Can we talk about the sorry state ZAC is in?
After searching the forums a bit, all that anyone seems to be talking about in relation to ZAC is skin ideas...but no one is talking about how bad ZAC is right now.
Not long after he came out, he was hit with the nerf bat, and pretty hard. His combination of tankiness and CC made him s monster in the meta, and his ability to go top lane also proved annoying. I'm not going to deny he needed nerfs at the time, but I think the scope of the nerfs put him in a very bad spot even then, and an especially useless spot now. To use some stats, according to LoLking, as of today, Zac is good for a 44.88% win rate-which is 11th worst of all champions. To make matters worse, he's only played 1.28% of the time...the FOURTH worse of all champions...only ahead of Urgot, Cass, Galio, and right behind Yorick. I know win and play rate aren't an end-all, be-all, but that's pretty telling. It means no one likes to play him, and those who do can't win with him, so it's not like his winrate is tarnished by a large, diverse pool of people playing him. And considering Yorick and Urgot are slated for major reworks, and Cass is currently in a rework limbo, I think it's safe to say that ZAC being so low means the players don't don't like his current state he is in.
Of course, that wasn't always the case...no, his nerfs put him in this current bind. And I think the current meta combined with how long ago many of these nerfs were implemented (around August of 2013) means ZAC can afford to be brought up the speed.
Let's take a look:
Passive: So his passive lasts for 5 whopping minutes, can be Smited, and he's completely helpless for 8 whole seconds. So why can Aatrox proc his passive at leats twice in that same time frame, at a much quicker speed, and also remain invulnerable for the duration? I understand that ZAC jumping in, blowing a load of CC on the team, and then having his passive save him could be ripe for abuse if it was lowered, but it just doesn't feel that good in it's current state. I think either how long it takes to revive (the 8 seconds) could be looked at, or maybe the overall static CD. Or maybe some form of CDR could apply to his passive? What if, every time his passive goes off and he successfully reforms, the passive CD gets lowered per bloblet that he recovered with? I think his passive is ripe place to give him a bit of QoL power.
IN ADDITION, there's the blob pick-up mechanic, when ZAC shed's a % of his HP per ability into bloblets that he can pick up to regain HP. How far they fly away from ZAC was nerfed to compensate for top-lane ZAC dominance, but it still feels absolutely awful in the Jungle. The blobs fly into random, crappy positions that require you to waste time and move awkwardly to pick them up. Most annoyingly, they often fly into the back of a jungle camp between the creep and the wall, and clicking in that direction to get the bloblet 90% of the time results in you selecting the creep to AA, or clicking the wall, in which then the auto-pathing thinks you want to walk all the way around the wall. This just results in a sluggish and bad mini-game mechanic that slows ZAC's jungling down and is no fun. Surely it can't be too hard to script the blobs to stay close to ZAC when used ton creep camps/when there's no enemy champions in like a 600 area radius, right?
Q: Simply put, I think this move sucks. The slow % is pretty low, the range is garbage, and the damage is junk. It's just a really, really weak CC move. Normally it wouldn't be too bad, but it's made worse by 2 factors:
- It has a long casting animation that feels crappy, and pretty much negates much of the slow's power because he has to hesitate himself to cast it.
- As Jungle ZAC, Q is typically the last skill you put points into, due to W being a core moves, and needing to put points into E to make the range more effective (more on that later).
This means you're typically stuck with a crappy Level 1, 25% slow for most of the game, which helps no one when ganking. Either the slow should be a static, higher % number for all 5 ranks, or it needs longer range (for a move called "Stretching Strike", that 550 range sure is pretty lame). Or do away with the bad casting animation for this move. The only problem I foresee with this is that Q is the first move you max when playing top lane ZAC, but surely there's a way to work around this.
W: I really don't have anything to say about this move, as it's in a good spot. it's his bread and butter Jungle move, and the recent change to make the CD lowered if you pick up blobs feels nice. Probably the only thing that really feels "good" on his kit.
E: The big problem with this move is that it's one of the only (the only?) non--Ult engage move that needs to rank up to increase the range. Every other jungler that uses a gap-closer to initiate (Lee Sin, J4, Elise, Amumu,, Kz, etc.) can count on the range to be static from the very first rank. However, ZAC's E gains range per point invested in it, meaning you have to waste points into it in order to make it more effective (at the expense of Q, as noted earlier). Ultimately, this feels bad, because it means most other gankers have stronger ganking power to start. The trade off here is that ZAC's E can get to be very long-up to 1550 range, to be exact. However, you have to channel to use the move...and the channel time goes up the more points invested. So it comes off as a slow, kinda clumsy move, that's strong for early game lane ganks, but feels like it falls off later.
Could we meet in the middle? MaybeE's range is 1350 (his current level 3 distance) at all ranks? And in addition to more damage, leveling up the ability could lower the channel time duration? This would free up players to decide if they want points in E to make it faster, or Q to get a better slow, giving players more options, and making the move feel better. It's a unique move, but it currently feels like it puts him at a disadvantage.
R: I don't think this move feels too bad, but I question the complete remove of tenacity from the Ult. There were many more Tenacity items when ZAC was first released, and ways to abuse him to gain absurdly high amounts of Tenacity, but currently on Merc treads and and Zephyr give it-and only Merc Treads makes sense to get on ZAC. Maybe if the rest of his kit gets cleaned up, he won't need much of an Ult change, but it currently feels like it's missing something. Or perhaps the slow % can go up (currently only 20%) or the duration (1 second)?
Overall, I love playing the Blob Man, I love his theme and play style, but I think he was nerfed too hard in an age of metas-past, and it's time to give him some love in the form of buffs/QoL adjustments to get him some play time, and some more W's.
