damn its almost like creating brain dead, impossible to balance and super OP broken champions is bad idea hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm kysante nilah viego akshan yuumi ambessa smolder apeplos mel aurora naafiri milio only kinda but he is possible to balance belveth-someone remember this champion? not played much huh, that tracks skarner- literally belveth ofc not in gameplay but you get the idea zeri yone yuumi all of those champions (exept maybe milio) should be removed or at least for viego and akshan remove revive and changing to champions those abilities are broken beyond belief and impossible to balance
@jensv874 i had problems for years with opera sound cuz it was just gone i didnt have any sound nothing idk why and suddenly sometimes it was coming back after months so it was just impossible to use
almost forgot to say that smolder is literally zeri literally annoying as hell but instead of infinite ms he can move over walls cuz ofc he can and he gets bunch of MS so when you are able to EVEN GET TO THE RANGE he just gonna press E and fly away while DOING % MAX HP TRUE BURN EXECUTE AND ONESHOT TANKS OBVIOUSLY
Best part is: when you mentioned AP ratios at 14:48, that clip of her doing over 1k damage with her W: SHE WASN"T EVEN BUILDING AP!!! THAT WAS A FULL AD BUILD WITH MURAMANA!
It's honestly amazing that Rito had been doing this over a decade and still managed to release a champion that ridiculously busted, far more overpowered than even Ekko at release. Really just proves to me that quitting was the right move. Incompetent company that also does sketchy stuff like buff Zeri on the same patch they release a new skin for her.
@jons1278 doesn't make all the decisions, but heavily contributed to enough decisions to cause a big problem. it's not all or nothing, he still did a lot more than harm than good with zeri.
The developers, such as August, being so open about their thoughts, worries, and takes on their work is something we as a community need to aknowledgable as a blessing. Genuinely rare to see.
I really appreciate it but it also boggles my mind how Zeri even got past playtesting. Like, if you showed anyone her kit before release they'd all raise their eyebrows and say "Are you sure this is a good idea...?"
@Ex_ceed_ed If it was fun to play, that's literally the only thing that matters I'd think; the kit can be balanced afterward, but why would they pass up on fun gameplay? tons of champions in the past were balance nightmares too, this is barely any different as far as I'm concerned
@Ex_ceed_ed you say that but as the video stated a lot of people saw her kit before release and thought she was going to be fun and BALANCED. turned out people can make bad choices at just a glance.
I disagree completely. August has brought us a bunch of terrible champs lately and he is part of those people that keep on making champs with stupid move speed. He is now head of design or not far from it and you can see how that has affected the game since all the champs pretty much since zeri etc are just more of the same stupid dashes with kits that have entire essays for kits. They're clearly being super subjective with the game and there is 0 objectivity with the release of champions lately. Nothing new, just more cute champs that dash and hurt :).
It’s still possible with the new ARAM Mayhem gamemode and probably Arena (I don’t play Arena so idk but some augments came from there) but that’s not really Zeri herself it’s just movespeed
14:19 I think it's ironic how they worded the patch notes. They said their goal was to provide counterplay. What riot failed to realize is that the champion doesnt have counterplay because of its design. Either she's nerfed to doing no damage so you can ingore or does just enough damage to where you can't ignore because shes too safe and fast (in theory).
at 75 range reduction I would assume she wouldn't be as safe. I mean all other adcs are slotted into their range category with completely different playstyle according to it and I believe each category is 100 range apart
The range nerf pushed Zeri from a classic backline ADC into what I like to call the battle ADC category (just something I started using with my friends.) - champs that have mobility and need to dance on the edge. It’s a mixed bucket: they have to play closer than "classic ADCs" to do well. Vayne - solo-target monster Kalista - extremely slippery, snowballs early Kai’Sa - can access the backline and burst it down Zeri - AoE-focused teamfighter in this bucket As few examples. What defines this category for me is mobility, effective range, and the kit itself - how much it forces to play up close versus from a distance. Zeri fits here because she needs to hit more than just the frontline to out-DPS classic ADCs, in even game she loses in pure DPS against the classic ADCs. Therefore her frontline falls first.
I don't play league, but have seen a lot of your videos mention how broken Zeri was. It's nice to have some context to why everyone hates her so much. It is a shame they were never able to get her to a healthy state because as a character she looks really cool both visually and because of the mobility.
from my experience in any competive game the biggest stat is always movement speed. Like in general movement speed is lowkey the biggest impact in any game3
The worst thing is; Zeri was broken for very much the same reason Kalista was. The ability to keep attacking while infinitely kiting and still moving. Riot had YEARS with Kalista to know this was a problem. Yet they did Zeri anyway. Zeri should not have gotten past the planning stage. Someone should have seen Zeri; and gone "uh; this is Kalista again. NO". This isn'teven just on August. Surely; SOMEONE involved should have seen Zeri and realised she was Kalista 2.0. Zeri is maybe the biggest example of Riot not learning from it's past mistakes, the only contest to that being Zoe, who was "we reworked Nidalee to stop her being a super-safe oneshot machine from offscreen. Also; here's Zoe a super-safe oneshot machine from offscreen!" And Zoe's release state was so absurd Riot literally intentionally nuked her from orbits and made skits about it.
i think its egregious that riot completely reworked nid and poke to change the poke game. just to make a champ that does that with a cc that lasts longer than most supports. Old nidalee was spammy, but it took set up. Zoe can one shot by level six for some reason.
Man, the good old days of just throwing Nidalee spears and getting Malzahar ulted at level 6... everyone slow and methodical as fuck, the game just generally being more deliberate. Good times.
Riot doesn't learn from their mistakes because the entire dev team is not the same team from 15 years ago, even 5 years ago. So many staff have changed. Not as many OGs.
@SakyTenraku Yes, but the balance team are still dealing with the Kalista problem. To suggest Riot are not aware of Kalista's issues is silly. Also Zoe was like; a few months after the Nidalee rework.
I still have flashbacks to Zeri Yuumi, Lucian Nami, and Sivir Lulu meta 😅 Also, I recall playing a competitive game against a Zeri, as Lisandra. We also had a Nautilus support. Despite 2 point and click abilities, we still couldn’t kill the Zeri lol
When it comes to broken kits they really gotta just take the DotA approach... Change the abilities. You can't fix a fundamentally broken kit with stat tweaks, you have to change the actual kit.
If they could afford to do 1% of what Ice Frog done to DOTA 2, we wouldn't need to even wait Shyvanna rework at this point. Like seriously, Riot is damn stubborn with their game because they know they'll have to do actual work with their ancient ahh game. Every time Riot need to do a champion rework or even make a new game mode, they have to moan how hard it is for them or how the community is too stubborn for changes. Valid concern. But like you ans I have played DOTA 2, we are spoiled by Valve's generosity and when we came back to League, we could feel how lazy Riot is to everything
This is ultimately the key to fixing broken champions 90% of the time. Idk what riots resistance is to changing or nerfing abilities is maybe they are too proud of their 'design vision' or something. But if you unintentionally create a character with abusable overpowered abilities, all you need to do is change 1 of them or remove attributes they give. They've done it before like with gragas. They changed his ult so it comes out slower and it made him more balanced. K'sante W and his ult q speed were changed and while he's still strong it definitely made him less disgusting. The refusal to admit and just remove or change bad ideas to begin with is my biggest gripe with riots balance. It screws up the game constantly and makes it way more frustrating and anti fun for long periods of time. Just if I was a designer and someone brought yuumi or zeri's kit to me to test it my feedback within 5 minutes would be 'this is a toxic, anti fun design. Need to remove some of the mobility'.
@QuestionableObject yeah who knows. I remembered some better examples of just admitting the problem. When they reworked zac blitz and kog'maw. People didn't like the new zac ult, blitz being more of an attack speed fighter did was not fun in practice and the 5.0 max atk speed kog was a balance problem. Eventually they admitted they were a failure and reverted them all. Seems like they only do that for reworks though. They almost never do it for new champions. The first new champ I can remember everyone hated was Zoe and riot only did nerfs and changes but never to this day changed her kit.
I remember when Zeri came out but that was around the time I took a few breaks from league to play HotS. Every time I booted up League for an Aram or something Zeri functioned differently and I wondered why. I had no idea she was such a problem until after the fact.
I was literally searching up zeri movement speed and watched the first clip of those guys laughing yesterday. I kid you not i was hoping you had a video on it!!! Twilight zone rn
21:00 zeri came as the first ADC after Samira I think. And a topic you didn't touch at all, that I think plays a big part here is: Samira and Zeri show a big change in leagues champion design (also with Gwen around the same time) And it's "utility creep" kind of like how modern day Yu-Gi-Oh had so much card design change that some people call it Yu-Gi-Oh 3.0 These modern champs had so much utility that it basically warped the game around them. Like zeri had movement speed + dash + onhit + build in shield + build in Anti Speed + AP scaling+ dmg + huge AOE + AOE cc (slow) + huge single target dps. I don't remember if she had build in Livesteal, but I think she had no penetration or cleanse, so of all possible tools she was missing 3 . And I think thisis the main problem that made zeri impossible to balance And then riot saw the problems of utility creep and released ksante
It goes back even further than that. A lot of people forget that on release Sylas had a Shield on his E, all his abilities were auto-cancels, his W was an execute, and I'm sure there are a few other things I'm forgetting that were entirely removed from his kit. It's no wonder they haven't had time to rework Shyvanna when they need to rework every new champion they release, often multiple times, within a couple months.
Because they thought: "Zeri has to be able to play lane against mages because poke is unfun!" And the outcome is Zeri, Samira(windwall), Akshan. First champion that was designed to counter poke was Ekko and it shows how much stuff each new champion has just to counter neutral lanes.
That one post in the video summed up the issue perfectly, new champions on average are so incredibly bloated with mechanics and complete item's worth of free stats (Ambessa R for example) that it's pretty much impossible to adjust it in a healthy way and it's also a nightmare to play against it if you play a different lane. There's so much fine print to their abilities and passives that you will never fully understand how strong they are by just looking at their items and lvl in game - you have to deliberately spend time reading everything or even playing a few games.
i love to see zeri in proplay and love to play her, a mechanically demanding champion with the potential to make amazing plays when piloted perfectly, the cat however lowers her skill floor so much that even when she got caught she would live. the cat can burn in hell but zeri is an amazing design on all fronts other than balance
Think it’s really funny how both Zeri and Neon are characters that Riot’s teams aren’t really sure how to handle, so they overbuff or nerf them to the ground with no real in between. Also August’s reaction to early Zeri is really funny to, knew that she could and would be broken beyond belief. 😭
I don't know about you all, but Zeri was genuinely the most fun I've had with a champ on league probably ever, and I've been playing since 2011/2012. Even after the 5th/6th/7th/8th nerf, she was still sooooo incredibly fun to play and pilot. Was she balanced? Most definitely not. But man is her overall design and gameplay philosophy fucking cool. It's a shame how she ended up.
There's like 19 HeWhoQuacksss clips of August saying "God I loved making Zeri but I'm so sorry for what I did with her" you could have used in this, cant wait to watch it and see what you cooked up
The real issue is that there aren't enough ITEMS that counter movement. Including movement speed and dashes. ITEMS that would allow a champion to deal a lot more damage to a champion moving faster than them, or half a second after a very fast dash, would go a long way to dealing with champions like kalista, zeri, or any other champion that is too strong because of mobility creep. The reason why I highlight items, is because champions like vex have a half-hearted anti movement ability, which should make them useless against non-movers and op against movers, or kind of being a useless ability as it has become.
it kind of kills champions that arent designed around being fast or spamming dashes, poppy being an example of being strong against some dash champions but unfairly screwing champs like ornn who you wouldnt really call mobile
@duckesome That makes sense, but if you had an item that reduced the distance of the dash by 35% (similar to mercury treads) It wouldn't affect ornn much except for max range q+e but it would affect some very dashy champions. Alternatively something that stacks per dash, and each increases your damage by like 5-10% per dash in a short period of time, which would at its worst deal 10% additional damage to mostly immobile champions like malphite.
The problem is that they took alot of point and click CC out of the game like taric stun sion stun etc. They tried to move everything to be more "skill expressive". The problem is is you don't have a way to deal with a champ you just lose.
What is worse is the "skill expression" actively comes as a lack of skill since you now don't need your entire team to function against the enemy's entire team. It is the same balance issue Snipers face. You focus so much on one skill or a small pool, that every other skills doesn't matter. Only to find out those skills that do matter are basic skills that everyone uses.
I haven't played League in years, but looking at this issue...it seems like the first and simplest nerf that would've made sense for making her not insane would just be capping the stacks on her ult? Not at 10000 stacks but at, like. Ten? Would that have made her unplayable? No idea, but it just seems like that would've been a simpler way to attempt checking her ability to take over a game vs tweaking the entirety of the rest of her kit while insisting on leaving the infinite scaling in place.
The shield stealing part in my opinion was a big issue, it made her more tanky and the enemy less tanky at the same time You basically hurt your team by putting a shield and almost directly helped the enemy by giving one to zeri As for her movement speed, the nerf she got in the end, which is to reduce the stack time to 1.5 sec IS the correct solution. This way she can still stack as much as she wants but if enemy has Annie with a passive + Q combo, ur stacks are gone
You have fun playing her, it's fine. But his kit is lame as fuck. And since Jhin he made only mistakes. Viego Belveth and Briar, just naming a few of them.
Really love these retrospectives of you man. Both the ones I lived through (which gave me an odd mix of nostalgia and PTSD) and the ones I missed. Keep up the good work man, you are one of the best channels in league youtube atm. And yeah, Zeri was one of the worst releases they've ever had, you've covered most of it pretty well.
I think so. Champions who are astro-broken actually get stronger in Fearless, since you basically get the freewin for the entire game. For example, Dr. Mundo and Sion in Worlds 2025 were so beyond turbo-broken that they warp the game around their *REMOVAL* let alone the power they have in the game.
@omegaminoseer4539 Dr. Mundo was banned 0 times and picked 5 during the entire championship. Why not pick an actual good example, such as Azir and Orianna, which were the clear two best mid laners in the Worlds patch, and both had 80% or more presence in pick and bans during the main event, below only Yunara? Even Sion, which was quite strong, only had a 63% presence.
I don't know even play League but somehow I'm here. As an Overwatch player this sounds like our GOATS meta we had back in the day. Anyway super interesting and entertaining video to watch regardless.
i still remember ruler on zeri during the lpl like wow even at the final game against T1 they really had faith in that champ and with ruler controlling it to just carry
Let me tell ya, as someone who played Zeri because she genuinely fun on release, it felt like being a war criminal constantly on the run from the authorities.
I can't be mad at August cause he genuinely is a good designer responsible for some of my favorites (Jhin, Senna, Ekko, Jinx, Vi) but Zeri is that one case where he forgot to add the glaring weakness that made his designs "balanced" (or thought maybe having the autos be a skillshot is already too big a drawback). And then The Cat made it worse by essentially pumping her kit to 11. Edit: wrote this before finishing the video and he listed the same champs I listed lmao
If you've seen one Zeri launch you've seen all the Aphelios releases. Lol. They both basically broke the game on release. Too dang strong. 200 years of combined development experience.
now with fearless draft being utilized i think its "more fine" to see them again, but not in such a state as they was, but maybe its about time they are allowed to experiment to find the right point for them again!
Zeri deffo feels like playing an Fps Ur trying to have fun then a unemployed sweaty basement dweller that does nothing but play the game and kills u in a micro second
Never really understood why people lean towards calling more skilled players no-lifers, like, maybe they play every-day of their life after getting home from work/school, it is not that hard to get good at videogames without spending all your life on them.
@sharksnarkk It's just to put them down. They're angry at themselves for being worse than a pro, which is ridiculous. Of course an actual athlete is going to be better than the average person that only plays a few hours a day at most. It's okay to not be as good as the pros. That's why we have leagues. So everyone can play with people of their own skill level.
What i like about that yumi is fucked up is that HEROES OF FUCKING NEWERTH could have a champion that could jump into someone and be untouchable and even get better spells while in them, they made it their ULT and for a limited time. Riot needs to do the same with yumi, make it so her ult is that she can jump into someone and change up her skillset. I am usually NEVER for removing a champion completely, but yumi needs to be changed 100% her kit is just dumb as it is.
@lezzgooemphe Making her useless, how? I said to change her skill set to accommodate the new ult where she can only be in her target for a limited time, like i said, it worked in HoN one of the most scuffed mobas there ever was but Empath was actually a good support. It is just that riot probably doesn't want to put the time and energy to change her up because she is so noob friendly.
I will forever commend August for straight up saying sorry for Zeri, and it's one of the reasons I love August and the team that makes this game in general. Because in what other large, multiplayer live service game would you have the devs openly saying "yeah we fucked up" when they let something as busted as a new character or feature slip through into release? It takes a lot to say that you fucked something up when so many eyes are on your work (especially when those eyes consist of the League of Legends player base) and him doing it on a livestream is just wild to me. It's one of the reasons why I never will criticize the changes made by riot, because the people that make the game are humans too, and they fuck up sometimes and try to make things work that just can't, and that's okay.
Riiight. And how many times have they fucked things up and ignored all the backlash and criticism? Your statement looks naive, zealous even. You idolize them for one thing they've done right and completely dismiss all the things they've done wrong, and even worse than that you pledge your loyalty to them in the future because of it. By doing so you're just predisposing yourself to abuse and exploitation.
@nithurlutI think you meant have they, saying “how many times they fucked up” is incorrect if you’re referring to the past and phrasing it as a rhetorical question. Hope that helps!
One of the reasons things like this can slip through is designers aren't always professional players. What is a "balanced" champion to some people does not mean it will be balanced to people with a high skill cap. Personally though, I think more things should exist that reward skill cap. It rewards learning, and growing as a player.
Ridiculous. Them saying sorry for their own fuck up is certainly a great thing to do but that isnt a common thing for riot. Even if they did often apologize for their mistakes, that suddenly means they dont deserve criticism? Anyone who creates requires criticism to improve. To omit any criticism you have because they seem sorry is just ridiculous and I hope you realize how stupid that mindset is
You sound like an mentally unstable girl defending her abusive bf. There are a lot of live services that listen to customer feedback. It is like the bare minimum
Did they ever try making her wall dash function like Talon's? Give it a lowish cooldown but give the terrain itself a cooldown so she can't spam dash everywhere as often.
Having lived through this era as an LCS fan, I also remember that Zeri's resurgence in mid 2023 overlapped with the reintroduction and meta dominance of Statikk Shiv. There was a brief period towards the end of 2023 Summer and throughout 2023 Worlds where if Zeri was played, you could be reasonably sure that she would build Statikk Shiv.
I still love my clip of me playing Zeri after she released and got into a lane with Yuumi as support. God. The speed. I felt like early days Kassadin lvl 16, but only was lvl 6 on Zeri. Got the zoomies for sure with her.
a video on aphelios would be amazing, as a phel main who just recently got into the game i never got to experience him on release but all i hear his how he was up there as one of the most busted champions when he first came out. I'd love to get to really know why riot refuses to properly buff him.
August being so humble honestly makes this so much better. The guy really did feel sorry for making a problematic champion. Imagine if Phreak designed her back in the day. We'd never hear an apology 🤣
Yuumi was my main before she got her first nerf to her entire kit, never picked her up again, and I usually played Yuumi with a Lucian duo, good old days
You’re unstoppable with Opera GX - better in every lane: operagx.gg/MythLeagueofLegends2
That browser is way too slow. and has spyware; Like LOLs. F em both.
damn its almost like creating brain dead, impossible to balance and super OP broken champions is bad idea hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
kysante
nilah
viego
akshan
yuumi
ambessa
smolder
apeplos
mel
aurora
naafiri
milio only kinda but he is possible to balance
belveth-someone remember this champion? not played much huh, that tracks
skarner- literally belveth ofc not in gameplay but you get the idea
zeri
yone
yuumi
all of those champions (exept maybe milio) should be removed or at least for viego and akshan remove revive and changing to champions those abilities are broken beyond belief and impossible to balance
@jensv874 i had problems for years with opera sound cuz it was just gone i didnt have any sound nothing idk why and suddenly sometimes it was coming back after months so it was just impossible to use
almost forgot to say that smolder is literally zeri literally annoying as hell but instead of infinite ms he can move over walls cuz ofc he can and he gets bunch of MS so when you are able to EVEN GET TO THE RANGE he just gonna press E and fly away while DOING % MAX HP TRUE BURN EXECUTE AND ONESHOT TANKS OBVIOUSLY
Real OGs know the game stopped being LOL in 2015.
Its League of skins.
(League of microtransactions.)
Buffing her, releasing a skin, then nerfing her the next day is diabolical.
Like most League monetization moments?
big reason why I called it quits on the game. just dirty marketing
Damn thats hella shady 😂😂😂
Battle dove seraphine in a nutshell
DiAbOLiCaL
Just pls stop 😂
This just proves that movement speed is the most op stat in the game
Yeah, this reminds me of Kalista
In arena, they removed the bonus movespeed given to ranged champions recently and the champion variety increased because rangeds are far less op now.
Movement speed/mobility in general
We have literally known that since riot removed stacking boots and getting the movespeed. This was season 1 if i remember correctly.
Makes me think about the fast
Best part is: when you mentioned AP ratios at 14:48, that clip of her doing over 1k damage with her W: SHE WASN"T EVEN BUILDING AP!!! THAT WAS A FULL AD BUILD WITH MURAMANA!
Except that she has a ludens echo in that clip, which is indeed an AP item.
Ngl the fact that there were several games at worlds where yuumi was like 2/3rd top dmg on their team was wild
When Twisted Treeline was still a thing, I went 23/0.17 as a Yuumi. Witha Draven and Kai'sa on my side, A trynd, Voli, and Annie on their side.
Release Zeri was quite literally you playing URF while everyone else was playing normally.
yeah, she's literally "top down shooter" while everyone else is "top down rpg."
It's honestly amazing that Rito had been doing this over a decade and still managed to release a champion that ridiculously busted, far more overpowered than even Ekko at release. Really just proves to me that quitting was the right move. Incompetent company that also does sketchy stuff like buff Zeri on the same patch they release a new skin for her.
@_ArsNova I was level 5 on ekko the day he came out. He was broken and I didn't really know it lol
Damn, August's apology sounds like he really feels he's at fault for the state of those two world championships. He really did care.
Yeah and the fact that he knew she was gonna be OP gives him cred
I mean it's his fault, so yeah.
Well yea it is his fault lmao. These designers know theyre making a hot mess and just do it anyway
@Morrissey2k Yes, the game devs make all the decisions ;) that's how the world works
@jons1278 doesn't make all the decisions, but heavily contributed to enough decisions to cause a big problem. it's not all or nothing, he still did a lot more than harm than good with zeri.
Just add a secret passive where Zeri is now alergic to cats and gets nerfs when coupled with Yuumi. Problem solved.
By proxy she also sucks with Rengar and Nidalee haha
or add "in non solo queue nerf" or "if u win with this champion consistently, it's nerfed for you"
@jokerpandroidc9807and if you lose with it consistently your client uninstalls itself
@kailet1997 reminds me of the old debuff Shen, Akali, and Kennen used to have when they played together. Cause Ninjas are supposed to work alone LOL
she takes magic dmg per second when around cat like champions
The developers, such as August, being so open about their thoughts, worries, and takes on their work is something we as a community need to aknowledgable as a blessing.
Genuinely rare to see.
I really appreciate it but it also boggles my mind how Zeri even got past playtesting. Like, if you showed anyone her kit before release they'd all raise their eyebrows and say "Are you sure this is a good idea...?"
@Ex_ceed_ed If it was fun to play, that's literally the only thing that matters I'd think; the kit can be balanced afterward, but why would they pass up on fun gameplay? tons of champions in the past were balance nightmares too, this is barely any different as far as I'm concerned
@Ex_ceed_ed you say that but as the video stated a lot of people saw her kit before release and thought she was going to be fun and BALANCED. turned out people can make bad choices at just a glance.
I disagree completely. August has brought us a bunch of terrible champs lately and he is part of those people that keep on making champs with stupid move speed. He is now head of design or not far from it and you can see how that has affected the game since all the champs pretty much since zeri etc are just more of the same stupid dashes with kits that have entire essays for kits. They're clearly being super subjective with the game and there is 0 objectivity with the release of champions lately. Nothing new, just more cute champs that dash and hurt :).
@SilentShadooow Imagine of having a track record of making bad champs and then becoming head of design lmao
19:12 he is giving oppenheimer vibes
0:20 wuh how? I have NEVER seen a zeri do that before how in the heck do you get move speed like that
Zeri on release used to stack movement speed in her R, easily reaching 1000+ movement speed with ease.
@trollerox7276that's insanity
It’s still possible with the new ARAM Mayhem gamemode and probably Arena (I don’t play Arena so idk but some augments came from there) but that’s not really Zeri herself it’s just movespeed
I'm so thankful for finding your channel. I quit League years ago, and your channel is literally the only League content I watch. Keep 'em coming!
14:19
I think it's ironic how they worded the patch notes. They said their goal was to provide counterplay. What riot failed to realize is that the champion doesnt have counterplay because of its design. Either she's nerfed to doing no damage so you can ingore or does just enough damage to where you can't ignore because shes too safe and fast (in theory).
at 75 range reduction I would assume she wouldn't be as safe. I mean all other adcs are slotted into their range category with completely different playstyle according to it and I believe each category is 100 range apart
The range nerf pushed Zeri from a classic backline ADC into what I like to call the battle ADC category (just something I started using with my friends.) - champs that have mobility and need to dance on the edge. It’s a mixed bucket: they have to play closer than "classic ADCs" to do well.
Vayne - solo-target monster
Kalista - extremely slippery, snowballs early
Kai’Sa - can access the backline and burst it down
Zeri - AoE-focused teamfighter in this bucket
As few examples.
What defines this category for me is mobility, effective range, and the kit itself - how much it forces to play up close versus from a distance.
Zeri fits here because she needs to hit more than just the frontline to out-DPS classic ADCs, in even game she loses in pure DPS against the classic ADCs. Therefore her frontline falls first.
Mate all the Mass Effect music is giving me flashbacks :( I need to play that series again.
0:33 "is he playing well?" shit is killing me LMAO
9:13 Jak and Daxter the precursor legacy final boss soundtrack
this guy knows ball
I'm still curious why Sony hasn't given Jak and Daxter the Spyro Reignited treatment
I don't play league, but have seen a lot of your videos mention how broken Zeri was. It's nice to have some context to why everyone hates her so much. It is a shame they were never able to get her to a healthy state because as a character she looks really cool both visually and because of the mobility.
"The demon cat" at the end killed me lmao
And mad respect for August.
8:20 the balatro music... 🫰🏽
Omg, the Problem Solver 68 theme at 16:44 was so smooth I didn't get it, love it
from my experience in any competive game the biggest stat is always movement speed. Like in general movement speed is lowkey the biggest impact in any game3
The worst thing is; Zeri was broken for very much the same reason Kalista was. The ability to keep attacking while infinitely kiting and still moving. Riot had YEARS with Kalista to know this was a problem. Yet they did Zeri anyway. Zeri should not have gotten past the planning stage. Someone should have seen Zeri; and gone "uh; this is Kalista again. NO". This isn'teven just on August. Surely; SOMEONE involved should have seen Zeri and realised she was Kalista 2.0.
Zeri is maybe the biggest example of Riot not learning from it's past mistakes, the only contest to that being Zoe, who was "we reworked Nidalee to stop her being a super-safe oneshot machine from offscreen. Also; here's Zoe a super-safe oneshot machine from offscreen!" And Zoe's release state was so absurd Riot literally intentionally nuked her from orbits and made skits about it.
i think its egregious that riot completely reworked nid and poke to change the poke game. just to make a champ that does that with a cc that lasts longer than most supports. Old nidalee was spammy, but it took set up. Zoe can one shot by level six for some reason.
Man, the good old days of just throwing Nidalee spears and getting Malzahar ulted at level 6... everyone slow and methodical as fuck, the game just generally being more deliberate. Good times.
Riot doesn't learn from their mistakes because the entire dev team is not the same team from 15 years ago, even 5 years ago. So many staff have changed. Not as many OGs.
@SakyTenraku Yes, but the balance team are still dealing with the Kalista problem. To suggest Riot are not aware of Kalista's issues is silly.
Also Zoe was like; a few months after the Nidalee rework.
They should have never made Zeri she doesn't even fit in to the league style, it was a cash grab at games like fortnight
11:45 the Galaxy map theme got me back to mt Xbox 360. Thnx dude. Now I have to play the Mass Effect Trillogy again. 😂😅
i like the soundtrack when u were talking about yummi, parasite eve 1 ost, and champion itself a parasite
That mass effect 2 music is just sooooo nostalgic dude. thx for it
you don't get it bro 200 years bro 🥀
You are not nearly as funny as you think you are.
@LuckybonickJeeze you okay?
@SpaceSushiLordsure am, but seeing the same stupid comments on league content all the time is tiring.
@Luckybonick 'okay' but spending time yelling at clouds in yt comments LMAO
@phrostphoenix454 im not yelling at clouds, I’m telling an idiot that he is not funny for repeating a single stupid phrase from years ago.
This was a really well made video. I really enjoyed it man, keep it up 👍🏽
I still have flashbacks to Zeri Yuumi, Lucian Nami, and Sivir Lulu meta 😅
Also, I recall playing a competitive game against a Zeri, as Lisandra. We also had a Nautilus support. Despite 2 point and click abilities, we still couldn’t kill the Zeri lol
Been playing since Boots 3 start, DFG on veigar days, great stuff keep em coming.
When it comes to broken kits they really gotta just take the DotA approach... Change the abilities.
You can't fix a fundamentally broken kit with stat tweaks, you have to change the actual kit.
If they could afford to do 1% of what Ice Frog done to DOTA 2, we wouldn't need to even wait Shyvanna rework at this point. Like seriously, Riot is damn stubborn with their game because they know they'll have to do actual work with their ancient ahh game. Every time Riot need to do a champion rework or even make a new game mode, they have to moan how hard it is for them or how the community is too stubborn for changes. Valid concern. But like you ans I have played DOTA 2, we are spoiled by Valve's generosity and when we came back to League, we could feel how lazy Riot is to everything
This is ultimately the key to fixing broken champions 90% of the time.
Idk what riots resistance is to changing or nerfing abilities is maybe they are too proud of their 'design vision' or something. But if you unintentionally create a character with abusable overpowered abilities, all you need to do is change 1 of them or remove attributes they give. They've done it before like with gragas. They changed his ult so it comes out slower and it made him more balanced. K'sante W and his ult q speed were changed and while he's still strong it definitely made him less disgusting.
The refusal to admit and just remove or change bad ideas to begin with is my biggest gripe with riots balance. It screws up the game constantly and makes it way more frustrating and anti fun for long periods of time.
Just if I was a designer and someone brought yuumi or zeri's kit to me to test it my feedback within 5 minutes would be 'this is a toxic, anti fun design. Need to remove some of the mobility'.
@pc2555my reaction to Yuumi would be "It aint work. No thanks"
@pc2555 apparently individual people design entire champion kits so i guess there's some "special OC blorbo" syndrome or something
@QuestionableObject yeah who knows. I remembered some better examples of just admitting the problem. When they reworked zac blitz and kog'maw. People didn't like the new zac ult, blitz being more of an attack speed fighter did was not fun in practice and the 5.0 max atk speed kog was a balance problem. Eventually they admitted they were a failure and reverted them all.
Seems like they only do that for reworks though. They almost never do it for new champions. The first new champ I can remember everyone hated was Zoe and riot only did nerfs and changes but never to this day changed her kit.
11:58 Mass effect 1 ost, love to see it
Here after Peyz and Keria demolished HLE in game 5 with that duo
Same lol😂
I remember when Zeri came out but that was around the time I took a few breaks from league to play HotS. Every time I booted up League for an Aram or something Zeri functioned differently and I wondered why. I had no idea she was such a problem until after the fact.
Another banger of a video
And aw yeah ghost trick music
the Mass Effect music 14:04 🎵👌
I was literally searching up zeri movement speed and watched the first clip of those guys laughing yesterday. I kid you not i was hoping you had a video on it!!! Twilight zone rn
Amazing video
21:00 zeri came as the first ADC after Samira I think.
And a topic you didn't touch at all, that I think plays a big part here is:
Samira and Zeri show a big change in leagues champion design (also with Gwen around the same time)
And it's "utility creep" kind of like how modern day Yu-Gi-Oh had so much card design change that some people call it Yu-Gi-Oh 3.0
These modern champs had so much utility that it basically warped the game around them. Like zeri had movement speed + dash + onhit + build in shield + build in Anti Speed + AP scaling+ dmg + huge AOE + AOE cc (slow) + huge single target dps.
I don't remember if she had build in Livesteal, but I think she had no penetration or cleanse, so of all possible tools she was missing 3 .
And I think thisis the main problem that made zeri impossible to balance
And then riot saw the problems of utility creep and released ksante
It goes back even further than that. A lot of people forget that on release Sylas had a Shield on his E, all his abilities were auto-cancels, his W was an execute, and I'm sure there are a few other things I'm forgetting that were entirely removed from his kit. It's no wonder they haven't had time to rework Shyvanna when they need to rework every new champion they release, often multiple times, within a couple months.
@PowWowKenLaughs in Azir using soldiers to damage towers 😂
@ReallyReallyTryinggetting attack speed for buying CDR was also pretty sweet
@ReallyReallyTrying i miss his little bump-knock-up on his E...
Because they thought: "Zeri has to be able to play lane against mages because poke is unfun!" And the outcome is Zeri, Samira(windwall), Akshan. First champion that was designed to counter poke was Ekko and it shows how much stuff each new champion has just to counter neutral lanes.
That one post in the video summed up the issue perfectly, new champions on average are so incredibly bloated with mechanics and complete item's worth of free stats (Ambessa R for example) that it's pretty much impossible to adjust it in a healthy way and it's also a nightmare to play against it if you play a different lane. There's so much fine print to their abilities and passives that you will never fully understand how strong they are by just looking at their items and lvl in game - you have to deliberately spend time reading everything or even playing a few games.
I had friends who stopped watching pro play in 2022. Ask me when I said T1 had won back-to-back if Zeri Yummi was still a thing...
i love to see zeri in proplay and love to play her, a mechanically demanding champion with the potential to make amazing plays when piloted perfectly, the cat however lowers her skill floor so much that even when she got caught she would live. the cat can burn in hell but zeri is an amazing design on all fronts other than balance
Think it’s really funny how both Zeri and Neon are characters that Riot’s teams aren’t really sure how to handle, so they overbuff or nerf them to the ground with no real in between.
Also August’s reaction to early Zeri is really funny to, knew that she could and would be broken beyond belief. 😭
Knew it was a problem and did nothing about it. Great dev team.
That first clip is beyond crazy lol
Been maining her since Releases, still remember the good old 33% winrate days
Whatsapp build zeri was also pretty funny to intentionally bring the wr down
@jotarokujo934 played her during those days and remembered how Ryze and Zeri mains were basically in a contest of who can get the lowest wr
Been waiting for this for a hot minute now
man, I love your videos so much................
this only rivaled the time when dustblade was buffed after being "too weak"
I don't know about you all, but Zeri was genuinely the most fun I've had with a champ on league probably ever, and I've been playing since 2011/2012. Even after the 5th/6th/7th/8th nerf, she was still sooooo incredibly fun to play and pilot. Was she balanced? Most definitely not. But man is her overall design and gameplay philosophy fucking cool. It's a shame how she ended up.
There's like 19 HeWhoQuacksss clips of August saying "God I loved making Zeri but I'm so sorry for what I did with her" you could have used in this, cant wait to watch it and see what you cooked up
The real issue is that there aren't enough ITEMS that counter movement. Including movement speed and dashes. ITEMS that would allow a champion to deal a lot more damage to a champion moving faster than them, or half a second after a very fast dash, would go a long way to dealing with champions like kalista, zeri, or any other champion that is too strong because of mobility creep.
The reason why I highlight items, is because champions like vex have a half-hearted anti movement ability, which should make them useless against non-movers and op against movers, or kind of being a useless ability as it has become.
it kind of kills champions that arent designed around being fast or spamming dashes, poppy being an example of being strong against some dash champions but unfairly screwing champs like ornn who you wouldnt really call mobile
@duckesome That makes sense, but if you had an item that reduced the distance of the dash by 35% (similar to mercury treads) It wouldn't affect ornn much except for max range q+e but it would affect some very dashy champions.
Alternatively something that stacks per dash, and each increases your damage by like 5-10% per dash in a short period of time, which would at its worst deal 10% additional damage to mostly immobile champions like malphite.
Babe wake-up new Myth video
The problem is that they took alot of point and click CC out of the game like taric stun sion stun etc. They tried to move everything to be more "skill expressive". The problem is is you don't have a way to deal with a champ you just lose.
What is worse is the "skill expression" actively comes as a lack of skill since you now don't need your entire team to function against the enemy's entire team. It is the same balance issue Snipers face. You focus so much on one skill or a small pool, that every other skills doesn't matter. Only to find out those skills that do matter are basic skills that everyone uses.
i enjoyed the moments of nasus support i got to play because of her, zilean also became super fun to play
I haven't played League in years, but looking at this issue...it seems like the first and simplest nerf that would've made sense for making her not insane would just be capping the stacks on her ult? Not at 10000 stacks but at, like. Ten?
Would that have made her unplayable? No idea, but it just seems like that would've been a simpler way to attempt checking her ability to take over a game vs tweaking the entirety of the rest of her kit while insisting on leaving the infinite scaling in place.
The shield stealing part in my opinion was a big issue, it made her more tanky and the enemy less tanky at the same time
You basically hurt your team by putting a shield and almost directly helped the enemy by giving one to zeri
As for her movement speed, the nerf she got in the end, which is to reduce the stack time to 1.5 sec IS the correct solution. This way she can still stack as much as she wants but if enemy has Annie with a passive + Q combo, ur stacks are gone
we all loved Zeri lulu/yuumi vs Lucian Nami every game
its so sad what she became,, i really love playing her and her kit is soo cool and i feel really bad for august
You have fun playing her, it's fine. But his kit is lame as fuck. And since Jhin he made only mistakes. Viego Belveth and Briar, just naming a few of them.
@DamnFury What? Viego and Briar are both cool af
@emptyptr9401 .. okei
@DamnFury No? Belveth and Briar are pretty cool.
@mr_ogercool yes but broken as hell the guy just designs broken and op champ
I remember being able to build trinity force into runaans and black cleaver on zeri top.
Really love these retrospectives of you man. Both the ones I lived through (which gave me an odd mix of nostalgia and PTSD) and the ones I missed. Keep up the good work man, you are one of the best channels in league youtube atm.
And yeah, Zeri was one of the worst releases they've ever had, you've covered most of it pretty well.
Was literally dying in the hospital via stroke when zeri came out. And for a while I wasn't sure i survived with how crazy she got.
Now who devalued the pentakill in pro play more? Zeri or Smolder?
Smolder xd
“Is of course… a dash” 😂 I laughed a little too hard at this.
I have a solution: give the audience watching 5 bans during ban phase too!
this would honestly solve SO many problems and really freshen up tournaments
9 minutes in haven't heard mention of how often she got penta kills
I wonder how everyone would have felt If fearless already existed at the time
I think so. Champions who are astro-broken actually get stronger in Fearless, since you basically get the freewin for the entire game. For example, Dr. Mundo and Sion in Worlds 2025 were so beyond turbo-broken that they warp the game around their *REMOVAL* let alone the power they have in the game.
@omegaminoseer4539 Dr. Mundo was banned 0 times and picked 5 during the entire championship. Why not pick an actual good example, such as Azir and Orianna, which were the clear two best mid laners in the Worlds patch, and both had 80% or more presence in pick and bans during the main event, below only Yunara? Even Sion, which was quite strong, only had a 63% presence.
I don't know even play League but somehow I'm here. As an Overwatch player this sounds like our GOATS meta we had back in the day. Anyway super interesting and entertaining video to watch regardless.
holy peak
i still remember ruler on zeri during the lpl like wow even at the final game against T1 they really had faith in that champ and with ruler controlling it to just carry
Bro she looks like an average hacker at the start lmao
“He’s got his yuumi locked and loaded” 😂
First, it's teemo, then it's zoe, then it's yuumi, then it's zeri. Who's next?
You forgot the yasuo era
@hollowcloplover9539 I didn't know he was that problematic, but I'll give this one to ya.
14:17 is that ME3 normandy music?
Let me tell ya, as someone who played Zeri because she genuinely fun on release, it felt like being a war criminal constantly on the run from the authorities.
16:24 YEAHHHH ULTRA PRIME MENTIONED, THOSE ARE MY GOATS
I can't be mad at August cause he genuinely is a good designer responsible for some of my favorites (Jhin, Senna, Ekko, Jinx, Vi) but Zeri is that one case where he forgot to add the glaring weakness that made his designs "balanced" (or thought maybe having the autos be a skillshot is already too big a drawback). And then The Cat made it worse by essentially pumping her kit to 11.
Edit: wrote this before finishing the video and he listed the same champs I listed lmao
he added some but he was so tunnel visioned forgot about interactions with other champs and .. well.. items were a mess
Well the auto it weakness if you are pro player. Like Gumayusi dodge every Ruler Zeri AA end up solo both of Ruler and his Atrox top lane same time
I still remember playing zeri and doing a pentakill 2 matches in a row
If you've seen one Zeri launch you've seen all the Aphelios releases. Lol. They both basically broke the game on release. Too dang strong. 200 years of combined development experience.
now with fearless draft being utilized i think its "more fine" to see them again, but not in such a state as they was, but maybe its about time they are allowed to experiment to find the right point for them again!
damn, 31 mins ago im early!
Weird. All I remember is a bunch of feeding zeri’s. You literally banned her cuz you didnt want her on your team. Maybe I’m misremembering 🤔
And then i didnt ban her, saw the enemy team with her thinkin it was a easy game, oh how wrong i was
*deep breath* TWO HUNDRED YEAAAAAARSSSSS!
Riot should have a Guiness World Record for most stupid/broken heroes made
I throw a dart at a printed pic of champ select and wherever it lands is the next video
@myth-leagueoflegends miss and make a video about lore (its broken aswell as we all know)
7:00 Minor editing mistake - the image displayed is the mid-patch nerf she received, rather than the buff.
Zeri deffo feels like playing an Fps
Ur trying to have fun then a unemployed sweaty basement dweller that does nothing but play the game and kills u in a micro second
bro upset his hand-eye coordination and general gamesense is just awfull :'( you sound like a silver player
@smilermerchant you sound like a bottom
Never really understood why people lean towards calling more skilled players no-lifers, like, maybe they play every-day of their life after getting home from work/school, it is not that hard to get good at videogames without spending all your life on them.
@sharksnarkk It's just to put them down. They're angry at themselves for being worse than a pro, which is ridiculous. Of course an actual athlete is going to be better than the average person that only plays a few hours a day at most. It's okay to not be as good as the pros.
That's why we have leagues. So everyone can play with people of their own skill level.
@RomanNumerDos oop
I was not expecting Balatro music 😂😂
What i like about that yumi is fucked up is that HEROES OF FUCKING NEWERTH could have a champion that could jump into someone and be untouchable and even get better spells while in them, they made it their ULT and for a limited time. Riot needs to do the same with yumi, make it so her ult is that she can jump into someone and change up her skillset. I am usually NEVER for removing a champion completely, but yumi needs to be changed 100% her kit is just dumb as it is.
And making her useless at the same time lol
@lezzgooemphe Making her useless, how? I said to change her skill set to accommodate the new ult where she can only be in her target for a limited time, like i said, it worked in HoN one of the most scuffed mobas there ever was but Empath was actually a good support. It is just that riot probably doesn't want to put the time and energy to change her up because she is so noob friendly.
“Back then”? Zeri is new right? Right? I feel old.
Zeri mains: "You guys have no idea how balanced and how much skill it needs to play her. And Yuumi just there to give her a "Tiny bit" Of help. " ☝🤓
First time I played league was around her release... that was also the last year I played league.
I will forever commend August for straight up saying sorry for Zeri, and it's one of the reasons I love August and the team that makes this game in general. Because in what other large, multiplayer live service game would you have the devs openly saying "yeah we fucked up" when they let something as busted as a new character or feature slip through into release? It takes a lot to say that you fucked something up when so many eyes are on your work (especially when those eyes consist of the League of Legends player base) and him doing it on a livestream is just wild to me. It's one of the reasons why I never will criticize the changes made by riot, because the people that make the game are humans too, and they fuck up sometimes and try to make things work that just can't, and that's okay.
Riiight. And how many times have they fucked things up and ignored all the backlash and criticism?
Your statement looks naive, zealous even. You idolize them for one thing they've done right and completely dismiss all the things they've done wrong, and even worse than that you pledge your loyalty to them in the future because of it.
By doing so you're just predisposing yourself to abuse and exploitation.
@nithurlutI think you meant have they, saying “how many times they fucked up” is incorrect if you’re referring to the past and phrasing it as a rhetorical question. Hope that helps!
One of the reasons things like this can slip through is designers aren't always professional players. What is a "balanced" champion to some people does not mean it will be balanced to people with a high skill cap.
Personally though, I think more things should exist that reward skill cap. It rewards learning, and growing as a player.
Ridiculous. Them saying sorry for their own fuck up is certainly a great thing to do but that isnt a common thing for riot. Even if they did often apologize for their mistakes, that suddenly means they dont deserve criticism? Anyone who creates requires criticism to improve. To omit any criticism you have because they seem sorry is just ridiculous and I hope you realize how stupid that mindset is
You sound like an mentally unstable girl defending her abusive bf.
There are a lot of live services that listen to customer feedback. It is like the bare minimum
Vídeos incríveis como sempre.
Did they ever try making her wall dash function like Talon's? Give it a lowish cooldown but give the terrain itself a cooldown so she can't spam dash everywhere as often.
Old Fiddlesticks bouncing crows: *Shhh... AHHHH*
That yumi intro was hilarious 😂😂
I love this content dude
Having lived through this era as an LCS fan, I also remember that Zeri's resurgence in mid 2023 overlapped with the reintroduction and meta dominance of Statikk Shiv. There was a brief period towards the end of 2023 Summer and throughout 2023 Worlds where if Zeri was played, you could be reasonably sure that she would build Statikk Shiv.
I still love my clip of me playing Zeri after she released and got into a lane with Yuumi as support. God. The speed. I felt like early days Kassadin lvl 16, but only was lvl 6 on Zeri.
Got the zoomies for sure with her.
LOL first
a video on aphelios would be amazing, as a phel main who just recently got into the game i never got to experience him on release but all i hear his how he was up there as one of the most busted champions when he first came out. I'd love to get to really know why riot refuses to properly buff him.
August being so humble honestly makes this so much better. The guy really did feel sorry for making a problematic champion. Imagine if Phreak designed her back in the day. We'd never hear an apology 🤣
Yuumi was my main before she got her first nerf to her entire kit, never picked her up again, and I usually played Yuumi with a Lucian duo, good old days