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Zeri Build Guide by IKeepItTaco

ADC [14.4] IKeepItTaco's GrandMaster Zeri guide [Crit]

ADC [14.4] IKeepItTaco's GrandMaster Zeri guide [Crit]

Updated on February 29, 2024
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League of Legends Build Guide Author IKeepItTaco Build Guide By IKeepItTaco 1273 91 2,507,662 Views 31 Comments
1273 91 2,507,662 Views 31 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author IKeepItTaco Zeri Build Guide By IKeepItTaco Updated on February 29, 2024
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Runes: Lethal Tempo (Main)

Precision
Lethal Tempo
Triumph
Legend: Alacrity
Last Stand

Resolve
Conditioning
Overgrowth
Bonus:

+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health

Spells:

1 2 3 4
KITING EXTRAORDINAIRE
LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

LoL Summoner Spell: Ghost

Ghost

Champion Build Guide

[14.4] IKeepItTaco's GrandMaster Zeri guide [Crit]

By IKeepItTaco


I'm I Keep It Taco, a Grand Master ADC player
(peaked 450 LP) and streamer.
I'm also known as Jordanian Sniper, Jhindiana Jones, Jingle Bells, and other accounts. I dislike traditional auto-attack only carries and enjoy playing champions that mix auto-attacks with spell combos like Jhin, Aphelios, Senna, Ezreal, Samira, Akshan, and now Zeri!

Zeri is designed by the creator of Jinx and Jhin!! She's meant to be a fast electrifying high-mobility crazy-kiting burst piercing ADC for the botlane! She's yet another non-traditional adc as her kit revolves around keeping your tempo with your ultimate Lightning Crash in teamfights and shredding or bursting people down while skating around or grinding on the terrain with your hoverboard. I've been playing a lot of her and having fun so I'll be adding her up there with Jhin & Jinx! Hopefully I'm able to provide you with a lot to learn from this guide!

Disclaimer: Zeri is a new champion and all my experience comes from PBE. I'm giving what I think fits him best and as the meta develops I will re-visit this guide and update it with any new builds and changes I see!
OP.GGs:
I found 3 rune keystones that work really well on Zeri and have loads of potential. It's hard to say which rune page will be the “main” rune keystone to take for most Zeri builds, but once she's released into the LIVE servers and we get massive data for the one with the best damage output globally we'll know the meta. But, for now I'll explain and tell you the top 3 rune keystones and you can decide which one you want to use or prefer!
Lethal Tempo
This rune gives you attack speed per stack to a maximum of 10 stacks and at full stacks you gain 75 bonus attack range! Since this section comes before abilities you may or may not know how her auto attacking and Q Burst Fire works, but the Lethal Tempo interaction with your Q Burst Fire which is your “auto attack” will increase its total range from 825 to 900 which is a nice bump to range and since your attack speed is capped to a max of 1.5 this rune helps you max out your attack speed stats earlier into the game without having to spend gold on attack speed which lets you buy more AD focused items and builds! Overall, it feels the most solid for Bruiser + ADC Zeri atm.
Fleet Footwork
Fleet Footwork helps give you sustain and mobility in lane. Zeri's biggest weaknesses are how squishy she is and how weak she is in the laning phase. Fleet Footwork helps you stay healthy in terms of health with the healing it gives you on proc when you use it on minions or champions as well as giving you movement speed to avoid skillshots, run away, kite better, get close and trade with your Q Burst Fire passive right click, etc...
Presence of Mind
Zeri like most ADCs doesn't have the most spammable mana pool in lane so taking the rune will help keep your mana high and allow you to use your abilities more often to your advantage in lane!
Legend: Bloodline
This rune gives you a total of 9% lifesteal at max stacks which you slowly stack up overtime by killing minions, monsters, and champions! You won't be building a lifesteal item for the most part until way way later in the build if you end up needing it or wanting it. So, having lifesteal from runes is essential to keep yourself healthy throughout the game and incase you ever get poked by absolutely anything!
Coup De Grace
This rune gives you 8% increased damage to champions below 40% maximum health. This rune is important to take for Bruiser Zeri as she builds so much HP that she can't benefit much from taking Cut Down. However, if you decide to play Crit Zeri then you MUST take Cut Down because the damage increase from it is insane.
Taste Of Blood
Right now Zeri's problem is being able to stay alive, healthy, and safe while she scales so Taste of Blood keeps her healthy in lane to give her that soft cushion and it gives a tad big of extra healing in skirmishes/teamfights as well!
Ingenious Hunter
Ingenious Hunter reduces the cooldown of items such as Trinity Force for Bruiser Zero as well as Essence Reaver for Crit Zeri and Lich Bane for AP Zeri. It reduces their cooldown by giving your 20 item haste then +6 per Bounty Hunter (per unique champion killed) stack up to 50 at 5 stacks. This makes it so you can get a proc every other Q Burst Fire instead of every 2 Q's Burst Fire. So, it'd look something like this. Proc - No Proc - Proc - No Proc. While without this rune it would look like this: Proc - No Proc - No Proc - Proc - No Proc - No Proc - Proc. etc and over-time that diffeence between how often you can proc any of these items will stack up a lot of damage!
Shield Bash
This is experimental cause I haven't bumped into enough shield champs on PBE, but it looks promising if you play against a shield lane + comp since you'll be able to use this permanently and it will deal quite a bit of damage depending on how much you steal with your passive!
Bone Plating
This is an easy secondary rune to take because it'll help block some damage in lane or some burst later. I don't know how good Bone Plating is because I haven't tested out Overgrowth or Revitalize yet, but those two are good alternatives if Bone Plating isn't your thing!
Dark Harvest
Since she's extremely bursty with the AP build and tends to get really nice executes off people who are low I figured Dark Harvest might be the best AP keystone for her AP item build so that's why
Taste of Blood
This will give you a little bit of sustain in lane since the other runes in this row aren't as useful to Zeri!
Eyeball Collection
This will give you more AP the more kills you get up to a total of 10 stacks capping at 30 AP. Basically nice damage stats.
Ingenious Hunter
Since Lich Bane is going to be a big damage factor because of how it synergies with your Q Burst Fire and playstyle how Ingenious works is that it will reduce the cooldown of Lich Bane and allow you to proc it way more often. So, for example, without Ingenious Hunter you will use 1 auto with Lich Bane e then shoot 2 autos without Lich Bane then the next auto will have Lich Bane. However with Ingenious Hunter it will be 1 auto with Lich Bane then the next auto without it then the next auto will have Lich Bane ready. So, you can see there's a HUGE difference in how often you can spam Lich Bane with Q Burst Fire spam in fights or all-ins, etc.. Very important rune to use!
Gathering Storm
Scaling AP stat rune so you can do more damage mid-late game. ...................... ........ .............................. ............
Absolute Focus
early-mid game AP stat rune to give you some extra omph and it pairs rly well with Gathering storm into the late game to give you high one-shot AP numbers.
Alternative Secondary for Lich Bane CDR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cosmic Insight
This rune gives you +10 Item Haste that will stack with Ingenius Hunter and when you get into the game and get full stacks on Ingenius hunter you'll notice Lich Bane will always be ready before your next Q Burst Fire is ready UNTIL you get super high attack speed later in the game in which it'll only proc every other auto instead of every auto!
Magical Footwear
Having more mobility is always nice because Zeri's kit and item builds amplify whatever movement speed you already have so I figured Magical Footwear is right up her alley!
Biscuit Delivery
Having more mobility is always nice because Zeri's kit and item builds amplify whatever movement speed you already have so I figured Magical Footwear is right up her alley!
FLASH
It will be mandatory. It is valuable as a tool to make plays, chase down, kite away, escape, ruin a gank, etc....
HEAL
You'll be taking heal most of the time as it'll be great for 2v2s, movement speed for clutch plays or escaping, as well as being able to save allies..
EXHAUST
This will reduce the target's damage dealt by 40% and movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds. If you're playing against a team full of assassins then this is a great summoner spell to take and use to save yourself when the laning phase is over which is when assassins become more of a problem when the map starts to open up!
CLEANSE
This is a valuable tool under the right circumstances. It removes all disables except Suppression or Knockups. It also gives you 65% tenacity for the next 3 seconds. Cleanse is a hard counter for champions like Leona, Cassiopeia, Veigar, etc. People are playing Mages more often in the botlane. Once their CC is removed from the equation then you can proceed to kill them. Only take this if the enemy botlaner's combo relies too much on CC. It can also be used to counter the enemy botlane if you think they're going to take Exhaust + Ignite and skip their heal since Cleanse removes Exhaust + Ignite if it is applied onto you since they count as “debuffs”.
Living Battery
Zeri Passive Ability
Burst Fire
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Q
Ultrashock Laser
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
W
Spark Surge
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
E
Lightning Crash
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
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13
14
15
16
17
18
R
Attack Range: 500
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Zeri generates 1 charge for every 40 units she travels by any means and 10 charge every time she casts Burst Fire, up to a maximum of 100 charge. Her basic attacks consume charge to deal modified damage.
Zeri gains maximum charge when the game starts and upon respawning.

BASIC ATTACK: Zeri zaps her target, becoming non-projectile and applying spell effects as spell damage. Zeri's basic attacks cannot critically strike nor trigger on-hit and on-attack effects.

While not at full charge, Zeri's attacks consume 10 charge to deal 15 − 40 (based on level) (+ 4% AP) magic damage. Against enemies below 35% health, this is increased「 by 300%. 」She may still use an uncharged attack even while below 10 charge.

At full charge, Zeri's next attack will consume all charge to deal 90 − 200 (based on level) (+ 80% AP) (+ 3% − 20% (based on level) of target's maximum health) magic damage and slow the target by 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% (based on Burst Fire's rank) for 1.5 seconds. The damage based on the target's health ratio is capped at 300 against monsters.

Charged attacks only deal the base damage to structures.
Spell shield will only block a fully charged attack. Uncharged attacks are not blocked.
The attack's range is not increased from attack range increases (Rapid Firecannon, Lethal Tempo). Instead, Burst Fire's reach is.
Living Battery
INNATE: Zeri absorbs the energy of shields she damages, shielding herself equal to 60% of the post-mitigation damage dealt to the shield. Each instance of shield gained by Living Battery lasts for 3 seconds.

INNATE: Whenever Zeri receives a shield, she gains 10% bonus movement speed for 3 seconds.
Range: 825 | Slow: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%
Total Physical Damage: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 (+ 110% AD)
Burst Fire
PASSIVE: Zeri's slow application from a charged basic attack has its strength increased.

ACTIVE: Zeri fires a burst of 7 rounds in the target direction that each deal physical damage to the first enemy hit.

Burst Fire's effects are treated as a basic attack; it can hit any enemy unit a typical basic attack can, deals basic damage, can critically strike for (82.5% + 38.5%) AD bonus damage and apply on-hit and on-attack effects at 100% effectiveness once on each target struck. Burst Fire's cooldown and cast time scale down with attack speed, with the maximum of 1.5 attacks per second. 50% of attack speed in excess of the cap is converted into bonus attack damage.
MY NOTES: There's 2 important parts that come with your Q Burst Fire and it's the reason why it is auto-leveled for you starting at level 1. The first part is the passive of it which becomes your right click which is a lightning zap and it gets charged up by auto-attacking and/or moving around. If you right click before full charge it'll do small damage so you only use the small charges if you're last hitting or trying to weave in an auto in a trade. This right click is also counted as an “ability” while your Q Burst Fire ability is counted as your “right click” which is like a combination of Jinx's Pow-Pow, the Minigun autos and Ezreal Q Mystic Shot. It can be blocked by minions, champions, monsters, etc… So it's very important to keep that in mind when you're trying to kill or trade with people, it is extremely easy to block and that's why the 825 range it has is fair. The best ways to deal with minion blockage is try to move around the sides to use Q Burst Fire to have a better chance of hitting enemies or if you absolutely cannot help the minions blocking you then you can use your right click to try to trade or apply piercing stacks with E for your Q Burst Fire.
Range: 1200 / 1500 | Cost: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 Mana
Cooldown: 10
Ultrashock Laser
ACTIVE: Zeri fires an electric pulse in the target direction that deals magic damage to the first enemy hit and slows them for a duration. If the pulse collides with terrain, it transforms into a laser in a line from the point of impact that grants sight of the area for 1.75 seconds and fires after 0.75 seconds, applying the same effects to all enemies caught within.
MY NOTES: This ability is pretty simple actually it's a Jinx W Zap!, but when you is it on terrain it turns into a mini lux ultimate Final Spark. It's a pretty straightforward ability so my only tip would be get creative with the angles and the corners you can proc the extension from because you can get some pretty nice poke with it when they least expect it!
Range: 300 | Cost: 80 Mana
Cooldown: 23 / 21.5 / 20 / 18.5 / 17
Spark Surge
ACTIVE: Zeri dashes in the target direction. Afterwards, she energizes her next 3 casts of Burst Fire within 6 seconds, causing them to pierce through enemies, though dealing reduced damage after the first and not applying attack effects to secondary targets. This damage is affected by critical strike modifiers.


Zeri will dash farther across terrain if Spark Surge was cast within 50 units of any, gaining unobstructed vision of the surrounding 800 units and revealing herself while there are enemy champions within 800 units of her.

Spark Surge's cooldown is reduced by 1.5 seconds for every champion Zeri hits with charged basic attacks or abilities.

Spark Surge resets Zeri's basic attack timer and Burst Fire's cooldown. Zeri can cast Ultrashock Laser and Lightning Crash while dashing.
MY NOTES: There's a few things to keep in mind with this dash. There's 2 types of dashes and it will always give you 3 piercing auto attack stacks so think of it as a mini twitch R for your Q Burst Fire. If you don't use it on terrain then it will be a short ranged dash on the ground with 300 range, but an important detail to know is that if you're 50 range or less distance between you and the terrain dash will gain an extra 50 range just so you can 100% connect to the terrain. This is the only time it will give you an extra 50 range so make sure if you plan on doing a small dash and you don't want to jump on terrain keep that in mind because I accidentally jumped on the terrain because I wasn't aware. As for using your piercing auto attacks you should try to use it to get nice trades when the enemy is positioning behind minions or if you're trying to all-in and the minion wave is blocking your Q Burst Fire auto attacks then make sure to E so you won't have to worry about that!
Cost: 100 Mana | Cooldown: 100 / 90 / 80
Lightning Crash
ACTIVE: Zeri discharges a nova of electricity around her, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies.

If Lightning Crash hits at least one enemy champion, Zeri becomes Overcharged for 6 seconds, and gains 3 stacks of Overcharge per champion hit. Each stack grants her 2% bonus movement speed. She gains a stack of Overcharge each time she hits an enemy champion with a charged basic attack or ability, refreshing the duration of Overcharge by 2 seconds in the process.

While Overcharged, Zeri gains bonus attack speed and deals bonus magic damage on-hit, and empowers Burst Fire to instead fire 3 rounds over a 20% shorter cast time that are electrified and traveling with increased speed. These rounds deal the bonus magic damage to the target struck and the closest visible enemy, chaining up to 4 subsequent targets. Secondary targets are dealt 25% AD physical damage, which can critically strike for (43.75% + 18.375%) AD physical damage.
MY NOTES: Zeri's ultimate Lightning Crash gives overcharge stacks and empowers your Q Burst Fire, 2% bonus movement speed per stack, 30% attack speed, bonus magic damage on-hit, as well as chaining magic attacks. The more you attack champions with abilities and auto attacks the more stacks you can keep up and as long as you're in combat you can keep gaining stacks and keep your ultimate Lightning Crash buff until the fight is over or you die. It is extremely important that you use this ability early in the fight and try to hit as many champions as possible because the value out of this ultimate Lightning Crash comes from getting as many stacks as possible to buff yourself and mowing everyone down!
For itemization you have three types of builds you can go on Zeri and I'll be providing the best build that I tried for each type to get you started and I'll update them once the meta finds the best build. You can go Bruiser, Crit, or AP. They have different levels of damage with Bruiser being more consistent overall and Crit focuses on high late game DPS with AP being an alternative option if you want to play Zeri, but your entire team is AD. AP Zeri is the weakest at the momen All of Zeri's abilities have AP ratios except for her Q Burst Fire which is solely AD and generally speaking so if you go full AD you'll still be doing plenty of magic damage which makes it harder to build against AD Zeri. However, if you go AP Zeri you'll almost only do magic damage entirely and it's very easy to buy MR to counter it so this is just something to keep in mind if you think the enemy is more Armor or MR focused!
BRUISER BUILD
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I'll be honest out of all the builds I've seen over the past few days I did not expect a bruiser build to become the most reliable and best performing build on Zeri at the moment. How the build works is that it gives you amazing surviability in the early-mid game, multiple sources of extra mobility, and very good early damage which is usually her weak point. With the Crit builds her DPS is pretty low until she reaches the mid game and onwards while the Bruiser build focuses more on getting fed early-mid game and using those leads you accelerate yourself and become a monster late game too. All your power is in being able to stay alive and keep your ultimate Lightning Crash going on forever so keep that in mind as to how you should use this build.

The goal of this build is to be a sustained DPS fighter that's extremely fast and hard to catch. You will use your ultimate Lightning Crash to start stacking up your Overcharge stacks and by staying alive & being incredibly hard to catch you just keep slowly chopping off the enemies HP until they're all dead. Now I'll be explain the purpose of each of the core items and why they're important.

The first item in the build will be Trinity Force. It gives you a nice little bit of everything that is useful to Zeri. It gives you +35 AD, +20 Ability haste, +30% Attack speed, and +200 Health. The AD helps you with auto damage, ability haste lets you use your E and R more often, the attack speed reduces the cooldown on your Q Burst Fire, and the health will make you less squishy. It has a few passives. The first one is Threefold Strike which gives you 20 bonus movement speed for 3 seconds each time you auto and it grants you 1 stack that increases your base attack damage by 6% for 3 seconds up to 5 stacks total for a 30% increase. The total base damage increase can range anywhere between 17-28 extra AD at full stacks depending on your level! The next passive is pretty big for you which is Spellblade which works very well with your Q Burst Fire and it will apply a 200% base AD bonus physical damage on-hit and it has a 1.5 second cooldown on top of your regular auto-attack. Your Q Burst Fire procs on-hit to 100% efficiency so it works very well. The last passive is the mythic where it gives you 3 AD, 3 Ability haste, and 3 bonus movement speed per legendary item. So all-in-all this item gives you very good early damage and has alot movement speed to provide you with where when stacked with the rest of the items + combined with your kit, you'll be going so fast and be extremely hard to catch!

The second item in this build is Runaan's Hurricane and it gives you +45% Attack speed, +20% Critical Strike Chance, and +7% movement speed. The attack speed is great to further reduce the cooldown of your Q Burst Fire and while the critical strike chance won't do a lot on its own you get +7% movement speed to benefit with the other movement speed sources and the passive is the most important reason behind this item. This might get removed in the future, but Runaan's Hurricane fires additional bolts at up to 2 enemies around your original target and deals 40% AD physical damage and applies on-hit effects at 100% effectiveness and currently your ultimate Lightning Crash applies ligtening with attacks and it counts as an on-hit so it becomes incredibly powerful with Runaan's Hurricane. It will also help in stacking your Trinity Force passives as well as Black Cleaver passives even FASTER while applying Titanic Hydra's Cleave non-stop.

The Third in this build is Titanic Hydra. We used to build Ravenous Hydra, but the reason why Ravenous Hydra isn't the go-to anymore is because of the fact it has a 10 second cooldown while Titanic Hydra does not. This key detail from Ravenous Hydra "Can only hit each target once per attack or ability, and may only trigger once every 10 seconds from the same cast" means it isn't good as we thought it was and now people, including me, have been experimenting with Titanic Hydra because it also has a cleave, but no cooldown! It gives you + 30 AD and +500 health in stats. The AD it gives you is a lot less than Ravenous Hydra in terms of stats, but it has a unique passive called Colossus which gives you bonus AD equal to 2% of bonus health which is where the gap in AD closes. Total AD will be 45 AD when you complet Titanic Hydra then when you complete Black Cleaver it will go up to 53 AD with Ravenous Hydra being at 65 AD so the gap in AD closes overtime which is nice. The Cleave from Titanic Hydra has no cooldown unlike Ravenous Hydra so you can apply it non-stop on enemies with your ultimate Lightning Crash and Runaan's Hurricane combo. The cleave also deals more damage based on the extra HP you get which is great considering you're getting a lot of HP from Trinity Force and Black Cleaver!

The Fourth and Final build is Black Cleaver. It gives you +40 AD, +25 Ability haste, +450 Health. It's essentially a big HP damage with nice damage stats onto it in the form of the 40 AD and the passive which is Carve and when you hit a champion it applies a stack of Carve for 6 seconds up to 6 stacks total. Each stack reduces their total armor by 5% up to a total of 30% at 6 stacks! This Armor Pen will increase your damage and the physical damage of your teammates! The most important part of this item is actually Rage where if you attack an enemy champion you'll get a stack of Carve which gives you 3 bonus movement speed for 2 seconds up to a total of 18 stacks which totals at 54 bonus movement speed which as I mentioned earlier is huge when combined with all the other movement speed amplifies in the build + kit!






OVERALL SUMMARY: you're going to have a lot of early-mid game damage compared to the Crit builds, you'll have a lot of movement speed coming from your first 3 items and when combined with your ultimate Lightning Crash overcharge stacks you're going to be zooming around kiting like crazy applying damage left and right, and the final part is that you're going to be really tanky for an ADC so it's going to be way harder to actually kill/burst you down and this allows you to play aggressively with your ultimate Lightning Crash to snag some nice kills.


CRIT BUILD
Despite Zeri's Q Burst Fire being the only source of physical damage it is so good on its own and compared with other parts of her kit which makes AD Zeri work very well. Quick note: Zeri has no base AD damage other than her Q Burst Fire so Lethality is not an option at all and is extremely bad atm. I will explain a bit on the Q Burst Fire interaction first before explaining the items! It has 10/15/20/25/30 base damage and +110% AD scaling. Your Q Burst Fire shoots 7 bullets to the target and deals damage to the first enemy hit so for example if you're killing a minion and it dies after 4 bullets then the 3 bullets will stay in the air and hit anything else behind it. It can apply on-hit and on-attack effects at 100% effectiveness, but only on the first target hit so it will not repeat if there are still bullets around. The cooldown is reduced and cast time scales down with attack speed to a maximum of 1.5 attack per second. If you end up getting more attack speed over the cap then 50% of the extra attack speed will be converted into extra AD. You can also critically strike with this ability and it benefits from Infinity Edge! And now onto explaining the build!

The two important core items you will be building on Zeri will be Kraken Slayer or Immortal Shieldbow. Kraken Slayer is the highest DPS build for ADC Zeri, but Immortal Shieldbow is important if you need to stay alive and the enemy has a lot of people that can jump and kill you or a lot of poke that will keep your HP low often enough. Kraken Slayer is great because on top of it's high amount of AD and true damage passive it will give you nice attack speed from the stats and the passive that applies an extra 10% attack speed per legendary item which is great to help with your Q Burst Fire getting lower cooldown via attack speed since you won't be building any till later! Immortal Shieldbow is also an extremely good item on Zeri because it helps keep you alive through the laning phase with an early Vampiric Scepter as well as once you complete the item and starting using your R Lightning Crash to go crazy in teamfights the amount of healing you do with Immortal Shieldbow is very nice and it has allowed me to turn fights plenty of times by staying alive and repeatedly dealing damage which allows me to keep my ult up until the fight is over in which case I won.

Essence Reaver is really important to Zeri because of how in sync and easy it is to proc from far range (825 range and 900 range with Lethal Tempo) onto your enemies. Remember Zeri's Q Burst Fire is not too far off from Ezreal Q Mystic Shot in terms of how it functions and Ezreal loves Essence Reaver or Sunderer. You'll want to choose between Kraken Slayer or Immortal Shieldbow depending on the situation and/or preference!

The third item in the Crit build for Kraken Slayer & Immortal Shieldbow will be Infinity Edge because you're sitting at 40% Crit Chance and when you complete this it'll go to 60% and allow you to use the passive that increases your critical strike damage by 35%! This is just a huge stat stick of AD & damage which is nice.

Your next item after this will be situational! It could be anything you feel you need like Bloodthirster, Guardian Angel, Navori Quickblade, Mortal Reminder, Scimitar, Stormrazor, etc!
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SITUATIONAL ITEMS
Bloodthirster
Towards the mid-late game the amount of fighting power you get from having the 20% lifesteal alongside the 55 AD 20% Crit Chance is crazy because of the amount of damage you'll be dishing out, how fast you'll be dishing it out, and how hard it is to actually catch you. This means if you take any type of damage you will heal it almost instantly and whenever you're close to dying you just run away and distance yourself with 600 movement speed, heal up fast on an isolated enemy, then quickly go back to what you were targeting in the full teamfight where you're more likely to start taking damage again. In & Out.
Mercurial Scimitar
This item's strong points is the 30 MR it provides as well as the active that allows you to remove all CC and grants 50% bonus total movement speed for 1 second. This is extremely important to buy against champions that have CC abilities that are very difficult or impossible to avoid. Good examples are Twisted Fate, Lissandra, Malzahar, Leona, Anivia, etc…
Guardian Angel
This item is great as a final item to your build because despite Zeri being long range and hyper mobile she is still extremely squishy so if the enemy decides to flash onto you or finds a way to flank you then you'll get one-shot so Guardian Angel is a very nice way to have a backup if anything goes south!
Mortal Reminder
As mentioned earlier you generally want to avoid building attack speed items because you benefit way more from AD, but if no one on your team is buying anti-heal then Mortal Reminder is a necessity if you want to stand a chance against an enemy team with tons of healing in their team! It'll reduce healing by 60% max and it's easy to apply it non-stop to multiple targets!
Stormrazor
This item is built too often on ADCs these days but the reason why it's so good on Zeri is because of her insane mobility which allows her to not only recharge her passive fast but allow her to recharge any energized items which is exactly what Stormrazor is. At full energy it does 120 bonus magic damage on-hit and slows the enemy by 75% for .5 seconds. This is great for perma kiting people and catching people before they run away. The amount of times you get to recharge it and use it is ridiculously high compared to any other champions in the game which allows Zeri to get a lot of value out of this item that most champions wouldn't be able to get!
Navori Quickblades
This item won't reduce your Q Burst Fire and it doesn't really matter that it reduces your W Ultrashock Laser since you wouldn't spam it even if you could, but the reason why it's a viable option is because it will greatly reduce your E Spark Surge and allow you to use your E Spark Surge more often to play aggressive, escape more often, live more dangerously, etc… Because your E Spark Surge naturally gets reduced cooldown if you hit an enemy champion with auto attacks or abilities but when theres no champions nearby having Navori to let you crit anything at anytime and almost instantly refresh the cooldown of your E Spark Surge is very nice. Also, in teamfights if you hit a champion your E Spark Surge will get reduced from its own passive and Navori Quickblades so they have good synergy with each other! However, since this item only benefits your E Spark Surge I haven't found out exactly how useful it is compared to the other options, it's fun if you like to E Spark Surge around the map alot that's for sure.
Wit's End
Usually Maw is the go-to choice for ADC needing a good MR item but for an ADC like Zeri that can use on-hit items because of the way her Q Burst Fire works this means you can opt in for a Wit's End when you feel you need the extra MR and would like to have a lot of nice damage as well as the passive which gives you on-hit magic damage 15-80 (based on level) as well as 20 bonus movement speed for 2 seconds!

BOOTS
Berserker's Greaves
These boots give you 35% attack speed which in the AD build will allow you to reach your max attack speed faster and not need to buy attack speed items, like zeal items! This should be used for the AD Zeri build!
AP Zeri - Important Alternative to learn
Learning how to play and build AP Zeri will be extremely important because it is intended by the Designer of Zeri, August, to have her be able to use both types of builds extremely well, but it will depend on the situation of the game. So, if you have a full AD team for example then you will need to properly build and play AP Zeri so you can dish out loads of damage and be able to win the game!

We'll start off with the 2 best potential Mythics to go on AP Zeri. There's Luden's Tempest which gives a lot of damage and great mobility so it has amazing synergy with your kit so this will be the damage Mythic if that's what you want. One really cool thing about Luden's Tempest is that the cooldown can be reduced by dealing ability damage to champions and the Ingenious Hunter rune applies to it as well so Zeri's kit will be able to proc Luden's Tempest more often in fights than some other AP champions! The next option will be Crown of the Shattered Queen which is an AP item with nice defensive stats especially the passive Safeguard which will reduce incoming champion damage by 75% for a total of 1.5 seconds and once that's done it will take 40 seconds to recharge the shield! You would want to go for Crown of the Shattered Queen if you're playing against assassin or feel you can easily die against the enemy team comp and want safety!

For your second and third item I've been trying to figure out in which order you want to build them but it's hard to compare them both in PBE since the games aren't the best to get meaningful data so you can choose whichever sounds better to you for 2nd and 3rd order. Lich Bane with the runes Item Haste runes I mentioned earlier will actually sync up perfect with your Q Burst Fire for all of the early and mid game until you start to get rly fast attack speed later into the game in which the Lich Bane cooldown won't be able to keep up with your Qs Burst Fire. So, for example. In the early/mid game if I auto with a Q then Lich Bane will proc and by the time I'm ready to auto again with Q Burst Fire Lich Bane is ready again! But, later in the game Lich Bane will proc every 2nd auto attack instead of every single auto attack because you'll be getting faster attack speed late game! Nashor's Tooth on the other hand gives you 100 AP and 50% attack speed as well as 15 magic damage on-hit with (20% AP) ratio. It doesn't out damage Lich Bane when you're focusing people down in a 1v1, short trades, or all-ins, BUT I believe the massive boost in attack speed combined with your ultimate Lightning Crash will allow you to get stacks much faster and because of this you'll be able to do more damage overall in a teamfight. So, if you want better 1v1 and trades then go Lich Bane 2nd and if you want to make your ult fighting and teamfighting stronger then go Nashor's Tooth! After her initial release I'll update which order is best because after she is released on LIVE because in PBE testing changing the order didn't really matter.

The last two items you'll be wanting to build are usually going to be in this order unless the enemy builds ALOT of MR very early into the game! I end off the AP build with Rabadon's Deathcap because at this point you'll have a lot of AP and you want to increase it all by Rabadon's Deathcap 's passive which increases all of it by 35% which will increase the damage of Lich Bane, Nashor's Tooth, and Luden's Tempest as they all have AP ratios! Void Staff will be the last item because at this point people usually have a lot of MR that you'll want to be shredding and it gives a big 45% magic penetration alongside the 65 ability power, but like I said if the enemy buys ALOT of MR earlier in the game then you can buy this before buying Rabadon's Deathcap! And that's all for the item build!
#1
#2
SITUATIONAL ITEMS
This section will be updated once we're a few weeks into the LIVE server because I need to figure out which items are worth replacing some of the others because the build right now has a little bit of everything Zeri could possibly want! If I had to choose I'd say removing Rabadon's Deathcap for a Zhonya's to stay alive is a good example of a situational item. Horizon Focus also looks like it has potential since it increases damage past 700 range and Zeri's Q Burst Fire is 825 max range. These are the only 2 situational items you'd want to check up on. Will update this section soon post-release!
BOOTS
Sorcerer's Shoes
These boots give you a good 18 flat magic penetration which is huge in the early-mid game and it's really the only boot that makes sense to buy for AP Zeri since you'll be playing more around your burst than using CDR for example Ionian boots which some AP champs love, but not Zeri!
Laning Phase
Zeri's laning phase is pretty straight forward. You're not a lane bully like Draven, Lucian, Caitlyn, Jhin, etc… So, you'll have to be respectful of your enemies until you get level 6 or you get them really low to the point where you can just kill them very easily. Things to keep in mind during the laning phase is that your Q Burst Fire is blocked by minions so the enemy will try to use minions to block it at all times whether it's to avoid being poked by you or if you're fighting them then they just hug the wave to block it. You want to look for angles away from the minion wave by walking up to the sides of the waves and using the long range Q Burst Fire with its 825 range to try to slowly poke them.

Other things to keep in mind is to try to use your right click charge attack when it's full rather than when it's uncharged. If you use it before it's charged it'll still use small amounts of energy so it should only be used like that if the enemy is rly low that you dont need the full charge or you're trying to last hit a minion where you can't use Q Burst Fire to reach it! Zeri W Ultrashock Laser can be used in the open to slow them and follow up with a fully charged right click auto then follow it up with some Q's Burst Fire. You can also use Zeri W Ultrashock Laser for poke by using it on terrain in the right corners to it can hit them in lane!

The win condition of Zeri is to play for level 6 and scale well into the mid to late game! You don't have to force aggression, however, Zeri is a champion that's able to get things done before level 6 and mid to late game you just have to be patient and slowly trade till they're in kill range. If you're against lane bully ADcs like Draven, Caitlyn, Lucian, Jhin, etc…
This clip shows you the sort of corners and angles you'll want to keep an eye out for!
This clip should help you understand how you want to be using your Q Burst Fire to kite very well alongside your fully charged right click! (funny enough the right click was bugged so while I did use it at the right times when kiting, it never applied the slow or do the full damage it was supposed to do! LOL)
This clip should help open your eyes to see what kind of aggressive diving opportunities you can create with your E + R combo!
Just another clip to give you more visualization on how you should be kiting/skirmishing with Zeri!
Mid Game + Teamfighting
When the mid game arrives you'll want to rotate from botlane to mid lane so you can farm it safely since if you try to farm the sidelines you'll be out dueled or picked off extremely easily since at the end of the day you're still a squishy ADC. From mid lane you can get farm safety, you can rotate if you see a fight happening on the top or bottom side of the map, and you can make your own plays if there are people trying to contest you in the midlane! As well as being able to rotate to either objectives very easily. So many good reasons for you to be laning mid as an ADC post-laning phase.

AS for teamfighting you want to approach teamfights keeping a few things in mind. You need to keep your distance from any potential threats on the enemy team and this means you need to use your Q Burst Fire at max range when you're fighting, be aware of all the different escape routes you have with your E incase anything sudden happens, and if the teamfight is starting soon keep an eye on where's the best spot and timing for you to use your ultimate Lightning Crash so you can become overcharged and start kiting and shredding everyone apart! Lastly, use your E Spark Surge to peel yourself and don't forget you can use your W Ultrashock Laser while you're mid dashing on the walls which allows you to slow enemies that you're approaching or running away from and it makes kiting them even easier!
After I slow Volibear with E Spark Surge I get closer to Volibear and Zac then ult so I can get 6 overcharge stacks and begin getting more stacks through combat. It is very important to be aware that you want to use your ultimate Lightning Crash as soon as possible as Zeri, but also get enough starting stacks with it! After that I just start kiting and skating around then win the teamfight ending up with 24 stacks!
This clip is a perfect example where even if you're super behind if you can use your kit properly and find good positioning you can still deal a TON of damage. How this fight starts is that I use Zeri E Spark Surge to grind the wall and get into a perfect spot to press R and hit 3 enemy champions which gives me a total of 9 overcharge stacks which gives me a lot of combat bonuses and from there I keep getting my stacks and kiting until I almost ace them all! Remember your R Lightning Crash is stronger the more champions that get hit with it because you start off with a lot more overcharge stacks! I ended this teamfight with 44 stacks.
I'm super ahead in this clip, but as long as you're even with the AP build these are usually the type of plays and burst combos you can do to *most* squishy champions in the game. So play around the fog of war! It's like a sneaky lux waiting for someone to get close so she can full combo them!
If you made it this far congrats! I hope this guide was able to help you out! Zeri will most likely be one of my favorite all-time ADCs because Jhin is my #1 while Jinx is my #2 and they're both made by my very good friend and favorite champion designer Riot August! So, with Zeri being another ADC of his there's no doubt about it that I'll love spamming her. I'll update this guide more post-release with extra clips, item adjustments, and match-ups in the future! This guide is just to be aimed to give people a nice head start on release day because I imagine the runes and item builds I choose will not be what becomes meta. Hope you all enjoy Zeri and thanks for reading!

Special thanks to Hopper for banners and coding as always!
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