League of Legends Gameplay Thoughts: Zac

The roller coaster that is champion viability has yet another dip in store for the League's most [...]

Zac 0
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The roller coaster that is champion viability has yet another dip in store for the League's most springy champion. Zac came out of the Mid-Season Update looking worse than he ever had. He had been given many new forms of crowd control, including an ultimate that was insane on paper, but he had to pay a terrible price in terms of damage in order to get those new tools. He hit as hard as the Scuttle Crab and, to make matters worse, the new crowd control tools he got were more amusing than practical.

Fast forward to patch 7.10, and now Zac has been buffed beyond the point of being healthy. Just as Sejuani fell from her throne as the game's premier tank, Zac rose to fill the void. The new patch not only made his crowd control more effective and less gimmicky, it also gave him a ton of new damage, as his Q's damage now scales with his maximum health, a stat that Zac usually gets quite a bit of.

"Looks like we definitely overbuffed Zac in 7.10," said Meddler. "We're looking at the best way to tone his power down at present, and figuring out just how out of line he is or isn't. Possible that happens in a hotfix, more likely 7.11 changes though unless we get a clear read on what exactly the biggest issue is and it looks urgent enough to not wait."

Much like LeBlanc, there aren't currently any changes on the PBE for Zac, but it seems likely that he'll be losing some damage come Patch 7.11. While it's possible that Riot might instead choose to revert their buff to Elastic Slingshot, that seems somewhat unlikely, as that was truly the buff that brought Zac back into relevancy. Time will tell whether Zac will be headed for the very bottom of the jungler tier list or whether Riot will find a way to work a happy medium.

Want to hear more about the latest gameplay thoughts from the Riot Live team? Check out these other articles on the topic: Gameplay Thoughts: LeBlanc, Gameplay Thoughts: Yasuo, Gameplay Thoughts: Guardian Angel, and Gameplay Thoughts: Early Surrender. Keep tuned to WWG for all the most up to date gameplay information!

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