During the the last day of games for Group A during OGN Champions Summer, Jin Air Greenwings Falcons captain Reapered pulled out the rare jungle Fizz pick. Although the game itself did not mean much, as Falcons had qualified for the group stages with a win from the first game of the set, the Fizz pick does have merit, and in the right team composition can be a viable pick if you’re looking to snowball the game.

Here’s the VOD for the match. You do need a subscription to the OGN channel to view, however, highlights for this match are available in the following video. 

Runes and Masteries

Thanks to OGN’s official website we were able to pull Reapered’s masteries and runes without much hassle.

• +26 Ability Power; Flat AP Glyphs and Flat AP Quintessences
• 15% Attack Speed; AS Marks
• +13 Armor; AR Seals

With the extra 11 Ability Power Reapered was able to gain from using offensive glyphs instead of flat magic resistance, it allowed his earlier ganks and skirmishes to hurt considerably more since Fizz has great AP scalings. Also, since Sejuani was Xenics Blast’s only source of magic damage and ManyReason built her full tank, there wasn’t a need for extra resistances. If not for monster mobs hitting so hard in the early levels, Reapered would have probably opted for offensive seals as well, but they worked double duty with the amount of tower diving he performed.

Besides increasing clear time using attack speed marks, they also synergize well with Fizz’s W, Seastone Trident, that applies on hit magic damage and re-apply a consistent red buff — the only form of reliable crowd control that Fizz has until he hits level 6. Fizz’s E, Playful/Trickster, also provides a slow if you let it self-proc, but the chance for that happening is highly unlikely as most laners will not stand in position to fight you unless they have immediate help available.

His choice of ability power quintessences also helped maximize damage as Fizz doesn’t need the otherwise necessary movement speed in the jungle since his troll pole acts as a psuedo blink and his Urchin Strike is a targeted gap closer. Reapered wasn’t looking to roam around the map to push objectives; he was looking for kills to snowball.

Once again on the offensive side, Reapered placed 21 points into the Offense Tree and 9 into Defense which allowed him to tank the jungle without dying in his clears. All seems typical, save for him choosing to opt out of Sorcery for the cooldown reduction and instead place those 4 points into Fury. Although typical AP casters tend to favor CDR to cast more of their spells, Fizz’s cooldowns are relatively low and that extra AS allows him to proc more red buff ticks, along with more auto-attacks enhanced with Seastone Trident procs.

Although not considered the most resilient of junglers, Reapered decided to start Doran’s Ring and 2 health potions. Even as popular as it is right now with AP junglers, Reapered never picked up a Machete to upgrade into a Spirit of the Spectral Wraith. He was not concerned with sustain at all and, instead, built purely for damage.

After picking up boots on his first back, Reapered upgraded his boots into Socerer Shoes and then followed with a Lich Bane rush to synergize his Lich Bane proc with Chum the Waters.

Recognizing that Xenics only source of magic damage was a Sejuani, who itemized as a tank, Reapered bought a Zhonya’s Hourglass and, before the game ended, he had a Negatron Cloak and an Amplifying Tome. Since Fizz often is built as glass cannon, we can imagine that he was looking to finish an Abyssal Scepter and a Void Staff to come as close as he could to doing true damage with his abilities.

The Deadly Viper Composition

To complement the Fizz pick, the rest of Falcons all chose champions that had to the ability to assassinate single targets with ease. However, understanding Jayce’s power spike with a Brutalizer and Muramana can change the swing of a game at a Shockblast’s notice, Falcons timed their composition to account for key power spikes during the early, middle, and late game.

Strong individual dueling potential – Every lane, including the jungle, has the ability to lock a single target down and eliminate them due to either scaling power of their champion, or the ability to “outplay” them via mechanical skill. Once Jax is farmed enough with a Trinity Force and Blade of the Ruined King, he melts targets quickly due to enemies being unable to itemize against his mixed damage output. Using his troll pole, Fizz can dodge key enemy lockdown abilities or, quite simply, burst them down quickly if he lands Chum the Waters an opponent who lacks MR. Unless enemies carry around a pink ward solely for her, once Vayne obtains a Blade of the Ruined King, everyone from a tank to other AD carries melt and simply can not put out enough damage, since her ultimate grants a massive AD steroid and invisibility to disrupt auto-attacks and spell rotations.

Champions with differing points of power — To act as a sort of insurance policy for the Fizz pick, Jax and Vayne scale well enough into the game that, if things were to go awry in the first 15 minutes, sufficient farm on them could offset power differences with the enemy team. However, in the early game, snowball Fizz had a companion in Zed, as they’re both great roamers and both of their ultimates grant either a kill or a burned Summoner Spell on usage.

Although item counters such as Frozen Heart exist for triple AD teams, and champions like Shen exist to spell trouble for this team composition, their largest weakness is the inability to teamfight. Initiations would have to rely on a Sona Flash Crescendo or a long range Chum the Waters on a key target. Besides these two abilities, there is no way to initiate teamfights from their end and a Jax using Grandmaster’s Might to dive in would get locked down by CC and be ineffective as a carry. However, Falcons recognized this and forced constant skirmishes to not only farm champions, but to disallow the defense of their structures while dead.

In Game

Due to Xenics Blast initiating a lane swap and sending their duo lane top, they attempted to 3-man invade Reapered’s jungle hoping to take advantage of Fizz early, before he could become a formidable threat. However, while dueling for the red buff, Reapered out-smited Quality and an agitated Lee Sin followed his Reasonating Strike onto Jax, who had retreated towards his tower. Seeing that Lee Sin separated himself from the rest of his team and was now over the golem wall, Reapered used Playful to close the distance and land enough auto-attacks to pickup the kill. Although this results in a 1-for-1 trade, in Jax’s death for Lee Sin, the kill on Fizz will snowball a game harder than a kill on Lee Sin.

After heading back to the fountain and picking up some boots and a couple of health potions, Reapered went top hoping to alleviate some pressure so that Jax would not fall too far behind in farm. Once Bang and Boink moved a bit too close, Roar jumped on Bang hoping to stun him with a Counter-Strike. However, since Boink Flay’d away Jax, he flashed in, resulting in a double stun onto both Graves and Thresh. Even with Lee Sin coming into countergank, Boink died too quickly, partially due to Reapered’s heavy offensive rune setup and his early Doran’s Ring.

Since Blast’s duo lane was topside and the bottom outer turret had been taken down by Vayne and Sona, Reapered and Jax were free to roam Quality’s red jungle and ended up circling around Jayce to pickup another kill for Roar’s Jax. So far in the game, Fizz had a 100% kill contribution rate. An added bonus with Blast’s duo in the top lane was Falcons being able to take the first Dragon uncontested at 9:04.

Following this point in the game, Fizz had snowballed enough so that any unfavorable situations were turned on their heads, since his damage output was so high in any skirmish, especially with the tanks of Blast capitalizing on armor, hoping to offset Falcon’s triple AD composition. Along with the lanes being able to pickup kills on their own from this point forward, they were able to pickup objectives after skirmishes. Reapered’s Fizz ended up helping win the game with a 10-8-6 score.

So Can Fizz Work in the Jungle?

Although these games did not have any particular playoff consequences for either team, and were played lightheartedly, jungle Fizz could work in very specific team compositions and against an even smaller pool of enemy compositions. With his triple AD assassination composition, Fizz was allowed to maximize his damage against enemy team itemization and the lack of hard CC on many of Blast’s champions allowed Fizz’s free roam.

Even if we don’t see Fizz appear immediately in the bracket stages of OGN, North American or European teams might see it as a viable pick in niche compositions for LCS. If he does make an appearance, expect that game to snowball one way or the other.