[Patch 12.16]

This is a sad day for Zeri mains.
Her Q AD ratio cut down 5% from all ranks and W AD ratio from 130% down to only 100%. Damage build would be significantly weaker as this has been relying on the sheer AD ratio of her W. Bruiser build will also get significantly weaker as you would just lack damage in overall.

Her W AP ratio goes down from 60% to 40%. Zeri as a blue number Talon is no more. In return, Rito gives her Q a 60% AP ratio. They're trying to make Zeri viable by building Nashor's Tooth on her. Thing is, I highly doubt it would be any good since she relies so much in Attack Speed to do well, Everything. I have never seen ranged champs build Nashor's Tooth and Berserker Greaves because as you could imagine it would be very suck. Also, despite building AP, your Q is still dealing... physical damage. What.

Edit: There is no AP scaling on her Q. Rito lied in the patch notes.

[Patch 12.17]

Zeri's win rate is now 42.1%.

[Patch 12.20]

Zeri's win rate is now 42.5%. No updates...

[Patch 12.23]

The promised Zeri mini rework has finally arrived and Riot... still doesn't really know how to fix her. Most of her kit remains the same and Riot being Riot, adding crit-related scaling and bonuses into her kit so people would be more willing to build crit on her BY DESIGN. Oh she gets more bonus damage based on her Crit Chance, she gets more Overcharged stacks if she crits. Thank you very much, I do not want crit in my life. I am suck at the game and I HATE being squishy.
Here are some notes of a few major changes and a very thorough analysis of them. I actually dropped League since Patch 12.20 so I might get a bit rusty on her. Also they added Spear of Shojin, which is interesting.

General stat buff
+5 base MS, +3 base AD, +4 base Armor, +30 base HP, +0.057 Attack Speed Ratio (wth is this stat for?), +6 HP growth. Good news for Trinity build, base AD is important for her as this will give Sheen procs a bit more oomph. The bonus HP now turns her into probably the tankiest AD by base stat and more HP growth means Titanic Hydra would do good as well.

Burst Fire
Range reduced from 825 to 750. As I expected, the nerf would be on her ******* Q range. You still can poke against other short ranged ADCs, just a bit less safe as your Q is now a tad bit shorter than before. This isn't too much of a problem in teamfights as you will eventually wiggle yourself through and hit whatever you want to hit anyway.

UltraSHOCC Laser

It deals Physical Damage now. A tad bit less effective in late game when everyone has at least 50% Physical Damage reduction thanks to Armor growth alone, it got back it's 130% AD scaling. Lethality Zeri is on the menu tonight, bring out the test chamber and you might want to witness how fun it would be.

I am NotAragami, a peaked Gold V player and currently hard stuck at Silver IV. I spent most of my time during Season 7 to Season 9, playing Top and Support. I returned to the game in July 2022 and looking at a completely different game. As much I hate following the traditions of left-clicking critical-hit ADCs and loves FPS shooters, Zeri fits the bill.

PROS:

• Zeri's kit allows for variations in build and playstyle

• You are a bit more harder to kill depends on build

• CDR helps with your E long cooldown and press more W

• Maintain the same agility compared to regular crit build

• Fast clearing minion waves and jungle after getting Tiamat

• Mainly for fun

• Well, you are 200 years

CONS:

• You aren't dealing as much single target DPS as a regular crit ADC

• Your early game is very, very ****, probably the weakest out of all ADCs right now

• Require a semi-carry in your team to compensate the lack of high DPS

• If you have someone to peel for you in teamfights, tank build is invalid

• The person writing this guide is a Silver hard stuck at Bronze

The item haste works on your Sheen items. With 5 stacks of IH, your Trinity CD goes down from 1.5s to 1.1s. Have a 1.5 Attack Speed Zeri, a Trinity and tap Qs, she will activate Trinity at a rate of 1 Trinity every 3 Qs. Ingenious Hunter brings that number down to 2 Qs. You can go even lower with Cosmic Insight which brings down to sub 1s but it mostly doesn't change much. It's really powerful on anyone that can abuse Trinity like Ezreal but seems like Rito sees that as balance. Oh well.

Remember you are still a regular ADC in early game, you have zero sustain in your kit. Just like any other ADCs, you want your items as fast as possible to do damage. Farm casually, occasionally poke people if you can and dump all your damage if your support lands their CC. Your Q now is a lot shorter and if you were a Zeri main before the 12.23, you will have a lot of trouble getting used to it.

Once you get your core item, some obnoxious people will ping your items and ask if you’re trolling. Do not retaliate, mute them if they’re getting on your nerves. Here’s some advice for you. Want to play League like a normal person? Mute all. I have been playing League muted since I returned, hiding all the summoner names even. It feels much better, and you don’t have to deal with average League players.

You are now in a better state, continue farming or murder people if your team has a strong start. If you're playing in SEA, people will always murder each other the moment they get one item. Zeri low base AD doesn't do well with Sheen items, that doesn't matter as much because Zeri can proc a lot of Sheens by simply spamming Qs. If you get Ingenious Hunter rune, your Sheen will go down from 1.5s to 1.1s at max stacks. In other words, you activate a Sheen every 2 Qs. Even better, you can combine this with Lethal Tempo to turn yourself into a mass killing machine and Trinity will compensate the fact you don’t have any defensive runes.



Tiamat coming up next. Don’t swap your wards yet. Now you can clear minions a lot faster than normal, do slow push. While waiting for the large wave to stack up, jump into enemy jungle and farm their jungle. Don’t touch your own jungle because your jungler will flame you. If you notice their supports are warding their own jungle, bring a Pink Ward to check if the camps are warded. If it’s warded, neutralize the ward and get the hell out. Place your stealth wards as you’re farming, prime spot is the bush near the buff camps. When you’re taking their buffs, pull the monster inside the bushes nearby and hopefully their jungler is too stupid to realize their buff are being stolen.



Always remember to press your W. It has a 130% AD ratio; it hurts a lot and in team fights people run around a lot and not all of them will be able to dodge your W. Utilize all that Ability Haste to the maximum. The moment the fights break out, drop your ult and rush down their backline. Your E is a great escape tool, presuming you don’t eat a hard CC and/or already wasted your E. Black Cleaver or BotRK by late game or you will suffer immensely from insufficient DPS, because by this time everyone already has a sheet ton of Health + Armor and/or Magic Resist. Not everyone can proc Black Cleaver as consistent as Zeri.

Bruiser Zeri. Exciting I know. First, check on your team. Does your team have a frontline? No? It’s your best bet to become a bruiser. Become the frontline. If your team already has someone to be on the frontline, you will get flamed for griefing the game. Always hit anyone that currently has a HP shield as this will help you survive for even longer. You aren't the best teamfight initiater as you have near zero crowd control, you must rely a lot on the element of surprise.



Your early game is relatively the same. If you pick Grasp, seek every poke window as you need a lot of Grasps procs to get tanky. After getting Titanic, you are now relatively tanky. In team fights, dump your Qs on the closest guy and save W to drop it on enemy ADC to slow them down. Since you have Titanic, the cone blast will eventually hit the other guy behind him. Don’t worry about hitting squishy targets as you don’t have enough damage to burst them down and you risk mispositioning and people will murder you.



Your team can fend on their own and you want to split push. Swap your Wards into Oracle. I hope you bring Demolish, all that bonus Health will turn you into a mini Yorick whenever you want to split push and your enemy will have to send people to deal with you. If you are a psychopath, drop a ward on your feet before you run away. Hide in a bush and wait until the guy that was sent down to fend you off eventually leaves. After that, return to shove that lane. Remember that destroying towers gives your entire team gold so your team can somehow turn the game.



Late game now. You likely have two Armor or MR items and likely some CDR. You are now tanky and very agile while dealing enough damage to be the main distraction of the enemy team. When a fight eventually breaks out, shoot the enemy backline. You might not be able to murder them in half a second but your damage is enough to make them run for their lives and break the formation. Your job is to divert people’s attention to you. Because you’re fast and tanky and can jump onto walls, nobody in the world will be able to catch up and murder you. Zeri turns into an annoying green Pikachu that dives in and out of combat, constantly threatening the enemy ADC. Even if you die, the enemy formation is now broken, you have successfully baited the enemy to press their ult or summs, your team has the advantage now and they likely already murdered the enemy frontline with minimal casualties.

Your support picks Lucian. Okay. Calm down, I know you are very pissed but hey, let's give him a try. Maybe he got autofilled support all day but he's good at ADC.



Swap your rune page into that and buy an Imperial Mandate. I know Rito nerfed the living hell out of Zeri's AP scaling because they have problem with a 47% win rate champion, the slow however, isn't touched at all.



Your job is very simple. Trade pattern? What is a trade pattern, walk up and slap a charged auto at their face. Your charged auto scales up with maximum HP and your enemy will scream in horror. If your enemy is dangerous, harass them with W and Q. I told you to grab Waterwalking and Relentless Hunter. You have the option to roam around and gank whichever lane you want to gank. Your E is stupidly strong for ganking purposes and once you're sliding toward the enemy, make sure you hit your W. A bonus in support Zeri is you can build whatever the hell you want. The world is your oyster, build AD, build tank, whatever your team needs to compensate.



The best thing about this build is if your team loses, you can flame the living **** out of the guy who stole your role until he decides to uninstall League. Or mute all. I know being toxic is bad but, people sometimes just too stupid to understand common English. And he steals your role.

This strat is only viable to bruiser or AD Zeri.

You are 0/6, falling way too behind and you have zero damage to fight other people. Make sure you get your Trinity, a Tiamat and then Hullbreaker. This combo gives you a massive spike in wave clearing and splitpushing power that now you now can casually walk toward enemy towers and start blasting. You will eat towers so fast that you can rival Yorick while having one of the best escape ability. Best thing is, you are farming minions.

Normally when you are feeding, it takes one kill to reset your gold kill reward. One kill is 300 gold, maybe 450 if they have bounties here and there. But thing is, you only get 300 gold. While killing minions, you have to kill at least 1000 gold worth of minions to increase your kill reward tier by 1, not even a reset. Farming minions worth more than any killings in League and people mainly kill for the thrill of it. The result is sometimes the enemy doesn't even care about you because they look at your KDA and goes "oh I guess this guy doesn't worth much" while he already yeeted 4 of your side towers on all his own.

Bonus points if you bring along a Farsight Alteration. I bet your support doesn't ward so you can just ward for yourself. When you know where people are on the minimap, splitpushing becomes a cat and mouse game. Cats away from lane, push. Cats missing or near lane, hide and/or recall.

If you have more time, this video is a great guide on how to splitpush. Play Video

I wonder if this guide is any help. Hope for the best.