Fizz Build Guide by Ekki

Introduction

Hello, my name is Ekki, and I've been playing LoL since season 1 (got to level 30 mid-season 2). I'm a casual gold-tier player from the LAS server, and my mains always were tanks or supports. That is, until I knew...


FIZZ
The troll-pole trickster
Fizz is a mobile assassin that excels at trolling people with his E, Playful / Trickster, and killing single targets with his ult, Chum the Waters.

His main role, and probably his best one, is as a lane assassin. This guide is about other roles that I believe to be ranked-worthy and/or really fun. I ordered it by "builds" that are more like different guidelines you can follow or mix. This is a freestyle guide, so you can buy whatever you want as long as you follow some general rules and play according to your build.

The builds are defined as top/jungle and tank/attsp/AP. I only made AP as jungle because the AP top build would be too similar to the regular build.

I tried to use as little specific language as possible, but some acronyms should be internalised, so I made a short index.

Acronym index:
- ult: Ultimate ability. The R of a champion.
- CC: Crowd control. It refers to anything that slows, stuns, roots or turns you into a frigging rabbit.
- AoE: Area of effect (can refer to damage or CC). Anything that deals damage or applies CC over an area (instead of to a single target).
- DoT: Damage over time. Refers to anything that deals damage over a period of time. It can also refer to champions that do most of their damage constantly instead of nuking.
- CDR: Cooldown reduction. The stat that reduces the amount of time between your spells.
- aa: Autoattack. Your basic attacks.
- attsp: Attack speed. The stat that makes you aa faster.
- MMR: Matchmaking Rating. It's a number only known to Riot that defines who you are matched to and the amount of LP you win/lose in ranked matches. You might know it as ELO.

Why Freestyle Fizz?

Why Fizz?

As a main tank/support player, I was never good at playing assassins or mages. As of today I still avoid the mid lane. But when I saw the broken attsp jungle Fizz build with Blade of the Ruined King back in early 2015 I decided I needed to buy that champion. Since the Seastone Trident rework heavily nerfed that build, it branched as Fizz top with Skirmisher's Sabre - Cinderhulk and Blade of the Ruined King as main damage source.

Fizz is a really versatile champion, giving you the chance to build him AP, tank, attack speed (mistakenly called AD) or even stuff in between. This takes us to the next question...

Why Freestyle?

Fizz has a wide spectrum of good traits that make him work in lots of different positions, as long as you exploit what's good on him for that.

- When building tank, his passive, Nimble Fighter amplifies his resilience against aa dependent champions ( Jax, Master Yi, any adc, etc.). He has AoE slows in his E, Playful / Trickster, and ult, Chum the Waters. He also has damage based off percent missing health on his W, Seastone Trident, which deals good damage to low-hp targets regardless of your build.
As a tank, he's a mobile champion with soft CC and decent DoT that can start a fight and then go back to peel for his carries.

- When building attsp, you exploit the active from Seastone Trident, and any on-hit you can add in to the mix ( Blade of the Ruined King, Wit's End). Making use of his mobility and ignoring of unit colission to stick to your target, while surviving with a bit of tankiness, and amplifying all of that with Chum the Waters.

- When jungling, his DoT from Seastone Trident gives a cheap jungle clear tool. The mobility and two slows make him a decent ganker with decent presence on the map. If building attsp, he has a really fast cleanup speed.

But what really makes this guide Freestyle is the fact that the builds get somewhat intertwined, so you can start building attack speed, then go tank and then sell one item by late game to buy a Zhonya's Hourglass.

On top of that, there's a lack of in-depth guides for his alternative builds, so I figured it should be done. Feedback from any experienced AP Fizz player will be really appreciated!

Pros / Cons

Pros

General: Fun to play, lots of fun mechanics Hard to master (you always have something to practice!) Overall strong champion Jungle: Fast clear speed mid-game Good map presence Two AoE slows Top: Innate autoattack damage reduction Cheap source of harass in melee range Kill potential at level 6

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Cons

General: Hard to use well Runs out of mana easily Might get insulted for not following the meta Jungle: Lacks sustain early on Can be focused and killed when ganking Lacks hard CC Top: Can be kited early on Loses trades against ranged champions

Quick guides for each role

The guide is long, so I added a short summary of how should you play in each role, to make the basics more clear. The idea is that with these and the cheat sheet you should be able to correctly play the build.

Skills

Nimble Fighter:
This passive has two components. First, Fizz can pass through any unit, meaning he can't get stuck between minions, which helps when fighting someone through a big minion wave.

The second part says he recieves reduced damage from basic attacks (aa's). This means he has increased resilience against adc's or the basic attack harass of a ranged top laner, for example.

The whole passive makes him both a good tank and a good lane fighter.

Urchin Strike:
This ability can be used as a damage amplifier, but it's main use is the mobility it gives. As it makes you travel a fixed distance in the direction of a target enemy, you can use it to stay ahead of anyone you want to poke. Also, it can be activated right after you make an autoattack on a target to quickly deal extra damage.

You can only use this to jump walls if you're aiming it at something on the other side of the wall. You CAN'T abuse the fixed distance to cast this on a champion that's between you and a wall and jump to the other side. You'll end up face to face with a wall. This also means, when jungling, you can safely use this spell without fear of going over a wall after casting it on blue buff, for example.

You should max this second or last, because your main mobility source is Playful / Trickster and in some builds your main damage source is Seastone Trident.

Seastone Trident:
The bread n' butter of attsp Fizz. Its active gives raw plain damage for each hit. It's good with the attsp and increases your damage output a bit, but what really gives you damage is the passive.

You deal DoT scaling off of your enemies' missing health, burning for a chunk of health once they are low. It means, sometimes, you'll kill that Lee Sin that escaped with 50 health, and burns super-hard when paired with Ignite or the red Smite.



Playful / Trickster:
This is Fizz's signature move. His troll pole. The reason why he counters many mages and can go in and out of fights. It makes you untargettable for 3/4 of a second and can jump walls with two consecutive jumps. It also has a delayed AoE slow and decent base damage.

Basically, the first cast of the spell does a short jump in the direction of your mouse and makes Fizz invincible for a short period of time. During that time, you can just wait or click move and Fizz will fall to the side where you clicked (or in the spot if you didn't do anything), dealing damage and applying the slow in a medium AoE. Notice that during those 0.75 seconds you can also cast Smite, meaning you can steal dragon / baron with some practice.

BUT! You can re-cast the spell during those 0.75 seconds instead. By doing this, Fizz makes yet another jump, with slightly bigger range. After this jump, he deals damage in a smaller AoE, without the slow.

90% of the time, you'll use the re-cast to escape/chase and wait for the slow when fighting/ganking.

You should max this first because of the shorter cooldown and increased slow. But mainly for the shorter cooldown.



I'm adding a section of every wall that can be jumped by one or both jumps.



Chum the Waters:
As with most champions, Fizz's ultimate is a really strong ability with a long-ish cooldown (more than a minute without CDR). Its primary use is to ensure that a target hit by it will die. It slows in an area and amplifies damage dealt to a single target stuck by it. You also get vision of any champion stuck to it. If you miss, it stays where it landed, aplying the AoE slow and AoE damage/knockup after the same time, but it doesn't amplify any damage.

Notice that it is a really easy to miss skillshot, as it will stop where your mouse was when you casted it (or go max distance if you casted it far away), so it's easy to cast it in melee range only to stay there and make you look like the worst of noobs. So, rule of thumb, always aim it a bit further from where your target is.

As with any ult, max this at levels 6, 11 and 16.

Skill Sequence + Early roles

The skill sequence has three main branches that vary the most for the first few levels (the most important levels!), depending on if you're going jungle ganker, AFK jungle or top.

Jungle ganker:
This means you will gank by level 3, and it's 90% of the games for jungle AP and jungle tank Fizz. You can also gank at level 3 with attsp jungle Fizz, but you should focus on getting the Enchantment: Devourer upgrade and stack it as soon as you buy it.

AFK jungle:
This is when you focus mostly on killing the jungle creeps instead of ganking. You can still gank when a lane is an easy kill, or to secure a dragon or buff steal, but you should try to farm to level 4 before your first back.



Top:
Varies depending on your lane opponent. If you're being harassed too much, or risk being killed in an all-in, you can get your Playful / Trickster at level 2. If you're able to all in early, you can get Urchin Strike instead.

Example if you're not going to all in at level 2.

Summoner Spells

Flash should be taken with 99% of the champions 99% of the times. In the case of Fizz top, I prioritize both having Teleport and a brawl oriented spell like the red Smite or Ignite, that's why I don't pick it. Feel free to go Flash/ Teleport or Flash/ Ignite if that's what suits you though.

Pick Smite whenever you go jungle. You can also pick it in top, since you can steal the enemy jungle and buy Skirmisher's Sabre for some fighting utility.

If you're going top, you should pick Teleport. It allows you to increase your experience by going back to lane faster while keeping some map pressure if your team is losing.

I only recommend Ignite if you plan on killing people early to faceroll them mid-game. Never go Smite/ Ignite, you're not Shaco.

Runes

Realistically, I can't expect anyone to have 5 rune pages for 5 slightly different builds (+1 more page for AP mid/top Fizz), so the best option is to have one or two generic pages that work for a couple of builds and for other champions too.

Marks:
- I pick greater mark of hybrid penetration on the jungle pages because jungle monsters only have around 10-15 armor, so magic penetration is a waste on them, but pure armor penetration wouldn't have much value since most of your damage is magic. You can pick Greater Mark of Attack Speed instead, but I like to use the quints for that.

- On the lane, as most of your damage is magic, Greater Mark of Magic Penetration is viable. Greater Mark of Attack Speed can work too, but it's not as good as in the jungle.

Seals:
- Greater Seal of Armor is a must in the jungle. Jungle monsters deal physical damage, so get some armor and take those hits like a boss. They can also be used in top lane if you know that you will be against ad damage (ranked or draft mode).

- Greater Seal of Scaling Health in lane, as you will rush Frozen Heart unless you're against AP, and against AP the armor will be useless anyways. Greater Seal of Health is an alternative if you want a better early game (pre-6) experience.

Glyphs:
- I always pick 6x Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction, to start with 10% CDR and get to 40% round CDR abruptly. You can run 9x of them if you want to expend those 2 points that go in Sorcery somewhere else, or you can use 3-6x Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction for a smoother transition to 40% (some pros use that, I just don't like those glyphs).




- On the other 3 slots (or on all 9 if you don't have CDR glyphs), you can run Greater Glyph of Ability Power, Greater Glyph of Magic Resist or Greater Glyph of Attack Speed. The attack speed ones are not primary, so they're often subpar, but they can work if you don't need the defensive stats and aren't buying AP.

Quintessences:
- Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed works for any build, but scales best for the ones with many on-hit effects, and is generally better in the jungle.

- Greater Quintessence of Armor if you're going full tank. You can change your seals from armor to health if you're doing this, and you'll get better stats that with armor seals and health quints.

- Greater Quintessence of Ability Power if you're building AP, as you won't scale as well from the other options.

Masteries + Main builds

While rune pages can be compressed, mastery pages can be edited while picking your champion. The best grouping you can do is by the Fizz role you can exploit. This can be Attack speed, jungle AP or Tank.


Attack speed:
In this build, often confusingly called AD, you build attack speed and items with on-hit effects. Your main source of damage is Blade of the Ruined King and the fully stacked Enchantment: Devourer. Other useful items are Wit's End, Trinity Force and Guinsoo's Rageblade.

For the masteries you should focus on the offensive tree, leaving 9 points for some defense. Unfortunately, if you pick the 5% CDR from Sorcery , you should opt out of Fury , as there are many other useful skills in the tree. As you're not building too much AP nor AD, Archmage and Warlord are useless, and Martial Mastery and Butcher are really attractive.

The two pages I use for this build only differ in 6 points (4x Sorcery +2x Tough Skin in the jungle or 4x Fury +2x Recovery in top lane), but they are very important ones.

Jungle AP:
In this build, you're essentialy tweaking a regular Fizz AP build to fit the jungle. This means little change in item priorities, but the masteries become much more important, as they define if you can or can't survive in the jungle.

I picked a generic AP mastery page and tweaked it for Fizz jungle. Double-Edged Sword is good on melee champions, and Feast is not worth it if you're going to jungle (it's optimal if you're farming in lane). You'll also need Tough Skin in the defensive tree, and I didn't pick Bladed Armor because Unyielding is just too good on Fizz.




Tank:
In this build, you focus on dealing damage with the basic scaling on your abilities and the AoE of Enchantment: Cinderhulk. You can build a Blade of the Ruined King or Liandry's Torment to deal a bit more of damage, but that shouldn't be your focus.

As in the jungle you need the offensive stats to kill the monsters, while in top you can just go defensive and farm, the masteries get really variable. You can still use the jungle ones for top too, but you shouldn't go full defense masteries in the jungle.

In the jungle, I picked both Martial Mastery and Arcane Mastery for better early damage. Feast is a must in top lane, but not so much in the jungle, as you kill less things. Tough Skin in the defensive tree because it's really useful, but I didn't pick Bladed Armor because I like Unyielding on Fizz, and in early clears the 21 points in offense are enough to do most jungle paths.

In top, I chose a generic heavy on defense mastery (7/23/0), with Feast for sustain and Double-Edged Sword for a cheap increase in damage. In the defensive tree it's just whatever suits you, as long as you understand what you're prioritizing. Tenacious because CC counters Fizz, Evasive over Reinforced Armor because of the AoE meta, Oppression because Frozen Heart perma-activates it and it's worth around 2-3 armor+mr. You can use a 21/9/0 variant of the jungle tank if you plan on playing aggresive on the first couple of levels (you only change Tough Skin for Recovery ).

Items

Jungle pathing

There are two main jungle starts, and three main jungle paths. Deciding between these 3 will define where you will be able to gank first and which allies you can trust more (either trust them to win lane or trust them to gank them).

1. Gromp ( Smite) - Blue buff - Red buff ( Smite) - Gank OR Back to base

This is the standar start for tanks. I always take this path for Fizz AP and sometimes for tank, but it's only optimal for tanks/APs that don't rely on their basic attacks for their damage. With this start you end up ready to gank on the red buff side of the map.

2. Krugs ( Smite) - Red buff - Blue buff ( Smite) - Gank OR Back to base

This is a really underestimated jungle start, in part because you're not smiting the red buff, which looks like losing lots of potential health. But if you rely on your autoattacks for damage, the krugs' Smite passive is crazy. It prevents lots of damage if you focus on stunning the big monster of each camp (look at the charges on your passive bar, when you're at 5 charges on the krug face passive, make sure to hit the big monster on the camp). This often means ending up with more health and being able to gank. I take this path with Fizz tank when I want to gank on the blue buff side.

Both (1) and (2) give you barely enough money for a smite upgrade and 2 Health Potions.

3. Krugs ( Smite) - Red buff - Blue buff ( Smite) - Scuttle crab - Gromp / Wolves ( Smite) - Wolves / Gromp - Back to base

This is an extention of (2), that sets up your AFK farm with attsp Fizz. By starting like this you get enough gold for the smite upgrade, 2/3 Health Potions and a Vision Ward, on top of being level 4 by then. Remember to upgrade your W again at level 3 for this to be of any use.

Combos (Ganking)

Ganking with Fizz is pretty straightforward, and the only "trick" there is to it is a couple of combinations of your abilities that you should know when to use.

1. The close-up slow:
Urchin Strike+ Seastone Trident -> basic attack -> Playful / Trickster (with slow)

With this combo you get close to whoever you want killed with Urchin Strike, to set up a Playful / Trickster for the slow. After that, just autoattack them while your ally helps you.

You may have to use this mostly after the champion you're ganking used his mobility spell, to catch up to them.

2. The "already close" killer
Playful / Trickster (with slow) -> Seastone Trident + basic attacks -> Urchin Strike + more basic attacks

This combo assumes you're already in close range, so you can safely slow them and then deal damage while they try to walk away, then Urchin Strike them when they walk too far away or Flash for more basic attacks.

Practice positioning your Playful / Trickster so they can't just walk away and have to Flash. This also means waiting for them to use their mobility spells and using either (1) or (2).

3. Enhance your combos with your ult for a kill combo
a) Chum the Waters -> Combo (2)
b) Combo (1) -> Chum the Waters

Use Chum the Waters when you plan on killing people. Other than that, only use it if you are in a really tight escape or really need (and can) save someone.

Remember, Chum the Waters is very easy to miss, and has a decently long cooldown, so wait until your enemy wasted all their mobility before using it.

3.b) Is specially useful because it makes your ult harder to miss, and your enemies will probably use all of their mobility once you do it.

4. The Q+R surprise
Urchin Strike -> Chum the Waters (mid-air) -> Combo (2)

By casting Chum the Waters mid-air, you reduce the chances whoever you're jumping to dodges the combo, as people tend to Flash after you hit them, to dodge the Playful / Trickster, and they may notice too late that you threw your ult.

Early game top lane

Your first 2 or 3 levels will be hard as Fizz top, as you'll lack on mobility and won't have any all-in potential until level 3-4 (and most times you'll have to wait until level 6). I made a couple of bullet points to streamline what you should take in account during early lane phase.

Play passive at level 1
You should try to farm staying behind your minion wave, and only hit back when you're being harassed by melee attacks, as you'll probably win the trade with your DoT from Seastone Trident, the damage from your minions and Nimble Fighter.

Choose if you should play aggresive by level 2
Once you got to level 2, you can either choose to upgrade Urchin Strike for an all-in, or Playful / Trickster to keep playing passive, depending on if you can win the trade, if you have Ignite and if your opponent has Ignite. If your enemy has Ignite, or if you're already low on health, just don't all-in. Keep farming and maybe all in at level 6 after your first back.

Don't over-use your abilities
You'll run out of mana if you abuse your Playful / Trickster, especially if you maximize it too soon (hence I recommend having 2 or 3 points into Seastone Trident by level 5 instead). Know when it's worth to dodge a skill and don't "poke" with it as if you were Lee Sin playing Q->W into a minion.

*After level 6 just either all-in people, farm passively or gank other lanes. Fizz is mostly an all-in champion, and he doesn't have any sustain to make an even trade be worth it. Let's say you can be a bit more brawl-oriented if building tank with Blade of the Ruined King, but by that time in your build you'll be of better use by going with teammates.

Mid/Late game

Teamfighting:

After lane phase is over, your better option is grouping with your teammates and participating in teamfights. The main responsabilities you can have within your team will be Initiating, Protecting your carries, Nuking an enemy carry and Zoning their heavy hitters. Which one you should do depends on each game and team composition, so make sure to know when to do one or the other before going in against a full CC team.

Initiating:
As a good all-in champion, Fizz has good initiation. If you catch a bad positioned carry with Chum the Waters when your team is around, he's a dead man, wether you're AP, attsp or tank Fizz, mostly because your team will do their job too. Do this if you catch an enemy off guard, or if you're the only initiator in your team (you're good at initiating but depend heavily on their bad positioning).

Protecting your carries:
Do this mostly if your support isn't protecting your carry properly, or if you can nuke the enemy assassin. You're good at killing people, not so much at peeling/disengaging. Just use your Playful / Trickster if it's a tank and save your Chum the Waters for their heavy hitter.

Nuking an enemy carry:
This is only an option if you are building AP or attack speed, and is only mandatory if you're AP. Just remember, if you missed Chum the Waters that's it, unless you're extremely fed you won't be able to nuke anyone and should try to peel and disengage.

Also, don't do this as attsp Fizz if they have too much CC, you won't be able to deal the damage before getting nuked.

Zoning their heavy hitters:
This will be your role as tank Fizz if your team is doing good in teamfights. You'll soak damage, and if their adc/apc tries to get past you, you Chum the Waters onto them and make them easy prey.

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Splitpushing:

Fizz isn't the best splitpusher of LoL. If he doesn't build AP, he won't deal too much damage to turrets nor have good waveclear. And if he builds AP you'll likely be better trying to snipe people walking alone if not teamfighting.

That said, it might happen that you face a team that has godly teamfights that you can't win (mostly because you or your team suck), and you might want to avoid them at all. In this case, if you are not AP Fizz and got Teleport, you can abuse your mobility to push a lane and then escape before anyone comes. Remember to only do it if your Teleport is up, in case the enemy team tries to 4v5 yours, as you may catch people off guard with it.

This may confuse the other team, forcing them into bad decisions like not checking a dragon / baron (or only sending 2-3 people to check it), backing in bad positions or leaving you to break a tower.

Just don't do it if you have a teammate that's good at it and has a champion that's better at it (like Nasus or Tryndamere).

To do list

And that's it! Hope the guide is useful, and please comment with any doubt or suggestion you have. This guide is still lacking in some parts and I'm not a perfect Fizz player. I'll leave a to do list here, so I can remember what should I add any time I check the guide. Thanks for reading!