For newly released or reworked champions in League of Legends, the win rate is often quite low (below 45%) as players have not yet fully understood the playstyle of that character. Therefore, when a new or reworked champion appears with a win rate above 48%, Riot Games considers that character to be extremely strong. Perhaps for this reason, they once referred to Dr. Mundo’s rework as an “OP” character in their video.
However, the win rate of the reworked Dr. Mundo is nothing compared to Zeri, who currently boasts a 52.07% win rate just days after her debut. Her high mobility and continuous movement make it incredibly difficult for opponents to chase her, which is one of Zeri’s greatest strengths. Additionally, with her unusual item build focusing on Blade of the Ruined King, Black Cleaver, and Runaan’s Hurricane, Zeri can deal significant damage while being hard to take down.
Clearly, having a new champion like Zeri with a 52.07% win rate is extremely unreasonable. This indicates that she possesses excessive power, and Riot needs to act quickly to adjust her. Just a few hours ago, Zeri’s creator – Riot August announced on his personal Twitter that he would be removing the interaction between Zeri’s ultimate and Runaan’s Hurricane. The head of champion design for League of Legends has also mentioned that this interaction is very unbalanced.
If you are not aware, after using her ultimate, Zeri gains the ability to deal multi-target lightning strikes with each of her attacks. In simple terms, this lightning strike ability is calculated like normal attack effects. Therefore, when Zeri has Runaan’s Hurricane, the lightning damage from her ultimate will triple per attack because it activates three times, creating an incredibly devastating damage output.
As a result, Zeri doesn’t need to build any critical strike items or enhance any other attack effects to deal a tremendous amount of burst damage in fights. Perhaps it is this overpowering interaction that has led to Zeri’s staggering win rate just days after her release. Hopefully, with this adjustment, Zeri can return to a balanced state with a reasonable win rate rather than the excessively high rate she has now.