Zoe is not OP. She's horrible to play against. There's a difference.

Barkley··99 votes·8,314 views

There's a difference between being absolute cancer to play against, making everyone else's experience less fun, and making you want to throw your keyboard at a wall, and being "overpowered."

She's the first one. Not the second.

She's an unhealthy champion with a toxic skill set that makes playing against her an awful experience.

But as far as power, she's either average or slightly strong. She's not broken or OP, she doesn't need massive sweeping nerfs. She doesn't need 10000 posts saying how OP she is.

She needs some serious attention as to why she's so terrible to play against, and why the community largely hates having her in a game.

She ruins the game, period. Has nothing to do with her power, and everything to do with her kit being cancer.

Stop saying she's OP. She has average to below average win rates across all elos. She has average or comparable damage to other burst mages. She has counterplay. She has weaknesses (Malzahar, just to name one)

It just doesn't feel good to play against her. It's a total headache that detracts from the overall experience of the game.

She needs rework, not nerfs.

210 Comments

Lauchmelder45 votes

The main problem she's having right now is her playstyle of "I'm gonna miss 5 million bubbles and it doesn't matter. I'll eventually hit one and then oneshot that guy".

Infernape27 votes

Old Nidalee in a nutshell. "I'll miss all my spears but I'll eventually hit one that will oneshot someone".

Barkley12 votes

Yeah bit at least nidalees spears were pretty costly. She could only throw like 5 or 6 before she was oom.

Typically Drunk42 votes

She simply has too much utility and is OP. The W cool down and Q delay helps a bit, but lets be honest. She can jump and shoot over walls with basically a sleep that cannot be purged or dodged on an extremely short cool down. Even if she went 0-25-0, she can take an engage or high DPS person out of the game for 2 seconds no matter where their placement. Her damage late game is high and she can snowball early if left alone. Who else in this game can burst someone to below half health in one shot every 6 seconds? Add to this the extremely long range with the ulti that always up. She won every game she has been unbanned in all stars. Faker did the best and had the most deaths in just about any game he has played. Jarvan engage? Put him to sleep every time he steps forward. Faker carrying? Make sure he is not involved in team fights. Riot looks at competitive play and she is severely busted. It wont make it past preseason...

Barkley23 votes

That's honestly her biggest issue, IMO.

Her cooldowns are just way too goddamn short. It is an absolutely relentless onslaught of bubbles and stars you have to dodge, or you're dead. Just bubble after bubble after star after star after bubble after bubble... it just never stops.

At some point probability has to kick in, and you're gonna get hit. There's no avoiding it. You can be the best player in the world (Faker, as the other kid mentioned) and even he gets hit with it eventually.

You can only dodge so many skillshots before one hits. Especially when they're flying at you every other second.

It'd be like Season 2 Nidalee spears, except cheap as hell on mana, and on a 2 second cooldown. Oh god, the horror. As if that's not bad enough (Think about it!) add some nearly-unavoidable CC to it as well, on nearly the same cooldown.

Its a joke.

Fairyfleur2 votes

Honestly just increase the CD on E so that she can be punished more easily.

FatedSaviour10 votes

no, instead give it a minimum range

KlydeFrog2 votes

Higher mana cost

HaIlMonitor17 votes

Sounds like All of these champs too

Darius Thresh Zyra Yasuo Kalista

I wonder if there is anything in common with them? /sarcasm

quasistellar3 votes

{quoted}

Sounds like All of these champs too

Darius Thresh Zyra Yasuo Kalista

I wonder if there is anything in common with them? /sarcasm

heh.

( agreed )

Ahris13 votes

[deleted]

Barkley28 votes

Literally nobody on these boards is even remotely close to Faker's level of play.

This statement applies to literally nobody here, and is therefore irrelevant.

Ahris6 votes

[deleted]

Barkley32 votes

Ok you're literally one division above me in rank, so lets stop the holier-than-thou bullshit. Lets get that out of the way.

Secondly, 99% of the people on these boards are absolutely 100% factually not as good as faker.

What you're proposing is that balance teams listen to the top .0001% of players for balance issues, and ignore the general community. That is absolutely asinine. If you wanna talk about "unfair balancing," you've presented quite a case yourself.

Lastly, I've played against zoe more than once or twice. She's been out for a couple weeks now. Probably played against her like 20-30 times. Maybe more. It only takes maybe 4-5 games against someone to figure out what they're all about. This game isn't rocket science. And I doubt there's a person playing today who's only played against ahri "once or twice." The champ has been out for years.

And who the hell was talking about Ahri, anyway? Why even bring Ahri up? What does Ahri have to do with anything?

It seems like you just came here to arbitrarily and baselessly dismiss my point with some out-of-your-ass logic, just so you could get to the point of complaining about a champion you like and want buffed. Like.... you didn't even come here to talk about zoe, or converse intelligently with anyone at all. You just wanted to vomit your pro-ahri-buffs agenda, and the zoe conversation was an obstacle to that.

Go make an Ahri post, then. Lol.

Infernape25 votes

And who the hell was talking about Ahri, anyway? Why even bring Ahri up? What does Ahri have to do with anything?

it's Ahris. Everything somehow is about Ahri.

Malicious Metal5 votes

Blasphemous. Everyone knows it's all about Mordekaiser. Duh.

GelsominoKiller11 votes

Well, I don't even know how to respond without being rude..

You have one of the best players in the game stating Zoe is fundamentally broken right now. I might add he's not alone in that judgement among experienced players.

Zoe is hard to play and takes a lot of skill to master. Just like Azir, if she's decent for the average gold player, she's infinitely broken in the hands of good players.

I occasionally play with high rank people and I assure you Zoe is a big issue up there. As people master her she's actually warping the game, and she's permabanned in ranked plays.

No excuses; she's beyond broken and she must be worked on.

Hèntaî 9 votes

But she beat me in lane so that must mean shes overpowered and overloaded :c /s

Barkley4 votes

Clearly. You're absolutely right. There's no arguing with this logic.

I retract my post.

Darius Strada9 votes

Girl just came out and you are already talking about reworks?

Remlap122324 votes

It's a CertainlyT champ, so yes, it's justified.

Fairyfleur4 votes

And there are plenty of other modern champions who could use a minor/major gameplay update, this isn't just a CT thing.

Niyume8 votes

I actually think it's fun to play against Zoe. She has real counterplay, unlike every other braindead "Hur durrrr I right click and push every button simultaneously and win!" champ.

If I lose to her, it's my own fault. And that feels so, so much better to play against than some statcheck.

And I don't understand why her kit is so "cancerous" when other champs do exactly what she does.

Barkley15 votes

Please name another champion that has a long range 2.2 second hard-lock CC on a 6.5ish second cooldown at max rank/cdr (which she builds) that does all of the following:

-Travels insanely fast -Slows you -Stuns you -Amplifies their damage against you -Travels absurdly far if cast through a wall -Leaves a trap on the ground even if you miss

And also has a long-range skillshot that almost instantly nukes you if you're asleep on a 6ish second cooldown

Combine those two skills, and you have a death-sentence projectile flying at your face roughly every 3 seconds.

Oh, and on top of that, this champion you're going to name for me also has to have an ultimate that's on a 6 second cooldown that allows them to blink at you, uninterruptible by CC, that allows her to amplify her damage even further.

Oh, and this champion you're going to name for me that does all the same things as Zoe does also has to have access to any summoner spell in the game basically whenever they want.

I'll go grab a sandwich real fast while you come up with an answer. BRB.

2Charmnot2Charm3 votes

ultimate that's on a 6 second cooldown that allows them to blink at you, uninterruptible by CC

Speaking of uninterruptible she can still recast her Q while being crowd controlled.

Barkley4 votes

Didn't even know that. Add it to the fuckin list.

Ramza Paradise8 votes

Things I've been saying since everyone jumping on the OP Zoe bandwagon -

  1. Remove the CD reduction for landing a Bubble, not needed at all. She's already rewarded enough by hitting one.

  2. Lower her base MS to 335. 340 is a bit higher than she needs, her weakness should be lack of escapes.

Elkington6 votes

I don't know that sleep mechanic is pretty strong. The range is massive and with any kind of coordination it's like a guaranteed kill, and then you can just snowball from that. That's the only thing that bothers me about her really. I can deal with the damage, but that sleep spell is what wins games for her.

Barkley8 votes

The sleep itself is fine.

The fact that she can cast it so often is what's broken. That, paired with her Q, she's got death-sentence projectiles flying at your face at high speeds every 3 fucking seconds.

You either dodge the whole game, or you're dead.

And as I said in previous comments, at some point probability has to kick in - and you're going to get hit.

You can't dodge 20 skill shots per minute. Nobody can.

Elkington7 votes

I certainly wouldn't mind them increasing the cooldown and maybe even the mana cost. That spell alone is better than some champion's ults.

Spank the Fox1 votes

Like whos? Some shitty, short range (wall ignored), single target CC is not better than any champion’s ultimate.

VoraciousX5 votes

[{quoted}](name=Spank the Fox,realm=OCE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ugrAFHhy,comment-id=0008000000000000,timestamp=2017-12-10T23:43:19.251+0000)

Like whos? Some shitty, short range (wall ignored), single target CC is not better than any champion’s ultimate.

It doesn't just CC you. It increases the next damage you take and makes it into true damage. Not saying it's better than anyone's ult but it's REALLY strong and it's WHY Zoe one shots people.

{quoted}

https://i.gyazo.com/5a93ae1b11f4e1f05650063ac95e5b96.png

These nerfs most definitely fixed a lot of people's complaints with her.

The duration of the pickup shards got halved, the trap radius was made more accurate, Mikaels now properly works with her E, the length of her E was lowered, and opponents were given more room to react while they were about to fall asleep; all of these were things many people made posts about on how annoying they were.

I honestly didn't have any problems with any of that, except maybe the E refunding on anything she hit. I always from day one of playing her thought her E cooldown was too short. If the refund is better but the base cooldown is worse, and all of those changes were reverted except the champion hit on E thing, I would totally be happy with playing AS and AGAINST her. I need time to engage on her, as right now she just walks away from the minion wave for a few seconds then comes back in with another E ready for whenever I try to engage. If she has to wait longer she can't just stay away from the minion wave until it comes back up.

Winek Chan4 votes

I personally find her weak and I'd even buff her.

Barkley10 votes

Buffs, nerfs, doesn't matter. Her power is irrelevant. She could have a 2% win rate or an 80% win rate, and she'd still just be unfun to play against.

Nik Nikerson4 votes

You need to be more specific than "it's not fun" and "She ruins games". Why is it not fun? What about her kit ruins games?

Barkley4 votes

Between her 6-ish second cooldown on paddlestar, her 6-ish second cooldown on bubble, you've got a skillshot coming at your face every 3 seconds that almost guarantees you die.

Idk. To me that's enough to not be fun. Call me crazy.

Literally spend the whole game dodging, or die.

M00ndanc34 votes

in my opinion she is annoying early and strong late, and whenever i lane against her i just wait for her to miss the bubble before going for a lot of harrass which makes it harder for her to reach that mid-late game one shot

Imperial Japan4 votes

The only thing that's annoying about her is her e... Also the reason that she has shit/average winrates are because peopple are just picking her up now

SB Arneeman4 votes

I think she's on the stronger side, especially for high elo. Faker himself said she's broken. However, I agree with your point. She's more annoying than effective, just like Yasuo. They were both made by CertainlyT, which is no coincidence. The design makes them cancerous to play against even if they are not carrying.

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