As many of you maybe have noticed, the changes to our beloved scarecrow Fiddlesticks seem a bit weak on paper. Some even go as far to claim this rework of Fiddlesticks of a straight nerf to an already underpowered champion. Classick has made a rather lengthy post detailing the exact intent of all of the changes to clear up a bit of the confusion.
Ok let me explain the fiddle changes in detail for you guys considering how big this thread has become. It was my mistake for making such an ambiguous post originally.
We found fiddlesticks to be too much of a "all or nothing" character, where he either snow balls out of control or is virtually worthless throughout the course of a game. This makes him a very practical low tier stomper and a character who is very sub-par in mid to high tier play. So with this in mind we wanted to make his abilities more consistent and make the character overall feel better when his ultimate is on cooldown.
General
- Base Armor increased to 14.5 from 8.25
- Armor per level increased to 3.5 from 3
- Movement Speed increased to 310 from 300
This was a quality of life change to fiddlesticks overall. His starting armor was just too low, we wanted to make him a more sturdy character in general, and the power of his Drain was preventing us from doing so. He also had a very slow MS making it hard for him to kite during a team fight because everyone would chase him down and kill him very quickly due to his low armor and movespeed. Overall these changes are to help with Fiddle's vulnerability when his ultimate was on CD or when he is ganked.
Fear
- Range increased to 575 from 525
- Mana cost decreased to 65/75/85/95/105 from 80/90/100/110/120
Just a good buff for him, this helps him poke in and out of a team fight with his Fear and Dark Wind when he is not using his ultimate and helps his kiting ability.
Drain
- AP ratio increased to .5 from .48
- Life Steal amount adjusted to 60/65/70/75/80% from 100%
- Leash Range decreased to 650 from 700
In general we felt Fiddle's drain was flat out too powerful, and we wanted to spread his power out from his drain making his usability much higher so that when there is an Alistar on the other team constantly interrupting your drains you do not feel useless in general. The AP ratio change was entirely a readability change, it had nothing to do with power level changes.
Dark Wind
- Damage adjusted to 65/85/105/125/145 from 100
- AP ratio increased to .45 from .35
- Now bounces 5 times at all levels
- Cooldown adjusted to 15/14/13/12/11 from 14
- Projectile speed decreased to 1100 from 1200
Dark Wind now bounces 5 times at level 1, this is a buff to the very early part of Fiddle's jungling route. This allows him to clear the initial jungle faster but he will not be as safe due to the drain nerf, but he does start out with a much higher base armor as well.
Projectile speed decreased on Dark Wind is actually a buff in big team fights, the slower it bounces the longer it can keep a target silenced overall. So if it bounces very quickly there is a high chance that it will hit the same target twice in a very short amount of time, overlapping the already current silence.
We changed the way Dark Wind works internally, so that Dark Wind now has a higher chance to bounce the maximum amount of times in comparison to the old Dark Wind which on average would not reach the max bounce potential during a team fight due to multiple reasons. Dark Wind is much more practical for harassment as well now, it was a very low chance that you would actually hit a target 2 times or more during the early to mid part of the game(that's assuming you even max dark wind first). Now you will hit the same target twice quite often and do more damage with those two bounces as the game goes on. This makes him a much more practical solo lane caster, where he's not so dependent on his drain which could be countered if the opposing laner had a stun, he now has a pretty dependable form of harassment and his performance in lane is not entirely determined by his match up.
The cooldown was decreased quite significantly making it able to be used much more often during late game team fights, overall putting out more silences and damage considering the information in the above paragraphs.
Crowstorm
- Damage decreased to 125/225/325 from 150/250/350
- Cooldown adjusted to 150/140/130 from 150
- AP ratio increased to .4 from .35
We also felt Crowstorm in general was a little bit too strong damage wise, making Fiddlesticks too much of a "ultimate on wheels". So we adjusted the cooldown to allow Crowstorm to be used more often as the game progresses, so that there are not periods of the time in the game where your team is playing 4v5 becuase your Crowstorm is on cooldown.
We decided to see how these changes pan out before we bump up his AP ratios much more than they were previously, Fiddle was doing very well in all of our play tests. If it turns out that he is still not at a power level that is desired, we can look at increasing his AP ratios some more. I like Fiddlestick as much as you guys he was the the first character I ever played in LoL, but an overpowered Fiddlesticks is a very terrible experience to encounter and we want to take steps to prevent that.
