

I go with 21/7/2 for my build.

The 21 offense helps Fiora put the hurt on her enemies and also helps her farm. I focus on masteries that will improve her physical damage.

I go 7 defense to buff her armor/mr depending on who she's against and to give her a little more hp regen for sustaining power.

I grab improved summoners and improved recall out of utility so that the summoners are more effective and so I can get out of enemy territory more quickly after doing an objective.
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Rune page:

I grab armor penetration marks. I prefer these over AD marks since she already gets a lot of free AD early on.
Greater Mark of Desolation x9

I grab hp regen quintessence for extra sustaining power early on.
Greater Quintessence of Vigor x 3

I grab armor seals to help Fiora be more sturdy.
Greater Seal of Armor x9

I grab mr/level glyphs also to help Fiora be more sturdy.
Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist
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Skill selection:

Depending on who I'm up against, I either level Burst of Speed or reposte first.

If I'm bot lane, reposte will greatly help mitigate enemy harass and provide counter harass.

If top lane, it depends on if my opponent is skill based or auto attack based for their damage. If auto attack, then reposte but Burst of Speed if not.
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Item Selection:

Getting the most out of your gold is very important for carries.

I've created a very specific build to follow to maximize her effectiveness.

Boots are Fiora's first buy along with 3 hp potions.

Fiora needs the ability to move as quickly as possible so that she can get a last hit and get out while taking as little harass as possible.

The potions are great to help you mitigate harass and farm effectively.

berserker's grieves are your second buy. These will further make avoiding ganks and harass easy while also improving your ability to stick to a target and deal damage to it. These are very important. Do not get merc treds over these. Fiora needs the ability to take down opponents quickly, these will help the most to do that.

I next purchase some additional AD. The Brutalizer is 1337 for Fiora. It will give her the most dps for her gold while improving her utility in the process.

I now get some more sustaining power with a Vampiric Scepter this will help Fiora ultimately win her lane through being able to trade better and mitigate harass.

Now we make the first big improvement to Fiora with the Youmuu's Ghostblade I like to call this "the equalizer" This item was specifically placed into the game for melee carries to help them beat up anyone who gets in their way...and it does a great job!

Once you have one of these bad boys you can stick to any target and really make it hurt.

Next I save my pennies for a B.F. Sword which will synergyze well with all the bonus attack speed from the grieves, ghostblade active, and Burst of Speed. The next awesome upgrade is turnint it into Black Cleaver. Once you have ghostblade, scepter, and grieves your basic dps kit is complete. You should take down any player in a matter of a couple seconds.

Next we get our escape jail free card. We buy a Quicksilver Sash. This will cleanse ANY debuff from you. That means one exhaust, ignite, or CC is no longer an issue. Simply cleanse it immediately and go back to rolling someone over. The MR will also help you survive a nuke or two from the AP carry.

After the QSS is complete, I pick up a Glacial Shroud this item is a very cost effective way to get cool down reduction while also giving you a strong source of armor for durability. This is necessary if you want to work around turrets, especially against enemy AD carries.

I now will pick up a Bloodthirster this will help your survivability via more life stealing and will also greatly improve your dps via more AD.

I now upgrade my Glacial Shroud to help boost my CDR further and improve my armor value. I will also debuff my enemies with an AS hinder.

If the game lasts long enough, I will sell my boots for a Phantom Dancer the extra crit chance will greatly improve my dps, my MS will remain untouched and I'll gain slightly more AS.
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