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A Possible Reasonable Nerf Zoe Could Be Given

ShuyinTheX·2/9/2018, 7:29:44 PM·1 votes·145 views

What if her Q no longer delt damage as an AOE? Yes, her Q does crazy high damage, a good portion of which can also be because of her E, but this is about the Q itself with this post.

After watching videos and experiencing her Q for myself, I feel the removal of her Q as an AOE ability would be a reasonable nerf that would still let Zoe do Zoe things, but force a little more skill out of players because it would force them to increase their accuracy to be successful. More often than not, in the games I've seen her in and have watched, it's the AOE effect that is hitting players and not the actual projectile itself.

Could her Q use a damage nerf? Of course, it does tons of damage that can feel unfair. However, I'm not certain of the distance thresholds that determines how far a distance it needs to travel to max-damage, thus I don't feel confident in giving damage number nerfs that would be appropriate.

Yes, this would end up removing wave-clear abilities from Zoe's lane phase, but considering what happens after lane phase it feels to me that it would be a fair trade off as champions don't require wave clear to be successful in the game as whole.

What do you think of this nerf idea?

2 Comments

HungryAngry2SPP2/9/2018, 7:44:18 PM1 votes

Champions should always have a way to clear wave decently fast, taking out the AOE would break alterate ZoEE's way to play.

But on the other hand, it's frustrating how my ADC get one shoted, even if I tried to blocked the projectile with my body. And then you should have to reconsider other abilities. One that come to my mind immediatly, is Jayce 's .

Kai Guy2/9/2018, 8:38:54 PM1 votes

Likely changes for 8.4: Q: Only applies her passive damage on primary target hit. That reduces her wave clear, particularly ability to kill caster minions with one Q, reducing her power from gold and ability to shove/roam as easily. It also makes it harder for her to harass through a wave and makes it easier for allies to block Qs intended for sleeping allies. W: Is no longer able to drop teleport. Teleport creates some cool plays, and is the only real out of combat drop to be had. At the same time though its power is generally significantly higher than the options and it doesn't present opponents with good ways to play around it either (which is particularly important with randomly picked effects). E: Drowsy can now be cleansed, preventing the sleep from happening. That makes Cleanse, QSS, Mikael's noticeably better responses to her. We originally thought that the appropriate degree of cleanse countering Zoe E was to have the player choose between being able to reposition faster before falling asleep (cleansing the slow) or breaking the sleep once it hit. Having seen Zoe get a lot of play since her release though it’s clear at this point cleanse effects ought to be a stronger counter, rather than a partial one. E: CD increased, giving more windows where she can't threaten lethal as well and/or can be engaged on. R: Bug fix, but one that's potentially power impacting: Was granting the ability to move through units for the entire game after the first cast, rather than just for a very brief period when she returned to the cast point.