When I first picked Zen, I felt like I could get gold damage or gold healing if I played well enough and what playstyle I prefered. Winning duels wasn’t the most impossible task and overall, he was the perfect dps / healer hybrid for me.
I feel like modern zen is just discord, you want to get as much value off of discord as possible since its a free 25% damage boost that has 0 cooldown and doesn’t need aim.
your only other ability is healing orb which is one of the worst healing abilities in the game.
Examples of trans counterplay that became more common as the game evolved
Kill zen first
Nano blade can slash + dash and kill 200hp targets quicker than trans can heal
if grav’d, you can use torbs lava and primary fire to outdamage the trans heals
ANA
Just dealing more than 300 dps which isn’t impossible with things like storm arrows, echo’s beam, Bastion, Window, ETC.
Here’s the biggest reason why I don’t like playing zen anymore.
The duels you would win against soldier (dude got laser precision and a 6 second rocket cooldown) or Reaper (dude got lifesteal on top of a wraith that he can cancel whenever) or Torb (back in the day are just not going to happen with the overall powercreep to the damage role
And because of damage powercreep, duels have gotten so one sided that people used to call tracer vs zen a skill based matchup, now it’s just called a free trip to spawn.
Not to mention Sombra and Doom, two new dps can force him to swap with how easy he is to kill.
The only reason that Zen is in the slightest bit viable is because the supports they’ve added are LEAGES better at keeping him alive
Brig has heals even better than mercy + stun + knockback
Bap regen burst + easy pocket heals + immo
Moira pee + pee ball
This hero felt like one I would be robbing my team of better heals but my defensive ult and power could win us the game if I did everything right.
Now it feels like I’m playing bastion in the support category with how much teamwork I need which is usually out of my control.
Bruh I was straight FARMING on zen Today lol, your aim has to be crisp tho, but if you can capitalize on your own discord targets it’s gg for the other team lol
Yeah if you look at Top 500, almost everybody hard mains Zen as a support. That being said, I do see where you’re coming from with some of your points. He can feel weak on a bad team comp or just a team with bad communication. Positioning has to be FLAWLESS or you’ll just be a walking respawn timer.
The new kick keeps flankers/divers from being able to just run up and dump a clip into his head.
Also tracer’s one buff to guns range has been reverted quite a while a go. while her ult maintained it’s damage nerf.
So dueling her now wouldn’t be any different then dueling her then, out side the fact that tracers are a lot more skilled then they were at launch.
OW2 is nerfing her damage. So the match up is being pushed into zen’s favor.
dive tanks can’t dive OW2 zen because of the kick.
If a reaper is getting close to you that is an positioning issue on your end, I would hang out closer to your team. As if he burns wraith to dodge your charge shot, he would be easily exploitable by your team.
Shoot the ana, force her to nade/fall back well behind her team so it’s a harder shot. Tell team they need to block nade/pressure ana while ulting.
If she does nade your ult, tell team ana has no sustain.
Yeah I know he’s still viable especially in higher ranks, I just think it’s solely because of the new support heroes that were added that can turn his glass cannon status into just cannon.
I just think it’s very dissapointing that he’s become this in my mostly solo que experience.
For the OW2 stuff, yeah that does help a bit, I havent played much of ow2 in a long time so idk how much it will help but it does fix most of what im complaining about. but this is specifically about OW1
I’m not saying I should beat reaper or that I keep dying to reaper, just that he was much easier to deal with back in the day.
As for Ana, we both know that shooting her as zen is much easier said than done since you and her should be as far away from eachother as possible, the hints “tell team to block nade” and “tell team ana has no nade” is pretty redundant and proves my point as the main focus is that I think Zen has evolved to the point where the answer in how to get the most value from him comes from others instead of yourself.
The people who call Zen/Tracer a skill based match up are the Tracer’s throwing games and blaming their teammates for every loss. Zen only wins that if he is substantially better than the Tracer.
Yeah the Zen/Tracer skill matchup quote came from a KarQ video from 2017 lol
even amazing support players had the early perception that Zen v Tracer was even, but as the game evolved, it’s as free as you have said it is, which is why I made this post.
