So is there ever any problem with letting Zac pick up his…

5G8Nri0B54 · 2014-12-27T02:39:25.136Z

It's not like he's going to become remotely close to being OP anytime soon, and he really could use something, though it's quite hard to pinpoint exactly what he needs, plus it'd be an interesting trade-off between using it offensively or using it defensively if there are enough globs in the correct position. Or if the planets align, if the globs and enemies are in the same path for your Q. Asides from that, excels in fucking up grouped up enemies and screwing their positioning up, yet it sometimes feels like his R have the potential to save the enemy by scattering them when in truth I'd rather they stay clumped up. It's more of a nitpick and I can completely see the power in his R throwing the enemy champions all over the place, but sometimes I really don't have much of an idea of where to go after I scattered the enemies around me far enough that it feels like I lose my 2nd bounce just to reach the closest target. He's supposed to be picking up his blobs as the fight goes on, but often times that just doesn't happen because the globs are all too happy to land right on the enemy's feet, or they land in somewhere out of the fight. PS - can he not be countered by Smite? He's already vulnerable to AoE after his Passive goes off, I don't think he needs to give the opponent another way to kill him faster.

5G8Nri0B54Dec 27, 20144 votes

Well for my part I'll just point out that while he was oppressive before, oppressing Zac is rather easy atm. In a way I'd consider early Zac to be even worse than early Mundo. And as I described in late game teamfights, he relies on his blob collection to tank as he posses no defensive steroids...however sometimes his blobs have a tendency to disagree with your desire to stick to your enemies by bouncing off to somewhere else. And if you want to talk about counter-play, literally no one bothers to step on your blobs in a teamfight anyways, so it's purely a laning thing, and even in lane people aren't so much stepping on blobs but rather zoning you out till the blob expires, and I can't help but feel the blob bounces closer to the enemy than it does to me.

Obviously this solely applies to champions with some ranged harass be it through abilities like Mundo or AA like Nidalee. But considering this is what's in atm and Zac's own ranged harass is only long-ranged when compared to most all-in melee champions, I often find myself trying.

Ironically, the one thing that destroys Zac harder than anything else now is ranged tops as well. Gnar with his mobility and range, etc.

Of course this is mostly talking about laning Zac. Jungle Zac have a lot less issue from that outside of sometimes struggling to walk grab a glob behind or beneath a large monster. And those late-game issues described.

PS - if you're in any position to forward anything to the balance team, consider telling them about how much easier it is to deal with his Revive passive due to his vulnerability to smite and AoE abilities...or AoE Smites. And also the fact that he generally wants his enemies clumped together with that kit of his, but his R serves to scatter the enemy team effectively lowering his and possibly his team's DPS. I can totally see the power in him being able to scatter the enemies the way he does with his R...but the rest of his kit kinda wants the enemy clumped together to be optimal, and most teamfight-oriented allies would rather the enemies be closer together for their wombo combo. The ability to scatter the enemy is mostly an assassin-deal rather than a tank thing as they are the ones who'd want enemies to scatter, the tanks wants the enemy to be in the optimum position for their mages and AoE allies to wreck face.

RiotFeralPonyDec 28, 20143 votes

Enemies trying to zone Zac away from his bloblets is as important if not a more important form of lane interactivity than stepping on the bloblets, so that in and of itself doesn't bother me. Zac's ranged harass is especially touchy from a balance perspective since his Q (and W to a lesser extent) are effectively undodgeable and aren't blocked by minions and can all provide sustain.

I think you're absolutely right to point out that the needs and effectiveness of grabbing bloblets varies pretty drastically from the laning phase to the teamfight phase of the game and there are definitely some interesting options to adjust bloblets to accommodate for those differences (increasing bloblet pickup size as Zac increases his size from Max Health for example).

As for the PS - The team is aware of the general level of sadness Zac feels in response to the AoE smite item, which was especially pronounced when it was the must have jungle item of choice during 4.20. With the nerf to the Trailblazer already in effect for 4.21 they wanted to see how Zac fared when every jungler wasn't running that item before making any additional changes.

I would agree that Zac's passive feels lackluster and more often than not outside the laning phase. There are a lot of ways we could make tweaks here if the team decided to buff Zac on that front. This could be anything from a direct "Reduced Damage from AoE effects" or more health on his bloblets, to something more indirect such as making Zac revive when his bloblets are a little further apart from one another could help as they need to snuggle up pretty close to one another before Zac revives.

RaptameiDec 27, 20141 votes

{quoted}

Mostly this come scenario comes to mind. This would most likely cause problems in laning scenarios rather than a jungle scenario.

This change shifts Q from being a ranged harass pattern that has a cost to a ranged harass pattern with a negative cost. As you can simply punch someone from range and scoop up more health than you paid in the process. You've effectively made AoE Dmg Vlad Transfusion ... with a Slow. Judging by the number of complaints I see about free ranged harass being OP/frustrating in top lane shifting Zac into that pattern seems really dangerous.

It would also make him viable, which is much more important.

killd0zerDec 28, 201414 votes

Actually that isn't the most important thing. Increasing his W's dmg by 5x would make him "viable", theres a lot of thing you can do to increase viability. When discussing the merit of a conceptual change, current or potential power level isn't as important.

RiotFeralPonyDec 28, 20149 votes

+1

NeclordDec 27, 20142 votes

{quoted}

Mostly this come scenario comes to mind. This would most likely cause problems in laning scenarios rather than a jungle scenario.

This change shifts Q from being a ranged harass pattern that has a cost to a ranged harass pattern with a negative cost. As you can simply punch someone from range and scoop up more health than you paid in the process. You've effectively made AoE Dmg Vlad Transfusion ... with a Slow. Judging by the number of complaints I see about free ranged harass being OP/frustrating in top lane shifting Zac into that pattern seems really dangerous.

If that isn't the use case and a player is simply using Q to grab a bloblet and not hitting an enemy with it at the same time, they're paying 4% current health for 4% max health (excluding other sources) which does have some optimization cases but feels like a really odd and almost trappy use case. You're incentivizing players at that point to use their nuke, slow, and cooldown for a minor heal.

This is of course in addition to removing any type of play/counterplay about collecting the bloblets which is really critical to his laning experience not being oppressive and frustrating which we've definitely seen in the past.

I haven't worked on the balance team for a while but that's my 0.02 at least.

-Pony

meanwhile gnar meanwhile zed

ProfDrDeathDec 28, 20141 votes

Sounds reasonable to me.

Would it be healthy for his lane if his blobs gave a little more HP back if they are contestable (like, with an enemy champion in a small radius of them)? Visible in faster motion/slightly changed color/an arrow indicator pointing to the contestant?

RiotFeralPonyDec 28, 20144 votes

Generally speaking yes, the more a mechanic has counterplay and is interactive (or in this case is bloblets being contestable) the more powerful it can be. This style of approach was used by the team at the time of the bloblet positioning nerf when his sustain in lane was being overbearing. They chose to make each bloblet more contestable instead of simply cutting the healing amount which would have also worked but would have made for a less interesting character overall imo.

5G8Nri0B54Dec 28, 20141 votes

But his blobs aren't being contested so much as they're Zac baits in many match-ups though.

Maybe I'm just playing Lane-Zac wrong (which is...not unlikely considering my skill level), but trading and contesting against most champions tends to favour the enemy much more. And sometimes it's not even a matter of contesting if they land behind a bunch of minions. But perhaps being a slime monster he can just pass/slime through units to grab his blobs...

Then again it could entirely be my bad luck in blind pick going up against champions who happens to do well against Zac...but I'm not about to bring a TANK to Ranked games unless it's Mundo just to see how well he'd perform in non-blinds. Not until Tanks have a way to not be invalidated by a single Void Staff/Last Whisper

(speaking of Zac baits..."Wormy Bait-Zac Skin", he's now a mass of writhing worms ala the Urobouros enemies from Resident Evil 5, let the skinmen know!)

PS - mind throwing your 5 cents on his R?

Like I said before, Zac WANTS his enemies to be clumped together. All of his abilities work best if enemies are clumped. In most wombo-combo comps, the desired position of enemies is to have them more clumped together as well. Unless I have an allied Khazix who also happened to have his Q evolved, I find the ability to just CC them without throwing them further away is the preferred method of screwing with the enemy team.

While I can understand the power of being able to scatter the enemy as much as his R can (or knock enemy ADC towards your team with a perfectly positioned Slingshot+R combo), in my PERSONAL EXPERIENCE playing Zac, most situations feel like it would have worked out better had his R just been a knock-up or something that doesn't push the enemies so far away from you.

And also, maybe I was CC'd or something, but from my games, I noticed that bouncing the enemies away puts them too far off for you to hit them with your next bounce sometimes, so if I have no other targets to bounce onto, I find my second bounce is often wasted trying to get to the nearest champion.

RiotFeralPonyDec 28, 20144 votes

My 5 cents - I haven't played Zac since the 4.21 changes so it's difficult for me to give thoughts on the ult knockback distance change as that's very much a feel based change. I think on a base level the idea of his ult being used to cause chaos and scatter enemy teams that is really disruptive and really cool. It's far more fitting on him than a malphite style lock dudes in place in a single spot so our team can pile on AoEs so everyone dies instantly type of play. If the knockback distance is pushing dudes far enough from Zac that he isn't able to keep that feels pretty lame. I'll ask the dudes who did the change about it when I get back to the office.

5G8Nri0B54Dec 28, 20142 votes

Thanks!

It may well be due to CC on me that I haven't noticed, but I've witnessed it happen more than once already.

And also, I understand that it's meant to sow chaos, and does a very good job at it too. But my worry is that the rest of his kit wants the enemy team to be lumped together.

TengrichanDec 30, 20141 votes

{quoted}

My 5 cents - I haven't played Zac since the 4.21 changes so it's difficult for me to give thoughts on the ult knockback distance change as that's very much a feel based change. I think on a base level the idea of his ult being used to cause chaos and scatter enemy teams that is really disruptive and really cool. It's far more fitting on him than a malphite style lock dudes in place in a single spot so our team can pile on AoEs so everyone dies instantly type of play. If the knockback distance is pushing dudes far enough from Zac that he isn't able to keep that feels pretty lame. I'll ask the dudes who did the change about it when I get back to the office.

It's a disgusting nerf to his knockback range,you can't followup with the 2nd bounce anymore.I am not even sure why would they change it.

EeyoreDec 30, 20141 votes

The issue with that scenario is that it doesn't cover the spawning of the blobs. No-one is asking for Q to pick-up its own blobs. His only way to spawn blobbies other than his Q is in point-blank situations, so what would be the issue in him picking up blobs with his Q while in the middle of a fight?

I've always wished that Gnar could pick up his boulder with Wallop - just 'cause his fist hits the boulder. :P

atomicwitMay 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Mostly this come scenario comes to mind. This would most likely cause problems in laning scenarios rather than a jungle scenario.

This change shifts Q from being a ranged harass pattern that has a cost to a ranged harass pattern with a negative cost. As you can simply punch someone from range and scoop up more health than you paid in the process. You've effectively made AoE Dmg Vlad Transfusion ... with a Slow. Judging by the number of complaints I see about free ranged harass being OP/frustrating in top lane shifting Zac into that pattern seems really dangerous.

If that isn't the use case and a player is simply using Q to grab a bloblet and not hitting an enemy with it at the same time, they're paying 4% current health for 4% max health (excluding other sources) which does have some optimization cases but feels like a really odd and almost trappy use case. You're incentivizing players at that point to use their nuke, slow, and cooldown for a minor heal.

This is of course in addition to removing any type of play/counterplay about collecting the bloblets which is really critical to his laning experience not being oppressive and frustrating which we've definitely seen in the past.

I haven't worked on the balance team for a while but that's my 0.02 at least.

-Pony

What would you think about this idea instead? It should keep top-lane Zac in check while offering more chances for skilled players to demonstrate mastery.

So is there ever any problem with letting Zac pick up his globs with his Q?

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(speaking of Zac baits..."Wormy Bait-Zac Skin", he's now a mass of writhing worms ala the Urobouros enemies from Resident Evil 5, let the skinmen know!)

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