u/Snappy2You

So I've played Zeri for a few games since the patch came out and I just wanted to say in advance, that she feels WAY better now. My biggest problems with her before were her almost non existent early game, weak/awkward passive and missing identity (even Sivir was faster).

They fixed them all (some almost perfectly and some just fine) by buffing Q base damage, fixing her Q being AOE (this should've never been the case in the first place, but I still wanna mention it), buffing her passive range so I can finally use it late game without walking into melee range, making her E more reliable for wave clear and giving her a massive MS boost in R in return for her late game assassin playstyle, which fixed her identity problem imo.

These are the positives, but there are still some negatives.

My biggest issue is her W feeling not that satisfying anymore. Before, hitting a W trough a wall was a dopamine boost, now it just does "normal" damage. I mean you could say it's more "balanced" from the opponents POV, but if you got hit by it in the first place, you should get a lot of damage, as it's easy to avoid in vacuum. I wanna feel rewarded for good lineups and foreseeing opportunities.

The second "problem" is just that too much damage was taken away. Yes Zeri shouldn't be a burst champ, yes she should deal "normal adc" damage, but taking away damage on EVERY SINGLE ONE of her abilities is just a bit overkill.

My wishlist of changes for either next patch or the patch after that (I'm fine with them waiting for one more patch to make adjustments, to gather more data) would be the following:

•W damage nerfs reverted, so base critical damage from 150% -> 175%

•AP ratio can stay at 50%

I know why they did the changes, to further push an auto attack heavy adc to deal damage with their auto attacks and not their abilities, but in Zeri's case it just feels shit (they also already nerfed it in 26.01), as I've explained above.

•passive damage from 75-160 (+1%-11% of target's max HP) -> 90-200 (+1%-15% of target's max HP)

That was the damage before patch 14.18, where Zeri mid was gaining popularity in pro play, and since that playstyle is dead for quite some time now, I'd like a simple revert of those changes. It would also increase her late game damage, which got nerfed most this patch, while also making it more skillfull and not guaranteed, because you'll need to weave in and out to AA when your passive is up, while also timing it efficiently. This would also make her passive feel more impactful overall since the removal of shield steal and on shield ms, which I don't mind not coming back if her current passive gets buffed more.

If those changes are not what Riot wants, then I'd LOVE to get the slow back (removed in 12.11) for more combo potential and depth to her kit.

OR

•Q damage from 21/24/27/30/33 (+102/104/106/108/110% tAD) -> 20/22/24/26/28 (+103/106/109/112/115% tAD)

This will make her damage in the laning phase roughly the same, but it will increase her late game damage by some amount. Either this or the passive changes, since both would be too much I think (I'm missing internal data to know how much of an impact either of those changes would have)

•E bonus damage scaling reverted from 0% bAD -> 10% bAD

Keeping the base damage buffs here, since I wanna keep the early game strength, but want a bit more late game damage. 10% bonus AD scaling (or 20% with 100 % crit) is not much, but it makes her E more impactful late game since right now the damage is almost neglectiable. Even 8% bAD scaling is better than the current 0%.

If those 3 changes/buffs (W, E, passive OR Q) are too much of a winrate increase, I'd even take a revert to the +5% bonus base MS on R to compensate:

•Overcharged bonus movement speed from 15% -> 10%

This still keeps her newly buffed stacking identity the same, just nerfs her starting MS directly after casting R, which (I think) I wouldn't mind, since after gathering some stacks she should still be fast enough. This buff was also not on RiotAugust's/RiotPhroxzon's changelist for 26.09, so maybe we just got lucky that they still shipped it.

Pls tell me what you think about my suggestions, I'm open for improvements or new ones. We all want Zeri to feel good to play, not useless in the early game but still decent in the late game, and while they did almost nail it this patch (imo at least), giving her some late game damage back would be nice (I don't want everything back ofc, since I hated the era of burst and slow Zeri and I'll take "normal" damage and speedy Zeri any day of the week).

Sorry that this is so long, I've gathered all my thoughts here xD

Thank you for reading