The FAILED Champion Riot Regrets... What Can Be Done About Zeri? 

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3:50 Funny thing is, it's actually the opposite of what happened. Both Zeri and Renatta were supposed to release in 2021 but were delayed ON PURPOSE because Riot thought it ill advised to release 2 Piltover/Zaunite champions during Arcane that had absolutely nothing to do with Arcane

I love how they admit that this champ is beyond broken and they can’t fix her but yuumi is still in the game 😅

One thing to note is, while Lillia may not have had a ton of big changes directly, Riot did fundamentally change the jungle in order to nerf her. If I remember correctly, they changed the monster patience mechanic because she was clearing two camps at a time and steamrolling through the jungle faster than anyone else could dream of.

I think a huge problem that you haven't touched on was that she was basically slightly stronger than any other ADC, but at a time when yuumi was also incredibly OP. Seeing how these 2 were usually played together, especially in pro-play, that made her absolutely broken. With yuumi giving her even more movement speed, an aoe CC and a decent heal, she could just skip buying any Utility or survivability items. This allowed her to just rush the highest possible damage items without having any problems with survivability. Her "weakpoint" of having lower damage than other adcs was completely negated by that.

For the intro, when it comes to Akali, it is good that they whack-a-mole'd a bunch of things that were problematic in her kit, but the fact it took them so long before they were willing, and that they thought having all those crazy features was okay to begin with was what sticks with me.

Lillia change to melee is such a buff, now demonic does so much more damage making her burns so op

best part about zeri is that she got so much changes it shows riot dont want to give up they gave up on so many characters really fast but zeri they are trying and trying to get her right and i love that one day they will get it right but who knows when that would happen

What you said about removing some of her excess mechanics is how I feel about Zeri. Her W and E just don't really *need* to have terrain interaction, while thematically speaking it doesn't say that much about the champion anyway. Her W seems the most egregious of all in that it's just... Really random? Yet for whatever reason she was balanced in a way that her W became the focal point of her gameplay, at least for a short while. In a perfect world I think Zeri is designed around her Q more so than anything else, I would argue that her W and E should be complements to her Q at best. If you're always managing your positioning then the standard W is already a worthwhile ability for its slow, and honestly is already quite powerful without being turned into a Lux ult. If her dash was less instrumental to her kit she could also niche out much more as a movement speed hypercarry, rather than becoming a strangely overtuned Ezreal. Their gameplay loops are quite similar, dash, Q reset, dash, etc. To me it seems a bit lazy as Zeri could've easily been designed to have 0 dashes, with more emphasis being placed on rewarding good positioning. Designing champs around dashes has become a no-brainer crutch in my opinion. She could be throwing down tesla coils for her E for all I care, which could be turned into a zoning threat to aid her positioning, or could lead to rewarding skill expression when used in tandem with her ult to build more stacks of her movement speed. It makes me a bit sad that she gets Lucian's/Ezreal's E instead, when those champions seem to be designed to use those abilities more thoughtfully-especially Lucian, who naturally promotes some of the smoothest adc gameplay out there.

I am praying that this midscope update brings her back into the playable category. I love her kit and really would accept any change to make her actually useful again

feel like Lillia's kit was made for her passive unlike most modern champions, and everything just flows afterward

Funny thing I saw was missing: Akali's Q used to deal bonus damage to minions at rank 5! The purpose of this was so she could still function as a split pusher "without having too much pushing power during landing phase", as that was her usual pattern pre-rework

I have to say, as a former Overwatch player, Riot being willing to admit they were wrong and remove shit is very refreshing. Blizzard basically never reverted any changes they made, regardless of how terrible the changes were. They would just try and re-balance with the new changes to the game. It resulted in the game becoming a shell of its former self (even before OW2), and characters' optimal playstyles constantly changing.

I think we should wait to see how her mid scope works. It seems good trying to build her as an adc and limiting her basic auto attack range and mobility in exchange to enhance the rest of the kit.

Yuumi was also a huge part of why Zeri was very strong

Y'know. Its weird how Zeri is seen as a problem, when most of the time, she's not a very good adc without yuumi...

13:48 this is because lilia ult proc is a projectile, travelling to the enemy champion, similar to sylas ult when he throws his chain at you. Samira can block said projectile, prevent the effect.

Zeri is such a fun champion to play and I'm really glad to hear that Riot is working on her to make her more balanced. Thank you, Exil, for another great video

9:23 I like that, when you say "No champion has ever had these significant adjustments..." Azir feels offended and hops away 😂

The Windwall deleting Lillias Ult is simply because the Ult starts with Lillia throwing some small projectile towards the champions affected by her passive. As it is a projectile, the windwall and Samira W can delete it. In the clip you have shown Samira was on top of Lillia, meaning that her W was able to delete all the Ult seeds Lillia threw out.

This video is supposed to be about Zeri but so much of it is spent talking about Lilia...

When they first revealed her kit, she seemed to me immediately like she was gonna be basically a league version of what Tracer was in Heroes of the Storm. And basically anyone who played Heroes of the Storm pre and post tracer would tell you she was the worst champion design and release of all time for that game. Maybe Genji is more hated, but Tracer having so many dashes and auto’ing while moving was the breaking point on that games balance

For me, Jhin is the best-designed champion. It's been several years since his release but he is still so much fun and rewarding to play.

I would also argue that sleep is also much stronger than stun in the sense that the delay incoming cc is what will cause a break in formation and make the players focus on running away for not having cleanse or rushing a qss which while they retreat it gives even more time for the team to get into position or dish out damage before the actual cc. Plus many players tend to burn their resources when they get drowsy whereas with stun they can just wait it out and the moment its gone spam the flash button and likely get out. with Sleep, it forces bad positioning vs full death plus sleep even buffs the incoming damage for more burst whereas stun is merely just hard cc.

I bought Zeri on release and have mostly avoided learning her bcuz of all her nerfs. I really hope these new changes will make her a lot healthier for the game, and I really hope she'll be viable in other roles since I really hate playing ADC.

You talk about her being rushed to meet a deadline because of Arcane, But I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that she was essentially developed alongside Neon from Valorant, making her essentially the first cross universe character. Trying to time the release for League, Valorant, and Arcane likely had her play tested much less.

Zeri's state right now hurts because she's been by far my favourite champion in the game since her release, I absolutely love her fantasy of being a speed demon ADC that just keeps getting faster as long as she still fights, but like others have said Riot just kept adding random shit into her kit (w crits? who asked for this) seemingly without thinking about how it was going to break her even further. It's a shame to see her state right now, but hopefully her midscope is good and I can finally play and enjoy the game again.

thanks alot, i spilled my drink when that twitch picture appeared 15:48 hahahaha so chonky

I tried zeri out the other day and I was surprised how fun her kit was but shes so underpowered it was depressing.. I hope they fix her Id love to keep trying her.

In all honesty, since Zeri tends to go so fast when shes ahead i often forget she has a dash that goes through walls, its like, shes doing so much that i dont process her having a dash skill on top of that

Zeri had to not only line up with Arcane, but ALSO with the release of Neon in Valorant, for whatever reason. It's hard to meet deadlines like that on three seperate projects at the same time.

Jhin has been changed in 42 patches over his release in season 6. That is seven patch changes a year. While Lillia has had 16 patch changes since her release. So 8 a year. And Zeri has 39 changes in one year.

Honestly, when she came out, the bruiser builds were so much fun and I personally dont like Riots approach to force champions to specific items. I like when you can choose and build different things like for example Ezreal. You have so many optiions what to build on him and its one of many reasons why that champ is so fun to play.

3:50 apart from what NickyBoi says, which is also true, a lot of problems from Zeri don't come from her release, it's not that she wasn't a problem back then, but for no reason, Riot began to add weird things to her kit (like the changes to the W AP ratio) that made it even harder to balance her. For every change in order to fix her, they added a new things that completely broke her more and more. This is a very basic example and of course Zeri needed more than number changes, but as I see it, instead of just changing numbers, they also completely changed a mechanic about her that wasn't a big deal until that moment; also, they kinda always rushed her changes, instead of waiting for people to know more and learn the champ, they always made the changes extremely fast, they eventually got tired and nerfed her to the ground to focus on other things, i really hope that these new changes put her in a more comfortable spot

Great video as always. One small thing is that zeri’s ult still gives her all of the buffs for potentially infinite duration, It lasts for 5 seconds and every hit against an enemy adds 1.5 seconds to the duration which is capped at the initial 5 seconds, so as long as she’s hitting enemies she will keep refreshing the buff. As for my thoughts on whether she can be fixed, I don’t think you can fix her. So long as she has longer range than every other adc while also having more mobility tools, she will always have the “she can hit you but you cant hit her” problem. Ezreal is in my opinion zeri’s design concept but better. He has absurd range sure, but in order to get the most out of his kit you are incentivized to be in his normal auto range because otherwise you are completely wasting potential damage from his passive and even a small amount from his e. On the other hand, Everything in zeri’s kit points towards her wanting to stay as far away from you as possible while giving her every tool she needs in order to do that. Her basic attacks are more effective if you play hit and run, her q effectively travels farther if you are kiting backwards, her w is more effective if you are fighting from behind terrain, her e travels the entire length of a wall, (90% of the reason people hate kayn is because he can do this too) and her R gives her ms to kite away more easily. If you want to truly fix her you need to either give her reasons to want to stay close so that she operates most effectively in the thick of things while still having the option to poke from outside, or you need to remove her mobility options so that she cant both operate at max effectiveness while 10 miles away and also have every tool in existence to get to 10 miles away. Both of these options remove a core part of her identity so I fear her fate is simply just her becoming ryze 2.0.

If you look really closely when Lilia ults, there is a small projectile that comes out really fast, so Yasuo and Samira blocks that projectile. It's pretty much impossible to react to and is pretty much on the Lilia to not get it blocked.

4:15 Is it just me or is this long transition super satisfying

Lillia ult sends out a thin projectile that moves really fast, so yes it can be blocked with windwall and untargetability.

When she came out i thought: "hmm interesting concept surely nothing can go wrong!" She will receive a mini rework for the 100th time in a few days i feel bad for Zeri mains

The Song name from 4:22 - 4:32 is called: "Violet Sky" from Phello

Lillia ult fires a targeted projectile towards marked targets. When thr projectile lands, the drowsy mechanic is applied. Projectile-blocking abilities can block her ult because of this, if positioned correctly.

"The FAILED Champion Riot Regrets" is a title you could apply to at least 20% of League's champs

I was hoping she'd be an Energy Based ADC, where the amount of times she can auto or Q would be limited like a battery, and would have to recharge by moving just like yasuo passive

An old friend played Aatrox back before his first rework, I started using him after the rework since my friend had since been unable to play from being busy, really sad to see the entire part of his kit removed but I understand.

Lillia main here, 10:08 if i remember correctly the patch note for this change specified it was to make laning harder for lillia and jun easier.

zeri as a concept is the most fun adc ive ever seen and i want nothing more for them to be viable, i play a lot of ryze and he is very viable, zeri on the other hand is so weak that i can't consistently play well. if zeri was a viable and not strong adc i would main them in a heartbeat

I legit think on release her kit could have been in a healthy spot, but instead of just nerfing her numbers they felt the need to constantly change her kit and how it works without much thought meaning that she has had at least 5 broken builds in other ways and now she’s just unfixable without a midscope (thank god she’s getting one).

the dash over the wall is my fav thing, I hope they don't remove that one thing

Lillia Ult is a projectile so you can basically remove that projectile with alot of abilities not just Yas Wall and Samira Spin wal

I just wish they would focus on one thing with Zeri. As a primarily mage player I was drawn to her skill shot auto attacks and fell in love with that part of the kit, but every other aspect of her kit is/has been so broken.

Here’s the weirdest part with Zeri, her release was pushed BACK. She was meant to release in 2021 but they ended up waiting till early 2022 which is why renata and bel’veth released so quickly after her. So how did a champion with an extra 2 or so months still be so unfinished?

3:59 and u also have to consider that she was released alongside neon in valo so there was time pressure there aswell

I wonder how you get those interesting shadows and mists. I know it's probably a summoner's rift mod, but I would love to use it too!

I genuinely think that zeri should be playable in the jg with her dash and lux poke abilities relying on terrain, I wanna have fun and play her but rn is not the time

How did you do the cool lighting effects

You sound a bit like reallifelore, you have one of the best narrating voices in my opinion. Great video, i hope to see more quality stuff like this!

13:40, that happens because when Lillia uses the ult, she sends a small proyectile, which can be seen, to the affected targets, and that proyectile can of course be cancelled by samira or yasuo

The moment I saw that Zeri's auto attacks were exclusively tied to an ability, I knew there was going to be problems with her. Her kit's power budget was completely out of whack; especially since they tried so hard to make her a kiting ADC, but gave her a dangerous combination of DPS, front-loaded burst, and high mobility. IMO they should have gone a similar route to Jinx and made Zeri's Q passive and active one single "stance swap" ability and give her a more normalized auto attack. I know that takes away a lot of her uniqueness, but clearly Riot doesn't quite understand how to balance a champion with her current set up.

also forgot to mention that aatrox used to gain a small amount of AD after using his dash for a few seconds. Thats why on some of his skins like mecha aatrox, the sword would turn green after dashing

16:49 - I legit thought this was a WARNING WARNING NATURAL DISASTER alert when the background music started.

The thing about Lilia also, is she was pretty popular in the meta around her release. I remember seeing her in pro games and she worked really well Being competitively viable and not needing a huge amount of changes is a huge achievement

What was crazy to me about modern design is that Samira needed EVERYTHING nerfed in a Patch, including passive, for the first time ever. Then Riot went "hold my gragas barrel" with Zeri

The lillia wind wall interaction is a bit different than what you said. Lillia ult shoots out a teeny tracking projectile that can be windealled by Samira or Yasuo. In the clip you showed Samira was just basically inside lillia so she windwalled all the projectiles.

I think they way to fix the W is just make the wall bang have a longer delay. If it hits a wall, it makes the big targeting area, and then detonates, but it's less than half a second delay between you seeing the danger zone and the blast; if they gave it a .75s or even a full second delay, that makes her more dependent on her team to pin people down, rather than just having her opponent have bad internet and not having time to react

I think one very consistent indicator of overloaded/unbalancable champions is how many sentences it takes to explain their abilities. Imo, each champion should have 5 abilities that can each be explained in one sentence. To use the comparison in this video Lillia has a magic damage burn on her passive, a circular cleave and passive movespeed on her q, a small area bonk on her w, long range poke on her e and sleep on her ult. Zeri is so overloaded that her q alone: makes her autos count as spells, makes her q spell count as autos and it charges up some charge (i don't know what it does when charged), her e and w both turn into completely different abilities when used over walls and her ult is aoe damage, as, ms and chain lightning. This overloaded buffet of features makes Zeri a nightmare to balance because there are just too many moving pieces.

For most of the year Zeri was my most played champion. I really liked her gameplay and seeing her being gutted and reworked over and over again made me quite hopeless, even with the midscope I'm not sure she will be balanceable again. I'll just wait and see, I don't want to illude myself

14:00 Thats not suprising. Her Ult is a little spark that goes from her body to the enemies. Thus a projectile.

I haven't watched yet, I plan to later... But I think the largest flaw with Zeri is the fact that she was designed to be a super zippy/fast moving carry, but also has the longest "basic attack" range of all marksmen at 750 (was 825 - even longer than ulting Twitch IIRC). I think they needed to decided (still need to decide) if they want her to be about movement or poking and either gut the Q range and buff other aspects of her, or rework parts of her kit to pull power out and make her more like Cait. I believe the former is what was intended with her, but she's never going to be remotely balanceable with range that crazy and being a very fast champion.

I loved zeri, she was my favourite champion to play and it sucks to see her in this state and that her ult and q are getting such a huge nerf but at least there's a chance that they'll be buffed to a nice spot instead of having to be nerfed into whatever is going on now

You make blocking lillia ult sound easier than it really is, when she ults she sends out very fast projectiles to everyone who is affected by her passive, if you block that then they won't get slept but that means everyone needs to stand behind wind wall the moment she casts or samira has to be on top of her whole team or on top of lillia and get the timing right since her w doesn't last as long

Zeri and neon who was both released at the same time in league and valorant was very op at release but both also got nerfed making them both at one point at the bottom of everyones tier list. Its funny how riot can mess up in both games at the same time.

Narrow w, smaller q range, buff based attack speed, and thst ult change mentioned and she’s golden

I think there's an even better example: VEX. She received 2 singular nerfs on release notes, then an universal buff, an universal nerf and a buff to compensate she lacks % damage. She's the definition of a pocket pick and is incredibly stable; if we ignore the 12.10 changes she only received adjustments the first patch and never again, because she's simple and used mostly as a soft response to certain opponents.

I'm not lying when I say Lillia is the reason I always come back to this game, she makes League really fun for me and I feel like I always have some control with her no matter what the game state is. I've never worked so hard to try and master a champion and she makes me want to play ranked, I'm practicing a lot in hopes to climb with her this coming season.

The Lillia R can be blocked by Yasuo and Samira because there actually is a small projectile travelling from the flower above Lillia to everyone with her passives DoT on. And since the activation of her R removes her DoT on enemies it looks like they just delete it but thats actually not the case.

I have to say this. It's nice to see Exil pushing more content nowadays. We've been in drought for a few months there buddy.

Lillia, (release) A-sol, & Singed. My top 3 favourites from a design perspective. I love the champions that focus on movement for damage, it is such a fun niche.

Zeri, imo, is by FAR the best champion that Riot has released in the last 3 years. Her kit, playstyle, new mechanics, gameplay, everything is just perfect. Her viability is definitely lower than others atm, but that doesn’t change how amazing of a champ she is. One of my favorite ADCs for sure.

Damn fine video. I think Zeri is in a completely different start these days. Also, I’m sad I picked up on loving Kalista after her broken days.

The windwall abilities block the lullaby Lillia sends to sleep them. It counts as a projectile.

Riot has always been unbalanced

Zeri just makes me sad, because I really enjoy the gameplay of having to aim my autos. My hands can't seem to move fast enough to a-move with one hand, so putting the auto on Q is game-changing. The problem is, no other champ in the game provides the experience Zeri does. Ezreal plays more like a mage and doesn't have the AOE that Zeri does, Cassiopeia is close but does magic damage so is hard to fit into a team, and Jinx has zero mobility outside of Get Excited. I seriously hope Riot can get Zeri right, because her gameplay loop of zipping around, dealing a ton of explosive crit damage in teamfights is exactly what I want out of an ADC.

11:33 Holy shit I had erased this from my memory and seeing it again made me feel the same astonishment as back then lol

i think putting a combat timer on zeris wall ride could do good, it could just be 5 seconds but i think being able to wall ride during fights is too strong for adc's

This is everything I said would happen with Zeri when she was in PBE. I said that she was clearly going to be a nightmare to balance and Riot's response was eventually going to be to nerf her into the ground because there's no way for her to have a middle ground. Others were like that won't happen! She has clear weaknesses like has a weak early game, she's squishy if she gets caught and she doesn't do that much damage comparatively to other ADCs.

I don't like playing against Zeri and I haven't tried her out myself. However I still feel bad that she's getting gutted like this. I think her range and scaling was fine since she's an adc. Maybe they should remove the wall slide and slow from the laser.

I play Lillia and Samira and I noticed there is a little projectile flying out when u ult with lillia and samira and yasou can block that

4:00 wasn't her rush to match when Neon was releasing in Valorant?

We can debate about balance all day... But yo this new toxic chat detection is so bad and needs to be balanced.

I personally would just like her removed from the game. All the nerds and changes in the world will not fix the self peel issues that should not exist on ADCs

bro what is the fog instead of darkness in these clips, I need this now. Is it a mod or graphics like what???

It's midnight and don't even play leauge and still somehow interested me

lillia is my absolutely favorite champ from recent releases. she is: cute, simple and intuitive to play and EXTREMELY fun.

And now is coming to Wild Rift... God help us

On Aatrox's E you forgot to mention the brief AD bonus upon casting it

Maybe her wall poke can be change as an engage tool, since now she being a close range adc, why not whenever she shoot her poke, she can dash through the range of it so she can engage in fight. U can just reduce the dmg of the ability n now people will play zeri as a new type of adc which is short range mobile adc. Idk if it's great or not but hey it's an idea

I actually consider Lillia as one of my mains. Lillia is very consistent and reliable for me. Lillia resonates so well with me.

I am a Zeri main. I've loved her since she released and over the course of time I've become dependent on her kit to keep me into League... I will cry if Riot kills her anymore.

Surprised to not see many comments acknowledging how well made the video is. I’m curious to know how much time and effort was put in. Well done mate.

Give her Q a 20 mana cost? Or up the damage a slight bit but work into her electricity gag and make it so you can't spam it or an overload would jam the Q for a few secs idfk