I've had Zoe in games before and while annoying, I didn't have to deal with her in lane until last night where I ended up against one as Swain.




Among other things, which I 'll get to in a bit, the problem is her trading pattern, which is to hit one to two long range Qs and you've lost the lane.

After the first one you have to burn all your consumables to stay in lane because you know one more without healing will quite likely kill you, especially when she applies the Ignite that she got from a random minion drop.

If you get hit by the second one, while it might not kill you, you will definitely have to go back to base to recoup.

In the meantime she is free to roam to another lane, however she gets there, and do the same thing in that lane.

Boom, two lanes lost and the snowball begins.

Sure you can die to other laners if you misplay, but at least they have a trading pattern that pretty much involves an entire rotation of their abilities along with autoattacks . E.g. if I get hit by a dash > AA > Stun > AA > empowered Q from Renekton, I'm going to get chunked, but at least I know he is going to take some minion damage and I might be able to trade back some of the damage and he is going to have to do that two to three times in order to pick up a kill.

Zoe's trading pattern is Bubble, Q, maybe an AA, and Ignite and you're dead.

When she gets her ult...it becomes a game of murder ball with potentially deadly things flying at you from god knows where.

And once she is itemized even your tanks have to seriously consider whether or not they want to step in front of a long range Q in order to protect a carry as even they are going to lose a third to half of their health.

And consider this is from a game where I actually didn't die to the Zoe in lane and I managed to out CS her.

At a minimum, she needs to not get random combat summoners or Teleport and enemies need to be able to step on the drops. If someone has a combat summoner you can see that and play accordingly. If you want Ignite for the laning phase and then Teleport for later in the game there is this new rune called Unsealed Spellbook which I consider reasonable because you have to make a choice to switch and switching is gated by time.

The Q damage for distance traveled also needs to be nerfed. I'm okay with the concept, but getting hit by one or two shouldn't lose you the lane and she shouldn't be able instantly delete a carry target with !one! non-ultimate ability without being really far ahead (just like any other assassin or character with burst).

If I were going completely ham on nerfing her, I would also nerf her ultimate cooldown to make her have to really think about when to use it. And potentially her Q cool down so it doesn't sync up as well with her bubble, forcing her to simply autoattack you once or twice before backing off rather than simply deleting the majority of your health bar every time she lands a bubble and a Q.

The nearest champion I can think of in terms of being a pain in the arse to play against in lane is a good Yasuo that knows how to keep their Q primed and knows how to use minion waves to maximize their mobility. You spend so much time trying to dodge things that doing anything else is a secondary concern.