Riot, in their pursuit of inventing new and interesting champions, invent some that they seem to be unable to balance. Last year it was Viego, now the place is taken by Zeri.
Zeri is a high-movement, high-survivability ADC, that builds tank items and has incredible amounts of damage due to her scaling. So, it's understandable that the champion is overpowered, however, with her kit, balancing her also seems to be a different beast.
In patch 12.7, Riot have instated changes to Zeri's kit once again to try and make her a fair champion, as she is currently anything but:
- Base Stats
- AD Growth: 2 ⇒ 1.5ATTACK DAMAGE 53-87 (levels 1-18) ⇒ 50-75.5 (levels 1-18)
- Base Armor: 22 ⇒ 20
- Health Growth:H: 90 ⇒ 95
- Health at Level 18: 2030 ⇒ 2115
- Q - Burst Fire
- Burst Fire now only applies on-hit effects once per cast
- Zeri can now only gain one stack of R - Lightning Crash and one instance of E - Spark Surge cooldown reduction per Q
- Critical strikes on Q - Burst Fire grant Zeri an additional R - Lightning Crash stack and an additional instance of E - Spark Surge’s cooldown reduction
Riot Games
In addition, the magic damage scaling on her W has been increased, while the cooldowns to her E and Utlimatehave been changed, with the former being decreased and the latter increased.
In an explanation of their line of thought, Riot have said the following in the patch notes, which really explains it all:
"Zeri, Zeri, you’ve been a little too unfair-y. Despite the nerfs in previous patches, Zeri has been shockingly resilient and continues to dominate Pro play. With this round of nerfs, we’re aiming to bring her bruiser build more in line with her crit build, as well as make her stacks and on-hits more predictable. This should give enemies more time to catch Zeri before she starts zipping circles around them."
