Ability Update: Xin Zhao

Riot·Sep 25, 2017·5 votes·103,966 views

We haven’t talked about Xin Zhao in quite some time - other than our dev corner posts on this update - but he’s a character with a lot of flags that scream “update me”. Like other ability updates before him, we see a lot of opportunity to give Xin Zhao a clearer identity and more dynamic gameplay. With pre-season coming up, we have a pretty decent opportunity to do something bold with his abilities and see where he settles, so let’s dive in.

Who is Xin Zhao?

When we started to think about Xin Zhao’s gameplay identity, we struggled to really pull much from his kit. We knew Xin Zhao needed to be swift, forceful, strong, and mysterious, but beyond that we didn’t have much to go off of. The one thing that really stood out was his spear, but his kit didn’t really say “spear fighter”.

He was a diver - sort of. But while most divers shine in teamfights as either damage oriented initiators compared to Vanguards or all-in murderballs compared to assassins, Xin Zhao falls off pretty hard when teamfights begin. So the first step would be giving Xin Zhao something to do in teamfights.

The second step was giving Xin Zhao decisions to make. Right now Xin Zhao pretty much clicks all of his keys on you and wins - or loses - on the back of how many stats he has now.

Dive into the Fray

We knew we saw Xin Zhao as some form of Diver, but what was his special sauce?

Before he came to serve Demacia, Xin Zhao had been sentenced to Noxian gladiator pit, The Fleshing, an arena in which Xin Zhao faced increasing numbers of opponents. While other duelists like Fiora and Kha’Zix want to isolate their opponents, Xin Zhao thrives in the chaos of a teamfight. Leaning into this idea of Xin Zhao as an epic scrapper who could fight off any odds, we wanted to sharpen his ability to create a bubble within a chaotic teamfight. That meant revisiting Crescent Sweep’s ability to isolate one enemy from the rest, and changing it to allow him to buy not only distance, but safety.

We wanted an ultimate which would allow Xin Zhao to create pockets of safety within a teamfight, within which he could dispatch an opponent if their team didn’t quickly reposition to assist them.

R - Crescent Sweep

Xin sweeps his spear in an arc around him, knocking back all enemies - except the last one attacked - stunning them briefly and dealing damage. After the sweep, Xin’s awareness is highly elevated, making him immune to all damage inflicted by enemies outside of his circle of awareness. Enemies inside the circle may successfully damage him.

Less Faceroll

We also wanted to add new gameplay to Xin Zhao. His existing W, Battle Cry, carried a ton of invisible power: a critical strike, a heal, bonus attack speed. It gave him a lot of power, but didn’t leave him with much to do once he was on an opponent other than right click. By moving the attack speed to his E and the bonus damage and healing to his passive, we were able to refactor his W into an interactive ability that gave him degrees of success, but also margins of error.

W - Wind Becomes Lightning

Xin attacks with his spear for 2 attacks in quick succession

Attack 1 - Slashes all enemies in front of him
Attack 2 - thrusts his spear forward at range, slowing enemies struck for 1.5 seconds.

Finally, we did some general balance tweaks to Xin Zhao (mostly consisting of shifting the steroids from Xin Zhao’s old W to his other abilities).

Passive

Every third attack deals bonus damage and heals Xin Zhao. No longer reduces armor.

Q - Three Talon Strike

Base damage decreased. Now scales with bonus attack damage rather than total attack damage

E - Audacious Charge

Base damage decreased. Slow duration decreased. Now grants Xin Zhao bonus attack speed for 5 seconds.

The new Xin Zhao should still have many of the same weaknesses as the old one. He’s still pretty susceptible to being kited by mobile champions or locked down by crowd control. However, his ability to isolate an opponent to create a duel zone gives him a unique way to shine as the game goes on and skirmishes turn into teamfights.

254 Comments

Baron Von BanginSep 25, 2017145 votes

"We knew Xin Zhao needed to be swift, forceful, strong, and mysterious..."

I hate and love you.

RetraukSep 25, 201739 votes

I swear they reference that song every time Xin's in the patch notes.

Blades in ExileSep 25, 20178 votes

What song?

TheDuckWhoCucksSep 25, 201713 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64

Agent Smith JRSep 25, 201733 votes

I think they're referencing "I'll make a man out of you" from Mulan.

Final CutterSep 25, 2017110 votes

Must be swift as a coursing river With all the force of a great typhoon With all the strength of a raging fire Mysterious as the dark side of the moon

RolLin SquiDSep 28, 20173 votes

that is hilarious that they do that haha

Ahri Carries AllSep 26, 20179 votes

You must be SWIFT as the coursing river, With all the FORCE of a great typhoon, With all the STRENGTH of a raging fire, MYSTERIOUS as the dark side of the moon.

We need a line referencing Mulan if you're gonna use those types of words to define Xin Zhao.

StrawberrycocoaSep 27, 20173 votes

I said "You. Pricks." aloud while laughing when I read that.

D2VincentSep 25, 201730 votes

oh look, another champ that can negate a Karthus ult :(

DicersonSep 25, 20177 votes

They need to change Karthus's ultimate to be true damage that pierces invulnerability like the fountain, but in exchange lower the damage and scaling relatively significantly. That way it is what it was always meant to be, a global execution ability.

FireFox167Sep 26, 201721 votes

nah i like that it can be dodged adds a level of counterplay instead of just oh he pressed r im dead. not a ton of champs can dodge it anyway.

DicersonSep 26, 20174 votes

There's a huge difference between "Counterplay" and "Useless at all levels of play"

TeslynSep 26, 20176 votes

just so you know. there are (4) different kinds of damage. Pure- Fountain damage.. True- Smite and some champions.. AP- you know this one .. AD- you know this one too ..

There was a time when smite did pure damage. i think the Tryndamere players cried getting smited to death during their ult. and a few other fun interactions with the smite.

undeadriseSep 25, 201721 votes

This is pretty much a nerf to xin his passive dmg/healing is not even worth losing the crit also his W is never used because it makes you stand in place and it is not even worth using over all im pretty disappointed with this mini rework sad im going to have to put this champ down even tho i play him alot. This is coming from a person who has played him on the PBE and honestly i can say old xin = best xin XinZhao XinZhao

MacDaddyBertoSep 25, 201720 votes

"My champ is different now, so he's automatically bad." - LoL Players item 3073

Cookie777Sep 25, 201716 votes

He just said he played the new Xin on PBE. So he has tried it after playing old Xin a while. So if he feels the kit doesn't feel right, he has the right to say so my dude.

MacDaddyBertoSep 25, 201713 votes

It's the same thing that's said literally anytime someone is reworked. Remember when people said Fiora was nerfed hard after her rework? or Graves? or Galio? Doesn't mean anything anymore.

Bodkins OddsSep 25, 201716 votes

I thought the people who said Fiora was nerfed were referring to her face?

MalchaSep 26, 20174 votes

The Graves rework feels bad thought. It wasn't week but he still can't farm properly in bot lane, he's been re-purposed but, that's not something riot planned. The players did that for them and they adjusted around it. If we hadn't been in a lethality heavy meta, we never would have seen much success.

Initially for a marksman his aa set up was dreadful and they somehow failed to see that.

FlashesSep 25, 201728 votes

It's a nerf in one sense. His lockdown assassinate ability was severely weakened. However, his ability to fight in teamfights became upgraded due to his ult's damage prevention. In other words, he's less viable in Bronze V and that's it.

SpooSep 25, 20179 votes

Point is, even if this is a nerf, by spreading his kit out and making it more skill based they will eventually be able to afford to bring power back into his kit if he's not living up to expectations. His old kit, not so much.

enesesSep 25, 20177 votes

I think just reading these notes should give enough indication that new Xin will feel weaker. Consider, he's a champion made to really shine in the early game and then roll into mid game with the advantage he supposedly got in the beginning. Now what they took away from him is the flat armor pen, some of the base damage, the scaling with base AD. All of those are good to have in the early game. Meanwhile what he gets to keep is the healing, and attack speed, which both start to feel relevant after Xin has built some of his items. So yeah, Xin is now weak where he was once supposed to be strong. I guess riot's idea is this compensates for his new R and W, which are definitely more useful in teamfights. Abilities like these won't make the champion feel strong in solo queue and lower skill levels for sure.

XyndredSep 25, 201720 votes

I wish we had the ability to set keybinding sets to certain champions or builds its hard to change your key bindings to make the play better when you're trying to focus on the game I just find myself finding a universal set that I always use. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

VelfrithSep 26, 20176 votes

Dota has this, i used it to learn invoker, give players some time to complain about this collectively and make it to front page reddit, then they can safely add it without looking like they're ripping valve off, i hate this stupid rivality due to issues like this tbh, also on that note:

inb4 "xin is just weaker legion commander1!11!11!" <-people like this please shut up...

flumptydumpSep 26, 20172 votes

tell that to the entire community that said not to launch new client when riot promised they wouldnt until it was stable (spoiler alert, riot didnt listen and they broke their promise)

Hungry CancerSep 26, 20176 votes

LOL the client was stable, they just had computers that couldn't handle it that had nothing to do with the stability of the client. lol

Queen KillerSep 26, 20178 votes

It's always been stable for me, and I participated in the Alpha. Sure there was a bug here and there, but it never hindered my play.

Anakin The WeirdSep 26, 201716 votes

I like how they gave Rengar Sejuani and now XinZhao all the same ability.[fiora-cool]

RIP Tahm KenchSep 26, 201713 votes

Next up: Aatrox E is replaced by a close range slash, followed by the usual projectile slow.

VelfrithSep 26, 201710 votes

I genuinely wouldn't be surprised, its not even a meme at this point. they just love rengars shitty Q.

EROTIC RAID BOSSSep 26, 20174 votes

its because it makes an ability useful for jungle clear

JoshtheliberatorSep 25, 201710 votes

Also what is "himconf"???

CivilitySep 25, 20175 votes

It means they're hurting his self-esteem. After he recalls next, he takes a few moments to weep in the corner before returning to the fight with slightly puffy eyes.

MalchaSep 25, 20179 votes

I'm really scared this is a net nerf to his early game dominance in favor of more success late game. I'm not sure how I feel about this, especially the reduction on his Q damage AND loss of armor, as well as a bigger push towards attack speed, which doesn't like to give a ton of AD. We'll see how it plays out I suppose.

The ability to chase is going to be HUGE, I wish he could walk and cast new W but it may not be as bad as I suspect, especially with attack speed. Though it means it should be cast during E buff, which takes away time from autos. Meh anyway, we'll see. Having a SPEAR that can POKE seems nice.

My biggest concern is that he's a lot weaker in duels and worse at pushing down towers(unless there are minons to dash to.)

I'm almost 400k points into this mofo, so, I'm apprehensive but hopeful, let's go rito!!

Dawn MarshalSep 25, 20175 votes

I'm in agreement over if this changes up his early game in favor of late. I'd be sad to see him lose his duelist identity for some protection during a teamfight.

On another note, I don't like the idea of his E carrying his bonus attack speed. Xin's E rarely should be used to initiate if it can be helped otherwise. Repositioning, gap closing after a flash is burned, slowing after your knockup and even using it to proc trinity all happen after you engage... taking the attack speed and putting it at the end of your skill order doesn't make sense to me unless you specifically are trying to make him pick between damage/utility of auto's and utility of a gap closer. To fully utilize his kit you want the attack speed at the beginning and the gap closer at the end.

MalchaSep 25, 20177 votes

One of my biggest issues is the attack speed on E as well. Especially for early ganks. The attack speed buff was a huge help in forcing a flash when you actually positioned well for ganks. I supposed the W will he a big help there.

On paper it just makes so little sense, that the tools necessary to force an opponent to use their flash/mobility are also tied to yours. Especially when you consider that maxing Q is less effective now.

I've been saying the same thing and they don't seem to be willing to answer/discuss it. Xenogeneic doesn't really talk about it, none of the riot post really address or justify it. Overall I think this is a net nerf, with the exception of the safety on his ult. However I don't really feel like that safety/parry suits Xin. Xin is a mechanically easy champion that promotes smart decision making and heavily punishes mistakes. His ult is a get out of jail free card when used well, which just feels odd to me.

LuroiTheUmbreonSep 25, 20178 votes

Why does Xin slash with a spear? Spears are not meant for slashing...

Cookie777Sep 25, 20172 votes

They needed to make it a lance. Better representation yeah?

TNTturtleSep 25, 20176 votes

Shoulda just made it a glaive.

SturmPioniereSep 25, 201752 votes

Spears and glaives are both slashing weapons. Javelins and spears and glaives are all thrusting weapons. Javelins and spears are also throwing weapons, but glaives are not.

Throwing / Thrusting / Slashing Javelin & spear/All three/Spear & glaive

There's also variations on each that lean more or less into each category, and even things like halberds (which aren't thrown but usually incorporate crushing strikes as well), with lances being strictly for thrusting (and some fairly ineffectual bludgeoning), but at the end of the day the spear is definitely not incapable of slashing attacks.

JustATeddyBearSep 25, 20179 votes

I mean I own a spear and it has a fairly sharp edge. Not just the point. Sure its probably not the best for slashing but you most definitely could. Especially minions that are like a quarter your size lol