[Champion Concept] Zara, the Cryptic King
https://lolstatic-a.akamaihd.net/frontpage/apps/prod/universe-map/en_US/d935b902fa623497f02794cf9aec0e413bede123/assets/images/shadow_entities_02.jpg Name: Zara Phim Role: Assassin/Warden Melee V2.14
For starters, this champion is an iteration of The Ruined King as a champion. Zara takes the theme of a Ghost King in place of 
Mordekaiser, since he is more like a living metal suit and if not a Ghost Warlord. His title has changed as the acts in his second life will redeem what he has ruined and is forever immortalized through mana. Zara is crippled with only one arm and no head; but he has a three-story tall sword that he can summon with his ultimate.
Condensed Lore:
I lived two lives, and died two times. A mark upon stars, to herald my crimes. To find my answer, I lost a lot. To save the people, I left to rot. The queen was my pride and joy you see. But she is a cause I should have left to be. Was it worth the struggle, pain, and strife? No. Not for my wife. I sought to atone for the grief I made. I swore it by soul, by crown, by blade. My will was my own, and my will is shown. By leaving my throne, my throne all alone. I kept it this way, by dying that day. The day that I slayed, the Phantom Brigade. Here I lay, in a plane filled with mana. Resting in peace, as I reach Nirvana. The rift calls to me, every now and then. To take up my blade. To fight once again. --The Cryptic King, by Bard
The Epic of Zara's Second Life: Legends of a Fallen King: Zara
Abilities Innate: Ancient Aegis
Weight of the World: Autoattacks instantly, but suffers from incredulously low base attack speed. Killing a minion with an autoattack will reset his autoattack animation. Zara incurs a permanent 35% slow and his movement speed is capped at 400.
Viel of the King: Does not gain damage reduction upon buying armor and magic resistance. Rather Zara gains shields based on his armor and magic resistance.
- 20% of his maximum health total shield
- 80% of armor gives physical shield.
- 80% of magic resistance gives magic shield.
Q: Archaic Bludgeon
Zara slams the ground with his sword, suppressing enemy units hit for 1 second, then imbuing a glyph on the enemies that slows by 20% (+ 8% per 100 armor), and deal physical damage over 3 seconds. If Zara autoattacks an enemy with the glyph, the glyph will be empowered--extending the duration to 6 seconds and Ground for the rest of the duration. Deals twice the damage against minions and recovers mana for every debuffed unit slain.
Physical Damage per Second: 50% base AD Mana Recovery: 40/80/120/160/200 mana Cost: 200 mana Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 seconds
"This is the weight, that you shall bear."
W: Might of the Occult
Transforms the physical and magic shields into a total shield that degenerates. Any damage Zara deals in the next 10 seconds will reduce armor and magic resistance. Subsequent casts of Might of the Occult will revert a portion of the total shield into physical and magic shields.
Armor Reduction: 12/14/16/18/20 (+2/4/6/8/10% armor) Magic Resistance Reduction: 12/14/16/18/20 (+2/4/6/8/10% magic resistance) Cost: 100 mana Cooldown: 18 seconds
"Together, forever."
E: Runic Redux
Channels for 2.5 seconds to cast a rune on the ground and then disappears. The rune can latch onto enemy champions after Zara disappears. After 2 seconds, Zara will reappear with an explosion, dealing magic damage and stunning enemies. Deals triple damage against minions. Runic Redux can be canceled before reappearing, but the mana cost will not be refunded.
Magic Damage: 25% maximum mana Stun Duration: 0.5/0.875/1.25/1.625/2 Cost: 200 (+25% maximum mana) mana Cooldown: 15/13.5/12/10.5/9 Range: 1000 Explosion Radius: 200 (+50% magic resistance)
"I've returned!"
Ultimate: Blade of the Reborn King
Zara calls upon his ancient claymore and sunders all foes with a three strike combo lasting 10 seconds. During this combo, Zara is only allowed to cast Runic Redux and instantly blinks after the channel instead of disappearing. (Runic Redux can be interrupted by enemies during this cast) While casting Blade of the Reborn King, Zara cannot cancel Blade of the Reborn King, cannot be interrupted, and will continue casting after reaching 0 health. If Zara reaches 0 health during Blade of the Reborn King, Zara will die after the combo is finished.
The first strike crashes down upon enemies all enemies in a linear path, dealing true damage to all enemy units and structures, slowing them by 75% for 2 seconds. True Damage: 100/300/500 Linear AOE Range: 1000 "Behold!"
After 3 seconds, Zara's second strike slashes enemies in a cone, dealing magic damage and knocking enemies back. Magic Damage: 280-880 (based on level) Conic Range: 1500 "Waves for all."
3 seconds later, Zara's final strike tears the ground asunder launching a tremor that deals physical damage to all enemy units in its path. Upon striking an enemy champion or turret, the tremor explodes knocking up enemy units and dealing physical damage to all enemy units and structures caught in the blast. Physical Damage: 420-1200 (based on level) Range: Global Tremor Radius: 100 Tremor Speed: 900/second "Kingdoms will rise. Then they will fall!"
Cost: 500/300/100 mana Cooldown: 300/225/150
Notable stats
- Extreme base attack damage. 130 - 300 AD
- Highest mana pool. 409.52 - 1548.5
- Base 0.25 attack speed with 0 per level scaling.
Biography Zara is a serious fool. His dedication breaches the boundary of goodwill to insanity. Zara is dishonest to a fault due to his sense of responsibility. He masquerades as an regal warlord when his true intention is much more humble.
As a result, Zara has faced great animosity and envy made worse by the vast gap in physical strength between him and his people. The one thing that prevented his people from staging a coup was his unadulterated selflessness and mercy.
In a brutal attempt to display Zara in a darker tone, his wife was assassinated through poison dagger. Slowly his sanity descended as well as the trust of his people, unleashing the pent up disdain of the king.
Zara finds himself resurrected at the bottom of the ocean as he struggles for centuries against the Abyssal Void, one of the two domains of the Watchers who prey on Runeterra with the other being outer space--void enhanced by The Black Mist into undead abominations. It is in this new life that Zara desperately tries to find a purpose for his emergence as he is plagued with guilt from the conclusion of his former life.
On his journey, he realizes that despite the centuries that have past, remnants of the past are recognizable. Relying on these small nuggets of memories, he makes his own indentations that change the world forever. Zara deems these imprints his redemption for the failures in his life.
Upon Zara's second resurrection, he regains his sense of justice as he finds himself bound to his final obligation, to remake The Blessed Isles that he destroyed. To bring about the angels that were closed off from Runeterra.
Gameplay Zara is a slow moving, one armed, headless revenant/ghoul. A master of burst and a champ who handles burst the best in the game, he acts as an extreme juggernaut, designed for the top lane. However, unlike other juggernauts, his lack of consistent strength but absurd burst is enough to break this categorization altogether.
Zara is a champion with the largest base damage in the game, while it can be further amplified with some items, a large part of his strength will come from increasing levels. As he grows more experienced, he will eventually become an indomitable force to be reckoned with.
Zara is a very clunky champion who relies heavily on the strength of his individual abilities. His power is significant enough that a full combo in the laning phase is capable of killing any champion in the game. Unfortunately, the sluggishness of his kit will make this feat incredibly difficult. Thus Zara focuses on limiting the enemy's flexibility by zoning the enemy with brief, robust trades as well as working with his jungler by making exceptional ganking opportunities with the strength of his CC.
As the game progresses, Zara is a siege menace due to his capability of sieging down turrets from afar through his ultimate. This forces the hand of the enemies to block the shot or let the turrets eventually fall. Zara's massive engaging range and his stellar ability to handle burst also allows him to work well with engaging setups.
Due to the nature of his shields replacing his damage reduction, Zara is unaffected by penetration. The ability to create a supermassive shield also allows him to take incredible amounts of burst damage. The prevalence of his shields for tankiness gives little room for enemies to utilize executes effectively.
However, this also means Zara is largely incapable of receiving healing. All forms of health regeneration are ineffective for him and his shields will take massive damage from current % health damage. This means that while it is difficult to burst Zara, it is very easy for him to be kited to death. This weakness is prevalent during the laning phase as poking and harassment will easily overwhelm him.
Design Philosophy Zara is designed to be simple and powerful. Each ability representing the most pivotal moments of Zara's second lifetime. He is not an individual who goes about utilizing fancy methods to try and whittle down his enemy. Zara is simple-minded as a character, to destroy a castle, you must destroy the castle. The structure, the means to the end? Zara is the structure. Zara is the means to reach the end.
That said, his straightforward approach is the bane that allows anyone to take advantage of him. Yet on the same token, he is powerful enough to keep going anyways. Zara is the monster who pushes beyond impossible odds and actually makes it work. Yet despite this capability, he is anchored by the fact that he must always face an obstacle.
While his kit may have quite a bit of detail in each ability, the way it plays out in game is incredibly simple. His Q is his farming/dueling ability, W is his shield and buff, E is an AOE stun/engage, and R is a teamfighting survival mechanism. His kit is built towards high-impact teamfighting, which is also his weakness.
The nature of his kit prevents him from sustaining multiple teamfights effectively. While his first engage has enormous impact, failing to engage leaves him vulnerable. It's already quite difficult to engage with delays on his E, so he needs to rely on his team to set something up or take advantage of a situation where the enemy must engage--such as diving.
While Zara's approach to winning is risky, his R gives him 10 seconds of guaranteed fighting time. It's not necessarily a safety net since he can die through it, but it gives him and his team leeway to figure something out. This allows our king to effectively make a last stand, which thematically fits his life's work. Through his straightforward approach, Zara paves the way for his people and all future generations.
Champion Matchups:
Riven's Runic Blade is no match for Zara's titanic blade. Unlike Riven, Zara has attained mastery over the runic arts and uses mana exclusively to power his blade while Riven has no knowledge of mana at all. In truth, both blades are very strong in their own right. However, Zara has one special form of control that tears Riven asunder: ground.
Archaic Bludgeon completely obliterates Riven and prevents her from using most of her signature abilities. On top of that, Wind Slash scales off of the missing health of the enemy, but given how monumentally difficult it is to actually reach his health at all, it goes to waste a vast majority of the time. She may be slippery enough to handle most enemies who rely on autoattacks, but never has she encountered one that has autoattacks equivalent to burst right at the very first level.
Riven reforged a broken blade. Zara reforges a broken spirit.
Renekton is known to shred through and bully enemy laners to subjugate and weaken them through immense consistent burst. Ironically, due to the nature of Zara's power, despite his weakness to harassment overall: Zara is one who instills fear into this foolish crocodile. Renekton is rarely afraid of his foes because they are either weak in defending against burst or weak in instant burst. Zara is the unholy combination of both strengths.
Playing his cards right, Zara can offer no opportunity for Renekton to simply dive in and dive out with Archaic Bludgeon. Even then his autoattack is too mighty for him to handle. Even if Renekton decides to get item Ninja Tabi to mitigate this overwhelming strength, Renekton already lost because his sole duty is to win the early game, and Zara's power is only getting stronger.
Hecarim charges and barges with lethal force. Hecarim brings death to all, but unfortunately for him: Zara is already dead. Unlike the other dead, he already knows lethal pain all too well and does not take any more damage from it. As such the factor that gives the horseman such immeasurable strength is deemed laughable in the non-existent face of Zara. Zara may be slightly spooked by the steed charge, but he stands firm and will strike Hecarim down with a graceful strike and a sundering slow--after all, he's done it once before.
Teemo is an utter monstrosity. The little badger known to make the manliest of men fall to their knees. Part of this is due to his Blinding Dart. Timed well, he can completely waste Zara's extremely important autoattack, very frequently as well. Given the pain of Toxic Shot, he can very well whittle away at Zara with extreme ease. He can do it safely, he can do it painfully, and worst of all: he can drop a Noxious Trap on the rune for Runic Redux.
Zara has denied his passing, so as one would imagine, death does not take too kindly to that. Kindred comes to serve as an indomitable duo that Zara will have immense troubles with. While Kindred is subject to all the pains of being a squishy marksman that could get bonked by an Archaic Bludgeon, what they have that the others don't is Lamb's Respite.
As easy as it would be to kill them, this allows the duo to freely barrage Zara with massive amount of health shredding. The combination of the Wolf's Frenzy and Mark of the Kindred serves as the inevitable downfall to Zara as he is affected more by % current health shredding than anyone else would while the range makes sure he cannot reach them.
Itemization:
Zara is completely balanced around Sterak's Gage. His terrible early game vulnerability is justified by how incredibly cost efficient Sterak's Gage is, and will always be, on Zara.
Sheen is Zara's second most powerful tool. He is attuned to this item by lore due to his incredible affinity with mana, which surpasses even 
Ryze by lore. Whatever Zara chooses to upgrade Sheen into will be effective for the mere fact that Sheen is part of it.
While it's not easy for Zara to charge 
, Manamune is still an effective item simply due to the fact that it takes advantage of Zara's massive mana pool while also minimizing his enormous mana costs. 
Archangel's Staff can also be useful, but he needs to itemize with AP ratio boosters before it can be.
Zara's greatest weakness is consistency in general. Marksman can easily kite Zara consistently while also shooting him consistently. The cooldown reduction is greatly desired on Zara, the mana will alleviate his consumption while also strengthening his engage, and armor will obviously increase his durability against these attacks through a larger physical damage shield. On top of it all lies the attack speed reduction which will alleviate the consistency he must endure.
While not the greatest item, I want to take a moment to address ressurection with Zara, since Blade of the Reborn King delays death in a unique way. When Zara resurrects he will recover a percentage of his health as well as the portion of of his shields that corresponds to the health that he recovers from resurrection.
When Zara dies during Blade of the Reborn King, the resurrection condition must be enabled at the end of Blade of the Reborn King's duration. So if 
Zilean Chronoshifts Zara too soon, Zara will not resurrect.
For more information, check out Zara on the League of Legends Wikia. Information is subject to change. The data on the Wikia is the most accurate source.
