Why Zac is bad right now.

TzQGRUST39·5/14/2017, 2:21:00 AM·23 votes·1,986 views

This isn't saying the rework is bad, but rather explaining why his winrate is so low.

It's because Riot underestimated how strong old Zac ult was. It was one of the most versatile and useful ults in the game. You used it to chase, escape, as teamfight disruption, as burst, in-fight sustain, ect, ect.

So when Zac's ultimate got changed, his options as a champion were severely reduced, but all of that power budget didn't really manifest anywhere else. Sure his new Q is very fun and unique, but it isn't vastly stronger than than old Q in most realistic situations. In order to get Zac to a decent winrate, they are going to have to inject some of that lost power budget somewhere, whether it be damage, cooldowns, or more utility.

My first suggestion would be to revert the E knock up nerf. It would help Zac gank better and be able to pull of his new ultimate more.

15 Comments

Wizzleboom5/14/2017, 2:37:52 AM17 votes

Old Q was more reliable. Old ult was better.

Doctor Jarvis5/14/2017, 7:37:49 AM6 votes

I've played against quite a few Zacs; have yet to have my head bopped into someone else's. Its a pretty limited ability. The whole point of the rework was to give him "more to do" since he pretty much just E - W - Q - R then jumped around the battlefield looking for blobs or champions, depending on his needs, so let his Q be cool instead of "sometimes a little neat"

Meep Man5/14/2017, 3:49:30 PM4 votes

Way ahead of ya dude. Next patch they are adding damage to his Q, making Q feel better to use, increasing the E knock-up duration based on time charged, and increasing the slow duration on R after bouncing.

Tobias Brackner5/14/2017, 7:33:46 AM3 votes

Nah, I feel they understand perfectly how strong his ult was. Not only that, but they also understand how mindless it was. They consciously chose to make him a champ that requires more thought and decision making in his most basic gameplay.

AcidTheWarlock5/14/2017, 11:33:29 AM2 votes

There's buffs for Q and E damage as well as E CC on PBE right now. And you can W during Q.

AmetDeCrypt5/14/2017, 2:45:48 AM2 votes

maybe give his w the slow that his q lost? I always wondered why they reworked almost everything but the most boring part of his kit: his resettable blurp blob. also let all damage instances of his q drop a blob, so 2-3 depending on how many enemies he attacked.

Teridax685/15/2017, 10:41:51 AM1 votes

I think part of the issue is also that Riot seriously overestimated the power tied to displacing enemies as a tank. On paper, being able to transport literally the entire enemy team hundreds of units in whichever direction you choose sounds super OP, but in practice the ult is so telegraphed, and requires so much follow-up to actually be effective, that it's not actually all that ridiculous (it's strong, mind, just not mindblowingly so). The same goes for his Q: being able to displace two different enemies at a time on a basic ability is strong in theory, but in practice his Q is so unreliable, particularly when compared to his old, fairly boring Q, that it didn't end up requiring such a nerf to the rest of his kit.

I think part of the issue is also that Zac lost a ton of damage, due to both the change to his ult and the one on his Q (his enhanced auto doesn't even apply basic attack damage, which needs to be fixed). Right now he's in this weird in-between state where he's clearly supposed to deal some damage (his W is a pure nuke), but he doesn't actually have that much of it. He needs to either have a bit more damage, likely on his Q and E (having the damage increase by charging it up could compensate for the loss of his R damage on initiates), or should be balanced properly around not dealing much damage at all, and thereby receive more CC.

XIII Vanitas5/15/2017, 3:19:38 PM1 votes

The E nerf is going to be somewhat reverted in the next update: the base damage is going to be the same as before and the knock-up duration is going to scale from 0.5 to 1 second based on how long Zac charged his E.

They're also going to add a max hp scaling to his Q and some qol changes with the target selection of the second portion of the ability.

TL;DR: let's wait for the next patch and see how things develop, although I'm still very skeptic about the new ult.

Sun Wu Ryuumoku5/14/2017, 12:07:22 PM1 votes

His old ult was stupid to play with (for ur team) and against (his damage was so high despite build full tank).

In order to get Zac to a decent winrate, they are going to have to inject some of that lost power budget somewhere, whether it be damage, cooldowns, or more utility.

The point of tank rework was to tune down tanks damages. In the end then new ult will be better, and yeah its less braindead.

Sire Hippington5/14/2017, 3:33:31 PM1 votes

The main reaspn for him beeing bad is the Q change, It lost tons of reliabillity, some waveclear and teamfight aoe and even in a perect situation the payoff really isn't much higher than befor (people really tend to underestimated high uptime slows like his old Q was)

Evewynn5/14/2017, 7:09:16 PM1 votes

Just make him untargettable during his ult channel and he would be great.

I honestly thought that's what it did until I died while trying to channel it.

CRAZFIGHTER5/14/2017, 9:40:34 PM1 votes

I think his new Q is like u said unique... but it honestly feels like such a bad ability.

Sexy Jack Rabbit5/15/2017, 9:31:13 AM1 votes

The new Q feels really janky. I've yet to play (Don't think I will) But at times he'll Q me and then nothing will happen, and other times he'll Q me and something will happen.

Seems like it's just either really hard to use, or just doesn't work.