I don’t want to weigh in on which zag talent is best, but after reviewing them for the first time in awhile, man, they really suck compared to what they used to be. Zag’s talents = booooring.
I don’t have issues with the lvl 7 quest talent; if I’m taking it, then I take it with the %hp damage talent at 16; a 50% increase on her summons is pretty solid for building up lane momentum and for dealing damage in a team fight.
However, I think people are undercutting its power if they’re using Maw with roaches; the cdr from attacking with Nydus is the biggest boost to how many roaches zag can get out in a full E build, which then increases how much pressure she applies when she shows up for a fight between splitting off to lanes or taking camps.
If I’m going maw, then I’m taking Q talents instead – it has cd reduction away from Nydus, it deals splash damage (for a clustered maw) and it adds range to play it safe. Q’s damage is pretty much what her auto attacks do, so they’re only good if it’s burst firing all of them out as she can otherwise just attack for better single target value.
The q slow can seem ‘bad’ as a stand alone, but it’s the best compliment she gets on a hydralisk; she and her summons get a speed boost on creep, so the damage difference of that slow is much more noticeable for her than it would be other heroes; having that slow is a couple more hits from zag and a hydralisk.
Even if people want to claim that her 7 is a ‘bad’ tier, a lot of heroes either have 7 as a damage tier if their earlier tiers aren’t damage-based, or 7 is a utility tier. Zag get’s damage boosts earlier, but she also has utility as well. It’s not a bad deal imo, it just depends on what other talents players took, and if they play to actually make use of said picks.
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I should have said in higher ranks sorry. In bronze you can finish it in 1 min. In a game even with a stun they can easily move out. For instance we right now have games with the top players in the game no question with this quest not bing finished. So it’s not easy to do it vs people who are not wood tier.
Also aware of the level 16 talent 1.75% max hp damage for each summon. It’s the only reason I play her is that 1 talent.
I am higher ranks and I finished it. Without too much trouble.
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You come off as crazy. With corrosive saliva at 16 that roach quest is totally worth it. You can melt pretty much any hero with the roach drop and a hunter killer. You can argue that saliva at 16 doesn’t need an additional roach. As for the other level 7 talents? The additional baneling charges are underwhelming but the slow is absolutely a strong pick.
In higher ranks the Zagara presumably has the skill to hit slightly harder targets. Or to work with team cc to guarantee hits. It’s perfectly doable to complete the quest even in high ranks.
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I play zag by mostly avoiding teamfights. Like if i wanna teamfight why zag? If I want to wave clear and teamfight then play Jaina?
I personally have issues landing the 7 quest, so I generally avoid it. Doesn’t mean it’s always bad though. Lots of people love her with the percent damage build. I dont., And that’s ok. Good thing talents exist and you can do different builds.
I choose Zagara because she can do so many global worm networks, and that is what is fun for me when playing her. So my goal is to do as much damage to a structure in as little time as possible. Nydus + jagged barbs + Medusa Blades + fury of the storm = one shot minion waves. Then when I’m done, unload all my banelings (I like the extra charge for this reason) and then leave, to a different lane and do it again.
I still show up for teamfights, but those are not my main goal. I have a 60-70% winrate with her doing this, and am level 23 (iirc? I have a lot of heroes in the 19-25 range).
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Then why can’t pro do it? top GM vs other top GM? Do you have replays so I can see rank and see how people just sit still? Or maybe your full of it? I mean you say it’s easy and your high ranks lets see it? Considering you need a lot of CC or for your opponent not to move and almost all the skill of landing the shot is not on the zags side I want to see what’s going on?
Also why play zag? Nazes zombie wall is as hard to hit and it’s not a quest it’s practically a death sentence. That’s at lest 12 easy kills a game for you maybe more why waste your time with zag?
I honestly just don’t believe you finish it every game. And I think it because the skill of landing the skill shot is in the lack of skill of your opponent. Unless your vs DW then ya you finish it easy.
They could probably.
They don’t take it, because at that lvl you take minimum risks. Why pick a risky quest when you can pick instant value?
Butch has one of the highest wr at high ranks but pros don’t take him. Why?
Risk. At the top, you can’t gamble. Can’t wait.
Usually high draft teams are full of CC and Zag has Maw for guaranteed hits in her own kit.
A destroyable/knockbackable wall is not a death sentence.
Suit yourself.
It speaks for itself that you get overemotional just because not everyone faces your problems.
(I switched computer last season, played Zag before that. I lost all of my old replays. Didn’t play Zag since/yet.)
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Just lies not backed up I need to see numbers. I can tell you I never lose as X hero then bs all over the forum about it. It’s really easy to do. I can tell you how getting 300+ damage stacks on ZJ in a pease of cake. I can tell you pros don’t do it because they don’t pick x talent even though in the game they do. I can do all this it does not make it true.
It would be nice if we could see a players quest completion and pick rate, but we can’t (as far as I know? If we can let’s check this guy.) so we have this. A guy saying that it’s easy.
You having done it in a game does not make it easy I did not say can’t be done. I said it’s hard to reliability do. I also said the reward for such an unreliable quest is not that good. It’s so not good it should be given for the talent. I really don’t think it does much until you hit 16.
To me a quest on a skill made for PvE about hitting hero’s is bad and it does not work. Faster cast time would be more reasonable then the area of effect.
Go and watch some of Karabas Replays I don’t doubt he can finish this quest even in Master play.
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Exactly this.
Zag spews damage like very few others can but her innate lack of cc and being very squishy lead to her not being a very impressive hero overall.
Stat wise, Zag’s giant killer variant is one of the best in the game, not being able to proc it with her own attacks and being reliant on minions to deal the damage are a huge draw back though.
All of your minions have 1.00 attack speed. Assuming you single out an enemy hero and get all of your minions to attack them that’s 7% per second. She absolutely shreds frontline heavy comps and dirty Deathwing/Imperius abusers.
Not to mention the additional roachling brings their total damage up to an untalented Hydralisk, since each one of them does about a 1/3rd of that.
Lol what are people here saying a 25% aoe slow on a spammable ability is bad?
Although I still do like Massacre as it upgrades your burst.
Bile Drop is ok, but it suffers from what some of the old talents did.
You pretty much need Corpse Feeders to really make use of it.
I hate talent dependency like that.
Similarly I think Protective Coating and Jagged Barbs are kind of bad unless you go Nydus.
I’d like to see Tumors have a shorter cooldown and lower duration, because they really are her unique mechanic that make her stand out strongly. But they can only do that if you go Nydus, or if the enemy team has no good ways to clear them.
It’s decent but it’s not the reason you want to pick Zag over other damage dealers.
Q can take a while to connect if they’re not directly in your face and is easily sidestepped without a teammate’s cc.
A hero that has a heavy focus on spawning minions is usually going to be like that. You can either focus on the beefing minions or just getting general utility/damage in the mix.
I somewhat agree about tumors but a strict buff could result in early game disaster. Creep’s main issue is how hard it can be to apply it before a team fight. You could always get to objective early and start spreading it but now you’re doing that instead of split pushing/fighting with team.
She’s a very strong solo laner and the vision/movespeed/range provided by creep can make her very hard to catch despite the low health. Being able to spam creep early on can give her the ability to be incredibly aggressive while staying relatively safe.
I think her 20s are what need the most love.
Fury is an ability that has been wildly outclassed for a while now and was only ever a universal pick on TLV. Criting an enemy hero every 5 seconds is very unimpressive and she already has decent wave clear capability so chaining to minions is only helpful on heavy push maps like Tomb or Garden.
She should get a 20 that matches her identity. Like “Every 5 consecutive basic attacks against an enemy hero spawns a roachling targeting that hero, an additional 5 consecutive spawn a Hydralisk” or something.
And make Endless creep it’s own talent again, give it the added functionality of making your banelings much stronger against nonheroic targets.
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I don’t see how you come to that conclusion.
Look at Azmodan.
No matter what you take at 4 your options are still completely open at 13.
Even though Battleborn lets you use demons more, and Army of hell lets you use them less and doesn’t even affect Demon Lieutenants, either one can transition into Chain of Command because while the Battleborn path lets you reap the benefits of Chain of Command more often, it comes at increased risk. And Army of Hell can make the push at your current location stronger so your Lieutenants are more often uncontested, which lets you take more advantage out of Chain of Command anyway.
There’s costs and benefits so the choice is dependent on strategy.
No quest dependent on cooldowns and the benefits don’t stack multiplicatively.
Which is why that would all have to be taken into consideration.
Say Tumors had a shorter cooldown and shorter total life time.
That alone could make her spam too much creep and push hard early game.
So maybe Tumors stay visible for a bit longer before going stealthed.
Not only would that decrease the dependency on certain heroes with certain abilities countering her creep, but it’d also make it harder for her to abuse the cooldown reduction.
Say that was too much of a nerf and she can’t spread tumors now, so she can now launch the tumors and spawn them from 5 range instead of 2.5
Say there was a talent that made Infested Drop spawn dying creep in 2.5 radius when it landed and made Roachlings prioritize heroes hit by Infested Drop, on the same talent tier as one that made Banelings spawn dying creep in a 0.5 radius as they moved and increased Creep Movement speed bonus by 15% (including summons) for 1 second after casting Baneling.
Balance isn’t as easy as just moving things from one side of the scale to the other, and it doesn’t have to be as boring as that either.
I think you don’t know who Karabars is:
He is too humble to show off but I give you a little hint:
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And yet you’re not posting any yourself, just vague complaints that things are somehow ‘too hard’ without any actual evidence to support them.
Azmodan has plenty of talents that work well together for making more minions and increasing their damage and survivability. He just also has a lot of better options so it’s not as prominent.
I can guarantee you that if Demon Warriors had a ranged attack, possible movespeed on creep and a better giant killer talent at 16 you’d see a lot more people relying on that talent dependency.
Az can deal fat aoe burst damage from a safe distance and has the healthbar of a tank. Zag focuses more on single target damage and mobility but has decent though conditional aoe.
Focusing on minions for Az can be done but I’ve never seen someone do it without actively gimping themselves.
As it is now, Azmodan is a mage with summoning capability, Zagara is a summoner with strong basic attack damage. In terms of straight gameplay I’d say Zagara is more relatable with Valla than she is Azmodan.
Depending on how you look at it, all of her basic abilities revolve around creating units, although banelings can’t be interacted with like normal minions. This leads to most of her talents having something to do with improving either those minions or improving her main body.
Her kit isn’t very interactive and there isn’t many ways go about making her talent tree more flexible without changing her basic abilities. She runs around and attacks things while spawning minions. It’s not highly intuitive, so you can either land those drop pods or not.
Changing the way creep and ways to apply it would be interesting to see but potentially raise her difficulty and usefulness in a variety of scenarios. A shorter life timer on tumors isn’t something I’m opposed to as it encourages you to stay busy but given that they’re currently advertising her as a “Summoner that provides lots of vision of the battleground” by placing faux wards all around the place it might be against what they’re aiming for her.
A lot of our early inclusions in the game have been widely out shined lately and while Blizz has tried to rework them they still suffer a lot.
Zag has conditional mobility but no escape ability and no strong self healing, so as an assassin her ability in teamfights isn’t the best. However she’s supposed to rely on a massive powerspike at 16.
In terms of pure numbers the corpse feeder + bile drop + corrosive saliva is her best build, assuming the enemy team isn’t letting you freely get several hundred stacks on Serrated Spines. It’s also less reliant on needing creep to be present or banking all your damage on a Mutalisk instead of spreading it across 4 minions. It’s very easy to drop a pod near the tank and bug off while they struggle to deal with the roaches.
Like you said Protective Coating and Jagged Barbs aren’t amazing talents and even if you have access to creep all they’re attempting to do is make you into a psuedo-Valla. But with her hitbox size, no dodge ability and mobility reliant on creep it just doesn’t make the cut against more organized and well rounded teams. For the most part Jagged Barbs is fine and can be pretty mean with a stacked Serrated Spines, but her ability to stand in a team fight and fire off basic attacks uncontested is pretty weak. Removing Spell Shield at 13 and replacing it with a Burrow (Ice Block) could do her a lot of good, and changing Protective Coating to give her health regen or lifesteal on aa could do some work.
She has raw numbers in place of self healing and escape abilities but those numbers aren’t enough in most cases, and I think any straight buffs could possibly break her so they need to reorganize her talents.
i do think the required hits should be lower.
i play aram (exclusively) and even in that constant teamfight it can take a good while
to finish the quest, the sound and ground effect are just way too obvious,
people don’t stand still for long anyway,
but if they were standing still, they simply move when they see the drop coming.
if the drop was faster it wouldn’t be so bad,
if there was no ground visual warning beforehand it wouldn’t be so bad,
but currently its just slow, obvious and easy to avoid
The analysis going on in this thread is very insightful… Little too much epeen waving in some places, but otherwise it has given me some things to consider when playing zag myself.