Fear has a new face – and some new tricks.
Back in the earliest days of League of Legends, Riot created a goofy little scarecrow that was meant to be the embodiment of fear. He limped around as he walked, had a somewhat silly voice, and generally wasn’t too menacing despite being titled the Harbinger of Doom.
But that Fiddlesticks is dead. Long live Fiddlesticks, the Ancient Fear.
Riot released a cinematic trailer for the reworked Fiddlesticks yesterday, a chilling paranoia-filled film just over a minute long yesterday that you can read about here. Today, they followed it up with another brief look at the rework, showing the new look and moves that the Ancient Fear brings to the rift.
Fiddlesticks’ new passive is A Harmless Scarecrow, and it seems powerful. As the video shows, Fiddlesticks can place a shade of himself that grants true sight, allowing you to take out wards – though it does take the slot of his trinket. These effigies look exactly like Fiddlesticks to enemies.
His Q, Terrify, isn’t too different from his previous Q. It now has a passive that makes it so that if he attacks while out of combat and unseen, his enemy becomes terrified. He can also activate the ability to deal damage and terrify his opponents, doing double damage if they were already terrified.
His new W is Bountiful Harvest, which is also similar to the previous move. It now drains the souls of all nearby enemies, with the last tick dealing damage and healing based on the enemy’s missing health. If it fully finishes a channeling or if it kills all targets before completion, the cooldown is partially refunded.
The previous E of tossing a bouncing bird is gone, replaced with Reap. Reap allows Fiddlesticks to damage and slow enemies in a crescent-shaped area-of-effect. Enemies in the center are silenced, which can also interrupt channeled abilities.
Finally, there isn’t much different about his ultimate, Crowstorm. Fiddlesticks will still channel the ability for a short amount of time before jumping forward and dealing heavy AOE damage to all enemies in the radius of the ability.
All in all, it seems like a powerful loadout, especially for jungling and ganking. His sustain will remain impressive thanks to W, and might even be stronger now given that it can clear camps in an AOE. With the new E and Q, ganks will be incredibly effective against single-targets for the considerable CC and damage, and the new passive will help keep the jungle clear of enemy wards and give vision on counter-junglers.
You’ll likely be seeing a good amount of the Ancient Fear on the rift, so make sure you keep those wards up!
