Zoe: Analysis and some suggestions
Zoe's a problem champion. Within the first few hours she was released, she received heavy criticism, criticism that has only been confirmed in the relatively short time she's spent in the game thus far. Putting aside the biases players may have against CertainlyT, Zoe is almost universally known as an unhealthy champion, with even Ghostcrawler admitting that Riot already knew she felt terrible to play against before they released her. After multiple rebalances, and a recent string of nerfs, Zoe has fallen very low, with a 3-4% pick rate and a 45-46% win rate following Patch 8.16: this kind of dumpstering is only done when a champion is so unhealthy they need to be taken out of viability, but usually this process only happens several years after the champion's release. It is concerning to see this happen to a champion released less than nine months ago, and to see this happen so quickly makes it clear clear that Zoe's design is a failure.
So what now? Many players have called for her removal, but putting aside how champions have never been removed before, only replaced, Zoe does legitimately have some fun gameplay, even if that gameplay thus far has only been fun for some. What she most likely needs is a rework, but the difficulty here comes from balancing what's fun for the Zoe player, and what's fun, or at least acceptable, for her opponent. From what's been commonly mentioned on the Boards, Reddit, YouTube, etc., here's the breakdown of her features and breakdowns:
#What makes Zoe fun/iconic to play:
- Her one-shots (for the player using her).
- Her sleep.
- Her combo, where she uses her sleep, double-blink, and nuke to delete an opponent.
#What makes Zoe unfun:
- Her one-shots: it doesn't feel great to take massive damage from what, to the average player, is basically just a normal skillshot. The fact that it can come from out of vision, and therefore offer too little time to react, is what's made many players call her Nidalee 2.0.
- Her passive feels out of place, as it doesn't meaningfully add to her core playstyle and in fact takes away from it by giving her point-and-click damage. This was especially bad before it got nerfed hard in 8.16.
- Her W:
- The biggest complaint about Spell Thief is the RNG component, where Zoe can randomly get access to effects that can give her an unfair advantage in lane. RNG-based drops were, by Riot's admission, an experiment in trying to generate fresh and novel gameplay, but that experiment has failed miserably.
- Additionally, summoner spells and items are designed to be extremely reliable, and item actives are often not balanced around being used at levels below 6. Cases where Zoe gets to "free" true damage with Ignite, healing with Heal, or even premature ganking power with something like Redemption, do not feel fair to deal with, and feel even worse when Zoe gets to access those effects multiple times in quick succession.
- Beyond just spell stealing, the tacked-on projectiles and bonus movement speed are basically just Ahri's W, with the same lack of inherent gameplay and interactivity. Neither effect feels particularly appropriate on a champion who's intended to deal her damage through skillshots, and in the end they just take from her power budget without really doing anything good of their own.
- Her bugs/"features": Zoe is known for not quite following the rules. Examples include:
- Being able to recast her Q while affected by ability-disabling crowd control.
- Being able to blink back to her original location with Portal Jump even when affected with grounding or rooting crowd control.
- Originally, her sleep effect ignored spell shields that were applied while drowsy. Thankfully, this has been fixed now, but the feature was aggressively defended during her release, suggesting the above inconsistencies may also be intended, particularly since they haven't been addressed yet. Considering how CertainlyT in particular has a tendency to bias his champions' tech in the player's favor (Yasuo automatically positions himself out of tower range with his ult, for example), such a move would not be beyond suspicion.
- Her E:
- Sleepy Trouble Bubble works as a skillshot, but also spawns a trap if it misses. This tends to give it way too much threat regardless of how it's applied, and leads to the impression that Zoe's kit is too forgiving to her player, while being too punishing to her opponents.
- This is also a problem with many burst mages, but the combination of extreme burst and hard CC on Zoe's kit makes it feel like all of her counterplay is boiled down to one single ability, as opposed to many abilities with their own gameplay. The fact that the E adds bonus true damage, in addition to its sleep, adds insult to injury.
- Not the biggest problem relative to the rest, but the forced combo tends to make Zoe feel like a one-trick pony: despite having all of these tools at her disposal, there's only one way she's really encouraged to play, and that manner of playing doesn't really make full use of a dispellable stun.
#What should a Zoe rework aim for?
- Give her counterplay. This is the single most important goal a Zoe should achieve, imo.
- Take out all the stuff that's not appropriate on her, e.g. point-and-click damage, RNG, etc.
- Let her be more versatile with the tools she has: this shouldn't mean making her do more things, so much as have more ways of doing the same things differently.
And, with that in mind, here's how I'd personally go about it (all indicated numbers are placeholder, and are not meant to be accurate):
#A possible Zoe rework:
- Stats:
- Base attack damage reduced to 40 from 58 (see below).
- Attack damage growth reduced to 1 from 3.3.
- Attack speed growth reduced to 1% from 2.5%.
- Attack range reduced to 500 from 550.
- Innate -- Pop!: Zoe's next basic attack instantly kills the target minion. This effect has an internal cooldown before it can be applied again.
- Q -- Paddle Star: Zoe drops a star at her location which lasts for up to 1 second. Within this duration, she can recast the projectile to travel in the target direction. The star deals 40 / 55 / 70 / 85 / 100 (+ 0 - 100 damage based on level) (+ 50% AP) magic damage to the first enemy hit, increased by 20% for every 0.2 seconds spent out on the field. The star is visible to enemies at all times, including through Fog of War.
- Range: 800
- Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 mana
- Cooldown: 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 (after the cast ends)
- Note: Zoe shouldn't be able to cast this while her ability to cast is disabled.
- W -- Portal Jump: Zoe blinks to the target location, and then automatically blinks back to her original casting location after 2 seconds. Zoe can move freely in-between blinks, but either blink can be prevented with grounding crowd control.
- Range: 500 / 1000 / 1500 / 2000 / 2500
- Cost: 50 mana
- Cooldown: 12 / 10 / 8 / 6 / 4 (after the cast ends)
- E -- Twilight Zone: Zoe summons a bubble at the target location that forms a stationary trap after a short delay, lasting up to 4 seconds. The first enemy to hit the bubble is immediately put to sleep for up to 2 / 2.5 / 3 / 3.5 / 4 seconds, becoming unable to take any action while affected. During this time, the affected enemy is immune to damage, and the next hit against them pops the bubble, ending the sleep prematurely and rendering the target untargetable for 0.5 seconds during a brief wake-up period.
- Range: 800
- Cost: 80 mana
- Cooldown: 14 / 13 / 12 / 11 / 10
- Ultimate I feel could be either one of two versions, personally undecided:
- R v1 -- Spell Thief: Passively, all champions drop a spell bubble on the ground that lasts for up to 40 seconds whenever they cast a summoner spell or item active. Zoe can walk over these bubbles to pick them up, consuming them and allowing her to cast Spell Thief to copy the selected active. Zoe can only hold one active at a time in this way, and only gets one cast out of each spell bubble.
- No cost.
- No cooldown.
- Has only 1 rank, is already unlocked at level 1, and Zoe's other abilities have 6 ranks each.
- R v2 -- Prank: Zoe turns the target champion, allied or enemy, into a tiny, harmless bubble for 4 seconds, rendering them untargetable but also unable to take any actions other than movement for the duration. Zoe can pop this bubble with a basic attack, ending its effects early.
- Cost: 100 mana
- Cooldown: 100 / 75 / 50
The idea here being that Zoe would still be able to put enemies to sleep, would still be able to one-shot, and would still potentially be able to copy spells from others, but would make up for it by offering clear counterplay at all times, most notably with forcing the Q projectile to be visible through Fog of War, and forcing a small grace period after the sleep effect. Ideally, with this kit Zoe would still be able to do crazy things, including portal-jump from thousands of units away and use that to trap and nuke enemies over huge distances, while displaying clear tradeoffs for the power she is allowed to have (e.g. unreliable abilities, squishiness, a need to put herself in danger, etc.). She'd be a little less harsh when punishing opponents (though she'd still get to punish them pretty hard), and would be more punishable herself, which could hopefully make her balancing less brittle. As a side note, the above reworked innate is intended to preserve her waveclear, or at least give her some last-hitting capabilities that can be tuned as needed, in compensation for making her Q single-target.
#Risks with the above rework:
- Counterplay might feel forced or otherwise unnatural, namely with Q being visible to enemies and E giving temporary untargetability to enemies (intent is to give the victim a small window to react as Zoe hurls her Q at them, though that might not feel so smooth on the Zoe player's side if they time their combo wrong).
- As with the above, there may be some loss in fluidity to the Zoe player, since the standard combo wouldn't work and they'd have to wait to pop the sleep first to deal damage to their target. This is likely to feel bad for returning Zoe players, and might lead to feelings of anti-synergy in her kit.
- Putting all of Zoe's damage into just one ability is a risk.
- Getting one-shot may simply feel bad no matter how much counterplay is put into the effect, so the above kit might still be frustrating.
- Balance on the numbers is almost certainly way off. The Q damage and increase based on time is likely not where it needs to be, and being able to blink 2.5k units away every 4-2.4 seconds may be broken in itself, even if there's a blink-back component.
And there you have it. I think I've typed enough at this point, so tell me: what do you think? As a Zoe player, or a player who has played often against Zoe, how do you think this rework would affect her? What would you like to see from a Zoe rework, and do you think she needs one to begin with?
