Updated February 9th, 2023
Miss Fortune is one of the league community’s favorites, both in Summoners Rift and the Howling Abyss. She has consistently been one of the most played characters in the game. Before the latest patch, she was very strong in ARAM, being able to be played as poke, building either AP or lethality and traditional ADC.
The recent changes to the Howling Abyss map, the new items, and the changes to the stats of champions in ARAM have mixed the meta up in ARAM. With a reduction in long-range poke damage and an increase in magic resistance for melee champs, the meta has moved from mixed damage, strong poke, and weak melee to strong AD, weaker poke, and strong melee.
The popular old builds are a lot weaker and overall Miss Fortune is in a worse state than before. However, she is most likely not as terrible as her win rate of 48% globally may suggest. As we will see, these old builds may be ill-advised to go in the new ARAM meta. And her win rate may increase when the Miss Fortune meta catches up to it. We will go through what these potential changes may be.
Current Meta: Bruisers Everywhere
Many of the newly introduced items are particularly strong on bruisers, and especially so in ARAM. Items like Ravenous Hydra and Jak’Sho, the Protean have made bruisers, assassins, battlemages, and skirmish ADCs the kings of the meta. They are very tanky, can out-sustain poke, and do massive damage with the new items and changes. Even Heartsteel can stack up quickly in ARAM, increasing its power.
Especially at higher levels, the strongest characters are those that can utilize Jak’Sho or Ravenous Hydra (or why not both?). Jak’Sho is a very strong item that scales well with skill level, as surviving longer increases its power with a power spike at 8 stacks. And this can be utilized by staying in combat, starting to stack, and then engaging when close to 8 stacks. Even Riot has admitted that they overshot things in favor of melee characters with the pre-season patch. In patch 12.23b they tuned it back a bit with ARAM modifiers, but more are likely coming in Season 13.
Many games in the current meta come down to who has more beefy characters in their comp, as you can simply juggernaut down the other team and snowball the game. But ADCs also have their place, as they supply damage that can shred beefy characters, through health and resistance.
Characters with area-controlling spells like Veigar also have increased in power due to the addition of falling towers, creating choke points on the map. These choke points are incredibly hard to push through if you are patient enough.
State of Miss Fortune in ARAM
So where does this leave Miss Fortune, who was a strong mainstay of the past meta? While still a very beloved and popular champion, she is currently in a poor state based on ARAM statistics. She performs at best mid-tier at lower levels. Across ranks, she has fallen 1-2 percentage points in her win rate. This shows an inverse pattern in win rate in relation to skill, with around 50% win rate across ranks and falling as low as 47.5 percent in diamond and above.
Theoretically, Miss Fortune shouldn’t be hit this badly by the changes, unless people are building her wrong, as the long-range poke nerf does not affect ultimates. She should even be a bit stronger in certain situations, as Make it Rain and her ultimate Bullet Time are very strong in choke points.
Best builds for Miss Fortune in ARAM
So where are Miss Fortune players going wrong in their builds in the new meta? One of the best builds before the patch was poke Miss Fortune, using Comet or Dark Harvest and go AP, building Liandry’s and Demonic Embrace. This build used her E to safely poke down and do good damage with her ultimate. Building AP is still viable, and annoying as hell to deal with. But it is massively nerfed with the ranged poke nerf and bruisers can usually out-sustain it. And this specific build is even more nerfed due to the melee magic resist buff. The stats sing this tale as well, as this build usually has around a 48% win rate.
This build is still widely popular and may be a large part of why Miss Fortune has such a low win rate. The solution is most likely to build Miss Fortune AD against more tanky comps, and then you have three main options.
Crit
The crit build is well equipped to deal with beefier targets, both with auto attacks and in ultimate. Usually goes Press the Attack or Lethal Tempo. With three items, Kraken Slayer, Lord Dominic’s Regard (LDR), and Infinity Edge (IE), you can shred tanky teams. This build probably scales the best but is weaker on 1-2 items than the other builds.
Lethality
This build was perhaps the second most popular one before the patch and does the most damage against low armor targets, with good burst and ultimate damage. The most common build is Eclipse, Collector, and Syrelda’s, which gives you a very strong power spike on two items. If you go full lethality, your damage falls off very quickly compared to other builds and it is very awkward what to build after Syreldas, you probably have to squeeze a Muramana in with this build unless you are certain you will win before four items.
Crit-Lethality Hybrid
There is also a crit-lethality hybrid build, where you build Eclipse, Collector, and LDR. The hybrid build retains some of the strong early-game damage of lethality, but can also shred bruisers later on due to having a lot of armor penetration and extra damage against bonus health. This build can also transition into late-game ARAM, with an Infinity Edge as the third item. Unless you are against a tanky team where Kraken Slayer is king, this build is probably the best of both worlds, as crit suffers early and lethality late.
Other builds
This is more off-meta, but one can also go an AD caster build, which involves using the Press the Attack or Dark Harvest runes and building Ravenous Hydra, Muramana, and Eclipse/Syrelda’s. You could potentially even go Black Cleaver. This build would try to maximize the AOE damage of spells.
To summate, it seems that the way to play Miss Fortune in the 12.23 meta is to build to maximize ultimate damage. This can be done with lethality, but this suffers against tanky comps and falls off quickly, full crit build suffers early but scales well and well against tanky comps and crit-lethality hybrid is a mix between the two. AD caster builds put most of your power in the ultimate, and it may be the future meta for Miss Fortune as it would be very dangerous to run into as a bruiser death ball.
When to Play What, and How to Play it
So a key skill to perform well in ARAM with Miss Fortune is to match your build to both the opponents’ comp and your own. For the crit build, you need to be able to auto-attack consistently, and that can usually be done either when you have a frontline to tank for you or when you can freely hit their frontline. If not; then the other builds may be a better choice. The hybrid build and lethality build can perform well with just a few auto attacks. If you most likely will not be allowed to auto-attack, then the AP build is good to get some damage in, or the AD caster builds if you can get good ultimates off. Either through positioning or strong ranged CC setup on your team.
But overall, to get the most out of Miss Fortune, one has to play smart and position well to maximize the damage from your ultimate. One of the problems for ADCs in the current ARAM meta is bruisers simply running at you, but this is significantly more difficult against a Miss Fortune positioned well. Especially when turrets have fallen and created choke points. Then the danger mainly snowballs, either on you or your teammates.
Future Changes: Buffs on the Horizon?
Miss Fortune currently has the modifiers in ARAM of doing 10% reduced damage and taking 15% increased damage. These are pretty rough in comparison to other ADCs. This should be reduced in the future, as it is based on the very strong state Miss Fortune was in previously. Also, patch 12.23 saw some modifiers tweaked from the first pre-season patch, but more are likely coming. Most signs point towards Miss Fortune climbing the ranks, with future updates and as people figuring out the correct meta.
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