I feel Zac was healthier pre-update.

Some while back, Zac was part of the Tank class mini-update along with Sejuani and Maokai. The purpose of this update was to bring "generalist" tanks in line and give them more defined roles. Sejuani was given synergy with melee-heavy comps, Maokai became a wide-range teamfight engager, and Zac was turned into a pick-centric design. None of these changes were well-received initially, although that's not really here nor there. Ultimately, Maokai settled into the changes, while Zac (and Sejuani) were left in a pit. As someone whose favorite Champion has been Zac since the beginning, I've chosen to make this exclusively about him and leave Sejuani for a different thread.

Prior to his rework, Zac was an aoe-heavy long range teamfight engage tank. His unique feature that made him stand out from the crowd, even as a "generalist" was his incredible engage range. This was kept in his update, but the focus of the rest of his kit was altered to focus on picking priority targets rather than disrupting entire teams. Since single-target picks are usually left to either assassins, or Champions with hooks, Zac was left in a very awkward spot. Upon release of the update he had one of the largest single-patch drops in winrate I've ever seen. His new abilities were clunky, and his clear was weaker, preventing him from attaining the stronger ganks the rework was aiming for. So he was buffed. And then the real problems became evident.

A tank, who is durable, with great range, good damage, and three multi-target displacements is obviously going to become a problem, and he became pick-or-ban that patch. It's not fun to have what is effectively a more mobile and more durable Blitzcrank kidnap you and drop you dead center of the enemy team with an ult that can't be interrupted. On the flip side, it doesn't feel good trying to pick a priority target with an ability that needs to channel for more than a full second, and is aoe so it can very easily be exploited to pull in the wrong target or worse, multiple wrong targets.

So he was nerfed, in both damage and utility. He was left feeling awful to play. Point of reference, as I feel it may be relevant, this was Zac's second mini-update. Originally Zac's W was locked to a 4s cd that could not be changed by any means, and the range scaling on his E was narrower, starting higher and ending lower. As such he felt fairly weak due to the slow clear from W permanently being at 4s, and his ganks felt average as well. He was changed to have W be locked to 5s, but refund 1s per blob grabbed, dramatically upping clear speed, and making his sustained damage in teamfights better if the player was skillful enough to play around dropped blobs properly. His E was also given it's current range-per-rank scaling, giving him a unique tool in the form of "the longest range non-ultimate engage in the game!" It made him feel unique, and worth picking over other Champions, even if he would later be accused of being "generalist."

On to his current state: He's got a 2% playrate, meaning pretty much only mains use him, and despite that has an abysmal 47.4% winrate in his strongest role. After his post-rework nerfs, he has minimal damage outside of his E, and his health cost to health restored ratio in his kit via his passive was thrown askew by doubling the health cost of his Q to 8% max hp. Pre-rework, Zac's strongest trait wasn't being a generalist, it was being reliable. His Q was snap-cast with a wide hit-box, and his ult had multiple bounces with which to hit targets. Post rework his Q is one of the worst-feeling skillshots in the game, with long windup and slow travel speed, and his ult was deliberately nerfed post-rework to make it less reliable by slightly extending how long it has to be charged to grab a target rather than simply bouncing. It feels like it's just as easy to score nothing at all as it is to make a game-changing play. And burning 8% of your max health on an hp-stacking tank for a basic ability as unreliable as his current Stretching Strike simply feels awful. Zac's rework gave him the potential to make much bigger plays, at the cost of all of his reliability. Now he sits in a gutter, because unreliability just isn't viable.

Granted, Zac did suffer from a kit-wide issue that Maokai also suffered from leading up to the update: It was hard to fail with him. Q was fire-and-forget and hitting or missing it rarely made a difference, and his old ult had a total of 4 bounces, during which the player could move, making knocking up multiple targets far easier. The core of Zac's skill was macro; making sure the area you're ganking from is unwarded so they don't simply walk out of your E. Originally he was arguably a better Malphite, as he could aoe knockup with his E, into another aoe knockup with his R, making him a one-man combo engage. His ult was altered to knock enemies up and away to prevent him from locking enemies together for an extended period and turning his ult from a combo tool to a disruptive one. This helped pull some of the overbearing reliability from his R and brought him closer into line, but left him with a major issue: all of his power now resided in his E.

As the highest damage ability in his kit, and his primary engage and cc tool, he spiked massively at level 9. His ult could only knockup each individual enemy once per cast rather than once per bounce; landing additional bounces simply reapplied half the damage. Due to the team-scattering effect of his R, Zac started lending himself to a Tank-Assassin playstyle. Landing E's whopping base damage of 280 at max rank with a .7 ap ratio, followed by all 4 hits of his ult for a total of 700 base plus 1.0 ap ratio meant simply removing squishy, high-priority targets immediately. That's without taking into consideration the extra base damage on his relatively weak Q. All this was available while still building fairly durable. This was ultimately what led to his rework, and while it's clear he had issues, I believe that not only was this rework a failure to properly address his issues (his E kept all of that crazy damage, even), but that a rework of this tier wasn't necessary to begin with.

I feel Zac's previous iteration was far better for game health than the current one, as he was less polarizing and suffered less from the fest or famine playstyle of "you either pulled the priority target or you didn't." I don't feel he should be turned back without addressing his old problems, and I've got a few ideas for solutions. I feel his abilities could be returned to what they were (or at least his ult) but his strengths would have to be spread out more evenly around his kit. First and foremost: his base damages were incredible. Dialing them back, even by relatively large numbers may be a good place to start. Specifically, as Zac is a disruptive tank, I feel rather than reworking him fully, power could have been pulled out of his base damages and into his utility.

Example: Elastic Slingshot started at 80 damage at rank 1 and gained 50 damage per rank up to 280. Since the power of the ability is intended to be it's incredible range and good cc, those factors should be kept, but the damage could easily be lowered to 60 at rank one plus 40 per rank for a max of 220. Much less up-front burst, without being low enough to feel unimpactful. The 1 second knockup was and still is in a good place, I feel, and should be kept the same. Likewise, Stretching Strike started at 70 and grew by 40 per rank up to 230. I feel base damage could be pulled out and sifted into the slow the ability had; a rather weak 20% at rank one that only scaled up by 5% per rank for a cap of 40%. It could be dialed back to 50 damage with a growth rate of 35 up to a cap of 190, and the slow upgraded from 20% to 30% but keeping the same scaling, ending at 50%. Finally, his ult starts at 140 and gains 70 per rank, eventually doubling to 280 at max rank. However, due to the multibounce it's power when dumped entirely on a single target starts at 350 and (again) doubles to the 700 mentioned previously. I feel its rank 1 power of 140 is fine, but the scaling could be dialed back to 45 per rank, ending at 230. This reduces single-target potential to 575. Still high, but not to one-shot levels. Zac's old ult left the target slowed by 20% for 1s after the knockup. To encourage using the ability for utility, hitting a target an additional time could re-apply the slow, rather than simply adding more damage.

Following my examples or similar, I feel Zac could be reasonably returned to his old kit, but still have that kit's problems addressed; that problem being that despite being a utility tank, all his utility was in one spell, and his base damages were too high for a tank. A redistribution of power, pulling damage out and putting utility in could have made him much healthier without the need for a full rework. I do feel he should keep his AP ratios however, as AP Zac is a good alternative way to play him for damage without having the added benefit of being incredibly tanky.

I would love to have his old kit back, and if a full revert like isn't possible, maybe something like what received; a mix of old and new. As it stands, I just feel like I can't play my favorite blob boy anymore and expect to do well without the match overall favoring me. On a non-balance related note, I liked his old sfx better too.