@Riot Regarding Zyra and Zilean
Zyra
In regards to Zyra, I honestly don't think she needs much, as in her kit is good. She just needs better tuning.
UPDATE: Plant AI has supposedly been fixed with 5.18
The following are things that still need to be considered if more needs to happen to her:
- I would like the "cast time" on her passive and her e to be lowered. Even a slight amount is fine (or have her passive cast time lower as she levels up, making it easier to hit later in the game when people are more likely have boots/ms items/escape abilities making prediction extremely difficult)
- The q range and seed range need to be normalized (reverting the past change where they were both 825). I'd settle with seed planting range being lowered to 800 and it overall being a nerf if they were just the same range (at least I think i'd be fine with it even though I do hate nerfs).
- I dislike her ms, but i can live with it. If the rest of the stuff is fixed her low ms is fine. Even a slight buff of 5 ms would be preferable to where its at now, but again, the rest of the stuff takes priority imo and this is somewhat manageable even if mostly annoying.
- Either increased Mana Regen or slightly reduced Mana Costs on Q since this seasons swap of mana regen and flat mana really hurt her imo.
Zilean
This guy needs something and I made a post about it before that didn't receive any attention, which is fine since the ideas I had were pretty bad at the time, and to be fair, they still might not be all that great. I just know that playing as Zilean isn't fun, and it used to be fun before his rework. All I can do for him is post some of the ideas that are floating in my head about him that might make him better to play as, since I'm not sure what needs to be done.
Side Note: Increase his ult duration back to 7 seconds from 5.
Zilean Rough Lore Retcon/Advancement
If he can have changes to the rest of his kit and complete Lore Adjustment that might be really interesting as well. It would be a completely different champion, and even then if he suffers from extreme unreliability in dealing damage I would be opposed, but it could make for a more interesting and interactive kit allowing him to still keep a mid and support role, albeit much stronger in certain areas and weaker in others but still able to hold his own alone.
- Zilean could use a Lore Adjustment accompanied by Complete Rework
- Lore adjustment would allow for more drastic changes to his kit that could be described by his advancements in knowledge regarding to his circumstances (ie. he currently has no way of of actually bringing people back from the past, but instead keeps them from leaving at the present --revival--)
- Ekko offers the perfect opportunity for Zilean to have studied and learned from how he is able to bring his body from the past into the present while keeping his self-consciousness from being lost in time. He doesn't even have to actually find the full answers he's seeking, it just allows him to advance closer to his ideal of saving his country. The next hurdle he would need to cross would be how to revive those whose conscious/soul no longer resides in present.
- This could allow for more interesting revive mechanics to be added to his ult (damage, cc, a time rewind similar to Ekko but available for any target, or even something beyond what Ekko allows such as the ability for the revive target to choose where to revive within a certain distance of where they die or the option of respawning where they are or being brought to zilean on revival if he's stayed behind to protect his target)
- I'm not saying he needs to become an Ekko 2.0, but their kits hold similar themes as well as Zilean being a man who wants to learn. The best way for him to learn is to examine Ekko's ult and apply it to himself with his own Zilean twist.
- The rest of the abilities don't have to be similar to Ekko, but they don't have to remain the same either.
- Some sort of abilty that would allow him to reflect things. Essentially reversing time and sending a projectile back to hit its original point.
Zilean Rough Changes for Current Kit
Change his passive to something that's useful to his kit if he cant have changes to the rest of kit
Possibly make auto's apply marks that augment his other abilities/allow bomb targeting
Make his bombs resonate, leading to similar effect of Heimerdinger's grenade. What i mean by this is, if a grenade is attached to a target, then when a second grenade is thrown if its initial landing is within a unit radius it stuns, once it passes a certain radius, both would still explode but instead of an aoe stun it would be an aoe slow. And obviously outside of a certain range it wouldn't explode at all and would be placed on the ground.
Zilean: Possible Rebalance Iteration 1
Balance around a mix of both changes above
Allow marking of opponents with AA's. The mark would allows bomb placements and is consumed on bomb cast. Have a delay between when champions can be remarked. If having a semi-reliable aoe stun becomes problematic, replace it with an aoe slow that increases in strength based on the level of his E.
This means his damage isn't entirely free, his reliability in mid lane improves, he brings more to the team with an aoe slow (granted less than an aoe stun, but its somewhat more reliable and can still be balanced around without making him broken. Since I'm not sure if the current kit can be reliable without being broken), and he would be more skill based than pre-rework. He would have to get close to auto attack his opponents in order to mark an opponent which means there will be opportunities for counterplay due to him getting close. His passive ends up useful to the current kit.
Zilean: Possible Rebalance Iteration 2
This change is similar to the above interaction, however both give slightly different playstyles. This one is more reliable, with a trade-off of cc if he chooses to go the reliable path. The max throwing distance for his bombs could be lowered in order to compensate for the fact that they become reliable, that way he cant run to 900 radius after doing an auto and place bombs from there.
Basic Attacks mark opponent champions for 3 seconds. Marked champions disable Zileans crowd control from abilities used on them. ( the stun ---both on the marked target and surrounding units-- on double bomb would not apply and he would not be able to cast Time Warp on them until the mark wears off, as well as potentially rylais although this specific interaction could be allowed). Bomb placement extends duration by 3 seconds.
This change keeps unreliable hard CC while allowing him to have reliable damage. It also forces the Zilean player to decide if he wants to try to stun opponents with potential failure or if he wants guaranteed damage. And if he chooses guaranteed damage, he cant lock the enemy in place with his cc afterwards (he would be able to slow them beforehand, but in that case it almost entirely better for him to land the double bomb skillshot and aim for a stun, and with the slow having a low duration it doesn't lock enemy champions down for very long (in comparison to what his pre-rework used to do with a perma-slow).