Ziggs needs some help
The classic strengths of Ziggs was that he was a lane bully that could transition into a pretty strong AOE teamfight with strong waveclear. Riot reduced the radius on his q making it extremely difficult to land in lane and in some cases even in teamfights leaving him with only the ability to waveclear until late in the game where he can kind of AOE teamfight but its very feast or famine. If the enemy team has sufficient mobility then you likely can only hit 1 person with a q and they are probably the tank, you are also probably trying to peel that tank off of your AD using W and E, so in general the only thing you are doing in a fight is helping to take down a single tank while lobbing your ult on the rest of their team and hoping that your team can clean up afterwards.
Because his waveclear was so strong you could help your team hold on in losing games and have a decent chance at a come back assuming you had some late game threats on the team.
To clarify here is what ziggs is now: He is a decent wave clear mid laner with an average teamfight who provides almost no pressure in lane. I could pick Viktor or Orianna and have basically the same waveclear and more utility while also having pressure in lane. What I sacrifice by picking Ori and Viktor is some very inconsistent long range poke which is completely countered by most popular items now.
Ziggs has been weakened by several things, one is that his waveclear is better suited to keeping assassins in lane, the currently contested mid laners have similar waveclear to Ziggs but have more reliable harass tools so he tends to fall behind. Secondly the changing scape of ADCs. ADCs are much more mobile than before, the most picked ADCs are Kalista, Sivir, Graves and Corki. All of these champs are mobile enough to dodge the teeny tiny ziggs Q's. Supports can no longer be poked out in a single spell, Alistar Braum Naut etc are all tanky, combined with tanky top laners and fighter jungles the poke you do land is a lot less meaningful that it has been in the past.
The most important difference though is that his waveclear just isn't what it used to be. If your team is behind Ziggs used to be able to buy 10-15 minutes for the team (which lets be honest, pretty frustrating) but now if your team is behind his waveclear just isn't enough, baron buffed minions take 3-4 q's to clear.
Lastly look at Ziggs win rates in plat+
plat ~ 47% diamond ~45% masters is pretty swingy but there are a lot of days its below 45%
While win rate does NOT always equate to power level I think in this case it shows a clear trend. Coupled with his low pick rate that means that even the people who primarily play Ziggs and are good with Ziggs are still losing more than half the time.
Here are some things Riot could do to bring him more in line with other champs: I think they should increase the radius on his q so it can be used in lane again, maybe not as high as before but there definitely is a comfortable middle ground that will allow it to land it without it being an auto hit. They should reduce the cd on his passive so that he can harass with it more. They could increase the stun time when hit with a w based on how close to the center it landed, this would allow him to hit with q more often in trading situations and maybe even land an e if he managed to get close enough to put himself into danger. Lastly they could just reduce his CD on W and E giving him more teamfight utility to make up for his inconsistent damage.
I think buffing all of these aspects would be too much but I think making 1 or 2 of these changes could help to make him more viable especially in casual play at higher ranks.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks, Binx
