Easy Zoe Nerf: Give her the Lethality Varus Treatment?

THE TL;DR IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST. THANK YOU FOR STICKING THIS THROUGH!

Hey everyone,

Crazy Jenkins here. Before we get started, I want to address the elephant in the room: I am not a Zoe hater. In fact, I've slowly been turning into a Zoe OTP. I love her kit. I love the RNG developed into her kit. Her mobility, her damage, her voice lines, her model, her damage, her animations, her damage...

HER DAMAGE.

This seems to be the biggest point of discussion. With one-shots happening offscreen and into your nightmares, this is probably the most controversial part of her champion design. Riot, for the most part, has also been trying to fine-tune everyone's favorite sparkle monster without touching the damage in a flat-out AP nerf. They've hit things like the Gunblade W drop, Sleepy Bubble's timing, and recently they will be nerfing his Paddlestar (Q) cooldown as a whole. In line of Riot's thinking, I have a solution to offer:

Zoe's cooldown on her Q should be increased significantly. For easy numbers, let's say doubled. Zoe's cooldown on Paddlestar should be double, BUT when hitting an enemy champion, the cooldown is reduced by 50%.

When thinking about this nerf, Lethality Varus comes to mind. Before 7.5, if you weren't playing Varus ADC you were wrong, because the amount of free, easy, and consistent damage Varus could obtain with his Piercing Arrow (Q) was absurd. Much like Zoe. Riot stated in their 7.5 patch notes the following:

"As most bot- or mid-laners can attest to, Varus's Piercing Arrow is really good at bringing the full force of Lethality (and Deathfire Touch) to bear from long range. This is (or was) somewhat intentional: when Varus is behind, Piercing Arrow lets him contribute to fights without feeding the enemy more kills. Right now, that backup plan doesn’t actually cost Varus that much damage, raising the question “why take the risks associated with basic attacking if safe Q spam works just as well?”

While it's clear that Piercing Arrow needs to be brought in line, the larger goal is to encourage Varus to do things we can support in the long run. To that end, the changes below are lessened when he uses Q as a Blight detonator between attacks, rather than a fully-charged fog-of-war snipe. Granted, even a basic-attacking Varus won’t escape the Deathfire Touch changes further below, but that’s honestly how far off the rails Piercing Arrow was."

Now they did touch the AD scaling a little bit on his Q, but their main change was hitting its cooldown but rewarding players for hitting targets with blight stacks. You could still run lethality Varus, but it was less safe and you had to stack blight procs in order to obtain similar success.

This is Zoe's problem. The Q damage is too free. It's safe, too; really safe. You can throw a blind Q in a general direction, and if your opponent is standing there thinking about Neopets or something he's going to get sent to the Shadow Isles faster than you can say, "Yorick is the real problem here, not Zoe."

But Zoe does have a problem. But if you increase her Q cooldown but reward players for hitting her spell, you actually remove a lot of issues that players may not be complaining as much about, but all help her be very oppressive in the game:

Farming and Clearing Lanes. One of the most oppressive pocket-reasons why Zoe is a terror is because she can clear minion waves in negative 2 seconds. If you blink, you miss it. If you increase her Paddlestar cooldown if it doesn't hit champions, this removes a ton of her roaming potential, as well as late game waveclear, allowing teams to actually feel rewards when grabbing Baron or trying to group and push down a lane.

Trading and Lane Bullying. Good Zoe's will still be rewarded in playing the champion the way they want to. However, this becomes incredibly punishing if you a) miss your Q, or b) decide to use Q to farm minions. Increasing the cooldown offers a ton of counterplay for her opponents, knowing they have a much larger time window to try and dish out damage and zone her out of experience. One complaint I hear a lot is Zoe requires CONSISTANT focus to play against. If Morgana misses a Dark Binding early on, or if Blitzcrank misses a pull, you understand your window to fight - and you can, easily. If Zoe misses a Paddlestar, just wait 7 seconds. If she misses the second one, just wait. If she hits the third one, pray to Nagakabouros she doesn't hit the fourth. You have to be on your toes for the whole match, which I think is a lot more exhausting then the pressure other midlaners offer.

Teamfighting. Zoe will still be able to get her picks, because that's what she was always meant to do. However if you miss your pick and don't hit a champion at all, your team better realize it's a bad time to go in right now. Zoe's power doesn't come from absurd one-shot potential in my opinion. There are a lot of champions that can do similar things should they land a single spell. Zoe's power comes from consistency, and if you remove free consistency but reward better Zoe players, I think people will learn to play around it more.

That's my two cents. I would love to hearing Riot's input on this, because they've been skirting around a lot of nerfs for her recently, which I am more than okay with (remember, I main Zoe, too). But I think instead of fine-tuning numbers, they should introduce a mechanic which rewards better players (both playing AS her and AGAINST her), and harm her potential a greater amount if misplayed.

TL;DR: Zoe should recieve a similar nerf to Varus when building him with Lethality was... well, lethal. Increase her coolodown on Q by a considerable amount, but refund part of the cooldown should she hit an enemy champion. This creates much longer windows for opponents to go in with, this hurts her roaming potential as clearing waves becomes more difficult, and this hurts her consistency in teamfights.

Have fun on the Rift, everyone!

Cheers,

Jenkins, Crazy