A detailed analysis of Zoe from someone who loves her. (But wants her tweaked)

I love Zoe. As someone that has mained since season 3, it's refreshing to finally have a new champion I love so much. She's probably my favorite champion in the game atm. So let's get her balanced so I can actually...ya know...play her.

**Things to get out of the way first: **

1. Zoe's damage versus squishies with a full combo is not the issue. I can play and just as easily delete you. The problem is her up-time, and damage versus tanks.

2. Zoe has a lot of frustration in her kit that should be looked at and hopefully will be dissected below.

3. Zoe has a lot of counters that people haven't really been abusing yet. Good choices include

There are the picks I go when I don't get Zoe and they tend to work out very well.

Now let's get into the ability break-down.

Her passive. AKA- Free Lich-bane.

Why this spell is important.

1. Last hitting.
2. Procs good damage on your E if Q is unavailable.
3. Let's her still contribute if she misses all her skillshots.

**Why I hate her passive. ** LICH BANE EXISTS AND IS BUY-ABLE ON ZOE.

Mini-rant inc.

I hate that Zoe can purchase Lich-bane. It encourages such a lazy, low-skill, low-risk pattern of play of using your ult to pop in and chunk someone. Similar to DFT that would just press W and R at you. The sad part? It's usually not even the best option for her. But it's there. And it takes a lot of the skill-shot based pattern of Zoe away. It's a cheap way to get to chunk someone without needing Q and I hate it. I buy Lich Bane on Ahri sometimes, but that's to deal with teams stacking health, because Ahri herself struggles against tanks. ((Zoe kinda doesn't))

Rant over. Sorry about that.

So yes if Riot wants to keep her passive, I wish it would come with not letting her get Lich-Bane. Then it could be scaled without even needing to consider Lich-Bane as an issue.

Because if it ever became a must buy for Zoe then her kit would be tuned to reflect that, and that isn't healthy.

Q- Paddle Star.

I think a lot of the frustration revolving around this skill has to do with two things.

1. A buggy indicator. ((recently patched))
2. The cool-down is very low and could use a few seconds added in the later stages of a game.

Yes this spell does a lot of damage, but it's also Zoe's only real damage "ability". Most of Ahri's damage is loaded into her Q as well, most people just don't complain because it hits twice and takes time.

W- Oh boy what did Rito do... Nerfs for this ability to reduce frustration.

1. Small cool-down between casts so that Zoe can't pick up multiple flashes and turn into Katarina. Likely 2-4 seconds roughly. ((Something they literally had to do to Katarina shortly after her rework.))
2. Make the illusion spell only be x% as effective as the original spell, possibly scaling with level or being set roughly at 80%.

If the ability scaled in effectiveness it could even be MORE effective than the original at the very late stages of the game, to bring out the fantasy of abusing others spells. But only if it was tuned properly of course. Scaling effectiveness also reduces the annoyance of early game spells such as:

1. Gunblade
2. Redemption
3. and let's be honest teleport just shouldn't drop until a certain level.

E- Where the hell did that come from???

Three possible changes for this spell:

1. No longer refunds as much when landed to reduce spam.
2. Trap time on ground scales somehow. ((2.5-4 seconds?))

3.** After the bubble has traveled 90% of it's intended distance it becomes visible to enemies.**

Number 3 would require some intense coding from Riot and it wouldn't make much of a difference when going through short walls, but when traveling through extremely long ones it could really give the enemy some fair warning and could be tuned to be fair for both Zoe, and the enemy.

As for her R I think that this ability is fine. It's highly telegraphed. Abuse-able. Fun. Introduces so much interaction with her kit and all around I haven't seen that many complaints about it.

It can be really annoying when Zoe is spamming spells from far away non-stop but the nerfs above would reduce that frustration of spam coming from the Fow and would hopefully make her R not feel nearly as annoying.

**TLDR: ** P- No longer can buy Lich-Bane because it's lazy and her passive should be tuned to not need it. Q- Cd Increase. W- Scaling spell effectiveness to reduce early cheese. Cool-down between casts to avoid three flashes in two seconds. **E- **Scaling trap duration. Less refund to reduce spam. Now is visible to all enemies after traveling 90% of the distance it's going through a wall. R- Not much to change.

It's important to add that if all these were to happen, Zoe might tank in win-rate and if she did, I specifically added a lot of extra tuning levers in her kit with these changes to make her balance-able. I love Zoe. I don't want her gutted. I want her fair, skill-full, and viable.

Hence all the emphasis of added additional scaling and percentages on her abilities that don't change her damage.

P.S I'm sorry if you like Lich-Bane Zoe, but I like Zoe being a higher skill level champion. So i'd rather she rely on her skill-shot prowess, and since Adc is my secondary role, I completely understand the anger at dodging all of a mages skills and still losing a huge chunk of hp to Lich-Bane

But at least with Veigar he has a short auto range that can't be extended with a low risk sort of mobility spell.