Let's help Zac

Sheerow·12/17/2014, 1:48:34 AM·12 votes·1,811 views

So I think we can all agree Zac could use a little love. The recent buffs are a step in the right direction, but I think his passive needs some help. Both parts of it are strong ideas, but are executed poorly. Let's start with his chunks.

So I think everyone who has played Zac is familiar with the habit of chunks to aim straight for the enemy's face. I swear there's like a 5% chance they'll land in a convenient spot. This isn't as detrimental when jungling... though they did have to change unstable matter to ignore jungle monster collision so the chunks wouldn't be trapped behind Blue's fat butt. I have a couple ideas for how to amend this:

1 Simply make them not fly as far, or fly more often in a better direction.

Tbh it's kind of a meh suggestion. I don't feel it really fixes things as the chunks' landing spot was changed because they were too easy to get and Zac was able to benefit from them too much. Or:

2 Make his blobs have some sort of CC when stepped on. A strong but short slow makes sense.

This is better as it creates a bit of interesting gameplay concerning his blobs... but I don't really like the idea of trying to run away from a Zac and his blob just happens to land in front of me so I get slowed and die. Dying from chance is never fun/shouldn't really happen in league. Or:

3 Make it so his Stretching Strike can pick up blobs.

I honestly feel this should have been there from the start. He's stretching his arms - there's no reason that shouldn't count as him touching a his chunks. It allows for him to regain his chunks but doesn't turn him into impossible to kill - since he's only grabbing one out of reach chunk and not the one generated from his Q. And with the cooldown on Q he can't constantly be grabbing ranged sustain. For lane Zac this gives Zac more of a choice of how to use his Q - to poke or to get sustain. Also, this fits nicely with his other basic abilities each interacting with his passive uniquely.

I feel like the other part of his passive is kind of more problematic. Splitting into bloblets is very strong early game, as Zac is very likely to survive with it. As the game progresses it starts becoming just less useful. Unlike other revive passives, he isn't immune (Aatrox) and he doesn't gain full health and scaling resistances (Anivia). It becomes pretty easy to take down his blobs with 8 seconds to do it, with them being able to be smited and affected by AoE. A couple ways this could be fixed:

1 Blobs move faster

Kind of uninteresting and not necessarily that helpful. The real issue is that Zac's revive passive makes him unable to do anything yet still take damage from all sources. It'd help at least. Or:

2 Make his passive have a much shorter cooldown or reset once he reaches full health

Probably a terrible idea. Makes him unkillable early and still doesn't help anything late. Or:

3 Have his blobs scale

This could happen in two ways I can think of:

3 a) At level 6/11/16 (or whatever level is best) the % of health/armor/magic resist of Zac his bloblets get increases.

3 b) Have the number of blobs Zac gets increase with each rank of his Unstable matter (which makes sense conceptually). They still retain the same values, there are just more with more points. Maybe something like:

Rank 0 - 4 blobs, Rank 1 - 4 blobs, Rank 2 - 5 blobs, Rank 3 - 6 blobs, Rank 4 - 7 blobs, Rank 5 - 8 blobs.

Who knows maybe this is wayyyy too many, but w is often maxed last and as said before his revive passive is honestly pretty bad late game compared to others. And especially with 2 charge smite right around the corner... (and ranger's trailblazer, though that's hopefully fixed soon).

And the last thing I think would be nice for Zac is allowing his Let's Bounce to let him move through player created terrain. It honestly makes sense clarity-wise, and is just frustrating being locked out of your allied Jarvan's Cataclysm while bouncing.

****Keep in mind I'm not suggesting all of these changes happening at the same time that'd be ridiculous. Maybe some of my suggestions are too strong, idk I'm not a game developer, (tho let's be real stronger game changes have made it through to live before - original feral flare cough). All I know is Zac needs some help, and I think these ideas are in the right direction.

10 Comments

X8ViEhkPS012/17/2014, 2:01:03 PM3 votes

WARNING I DIDN'T REALLY READ ANY OF THIS BUT I'M GIVING MY OPINION ON WHY HE IS NO LONGER BEING PLAYED

Zac's identity was a high sustain long range initiator. The only thing that Riot didn't really change about him was his long range. His sustain *technically * didn't go down, but it is locked away by Riot changing the blob drops from them to favor Zac to a more contestable range. Then later Riot fourthed the range of the area you can pick up his blobs. Which later they increased to 50 from 25, but it didn't really help him out at all.

Next they destroyed his ultimate after he initiates. By removing the tenacity on his ultimate the enemy team can completely stop his initiation in his tracks. You don't stop a Malphite engage, you don't stop a Hecarim engage. But you can stop Zac's engage well before he gets there, or even after he is in.

With how erratic his blobs are now, Zac has to now stop fighting if he wants to keep himself healthy to continue his job as a tank. With all these factors Zac is left in a place where he can't reliably function as intended.

Saevum12/17/2014, 2:08:21 AM1 votes

He's very fun to play. He just needs to wreck cc havoc with his kit. However, i agree he needs a little buff on his jelly gameplay.

Buff: remove the randomness of his splashing drops/particles. That way, player may control the direction in which they'll drop, just like The Draaaven Axes.

Thats it, only buff he needs. Personal opinion of course.

Edit: it may only work on his Q, cant figure out his W or E, but, Try Q at least pls.

patmax1712/17/2014, 11:54:24 AM1 votes

i really like the idea of picking the blobs up with Q, upvoted! ^^

(also, since the nerf is quite old, maybe you could more clearly state why his blobs fly towards the enemies, and probably link the patch notes)

Killstrado12/17/2014, 4:49:01 PM1 votes

W is never maxed last