Heyo everyone!

Blowing up the sub today with controversial opinions, haha. In this post we're going to look at the pure math numbers between Aery and Electrocute build (with Resolve secondary).

In other words, if you have to choose between the two trees, which one should you take? The numbers might surprise you a little, especially with how little the Aery nerfs seemed to have affected which one to take:

Summary of My Process

So I took all of Fizz's base stats as well as ability ranks, and included his likely maxes (E > W) and went all the way to level 12, assuming he would build a Morello first buy (Codex @ level 5, Morello @ level 10, this is obviously a huge generalization but I found that AP doesn't matter too much in the calculations).

I didn't go beyond level 12 because numbers will vary wildly at this point depending on how well you're doing, etc.

Runes Taken

For Sorcery:

• Aery

• Null Orb is the best here, but doesn't matter for the basic calculations I'll be doing, we're just looking at pure damage.

• Absolute Focus (better early game, and if you're maintaining high health, a slightly stronger late game than Transcendence).

• Scorch (Gathering Storm is a noob trap for the most part, games rarely go to 40 minutes for this to really shine).

For Domination

• Electrocute

• Sudden Impact

• Either ward rune

• Any of the 3, I prefer Ravenous for a better laning phase.

Assumptions

I've scaled each rune linearly. In other words, where scorch does 30-60, I've assumed this is a ~1.75 damage increase per level up to 18. They likely don't scale smoothly like this, but the difference in damage will be miniscule anyway, and so I'm too lazy to research it further.

Fizz will be performing a QWER and 3 AA rotation.

Fizz's target is an Orianna that is not building defensively or taken any defensive runes. Orianna was picked at random. Essentially I just used Orianna's Armor and MR values for Fizz's damage.

Table

I've bolded the cells where Sorcery does superior damage - meaning three or four procs of Aery surpasses Domination's damage with Electrocute and Sudden Impact. Keep in mind it's extremely difficult to hit 4 charges of Aery in a simple RQEW rotation, particularly since W DoT doesn't proc Aery anymore.

Takeaways

I wish I could include ALL the data I have, but it would just clutter this post up due to Reddit's simplified formatting options, and I'm not keen to save a pretty version of this and link it outside, sorry. Here are the takeaways:

• Scorch is superior to Sudden Impact early game. But Sudden Impact scales incredibly well with AP. At 300 AP it's adding roughly 100 damage to Fizz's rotations. Early game, though, it's only adding 15-20 damage to Scorch's 30 .

• Domination and Sorcery scale nearly the same assuming 4 procs of Aery (Domination is slightly higher, but it's nearly negligible), this means that Sudden Impact is essentially counted as an extra 10% AP modifier (actually like 11%), which I found interesting. However, Sorcery starts higher at 4 procs, so Domination can't feasibly overtake it without ungoldly (1000 ) levels of AP.

  • With that being said, Domination barely outscales 3 procs of Aery (with 400 AP at level 18, you're looking at 2,751 damage on Sorcery versus 2,783 damage on Domination). Two Aery procs is where you really start seeing a difference, which is pretty standard in an all-in scenario. This means Domination is stronger late game in most circumstances.

• For the early game - 3 Aery procs outdamages Electrocute for the majority (first 7 levels) of the laning phase. The damage is even until you start stacking more AP (once you cross over 100 AP, you'll start needing 4 procs to outdamage, which again, isn't really possible on a short rotation, all-in scenario. It is feasible if we're talking about reengaging in the laning phase, though).

• Both options are, in my opinion, perfectly viable. Something to note is that that extra 7 AP from Sorcery can be the difference between one-shotting the backline with E and leaving them with 1 HP, particularly if you're behind in lane. Nullifying Orb also provides defense in an all-in scenario against mages, which is another thing to consider.

• On the flip side, Domination provides superior vision control with Zombie/Poro Ward, and better lane sustain (coupled with Second Wind) with Ravenous Hunter, if you go that route (Ingenious Hunter is also good if you're planning on getting at least 2 actives - Zhonya's and Proto most likely).

TL;DR

Sorcery is better for trading, not surprising, and scales decently into late game.

Domination is subpar but still fine for trading (long windows make the "decision" to trade harder, though, which should be taken into consideration. It's always a good idea to trade with Aery, but sometimes you have 5s left on Electrocute so you choose to hold off on an otherwise good trade). and scales harder in the late game.

Level 11 is where you'll start to see more damage from Domination. Both due to the fact that you'll start stacking more AP, and because trading scenarios are less common than all-in scenarios.

Both options are viable. I personally prefer a stronger early game since that's when Fizz needs to shine, and go with Sorcery.

What do you do?