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Discussion with a Zac main

ThatHaleState·4/19/2017, 9:52:46 PM·17 votes·1,777 views

I would like to have a discussion about new Zac, and see what the thought are. Mine will be below:

I am still under the impression that Zac for more than in an already good state. I do not think he needed to be updated. Even if you could definitively win an argument stating that he did need an update, I would rebuttle with Malphite or JarvanIV being much better candidates. This update was about engage tanks correct?
Malphite And you think Sejuani was an ult-bot?Malphite JarvanIV's new name should be the poor mans Camille

I digress. On to Zac

What do I love about Zac as a character: Suave ass voice ; Super long range engage ; Forces people to adapt their playstyle and warding ; Disruptive as hell ; Low but consistent aoe dmg ; Rewarding to play when landing your E ; Good clear ; Special clear like Olaf where being low is beneficial ; Being able to reach the backline at all times ; Ultimate giving speed, disrupting enemies, and splitting them up

Passive:

  • Unique and awesome, thank you for not changing it

Q:

  • Arguably boring, but I liked the slow and it let me hit multiple things at once

  • Changed it to have a tether and bang people together: Strange and Unique idea, cant wait to play it to see how it goes.

W: -Thanks for not touching this one; it was simplistically perfect

E:

  • "Why everyone loves Zac"
  • Bread and butter Zac skill that could never go away

R:

  • This is where you lost me big time

  • His ult was SO GREAT. It was easily my favorite part of his kit.

  • Knocked everyone back, MS up and allowed you to essentially hit everyone of the enemies with it while picked up blobs, and throwing W's left and right

  • Now you just knock them back once or carry them like some ball to another spot not very far away.

Someone said that if you dont hold it, it just works like it does now. This is quite the understatement. You bounce one time and then its over. No time to hit anyone else on the enemy team, no time to spread blobs around everywhere, no W spam while bouncing

In closing, I believe not only did you pick a candidate for an update that didn't need it, but you both neglected more deserving candidates and made Zac LESS fun, interactive, and dynamic.

I hope I get a Riot response on what led yall to such a drastic difference on his ultimate. Especially Shrieve, the designer who wrote his synopsis, or anyone else on his design team. As a design student myself, I don't see the positives or the reasoning behind the Ult change. In no passive aggressive way, I would enjoy if you would enlighten me!

29 Comments

TheHappyReaperz4/19/2017, 10:14:52 PM4 votes

Its a Tank update, so for that reason J4 was excluded. Malphite needs some serious work, not just gameplay, but visuals and VO as well, and that kind of thing you can't do for a Mid-Season update. I don't see how Zac is less fun know though. His new Q is arguably more interesting and dynamic. With regards to his new ult, it seems to be way more interactive. Before, you press R, then spam W. Now, you can choose what to do, since his new ult gives you more options on what to do.

Dolasaur4/19/2017, 10:31:42 PM4 votes

Some of the criteria that goes into selecting champs is whether or not they have good ideas for them, as well as the scope of the work. I agree Malphite needs work. But my guess is that they think he needs a full VGU. Alternatively, they might have tried different directions with smaller changes and not found anything that fit well with him.

In closing, I believe not only did you pick a candidate for an update that didn't need it, but you both neglected more deserving candidates and made Zac LESS fun, interactive, and dynamic.

His Q is way more interactive now, assuming the "brief" slow on first Q doesn't last as long as his original did. The enemy has significantly more time to not get hit by the second part. They're making it less reliable, with a bigger payoff. That increases the separation between good Qs and bad Qs. At the very least it makes it more interactive and dynamic (for both Zac and his opponents). I'd argue that it's a lot more fun than his old Q too. Not every ability needs to be interesting, and I'm fine with his W being boring. But his old Q was pretty boring and had little counterplay (outside of the old "stay out of range").

His R is definitely different. If it was your favorite part of his kit (rather than the E, which is mine), then you'd probably be happy playing Wukong. They were largely identical ults. I don't necessarily have an answer for whether or not his new R is a net improvement over the old one. I'll have to wait and play with it to find out what I think. But I can definitely list relative positives for it.

  1. It fits Riot's goal of tanks focusing more on crowd control (the grabbing people and moving them around) rather than raw damage (which he lost a lot of on the R).
  2. It has significantly clearer success and failure cases. There's less of "well, I think I knocked up a lot of people... I hope it was useful."
  3. The success case sounds REALLY fun.
  4. Even if you're successful in channeling long enough to grab people over to your team, there's good counterplay of "uh oh, Amumu just flashed on top of the Vayne, so now I have to choose between dropping Vayne by my team or not dropping Amumu by my team". It's like double-counterplay.
  5. It may have been part of the goal of old Zac's R, but a situation where the optimal counterplay is "run away for 4 seconds" isn't really fun for a lot of people. Now, it's either done right away (similar to old first bounce) or has about 1-2 seconds of intense reactions and decision making from multiple people.
  6. Free targeted dash on the R success case? I mean, I mentioned it sounds really fun before. But this has LOTS of possibilities. You can drop squishies into your team. You can drop overconfident front liners in that you'll be able to kill 1v5 with minimal CC into your team. You can drop the fed 20-2 carry over a wall so he can't kill your team. You can drop people on a Viktor W, Soraka E, or J4 R, Ryze portal (from either team) or onto Baron. You can take the enemy jungler AWAY from baron/dragon. (Zac top coming back?!) There's so many possibilities. Way more potential plays than the old one.

Edit: I'm interested in hearing why you think his new Q+R are less interactive and dynamic.

Edit2: I don't think many people consider J4 a tank. He's more bruiser/diver/whatever the cool new name for those is.

ThatHaleState4/19/2017, 9:55:14 PM2 votes

I knew this was coming and I was scared for his changes, but then I got so hyped. Until today, when I watched the ability preview video by SkinSpotlight. His Ult seems very boring and under-whelming now. I cannot atm see how this ability is going to make me enjoy Zac more at all.

TheSingularity4/19/2017, 11:11:52 PM2 votes

I agree completely. I love almost everything about the new kit. But that isn't saying much as only 40% of it changed. The Q is nice but I to do not like the ultimate.

It's cool that Zac gets to toss people around where eva the hell he wants with his Q and ult. But it's just such an anticlimactic ultimate. You have a brief charge and bounce once with everyone on you before landing. Too make it sound less dull, Zac flattens himself out like a fabulous pancake, grabbing everything that stands above before launching him and them into the sky and crashing them down where he lands. There's no dramatic landing, no dramatic sound and no dramatic channel. Sure he flattens himself out. But I could do that before with his E or R and a item 3157 . Sure zac's old ult was similar to malphite. BUT BOUNCING IS SOOOOOOOOOO FUN!

Malphite Gragas Rammus Amumu could all use a rework more than zac

XIII Vanitas4/20/2017, 12:55:14 AM2 votes

I agree with you. The reworked Q is more than welcome, but his ult should have stayed the way it was, not only because it was extremely fun bouncing around the enemy team, but also because it allowed us players to show our skill expression (the direction in which the enemy champions are knocked back is determined by where Zac lands with every bounce, which means that skillfull players were able to redirect different enemies in different directions, even with the use of summoner 4).

Kilanost4/20/2017, 7:53:27 AM2 votes

People have been making a lot of posts about the tank rework and after watching game play of all 3 tanks, I began replying to those posts. Below is my reply to one of those posts that I felt would be worth making into its own independent thread:

Literally the only thing Sej needed before the rework was increased damage to jungle monsters. She had exactly what they wanted in tanks: Low damage, high CC. In fact, my nickname for Sej was "The CC Queen." Now, they removed her most consistent form of CC (the slow on her E) and made it so the skill can only be used it stacked 4 times which requires the help of ONLY melee champions to do. Playing on a team with a Thresh support and a Rumble top? This skill is useless. Having 20% of your kit so dependent on having a team with at least 1 other melee auto attacker is ridiculous. This screams of the roll out being rushed. They had a deadline of the end of Spring split and had this passive on the table and said "hmm, seems strong if everyone can stack it (a mechanic that is already in the game Braum ) but the dead line is tomorrow. Lets just make it melee only. But then they did the most contradictory thing ever. They gave a tank 25% max health magic damage. So the end result of trying to lower tank damage and increase CC for Sej was remove her main source of CC and give her shit tons of burst. They literally took the champion that did exactly what they thought tanks should be doing and made her the exact opposite of that.

Want another example of how rushed this dog shit tank update is? Here we go:

Look at zac's ult. First thing it does is remove movement impairing effects. BUT then you have to channel his ult for up to 2.5 seconds. So remove movement impairment but force the champion to sit there anyway to use his ult. Put the cleanse on his E so he has a decent escape because his old Ulti helped him get out of shitty situations which he is highly susceptible to mid game. Also, one of the benefits of his old ult was that it spewed blobs all over the place for some healing after the initial engage. Where is that? Its bad enough the blobs spawn so far away now (an old nerf) but now you get that much less of them? Lets not even go into how they tried to introduce extra CC into his kit by removing the extremely consistent and useful AOE slow on hsi Q and making it an ability that only affects the first enemy hit. Then you have to find another enemy nearby to smash into them. Ive watched 2 full game plays and I've only seen this "smash" successfully pulled off once on an enemy champion. So between that inconsistency and how easy it is to dash/flash/walk out of Zac's ulti, they've essentially made the only two things in his kit that they changed completely inconsistent. Wanted to fix pre PBE zac? Knock some damage off each of his ulti bounces. Done. Seriously of all the tanks to choose, why rework the one that feels the most satisfying to play that is already extremely unique?

Or we can talk Maokai:

Here's a guy who was the tankiest champion in the game. The PBE rework has no damage mitigation in his otherwise completely weak kit. The best thing that he has for sustain is his passive which now has a ridiculously high cooldown for most of the game.... which was the only thing that really allowed him to sustain in many of the lanes he was in. They made his travel time on his root so slow that people have enough time to play a ward and ward hop to a turret (or just dash or walk) so that if you use it in lane, you run a high risk of taking turret fire. Or, if you're Quinn, you just out run it. Yes thats right, you can flat out outrun Maokai's point and click snare and pull him a decent distance toward where you can get an easy kill. On top of that, they moved his %health damage to his sapling toss which has a flat 12 second cooldown at all levels and its full damage is completely dependent on being placed in bushes. So now he has zero lane damage (because saplings 9 times out of 10 end up running toward minions after the enemy champion starts walking away) and also poor lane sustain and zero damage mitigation for late game. What does he have now? A nami ult that is so slow people can just walk out of range so the only way its hitting anyone is point blank in which case it only snares for .6 seconds and affects no one else behind the person first hit. So basically this rework is probably the largest failure because he has no ability to consistently tank damage, his snare has just as much of a chance of getting him killed as it does making a play, and he has no lane presence because most of his damage got transfered to an ability that chooses its own aggro so people can just walk away form it and let it aggro a minion or even just out run the damage entirely. So basically they took the best tank in the game, removed his damage mitigation, nerfed his passive to high hell, took the %health damage he could consistently hit (at the risk of over extending) and moved it to an ability with a flat 12 second cooldown that you have no control over after it lands that is easily the 2nd easiest ability to out run in the game, second only to his new, shittier nami ult rip off.

These reworks are a fucking abomination. Straight up hot garbage.

ZT Xperimentor4/20/2017, 1:09:42 PM2 votes

In short, they made his dynamic entry, more static; while potentially being more of a problem for his teammates.

ABlueQuaker4/20/2017, 4:04:44 PM2 votes

Riot shat the bed with these changes. The 'Vanguard Update' will be a massive failure. Best case scenario the new items force the shitty updates to be viable. Worst case scenario the kits are useless even with the new items and the new items get abused by other classes.

Riot seriously needs to fuck off and stop trying to cram lots of really shitty changes into so-called 'Class Updates' and start doing small scale tweaks and pseudo reworks to champions that actually need them. I'm starting to lose count of the number of main/favourite/go-to champions of mine have been ruined by these updates. Quinn, Graves, Fizz, Sejuani, Zac. Just to name a few.

EDIT: I also hated the Kog'maw changes but I didn't list him because the changes were so stupid that Riot finally reverted them many many months later.

SolarisCorvus4/20/2017, 5:48:37 AM1 votes

Im gonna miss zacs old R animation. The way he gradually loses his human shape with each bounce was perfect to me. I really hope they keep it somehow. Also dont like the high pitched voice thing, seems to annoying.

Ehkrickor4/20/2017, 1:47:15 PM1 votes

This a very simple case right here. It is another one of my favorite champions nerfed into the ground for no good reason. hooray.

Nameless Drifter4/20/2017, 10:27:54 AM1 votes

As a Zac Main also, Im really disappointed with these changes to Zac, most specifically his ult change was a straight up nerf to Zac and all his gamestyle during a match.

First of all Im okay with the Q changes. Q on Zac was never a important part of Zac kit even though the old Q was fine the way it was.

The change to Zac voice depending on his health is also cool.

Now on to the negative points:

The sound when Zac activates his abilities is horrible. The old one was GOOD, why the hell is Riot changing something that everyone liked and the backstory of it was funny?? I honestly do not understand.

Zac New Ult is terrible. If you E on to the enemy on a gank and then try to use your ulti to throw him to your allie or tower, the enemy can easily flash and avoid. If you use your Ult without charging you do tiny damage to them and a simple knockup. -----If you engage in teamfights with this new Ult, you have no mobility or no way to get out or get to your targets. You E into them and then you cant do anything. ------This is also a nerf to Zac baron/drake steals and his ability to duel someone. He can no longer E to the enemy jungler and Ult him to get him out of the pit or at least make him panic so that you can Smite it. -------Also remember those Flash > Ult combos you could do and give Zac some dynamic? Well thats also gone with this crappy ult too.

Overall this new ult is garbage. Its a huge nerf on Zac in every level: Mobility, Engage, Duels, Objective control, Durability. It makes Zac a dull champion.

Zac never needed a rework, but hey Riot decided to change Zac since they were unable to come up with changes to Malphite or other tanks that needed this Rework Spot the most.

"If it works, why change it?" - No one at Riot.

Acheron164/20/2017, 12:49:27 PM1 votes

I like all of his changes, especially since now you can control where you want to bring the enemies instead of awkwardly knocking them back from you and your team.

I think only his rework out of all three was universally good.

Handy Sandy 4/19/2017, 10:08:54 PM1 votes

He was one of the most unique tanks there was, so I agree there were better candidates to get a rework.

Sire Hippington4/20/2017, 2:03:26 PM1 votes

Played him on PBE and i have to say i don't like it. His new Q feels pretty clunky and the payoff isn't all that big. I really don't get why the second part is tied to an AA rather than a simple recast, makes it feel really ankward to use and gives very limited range to the second one, but makes it fail save if there is something in range. The old one was simple, but funktional, the aoe helped waveclear and the rather reliable slow helped him to have consitent impact in fights.

But most of all: Why change the old Ult? It was Awsome, it delivered on his blobness and synergiesed with his W and passive. The new one feel wiered to use, the knockup feels totally pointless and the charged version is pretty unreliable yet potentially broken.

Also, his overall damage output and especially ap ratios went down a bit, hurting ap-bruiser builts alot.

DeathBot6664/20/2017, 12:48:08 AM1 votes

Personally, I want his ult so that every new rank he can move people further of he holds down his ult, and if he doesn't he bounces extra times per level. (Meaning lvl 1 he bounces 1 time, 2 he bounces twice, and 3 his ult works like it does now if not held.)

Sun Wu Ryuumoku4/20/2017, 1:46:33 PM1 votes

JarvanIV couldn't be adressed in this... he isn't a vanguard nor a tank.

despite not playing Zac, i like his current kit... but come on i hate when i play with a zac in my team... Ult Zac totaly ruin my MonkeyKing ult when we are in the same team*[slayer-jinx-unamused]*

to me they rise the skill required to play Zac, what's great IMO and they keeped his identy theme and in the gameplay. I like love his new ult will be great for trap and add something in the game along his Q.

E:

  • "Why everyone loves Zac"

not the pov of an ennemy laner KAPPA

YOUGOTKILLEDBRO4/20/2017, 2:32:46 AM1 votes

As a fellow Zac main, I can't agree with you more on the ult. Why the hell did they even touch it?