Zeri, the Spark of Zaun, has been shining a bit too bright in League of Legends. Riot are targeting the AD carry with more nerfs on LoL patch 12.5b, with the intention of lowering her damage and mobility while making her easier to kill.
Zeri has sparked up Summoner’s Rift since her League of Legends release, but her jacket hasn’t been enough to contain her full power.
Despite plenty of nerfs dropping in both a first-week hotfix and in later patches, Zeri still holds a win rate near 51% at all ranks and is widely considered the strongest AD carry in the game alongside Jinx.
Her ban rate sits at 36.44% at all ranks, which only goes up to 62% as you approach high elo. Zeri’s win rate in Diamond+ is also a very healthy 52.82%, with the best players mastering her high skill ceiling within weeks.
So, more nerfs have shipped League of Legends patch 12.5b to try and snuff out the Spark of Zaun.
Riot’s overall goal with the changes, as listed by developer August ‘August’ Browning, are to “lower overall damage and mobility [and] shift damage out of base AD to decrease power with Sheen”.
The stats hit all parts of her kit. Her Q base damage is being increased, but that’s coming at the cost of decreased base AD and decreased scalings on her right-click. She will also be squishier with less armor and health, although the latter has improved scaling.
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Her E cooldown is being increased to a flat 23 seconds, making it scale worse into the late game so she can’t dash around fights constantly. A nerf to its early passthrough damage also hurts her early game fighting around minion waves.
Finally, Zeri will get less move speed per stack on her ultimate at early levels, meaning she can’t just start zooming around from Level 6.
https://twitter.com/RiotAugust/status/1499159548589797376
The latest set of Zeri nerfs were packaged in LoL patch 12.5b, which went live on March 9.
Riot has also confirmed future changes for League patch 12.6 on March 30, including Rengar’s mini-rework finally launching, Swain buffs, as well as major Lifesteal changes that’ll affect Zeri too.