Zoe Balance Thoughts
Since the subject of how Zoe ought to be balanced seems a very... popular... subject on the boards, I figure as someone who plays as Zoe I may as well throw in a few constructive suggestions of my own for what it's worth. These suggestions are primarily concerned with giving her Q & E tradeoffs which will give Zoe players more flexibility while creating more latitude for nerfing aspects of her kit without neutralizing her entirely.
Q (Paddle Star): As advertised, having its damage be proportional to distance traveled was supposed to allow it to be used as either a reliable short-range poke or an unreliable long-range nuke. However, its mana and cooldown costs are just too exorbitant for a poke, meaning Zoe players are encouraged to use only the nuke version 100% of the time. This increases frustration to be on the receiving end of, because it means that opponents are always getting hit by the most damaging version of the skill.
I would suggest making the mana and cooldown costs scale inversely to the damage and distance scaling. So a Zoe player could use her Q as a quick poke, or to proc her passive, or to play mindgames with her opponent with a series of pokes followed by an unexpected nuke. It would give her some counterplay against champs at close range, which conversely means Zoe players will be less incentivized to only rely on the guerrilla tactics they're infamous for.
This could be implemented in several different ways. Here are two possibilities:
- Cooldown and mana could be refunded on hit from a successful short range Q. This would encourage skillful landing of the Q at short range, as it would heavily penalize a miss, while rewarding her opponents for skillful bait and dodge tactics.
- Mana could drain continuously while the projectile is out, causing the projectile to immediately vanish if mana runs out midflight (similar to how it vanishes when going out of range) and its cooldown would increase in proportion to the time that projectile was alive. This would require the Zoe player to be more mana aware and give a longer duration between nukes for her opponents to counter.
E (Sleepy Trouble Bubble): The slow & sleep effect of this skill should be considered a single effect with a single duration where the proportion of that duration opponents spend slowed or asleep would be determined by the precision of the shot. A direct hit would have the highest sleep percentage (maybe causing sleep instantly, with no slow effect at all) and a barely glancing blow would have the lowest sleep percentage (perhaps none at all). Traps would always count as a barely glancing blow.
This would alleviate one of the pain points of the skill: that an affected opponent must wait for two consecutive timers to elapse. For the Zoe player this would reward precise skill shots with longer sleep durations at the expense of reduced slow durations.
I don’t have much to add for her W and R other than that I have always felt they should be flipped, allowing her to take Portal Jump earlier (with perhaps significantly increased cooldown for the first few levels) and saving Spell Thief’s influence for later. Going that route, it would make sense if Spell Thief only began with one missile, gaining one with each rank (up to three).
