If you’ve noticed that Fizz has been steamrolling you harder than usual in solo queue lately, don’t worry, it’s not because you suddenly forgot how to play against him. Well, maybe you did, but there’s another reason, too.
Fizz was buffed last week with League of Legends Patch 8.15, and it turns out the buffs were maybe just a little too extreme. They were so extreme, in fact, that Riot is planning some nerfs for him already, according to a tweet from Riot staffer Richard Henkel.
Basically all of his key damage was buffed, and it was buffed by a lot. His Seastone Trident active and on-hit base damage were raised, as well as the AP scaling of both. And Chum the Waters, his ultimate ability, was given big, juicy AP scaling buffs to every single facet of the ability, including the Guppy, Chomper, and the Gigalodon.
While Henkel didn’t specify what exactly is coming for Fizz in future patches, we’re still happy, because any nerf would help. After the patch went live, Fizz’s winrate shot up from a sub-par 47 percent all the way to an incredible 53 percent, according to North American League stats site Champion.gg. This means he went from one of the worst performing mid lane champions in the entire game, out of 42 champions, to fifth-best. Yikes.
Honestly, we think any nerf should just dial back the buffs to his ultimate. Right now, it feels very much like you’re guaranteed dead as soon as he hits level six. That’s a very dangerous power spike to give to an assassin whose ultimate ability can take up the entire lane. We think the buffs were aimed at the right spots, but their impact needs to be reduced a bit.
A good nerf to explore should be focused on his Playful/Trickster. With most of his damage now being on his W and R, his escape/engage tool probably doesn’t need to deal as much burst damage as it does, at least by a little bit.
Whatever nerfs are coming, we expect them to go live next week with Patch 8.16.
Published: Aug 6, 2018 10:13 am