I sk this uestion genuinely
Because there are 3 optiosn right now
Either Zagara is an F tier hero worse then the Vikings and Tassadar
Everyone who plays her are potato’s
Or I’m doing something wrong when dealing with her, seriously it has to be one of the three because my winrate wit this hero on my team is zero.
False, but she is considered “low” tier in the meta, but the meta only really matters in HIGH masters like sometimes only in like the top 25 Grandmasters, so in like QM or unranked you shouldn’t worry about how good she is, because she isn’t underpowered right now.
False only me
Proabably this one, the issue with Zagara is she has the most early game lane pressure, and you need to draft an early game counter for her, some include Chen, Yrel, Nova, Ragnaros, Arthas (For Creep Clear alone) Falstad, Dehaka, Zeratul, Samuro, Valeera, Butcher, Illidin, Genji just to name a few.
Her weakness is ganks and people who can “hold” back her push, she is a hard early game pusher and falls off late game, which means contentious ganks will keep her from pushing hard.
The problem with the gank strategy is that if this is QM people wont lane and you will be forced to lane which means ganker her will be impossible since you are the one laning, but that’s not your fault now is it? Zagara will seem broken if your teammates just let her do whatever.
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So the trick is I have to babysit her while she AFK lanes? got it.
You misunderstand me (no idea how I called HER F tier in the post)
I’m saying she sucks when on my team when I have her with me the winrate is ZERO ))
There’s 3 ways Zag generally contributes: contesting objectives, taking objectives, or ignoring objectives. How Zag plays needs the right talents and some cooperation from her teammates.
Functionally, a lot of players don’t really consider what their talents would do, communicate with their team what they want to do, or vary their play to suit the map or enemy team as zag can have a very hard time if enemies put in the effort. Similarly, if an ally team make enough space, zag can almost seem unstoppable, so the span between the two (worthless to zomgbbqOP) depends on how well people are paying attention.
Vision is the lifeblood of zagara: she needs to set creep to keep vision, and since she doesn’t have a lot of defensive options, she has to be pro-active, not reactive, and anticipate needing to escape before she’s caught – ie, she needs to see threats so she has the space to take action.
Bad players don’t set enough creep or watch their mini map, they just stay in the lane phase all game and essentially hope people ignore them. Good zags keep creep vision up to suit how they’re going to play – they’ll either line a lane to control that space, the areas between a lane to support their team, or set-up around an objective to stall it out.
The biggest issues with zag is that all her outstanding qualities are better done by other heroes in a specific way – junkrat beats her on explosions, ming beats on her wombo spam, raynor beats her on aa, and bruisers are safter in the solo lane, esp if they also have a global.
So to zag well, stuff can’t just mindlessly be spammed, it needs a bit more aim. Hitting several targets with banelings is a big deal than just hitting a wall (cuz her bombs don’t bounce and don’t reload to full to be spammed) setting summons at the right spot helps them agro on, and stay on, enemies heroes instead of running off to lane, and so on.
If a zag isn’t committed to their focus/build, then they’re just going to seem like a worse version of another hero. Similarly, if an allied team doesn’t draw enough attention, then the afk zagara’s will get picked off and ganked because they aren’t paying attention.
Otherwise, when a zag is watching and paying attention and knows what they’re doing, it feels like they’re super trolling the enemy team and forced into a condemned if you do, condemned if you don’t type scenario.
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her team fight abilities has been buffed so she can actually be part of the 4 man. She usually ends up with highest dmg in the team but dont except her to do any burst dmg. its slow and descreet. I recommend a team that wants and can do long sustain fights. Maybe 2 Heavy tanks. Just to make sure the fight lasts a long time.
There might be a risk that some people havent caught up with the recent zagara Changes and expects her to only be good at the solo lane. The draft might not be quite optimal for zagara solo lane strategy but yet people might try to force it. If people only knew how good she is now at 4 man, Zagara might end up with having slightly higher winrate stats. Plus the creep that gives vision is actually even stronger attribute in 4 man.
I think she has potential but might cause confusion in games where people dont keep track of the meta strategies.
You need to play around her.
I mean the other 4 players have to make the opponent busy while Zagara is doing her thing somewhere: pushing, camping and avoid teamfight.
Unfortunately, I dont see many players in QM understand how to do that
Playing Zagara also requires great map understanding and placing vision wards in key places with tumors. Constantly. Making camp invades, ganks etc. impossible for the opposing team for 20-30 minutes.
If you get a potato who just places them a few steps in front of her all game you are nearly playing 4v5. She is one of the few heroes in the game who have a large amount of their power tied to a trait (which itself doesn’t even deal any damage).
Because of that she is almost always a liability unless played by at least plat+.
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Vikings and tassadar are S tier heroes, but they’re very hard to play. I’d say zagara is also among some of the best, but she’s a lot easier to play.
Well maybe you don’t understand how she works and/or what she can do.
Zagara is a menace in TF’s, even without maw (nydus gives massive cooldown reduction). She’s a sustain dps, with little burst (if no maw).
2 things for her teammates to keep in mind:
- Make sure you don’t push the fight away from her creep - she needs to stand on it.
- She needs to be auto-attacking a lot (significant chunk of her dps + that’s the way how her cooldown reduction works), so make sure you provide her enough space and healing to do that.
It’s not uncommon for zagara to have top hero damage, siege damage and xp soak in the game. Although a more common sight would be excessive siege and xp soak numbers and moderate hero damage numbers (but usually still high teamfight damage numbers, which you can’t see on the table ofc).
You should also keep track of where Zagara has nydus’es and not fight if she has no way to join you.
And you don’t need to “babysit” zagara. She’s very hard to gank if she has strategically placed vision - she’s fine on her own when she’s pushing/depushing a lane.
As for maw zagara - try to follow up on it; it’s the only thing that matters when you have a combo-maker like that. If maw hits 3 ppl and no damage comes on top of it - the team is to blame, not zagara (unless she was alone there).
Maw can also be used to isolate unwanted targets (either by eating them or blocking them with the massive wall it generates) - you need to understand when that happens and kill the other targets instead of waiting for maw to end and throwing damage there.
P.S. Maw works on ustoppable (one of the very few skills that does).
What counters zagara? In tf: pretty much anything that works vs valla will work vs zagara. Outside of tf: anything that can find and eliminate her nyduses easily (2 minute cooldown on those things) (so vision+high mobility+ability to kill them under forts (e.g., falstad)). Maw: typical anti-combo stuff. Heroes that have easy way of clearing creep are generally much better than those that don’t (e.g., long cooldowns or high mana cost). If zagara puts creep over half the map - she’s most likely going to win that game (vision = information = power).
Creep is your friend. It make you faster, it gives you vision it can empower zagara based on talents. place creep near walls and over lap so its harder to clear. make sure you have a creep path to safety.
If your D key has a count of 3 YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. walking between lanes, press d. walking up a lane press d. taking a camp press d, Place creep to help your teammates put creep early in ganking paths. As you move down the lanes take some time to put creep along ganking paths so you can see people coming to get you
second don’t spam QWE buttons just because they are up. Have a purpose for every button press send roaches to absorb tower shots or harass a hero coming after you. save your hydralisk for when a hero in lane with you. send banelings out 1 at a time don’t just fire a barrage
LOOK AT THE MINI MAP MORE FREQUENTLY WHEN YOU ARE MORE THAN 1/2 way across the lane. If you are playing a split push hero YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHERE THE ENEMY IS. If you don’t see 5 heads on the minimap then start heading back to safety because they are coming for you. If they have just killed some of your teammates they are coming for you. Learn to push without showing on the map (kill walls and dont walk right up to minions to kill them)
If you are playing a split push hero its better to cut back early than to stay too late.
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The main problem is that most Zagaras want to just afk in lane and push push without doing stuff that actually helps winning the game, like joining the team for teamfights and objectives.
Afk pushing only really works in one situation: when you communicate with your whole team so they don’t commit to anything and just let the enemy have everything while you push.
You probably never had good Zags on your team tbh. She is actually great in teamfights giving vision on flanks, good poke, good damage and if you took maw, good setup.
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Basically what MrFizz, Shape and other said above.
You are almost never going to get a good useful Zagara, so it’s understandable if the team isn’t too welcoming of that pick.
You will practically always get a mindless afk pusher who has no map awareness or strategic creep placement (worst case, they don’t even use trait).
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Zagara I think requires a lot of… map awareness. (I’m level 60 Zagara). You have to be quick and spam your creep. If you’re holding 2 stacks or 3 stacks of creep, you’re playing her wrong (And I see people doing it allll the time).
Creep is her success, you can get armor, attack range, movement speed, map awareness! I would say I pick Nydus 99% of my games, because your basic attacks while on creep then reduce your cooldowns (Which increase more abilities, and CREEP spamming).
Part of her success why I say map awareness is so important for her, it’s her ability to travel the map quick to do camps, lanes, and join team fights. That’s why Creep is so important for her, because she can do her job as a hero faster. With her changes for Roaches to do percent damage as well now, she’s strong all around.
In short, you just have to be moving a lot as Zagara to get the uses out of her. Push lanes, take camps, and clear up the fog of war map with creep
Lvl 65 Zag here. She’s one of my favorites. She does a truckload of damage if you know how to layer it in. As others have said, it’s damage over time, so you have to think about living long enough to do it. One of the biggest mistakes I see is that Zag players think they can split push all game. That’ll get you an L fast because she’s easy as hell to gank. Soak opportunistically. You can do it fast. Even double soaking lanes is easy with her creep on smaller maps.
And most importantly, be there at team fights. Get your hydra and drop pod roaches on the one hero they need to be standing there (their healer) and punish him for it. If they’re tank heavy, get the %damage talent for them. Most won’t react until they’re already down to 1/2 health and realize they’re overcommitted. Don’t be afraid to pick Maw. If you’ve got CC or AoE that can follow that up, it can be a game changer.
She can definitely be countered and there’s plenty of the usual cast of annoying/cancer that can make her life unpleasant, but played properly, she can give as good as she gets.
Do many people don’t know that Creep gives Zagara increased attack range
It does that without talents.
People also don’t seem to know that auto attacking anything while on Creep when you picked Nydus reduces all non-heroic cooldowns, even Tumors.
She can deal some damage.
People say her big weakness is relying on summons, but I’m usually more worried about mana.
Even her early game solo lane bullying is weak to that, it’s what I count on when laning against her, you can’t let her have regen globes.
Kiruki swears on the Zagara pick. That’s his main and he’s GM on EU. You can catch his VODs on twitch.
Zag is the cheesiest sleeper OP hero you can play against, gosh I hate her so much sometimes especially those who suicide and get away with forts.