Boards›Gameplay

Why Zoe's RNG is actually BAD RNG

Werwar·12/14/2017, 2:50:09 PM·75 votes·4,674 views

There is a lot of talk about Zoe recently, and yesterday meddler released a "gameplay thoughts" where he touched on the RNG aspect and their stance on it. They see Zoe's RNG as fine because they say you can play around it.

I disagree. Which I will explain to you with the following examples.

PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM NOT SAYING SHE IS OP. I really do not care about her powerlevel in this post, PURELY the RNG part of her kit.

Im going to be talking in hypothetical situations here:

Lets say KT is playing VS SKT. Faker locks in Zoe. KT's jungler (score) is one Elise. Elise is looking to get pawn on viktor ahead early, so he scale or whatever. Doesnt really matter. Elise does standard 2 buffs into camps route and is aiming to gank mid. A bubbled minion spawns. Score has 2 options. Respect the bubbles potential to drop a free escape and not go for the gank, or go for the gank anyway and risk wasting time. No matter which option he chooses, the rng has already influenced the game here in a way he can not play around. If the bubble spawns a cleanse, flash, he wasting his time for the gank and cannot go for it, because there is a bigger chance that he is wasting his time to basically gain nothing. If it was spawns a favorable spell/active than Zoe got a FREE gank escape because of the RNG. Maybe in 9/10 situations she will get bad spawns or no bubbles at all and not get a free escape, but this time she does, and its an important game so thats all that matters. Viktor is not in a position to deny her the bubble, and even if he was, the amount of pressure he has to exert in lane or the amount of pressure that is relieved from him, is again, decided by the RNG.

Maybe if they played this matchup 100 times, Viktor wins lane 70 times because lets just say that he is a better viktor player than faker is a zoe player. 30% of those games he will not win lane, because Zoe gets lucky summoner drops. (these stats are just an example, in my opinion if zoe wins even 1% of lanes because of lucky summoner drops than it is too much)

And im not even talking about redemptions map impact, or gunblade giving you a free health advanatage (goodluck zoning her from it, if she picks it up she wins the trade and you cant remove the bubbles)

  • With elemental drakes there is a 6 minute timer ahead of what its going to be. It can still fuck you over, if you draft a lategame team vs an early game team and they get 3 fires which you cant really contest, tough luck. But AT LEAST you get 6 minutes prep time, so perhaps you can get advantages elsewhere, or look to play around it.

  • With crit you are always going to take damage, if it crits or not.

Neither of those have the impact zoes rng has. 3 fire drakes is huge but games can be decided before they really get into effect. Zoe's rng has huge impact from the moment she levels it, potentially. A lucky crit will not allow you to impact the entire map as much zoes rng does.

Zoe's bubble spawns instantly and creates pressure. It could be useless, it could be great, you dont know, and what it is going to drop will affect your playstyle, but you dont know till it drops. And even if you did know, you will get situations where its "oh great, I cant all in zoe because theres an ignite bubble entering lane so its making it much more risky"

TL;DR, Zoe's RANDOM drops are BAD RNG, I explained why.

I love Riot as a company. I like Zoe's design and theme. I hate the RNG and its impact, and I hope Riot will change their mind on this.

79 Comments

Jet Sett12/14/2017, 3:34:25 PM49 votes

I genuinely feel her W should be castable and to get rid of all these bubbles and item active drops. It feels pretty shit that by building an active item you essentially give it to the enemy team as well, and it's already bad enough to have a champion that blatantly gets excused on the power of summoner spells.

Flash feels pretty shit when your enemy laner gets a free one because you used your own. Congrats! They have long cooldowns for a reason, but here comes a champion that literally punishes you directly for it, not because you misused it, but because you just USED it.

LadyRenly12/14/2017, 3:47:12 PM9 votes

If it was spawns a favorable spell/active than Zoe got a FREE gank escape because of the RNG

A "free" gank escape? It's literally her entire W ability. Fizz/Morgana has a constant "free" gank escape with their E. It's not free if you're entire ability revolves around only being able to be activated conditionally

fox only fd12/14/2017, 4:43:52 PM9 votes

Yeah. I like the idea of a sort of "all-or-nothing" champion with all her damage loaded into one skillshot, and in general most of Zoe 's kit is pretty unique and interesting. But the minion spell drops were unnecessary. Zoe 's W was already a cool, unique concept - stealing enemy summoner spells and items adds some interesting strategic options in fights. I feel like the minion RNG drops kinda ruin it.

Cowseed12/14/2017, 7:03:52 PM8 votes

A fix I think could work is making the bubbles content revealed when Zoe comes within a certain range of the minion. I say reveal it when she's in range so that if she's laning the oponent can determine how much resources they should put into denying her that spell and so that a lane doesn't that isn't hers spawns a free TP/redemtion etc that basically says "roam here"

xxxDogmanxxx12/15/2017, 11:12:16 AM6 votes

DECISION TO GANK

Score has 2 options. Respect the bubbles potential to drop a free escape and not go for the gank, or go for the gank anyway and risk wasting time. No matter which option he chooses, the rng has already influenced the game here in a way he can not play around.

False. He can play around the fact that it's Zoe and go for a gank in a different lane. Respecting a strong Zoe and her W and not going for the gank because of the chance she might outplay me is already an example of the Jungler playing around it. That's the same as me not ganking a strong Akali because I think she has her W up and could outplay me. The bubbles are part of her W ABILITY, the same as any other champion. Why does Zoe and her abilities not deserve the same respect as any other champion?

Consequently, the decision to go for the gank isn't determined by the RNG of Zoe's bubbles either. It's determined by the judgement of the jungler, after seeing the situation that Zoe is in, whether she is overextended or not, and whether they have enough tools to kill her even accounting for her bubbles.

In both cases, Jungler would have had to make against any other champion anyway. The jungler would have had to ask the same question, "Can we get this enemy despite her abilities?" and would have decided based on their judgement anyway.

By Meddler's definition, "good RNG" allows players to show their adaptability, adding another type of skill test in addition to the others already present in the game (mechanical skill, coordination with team mates, etc). It can create unexpected situations that test quick thinking, allow unusual actions and can be really exciting.

Sounds to me like when it comes to the decision to gank, Zoe's Bubbles are actually GOOD RNG, not bad.

OUTCOME OF THE GANK

Viktor is not in a position to deny her the bubble, and even if he was, the amount of pressure he has to exert in lane or the amount of pressure that is relieved from him, is again, decided by the RNG.

Not really a fair point. If instead of Viktor, he was playing say Lucian mid, then he could easily deny Zoe's chance to get the bubble. Lane pressure is far less influenced by Zoe's RNG bubbles and far more by champion choice and player skill.

This entire scenario you gave isn't a good example of Zoe's bubbles being bad RNG, because your entire argument in this part basically rests on the assumption that Zoe's RNG bubbles would unreasonably determine the outcomes of ganks against her. But that scenario assumed the jungler would not have taken Zoe's abilities into account, and it assumed that somehow the laner himself could not contribute to the gank.

Even in the rare scenario that Zoe did get a last-second Flash / Cleanse / Barrier / Exhaust / etc and undeniably escaped a gank by using it, who's to say that the laner and the jungler couldn't have still succeeded if they had started the gank one second earlier, or what if one of them had the foresight to account for a last-second Flash after seeing the bubble and pre-empt it by placing a skill shot where she'd land?

WINNING LANE

Maybe if they played this match-up 100 times, Viktor wins lane 70 times because lets just say that he is a better viktor player than faker is a zoe player. 30% of those games he will not win lane, because Zoe gets lucky summoner drops.

You've shoe-horned your example to exemplify output randomness. I F this situation occurred that frequently, then yes, it'll be mostly luck-based, and that's bad RNG. But in the vast majority of cases, Zoe winning lane could occur due to any number of things, and most reasonably it would happen due to player skill, and assuming equal skill between both players, champion match-up.

In my opinion if Zoe wins even 1% of lanes because of lucky summoner drops, then it is too much.

Even in this scenario, the Zoe player would still have to make the decision on how to USE the W. The summoner drops don't automatically use themselves. In which case, you can't really claim that Zoe winning lane in that scenario is entirely luck-based.

IMPACT OF ZOE'S RNG

It could be useless, it could be great, you don't know, and what it is going to drop will affect your playstyle, but you don't know till it drops. And even if you did know, you will get situations where its "Oh great, I can't all-in Zoe because there's an ignite bubble entering lane so its making it much more risky."

So what if you don't know? The point you are advocating is that it's bad RNG, which your statement doesn't prove at all. All it proves is that it I S RNG, but not whether it's good or bad RNG.

Anyway, Meddler already addressed this in his post, saying:

Occurrences of randomness are clearly telegraphed, minions are marked and the abilities they drop are guaranteed to spawn away from Zoe, ensuring it takes a bit more time for her to pick them up. Their impact is also based off how Zoe uses whatever she picks up, not the moment something drops."

He's right. As I've already said, Zoe player would still have to make the decision on how to use the W. And if it just so happens that the drop rate of certain actives are causing stuations to turn more luck-based than intended, Meddler has already said they'll tune it.

TLDR: Most of your post keeps emphasizing that Zoe's bubbles are "bad RNG", but what you really mean is that Zoe's bubbles are "RNG that could be bad for Zoe's enemy."

Kaptain Kuddles12/14/2017, 3:25:07 PM3 votes

I think the issue with Zoe is not so much the fact that they have RNG incorporated into her kit, but there has been little in the way to explain what abilities are available at what points in the game - the lack of information about her current RNG is the problem.

When you take a champion such as Kindred that has innate RNG built into the stacking mechanic, I feel like Riot eventually learned that this needed to be adjusted to offer not only power to the player but also provide the other team with information as to how she may move through the game in order to obtain those stacks.

Zoe needs to have certain abilities gated by the length of the game, removing oppressive summoners such as flash / teleport until after the 6-8 minute mark. Allowing for a heal or an exhaust should be relatively less oppressive in the long term. I still think that a very skilled player can utilize the sleepy bubble a little too easily in order to poke out or kill an enemy laner.

As long as a solution is found that provides information to both the player and the opposing team allowing some semblance of counter play that promotes skill on both sides of the rift I think Zoe is a smashing success.

Sire Hippington12/14/2017, 6:55:00 PM3 votes

I really agree with zoe's RNG beeing bad, however:

With crit you are always going to take damage, if it crits or not.

Neither of those have the impact zoes rng has.

No sire, just no. Crit is a way more imactfull mechanic than zoe's just because of how common it is, and there is a MASSIVE difference between takeing 100% damage or takeing 250% damage from an attack. Crit is very powerfull and impactfull stat, and it beeing RNG is one of the worst things in league ever. Amongst all the RNG in this game, Crit is by far the worst!

As for zoe, her W is a bullshit abillity even without the RNG, as it punishes players for doing the right thing. Gunblade is part of your core built and burstrptation? Well, if you face zoe, you just give her a free active with bonus on top. Go all in and naturally use your ignite? Now Zoe gets to ignite you to. It just makes you feel bad about doing things that under every other circumstances would be the right call, just becuase she fucking exists.

FlameHalbrdOkido12/15/2017, 7:50:58 AM2 votes

Additionally I find it strange that Zoe's passive doesn't get the fair counter play that many other champs with similar set ups do.

Examples: Poppy Poppy's passive: when she throws her Buckler it bounces to a random location, she can run to it to pick it up and gain a shield. The enemy can step on it to destroy it and deny her.

Zyra Zyra's passive: randomly produces plants in the area around her that grant sight and she can use her abilities on Enemies can step on them to destroy them and deny her

Theres are the only examples that i could remember. But the theme is the same. Both are passives that generate something on the map that the champ benefits from that the enemy doesn't want them to have. Both passives are uncontrollable, as in neither the person playing the champ nor the enemy knows where the objects will appear they only know when. The difference is that once Zoe has access to the object that she wants to use, no one can really deny her from getting to it, as she has the mobility necessary to get it and get away. Whereas for the other two the enemy has a fair chance at stopping them...so whats up with that?

Similar things can be said for Bard's W: Caretaker's shrine and Rek'Sai's E: Tunnel, they can be taken away by the enemy as a form of counterplay. Zoe's minion RNG violates exactly what Riot said they don't like about RNG, the decision has already been made by the game and theres not much u can do about it, just sit there and watch as it happens.

Riot I dont care even if u allow Enemies to step on the spell to destroy. GET RID OF MINION RNG and JUST make it the BASE spell.

PLEASE!!

rtbf22561824112/14/2017, 7:55:47 PM1 votes

That's not how you do a TL;DR.

PurpleKingCrazy12/14/2017, 7:05:06 PM1 votes

Free summoner spells definitely doesn't feel free to me. I consider Zoe worse than Taliyah because Zoe doesn't have that utility to support her playstyle and she could get punished for no good reason other than how well you play her or the trade within. Playing against Zoe, she doesn't have that much engage to her ability other than relying on that champion falling asleep in time to damage the champion heavily (clearly her design aspect). She doesn't quite have the cc unlike Annie or Leblanc and Taliyah can do so much more than those two. Like Taliyah, she can get punished heavily once she steps a foot in the wrong territory of her enemy, and there's nothing she can do about it.

Yea, I think her W definitely needs a change somewhere for starters. I actually don't see anything wrong with her kit other than her W. Zoe

Taliyah

ArcTrickster12/15/2017, 6:50:47 PM1 votes

By that logic, the crit mechanic is also bad. Facing a Tryndamere who passively gets critical strike chance from level 1 can be catastrophic if he can luck out and crit you twice. Imagine going for a short trade and he crits twice, essentially getting 4 autos out instead of 2. In the hands of a good player, that lane is already becoming way easier and generally generate a big advantage.