Abilities

Items

Fiora - The Grand Duelist High Damage, Healing, Mobility, Scaling Split-pushing: 9/10 Mobility: 8/10 Viability: 6/10 Introduction: Fiora is a mid-late game bruiser that excels in split-pushing and dueling. She requires good movement and positioning to get the most damage out. She is easy to pick up but has a high skill ceiling. Currently is a good counter-pick into most bruisers and tanks, but meta champions can beat you easier than you can like Camille, Malphite, Darius.

Pros

+ Strong duelist + Great split-pushing + High mobility + Excellent scaling

Fiora main thing is her passive, Duelist's Dance. It allows for great damage and outplay potential. Combined with the rest of your abilities means you have the potential to be an unstoppable split-pusher, which forces the enemy team to send more than one to deal with you.

Cons

- Mediocre teamfighting - Weak when behind - Mana problems - Hard champion to master - Squishy without items

While being an excellent duelist, Fiora struggles when there are more people to shut her down. With little AoE and tankiness, you have to approach team fights cautiously. Adding on, if you get behind you become useless until you can get items.

Conqueror is at its best when you have a lot of extended fights, where you can make use of the stacking AD and healing. Fiora is great at stacking Conqueror and does well in extended fights, making it a standard keystone. You can take Conqueror in all matchups.

Grasp of the Undying is a more early game type rune, excelling at short trades, poking, and sustain than all-in potential. Grasp of the Undying does well in every melee matchup except Darius or in matchups where you can't stack Conqueror like Lucian or Teemo.

Fleet Footwork is a more utility rune, as it provides movement speed and sustain but no damage. Fleet Footwork works well in matchups that can kite you like Lucian or Vayne, or if you want to farm and scale.

Press the Attack is THE early game rune, synergizing very well with Bladework and it makes your levels one to three very strong. It is best taken against squishy champions like Teemo or Vladimir, where they don't build armor early and lets you easily win trades with one good engage. It gets worse as they have more armor though, so if you're not confident in winning your lane, then Conqueror will always be a better choice.

Precision Tree

Precision is the fighter path, with all of the runes allowing you to stay in the fight longer or improve your fighting power. You will go Precision in almost every game because runes like Presence of Mind and Conqueror are game-changing.

★ Presence of Mind gives mana regen and mana restoration on kill, making it a great choice to deal with mana problems. The mana restoration on kill makes it great if you need the extra mana to shove out another minion wave, or escape with Lunge. Overall a safer choice than Triumph, but Triumph can snowball and outplay better.

★ Very good rune when you dive a lot or you build health items like Sterak's Gage or Spirit Visage. It will restore 12% of your maximum health on a takedown, making it an ideal choice for going deep into the enemy team. It is great while snowballing as the extra gold from takedowns adds up quickly. The only downside is that you will run out of mana fast if you spam abilities, so take Manaflow Band if you think mana will be a problem.

★ Boosts your split-pushing and wave clear, best taken against team comps with little to no CC. Helps with hitting vitals faster, as the extra attack speed makes your auto-attacks more fluid.

★ This is essential into heavy CC champions like Ashe, Morgana, etc. Not worth taking if there's only one champion with CC on the enemy team.

The best scaling out of the three in the third row of the Precision tree. It's great into winning lane matchups like Kled or Aatrox, and the enemy team has little CC.

★ The rune that gets better the lower you get. It should be chosen in almost all matchups except against champions with executes like Garen.

★ Does less damage than Last Stand but only requires the enemy champion to be low, not you. This is ideal in matchups with executes like Garen or Cho'Gath. Coup de Grace is good in winning matchups also, as you'll more likely be ahead.

Sorcery Tree

Sorcery is about scaling and unique tools that no other path has. When you want to scale, or need some more utility, this is the path to choose.

★ Great synergy with Ignite. The movement speed you get from using summoner spells is very good as movement speed in general is good to have. Take Nimbus Cloak with Ignite against other Nimbus Cloak users like Darius or Tryndamere.

Great into magic damage as it is a mini Hexdrinker. Take if the enemy laner and the jungler do primarily magic damage.

Is similar to Presence of Mind but doesn't require you to be in combat. Take if you're going Triumph 100% of the time.

★ It's great for the ability haste and the cooldown reduction on abilities on kill. Take if your build is lacking ability haste.

★ This rune is the scaling rune, giving you extra damage as long as the game gets longer. Take this if you're planning to go to 30 minutes, otherwise, you should probably choose a different rune.

Resolve Tree

Resolve is all about survivability, and it does that pretty well. This is the path you'll want to go if you want to survive the laning phase or be tankier.

★ Really good due to how destroying turret plating gets you ahead fast. It also boosts your tower taking by a good amount.

★ Against champions with a lot of poke early game or with a DoT effect, Second Wind mitigates a lot of damage from them. Take this against poke like Vayne or against DoT like Mordekaiser or Darius.

★ If you're facing a combo-oriented champion like Renekton or Riven, this is the rune to take. It will reduce their damage early, allowing you to win trades easier.

★ Gives you more health and increases your maximum health by a percentage. Take if you're going Grasp of the Undying or building health items like Randuin's Omen or Spirit Visage.

★ Increases your healing and healing given to you. Take with Spirit Visage or healing supports like Soraka or Sona.

Inspiration Tree

It doesn't have the scaling of Sorcery or the survivability of Resolve, but it provides a good balance of the two. Inspiration allows you to snowball and hit item power spikes sooner.

★ Allows you skip boots in your build so you can get to your core items faster. If you're going Inspiration secondary path, then this should be taken almost always.

★ Very strong sustain tool in lane, it allows you to basically have a mini Corrupting Potion alongside your starting item. This is rune you should take against Inspiration users like Irelia or Jax, or if you want a stronger laning phase before you first back.

Reduces your summoner spells and items cooldown by a good amount, it has more use when you have more items with cooldowns like Guardian Angel or Sterak's Gage.

Give you the effects of potions and biscuits immediately, with some movement speed as a bonus. It can be used to trick your opponent into taking a fight that you'll come out ahead because of the burst healing.

Domination Tree

It's all about damage and rewarding you for killing. Take if you know you'll snowball as it will reward you for it. It has good scaling but worse than Sorcery.

★ Very good sustain tool in lane, allows you out sustain with it. You should take this almost always if you're going Domination as the sustain is too good.

★ Great in higher elos and competive settings where warding is more common. Taking Oracle Lens and Control Wards will help in stacking this rune faster.

★ Leaves a ghost poro which gives vision and is untargetable. It's a good option if you ward a lot or get deep vision as it extends the vision you place down by a good amount.

The snowball option out of the three, relies on kills to get stronger. Great in solo-queue, outclassed in high elo or a competive setting. Is good if you're in an easy matchup like Kled or Aatrox.

★ The healing now works on everything including vitals and autos making this a great source of extra healing. Taking with Legend: Bloodline might be overkill, but with Legend: Alacrity or Legend: Tenacity it is great. Overall a great alternative for scaling if you don't want to go Gathering Storm.

More movement speed is nice for roaming and map pressure. Take if you don't want healing but instead want increased mobility and pressure.

Stat Shards

You want to take the attack speed shard if you are not taking Legend: Alacrity and the adaptive shard if you are taking it. Armor shard against an AD laner and magic resist shard against an Ap laner.

SUMMONER SPELLS - FLASH: Flash is the go-to summoner spell for any champion, as it's the best defensive and offensive summoner spell to have. You can't go wrong with taking flash as it is so versatile. TELEPORT: The usual summoner spell for most top laners, this allows you to have more map pressure at the cost of not having a summoner spell that you can use in a fight like Ignite or Exhaust. Teleport allows you to teleport to fights that can allow you to swing the fight in your favor. IGNITE: Ignite is the alternative to Teleport that allows more kill pressure and snowballing in lane, but with the tradeoff of less map pressure. It became better when Teleport has a longer cooldown, but wouldn't recommend as the map pressure of Teleport is more useful in the long run then Ignite's kill pressure.

Starting Items

Doran's Blade Doran's Blade is great for being aggressive as it gives you essential stats for the laning phase. You should start this if you're laning against a melee champion, or you're confident in your ability to win lane.

Doran's Shield Doran's Shield is when you want to ignore the laning phase and farm up for the mid game. It's better in situations where you want to farm and outscale instead of winning like Lucian or Renekton.

First backs

Pickaxe Pickaxe is ideal for a first back as it gives you early AD and allows you to build into Tiamat or Ironspike Whip. Since you vital healing is based on your AD, getting AD is effective to sustain yourself.

Vampiric Scepter Vampiric Scepter is an alternative to Pickaxe if you didn't have enough gold to buy it or you need to sustain on minions. It's better if you want to just farm instead of trading.

Tear of the Goddess It allows you to build into Manamune, fixing most mana problems and has great scaling. Build if your lane state allows you win without getting early AD like against Dr. Mundo.

Cull Cull is if the lane state is even to get a gold advantage over your lane if you can't buy a Pickaxe first back. Matchups like Camille or Jax are examples of this.

Core Items

Ravenous Hydra Ravenous Hydra is core for Fiora as it gives a big chunk of ad and life steal. It builds off of Tiamat and gives you the waveclear that you need. A good strategy is to take trades with your opponent, then life steal back up on the next wave. It makes it so that they have to also have sustain or they will slowly lose health as they have lower sustain then you.

Stridebreaker Stridebreaker is a great option to deal with champions that outrange and kite you out like Kayle or Vayne. It slows them and gives you movement speed so it makes it hard for them to escape.

Anti-Burst Items

Sterak's Gage Sterak's Gage is great for the health and the damage that it gives. The most important part of Sterak's Gage is the shield. The shield makes it easier to survive large amounts of burst. Get if there's a lot of assassins like Zed or Talon.

Death's Dance Death's Dance is great as a general armor item as it has some burst protection and healing on takedown. Take if you need some armor.

Maw of Malmortius Maw of Malmortius is basically a Sterak's Gage that's good against magic damage burst instead of general burst. It does give CDR unlike Sterak's Gage but the passive is more situational, only being actived against magic damage. Get if there's an AP assassin threat on the enemy team like Akali or Ekko. You can get a Hexdrinker early if you're losing against a mage like Kennen or Vladimir.

Offensive Items

Manamune Manamune is a scaling damage item that provides you with the most damage and mana you can get in an item. If you're planning to build this then you should first back with a Tear of the Goddess.

Chempunk Chainsword Chempunk Chainsword is a great item to build against healing champions like Vladimir and Aatrox. The 60% grievous wounds reduces their healing by a lot.

Defensive Items

Guardian Angel Guardian Angel is good for situations where you are fed carry on your team and you don't want die to give up your bounty. It's also good when there's going to be a big teamfight where having a second life is great.

Randuin's Omen Randuin's Omen is a good buy against 2 or more crit champions like Yasuo or Tryndamere. The active is good for the AoE slow and helps to stick on people.

Spirit Visage Spirit Visage is if you need magic resist but they can't burst you down fast so you can utilise the extra healing that it gives. It has great synergy with healing supports like Soraka and Yuumi. Revitalize is also good to take if you're planning to go Spirit Visage.

#1. Grand Challenge 6 / 11 / 16 #2. Lunge 1 / 4 / 5 / 7 / 9 #3. Bladework 3 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 13 #4. Riposte 2 / 14 / 15 / 17 / 18

> > > Q max is always good due to it being your mobility and your main way to hit vitals making it an obvious choice to max. Maxing E is next due to it boosting your damage and split-pushing potential. Maxing W is last because you'll only get one parry in per fight usually so the reduced cooldown doesn't mean much while the extra damage you get on parry won't out dps your Q or E. Put a point in your ultimate whenever you can as most champions get benefits for maxing their ultimate and Fiora is no different. Level one you should level Lunge as it allows for early trading and mobility. Riposte is next to level up as in lane blocking one spell/auto-attack is huge especially if you hit them with parry. Level three you should level your Bladework as it is the only basic ability you haven't leveled yet.

Fiora identifies the weak spots - or vitals - in the defenses of all enemy champions she comes close to. If she manages to attack her enemy's weak spot, Fiora deals 2.5% (+4.5% per 100 bonus attack damage) of the target's maximum Health as bonus true damage for that attack while gaining 40-115 (at levels 1-18) Health and 20 (+10 × Grand Challenge's rank)% movement speed which decays over 1.75 seconds. Fiora reveals a new weak spot whenever she attacks one, or if 15 seconds pass without it being attacked. Duelist's Dance is the main thing special about Fiora's kit so all your abilities revolve around this. When you're in range of an enemy champion, a weak spot, or vital shows. Hitting a vital heals you and does bonus true damage, then another one will spawn on a different side of the champion. Vitals increase your damage output and allows you to deal with tanks, so it's vital to hit vitals to win fights.

Tips and Tricks

★ Vitals can only spawn if in a certain range and if an enemy champion can see you.

★ You can reset the vital on an enemy champion by walking out of vision and reentering back into vision

★ Vitals can be hit with item actives like Stridebreaker and Ironspike Whip.

★ Vitals take 1.75 seconds before you can hit it.

★ You don't need to hit the middle of a vital to proc it.

Flash Vital Inputs: > Difficulty: Three Uses: Positioning for vitals, faster ultimate proc, hitting vitals against walls.

Play Video

Vital Spawning Pattern ★ Vitals spawning isn't random but has a pattern. The first vital will always be on the opposite side that you spawn. Then the next vital will either spawn on the top or right side if you started on the red side, or it will spawn on the bottom or left side if you started on the blue side. It will always repeat this pattern.

★ Sides where the first vital could spawn if you started on the red side

★ Sides where the first vital could spawn if you started on the blue side

Fiora lunges in a target direction before striking a nearby enemy, dealing 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 (+0.95 / 1.0 / 1.05 / 1.1 / 1.15 per bonus attack damage) physical damage and applying on-hit effects. Lunge prioritizes enemy champions, and tries to hit enemy weak spots. This is your main way to hit vitals in fights. This is a dash so it can be stopped by abilities like Poppy's Steadfast Presence. In lane, you will use this for poking at vitals to lower their health for an all-in. The cooldown is high if you don't hit an enemy so try to hit a minion closest to your turret if you see their jungler coming for a gank.

Tips & Tricks

★ Lunge's strike range is longer than your auto attack range.

★ You can do a short Lunge by using your dash a short distance. This is useful if you want to hit a vital to poke but need to be safer.

★ You can buffer an auto-attack after you Lunge for more damage when poking.

Walls that Fiora can Q through

Lunge Priority List Vitals of enemy champions that you ult Vitals of champions Enemy champions that you ult Champions who would die to Lunge The nearest champion Enemies that would die to Lunge Turrets Wards The closest enemy

Fiora enters a defensive stance, parrying all damage, debuffs, and hard crowd control abilities for the next 0.75 seconds. After she's done parrying, Fiora attacks in a target direction, dealing 110 / 150 / 190 / 230 / 270 (+100% of ability power) magic damage to all enemies in a line while slowing the movement and attack speed of the first enemy champion she strikes by 50% for 2 seconds. If Fiora parries at least one immobilizing effect, Riposte stuns the target instead. This is your main way to mitigate damage and outplay people. It has a high cooldown so using it in lane and missing is the opponent's time to start a trade. It is one of the strongest abilities in lane as 110 base magic damage is enough to win most trades if you parry an ability with it. Make sure to use your best judgment with this ability. Don't Riposte as a panic option when you get surprised. This is a hard ability to master so don't be discouraged if you don't parry abilities perfectly 100% of the time.

Tips and Tricks

★ Riposte is a projectile, so Wind Wall can block it.

★ Riposte can't block turret shots.

Slide Parry Inputs: > Difficulty: Two Uses: Engaging, getting through abilities/cc.

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Fiora gains 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90% bonus attack speed and 25 bonus range on her next two basic attacks. The first cannot crit but slows her target by 30% for 1 second, while the second is guaranteed to crit, dealing 160 / 170 / 180 / 190 / 200% damage. This ability is your main way to take turrets and is a way to push in the wave while being mana heavy. It's an auto-attack reset so it works well with Grand Challenge so you can reset your autos and slows your opponent to hit the vitals faster. It gives 25 more range on your autos so it can help to kill the opponent if your auto attack range was not able to reach.

Tips & Tricks

Fast Combo Inputs: > > > > Difficulty: Two Uses: Burst, trading, fast Conqueror/Press the Attack proc.

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Passive: Duelist's Dance's bonus movement speed is increased to 20 / 25 / 30%. Active: Fiora targets an enemy champion, highlighting all four of their Vitals and granting Duelist's Dance's movement speed bonus for the next 8 seconds. If she's able to destroy all four weak spots, or if she destroys at least one before her target dies, Fiora creates a large zone under her enemy that heals Fiora and her allied champions for 80 / 110 / 140 (+0.6 per bonus attack damage) Health per second over the next 2 seconds, plus 1 second for every Vital Fiora strikes beyond the first. This ability is amazing for turning fights around. It's not an ultimate that does damage, it allows you to do a lot of damage. When in duels hitting all four vitals is essential for winning fights. When you either hit all four vitals, or you hit one vital and they die, it will grant a healing zone that you and your teammates can use.

Tips & Tricks

★ It gives you movement speed when you use it, so you can ult to escape if needed.

★ Prioritize hitting the vitals the furthest or the vitals closest to the wall first, as they are easier for your opponent to prevent you from hitting them.

Fast Ultimate Proc Inputs: > > > Difficulty: Three Uses: Burst, efficient ultimate proc.

Play Video

The laning phase is critical as it determines who gets momentum and who doesn't. Fiora can win lane or play it safe as she can do both depending on the matchup. Remember that winning the lane doesn't always win you the game, so if you get behind don't give up as there's always a chance for a comeback.


Matchup Sheet

At the moment this is my updated opinions on matchups. Click here

General Tips

★ A huge part of top lane is learning the opponent's power spikes and the major ones are right at the beginning. The main power spikes in the laning phase with most champions are at level two, level three, and level six. Playing around when you or your opponent will reach a power spikes will allow you to get favorable trades.

★ Something to look out for in lane before going for any poke or trade is to see what abilities they have to counter your poke or force a trade like Counter Strike, Disdain, or Facebreaker. You'll want to bait these abilities out so they can't use them when you go for the trade or poke, forcing them to take damage. If they use an ability on the minion wave like Cull the Meek or Decimate, look for a trade as they will be down an ability to fight you.

★ Minions do a lot of damage early, so reducing the amount you take while forcing your opponent to take more is a great way to ensure that trades will be in your favor. One way to reduce the damage taken by minions is to poke then walk into the brushes to reset the minion aggro.

★ In heavy poke matchups that are hard like Vayne or Gangplank, it is vital to minimize the amount of poke you take from them. You can give up a few minions so that you don't take damage. In these matchups, you want to freeze the wave by your tower so that you can farm safely, and stay healthy so they can't snowball.



Fiora Laning Tips

★ Levels one and two are pretty strong for Fiora, as your passive and Lunge do a lot of damage early, while Riposte does 110 base damage and can negate one spell making trading easy.

★ Use your Lunge to poke them when they go for a minion. This forces a situation where they either take damage or give up cs. Remember to be unpredictable with your Lunge, if you always use it at the same timing they will adapt and punish you for it. Short Lunge and walking up aggressively are two ways to mix it up.

★ Riposte is a very strong tool, as hitting your opponent with it makes it hard for them to trade back, especially if you parry an ability or auto-attack with it. Like with most long cooldown abilities, it shouldn't be thrown out randomly to win trades. Use it when you have the greatest chance for it to hit.

★ Preemptively positioning yourself where the next vital spawns is important to maximize your trading. You get movement speed when you hit a vital so positioning around the next vital shouldn't be difficult. Same as with Lunge, don't be predictable with your movement, as they will punish you for doing so.



Wave Management and Minions

★ There are 3 main wave management techniques, slow pushing, fast pushing, and freezing. It is essential to learn how to manage the wave as it will help you in other aspects like avoiding ganks, winning fights, and gaining gold/experience advantages.

Slow pushing

★ Slow pushing is when you want a big minion wave. You can achieve a slow push by having any number of minion advantage. This is used to create a large amount of pressure, with the cost of time. ★ Slow pushing allows for you to trade easily in your wave because you have more minions to defend you than your opponent. ★ This is great to pressure a tower, mostly because the enemy team will lose a lot of gold and experience if they don't clear the wave.

Fast pushing

★ Fast pushing is when you shove the wave as hard as you can into the enemy tower. It is used to quickly pressure so that you can do something else like recall or ward. ★ Fast pushing will usually result in a small punish, but allows the wave to slow push back to you if you shoved the whole wave into the tower's range.

Freezing

★ Freezing the wave is when the amount of minions is greater than yours but the wave is outside the tower range. The enemy minion wave should have three-four more caster minions than yours. ★ You want to freeze the wave if you want to play safe because the enemy laner has to walk more towards your side of the map to farm. ★ You also have an easier time to all-in as they have to walk longer to get to their tower than you do. If you're stronger than your laner then freezing can be an effective strategy as they will have to overextend to get the minions and it leaves them open for ganks.

Minion Tips

★ If both minion waves have the same amount of minions, the side with their minions closer to their spawning side will slow push to the other side. This is called the Even Minion Rule.

★ You can determine which side will push later into the game by left-clicking on a minion. If there is a number there that means the minion has buffs.

This is where Fiora shines the best and when split-pushing is most effective. Split-pushing is where you push on one side of the map to create pressure to force the enemy team to send people to deal with you, allowing your team to pressure the other side of the map. Your goal is to make the enemy team waste time trying to stop you, while your team is getting pressure. ★ When split-pushing you want to be looking at the map at much as possible, looking at where the enemy team is and more importantly, who's missing. This makes it harder for you to get caught off guard if they try to send the whole team to deal with you. Warding will help you see the enemy team before they come, making it harder for them to catch you. ★ When someone decides to answer to your split, you have many options. One could be to dive them, which if successful will force them to send another person, making it easy for your team to take an objective on the other side of the map. You could also farm jungle camps to gain gold and experience leads if you can't dive the person matching your split. Flanking behind the enemy team is an option if you can't farm camps or dive the person matching your split. Make sure you have an Oracle Lens or a Control Ward so the enemy team doesn't know that you're coming.

Image sources are from Dignitas

Fiora does good in the late game due to her fantastic scaling, but this the part of the game where mistakes can cost you a lot. You want to keep splitting but be very careful as you don't want to get picked off, or let your team get outnumbered at an important objective.

Teamfighting as Fiora mostly revolves around bursting an important carry on the enemy team, or peeling for your carries with Riposte, and then using your ult to burst and get the healing zone for your teammates. You should only try to team fight if you can't end while splitting, or there's an important objective coming up, and you need to be there.

Team fighting is tough to learn but there are a few tips that are useful to know. ★ Keep track of items and cooldowns like Flash. This will help to figure out who to focus in a fight first in order to come out on top in the end. If they have items like Guardian Angel or Stopwatch, it will be much harder to kill them. Summoner spells like Flash and Exhaust also affect the outcome of fights. ★ Don't engage first, wait for important spells and cooldowns to be used first. If you dive in first trying to kill the important carry, you'll most likely get CC'ed and bursted down, leaving your team to fight a 4v5 without you. Wait until your frontline engages, or one of your teammates, then go in. ★ If you can, flanking is a great option for winning team fights. It makes you the center of attention, forcing them to turn on you and not on your team. If you encounter an enemy champion while you are preparing to flank, then you should have an easy time dueling them. Having items like Guardian Angel and Stopwatch makes it harder for the enemy team to kill you.

★ The most important thing late game is to not get picked off as if you do the enemy team will have an easier time getting objectives or even end the game. As long as you're applying pressure without dying and keeping vision up, you are doing your job as a split-pusher.

That's the end of my Fiora guide! Any feedback is welcome. If you liked this Fiora guide, please consider liking. I do stream if you want to see some Fiora gameplay. My Twitch


Big thanks to Jovy for making the banners for this guide!