Zen is currently the weakest support with this nerf due to his limited utility, reliant on a 7-second lockout activated with a 1.5-second LOS check. He lacks mobility, a ‘get out of jail free’ card, and his ultimate ability is overshadowed by lifeweavers. Additionally, his damage output is so minimal that he can’t even perform two-tap eliminations when his discord utility is inactive. In contrast, other supports like Kirko and Illari maintain their ability to perform two-tap eliminations independently of their utility. Moreover, Zen has the weakest healing in the game, with only 30 HPS on a single target, essentially functioning as an Illari turret. So what exactly is the reason to pick zen over ANY other support?
69 Likes
Glad I’m not a Zen main
17 Likes
I do agree that illari has pretty much overshadowed and replaced zen. But did you miss the part where he got 25 more health again? I feel it may have been easy to miss in the notes.
6 Likes
The health boost won’t help him much. Zen was already bad going in to season 7 and now he’s even worse.
The change to discord gives him effective uptime of 0% on discord. Players with decent positioning already work corners to duck out of sight when taking fire. You can knock out discord for 7s by LoSing it for 1.5s. Guess how much actual discord uptime there will be on anyone who is not a complete potato? None!
If you’re playing Zen, the only way you can track when you can replace discord is to roll your cross hair over your target. If you keep swapping discord out of necessity, are you telling me you will be able to mentally track the last 2-3 targets that LoSed your discord and exactly how long it’ll be before you can replace discord on each target? No!
The whole purpose of discord was to plant it on whoever was most out of position so your team could punish them harder. Now enemy dps and supports can just LoS it once to gain effective immunity since the odds of you being able to replace it in a meaningful timeframe are very low. Either you’ll lose track mentally, die from being in the sightline of too many enemies for too long (5.5s or longer), or win/lose the team fight.
If you play Zen in his traditional role as a rear support artillery piece, the only target that might stay in Los long enough for Discord to be effective is the enemy tank. And let’s be real, the main way to stymie Zenyatta has always been to just shoot his massive hitbox and kill him or force him into cover. Do that now and you just bought the tank a free 5.5s get out of discord card.
Zen discords the tank, gets bullied into retreating behind cover, discord drops. He switches it to dps or support, they LoS or bully Zen again, discord drops again and they’re immune. Wash rinse repeat.
They don’t even have to kill you, they can just take potshots and you’re screwed.
The only way to get any value out of discord is to play Flankyatta.
36 Likes
Highest burst damage support, and makes tanks squishy/forces them to back up and hide.
He isn’t great but is better than mercy by a long shot(good thing)
2 Likes
whats 25 hp if he cant do anything with it, i mean yes its GREAT to not have to die but if zen cant reliably contest a flanker with his aim and discord he will just delay his death, and even if he isn’t getting flanked his utility has such a high downtime as well as a weaker ult and pitiful healing he really isn’t worth picking for any reason anymore
8 Likes
Well, I think the health change is decent to deal with flankers, like fighting Sombra and Tracer. So, that should help him. You’re only really going to discord them once before they are forced to TP or recall away.
I think the other change is more beneficial for the tank. But it also means holding back on throwing out the discord on the tank, especially if they’re like a Zarya. So, that decision making might be rough. The cool down might be a little too much if they keep this idea but it seems the point of this patch overall is creating more time between abilities.
He was already a bottom-tier support pick, so why not nerf him some more?
LW also got multiple nerfs, but Ana, Kiriko and Mercy are effectively unchanged.
8 Likes
An extra 25 hp does not matter when zen has no self utility, EVERY other support has an ability to assist them when they are the target of a dive, zen does not and he ISNT supposed to have one because of the power of his discord, now that discord has lost its uptime it is considerably weaker and zen either needs compensation buffs or he needs to go back to his initial state of balance with discord being powerful but zen paying the price for it in no self utility and no escape cards
8 Likes
They shouldve keep that discord change applied to tanks, not to all of the heroes (dps support)
1 Like
Whether you’re correct or not remains to be seen. But even if you are correct, I’ll personally give, myself ample time to decide for myself how much I’d like to use one of my mains over other Support. Anything else feels like a dramatic knee jerk reaction for my taste. BTW I’m not at all excited about how this will affect my dueling potential.
That’s not a jab at the OP btw.
THISSSS if they just made it 7 second lock out on tanks it would be 100% understandable as playing shoot the tank simulator is beyond boring.
9 Likes
If theyre going to keep this change. At least lower the timer to like 3 or 5 seconds. 7 is honestly too long. Especially Zen using discord to survive by himself against flankers
16 Likes
i dont see the 7s lockout being a big deal unless your entire gameplan was legit just “discord the tank”. it still has zero cooldown. you can discord other players when it gets cleansed
Right now he is just a throw pick and with the new sombra she can delete you in 2 Second
6 Likes
Zen can no longer discord flankers if they break line of sight, WHICH most can due to there incredible mobility, and once they do zen is left weak and exposed with nothing to help him except landing 3 headshots which is INSANE that the DPS support needs 3 where as other supports need 2 NOT TO MENTION THE ONES THAT CAN 2 TAP HAVE SELF HEALING OR ESCAPE ABILITIES
13 Likes
They should’ve at least reverted his discord projectile speed nerf from a long time ago (for this patch). Once (don’t remember exactly when) they made it slower to apply, no need for that now…
Perhaps. I’m just thinking from a historical stand point that this isn’t the first time he’s had the 25 HP and back then he was fairly meta for a while (around the time they added the kick passive). So, he held his own to survive, at least in certain ranks.
But you’re right, he doesn’t have much utility and losing the discord spam will be harder for him. I think his strength is keeping that discord on the tank at all times. We also have new heroes, other dps balance adjustments since, so maybe he will struggle a lot this time around? I’m not so sure. I do think moving discords around will feel more clunky if we miss-target/click a lot.
Yeah, he was the high risk / reward healer in OW1. Now that every support can do about the same damage (except for LW), but also get mobility, self-healing and added utility tools, he doesn’t bring anything unique.
The payoff for picking fragile Zen just isn’t there.
9 Likes
How disabling a discorded pplayer for whole 5 seconds, forcing to hide and afk is a nerf, lol? I guess you are on the same page of stupidity with the devs. This change is basically a passive stun on 7s cooldown.