LoL patch 13.12 Zeri nerfs will entirely remove parts of her kit

Zeri’s been an absolute balance nightmare when it comes to high levels of play in League of Legends, and Riot’s balance team has resorted to removing two parts of her kit entirely to bring her into the realm of balance.

Despite two different ADC item reworks, a support item rework, Yuumi getting nerfed incredibly hard and then reworked, as well as a number of massive changes to Zeri’s abilities, itemization, and the ways items interact with her kit, the controversial ADC champion still shown herself to be a first pick/first ban choice in pro play.

Not to mention, with the newly buffed Trinity Force, she’s been tearing apart solo queue more than ever before. She’s really been hitting her stride on League patch 13.11 to the point where she’s one of the most picked and most banned ADCs on the patch.

In order to try and get Zeri under control before pro play really starts, Riot are making some major changes to the champion and going as far as removing certain aspects of her kit entirely on League patch 13.12.

Zeri nerfs remove parts of her kit on League patch 13.12

Buffs, nerfs, adjustments, and reworks are all major parts of keeping League of Legends balanced, and many of the patches in Season 13 have featured a huge list of changes.

However, it’s exceedingly rare that a champion has major parts of their kit outright removed for the sake of balancing them. High profile examples include Aatrox’s revive and Akali’s stealth under towers being removed when those champions dominated the game.

Now Zeri joins those rare few champs in having parts of her kit gutted as confirmed in a tweet from Riot August, a key member of the balance team for League.

It’s important to note that this isn’t entirely a set of nerfs to Zeri. In fact, she’s being buffed in a few ways. She’s getting a bit more base movement speed and better crit scaling on her E’s on-hits to counteract the massive nerfs coming her way.

So, what’s changing?

The shield aspect of her passive is being entirely removed, taking away her bonus movement speed for being shielded as well as her ability to steal shields from other targets. That’s a big change in and of itself, but the next one completely changes her build path.

While on-hit effects will continue to function with Zeri’s Q, Sheen’s spellblade proc will no longer work around her Q cast. She can still make Spellblade work, but it’ll now be tied to her passive auto attack and will only fire when her passive is fully charged.

It remains to be seen whether or not this knocks Zeri off of her pro play pedestal, or if players will find new ways to itemize around her kit and make the most of her high mobility and carry potential.