Season 14 AP Zeri Guide - How To Play AP Zeri

[@joey-desu]

Man i used to love my ap zeri but i feel like most changes she got kept making it worse and worse. There is nothing more satisfying than oneshotting the enemy carry with ult + aa.

[@joshay333]

I agree with you 100%, AP Zeri has only gotten worse and worse with time and unfortunately Riot probably won't ever make changes to alleviate those issues because they don't recognize the playstyle. When her old W max build was strong they nerfed it since they decided it wasn't conducive to how she should be played and basically cemented the idea that AP Zeri won't get attention. The best hope is for other changes to come around that help her out, like Stattik Shiv's revival. Even after it had most of it's AP scalings gutted it still let her push early which let her accelerate into AP items quicker and be more mobile around the map. Now that it's dead for her AP Zeri feels pretty lackluster but not dead. Since League is constantly changing chances are something new will come around that helps her a lot so we'll see. The only other way Riot would ever give AP Zeri buffs is if the playstyle builds up a large enough playrate to get noticed.

[@joey-desu]

@@joshay333 the last patch that kinda ruined ap zeri for me was when they removed the ap ratio from statiks and changed sheen to no longer work on her q. The sheen thingie was obv directed to "tank" zeri with trinity, but i felt like lich bane was actually really good before that since it would allow you to still deal some decent dps outside of burst scenarios. Im not sure if riot would ever buff ap zeri, even if it gets played a lot. The old ap zeri wit her w, was played quite a bit and instead of trying to balance it they just straight up "removed" it from her. Riot loves to push certain champs in certain directions and if the community plays them in a different way they will nerf it, there were already a bunch of champs that got played differently just for riot to remove that playstyle, and personally speaking riot has nerferd/removed a lot of playstyles/mechanics that i found very fun so im not really expecting much from them anymore haha.

[@ObitoHaxel]

@@joshay333

[@sugar3452]

Statikk shiv and Lich Bane are good ngl

[@joshay333]

Lich Bane is okay even without proccing on her Q but it's not good enough to replace the items you need. Shadowflame, Deathcap, Voidstaff/Cryptobloom are mandatory in any AP build. Once you get 2-3 damage items and you can start to look at Lich Bane it's hard to get your Lich Bane procs off because you have such a small margin of error (basically if you don't oneshot with auto, r, w, q you GET oneshot). And Lich Bane rush just doesn't feel as good because you're putting off Deathcap and Shadowflame. If they increased her uncharged passives base damage I think Lich Bane could end up being a better item on her since you wouldn't need so much ap. I like Lich Bane so I hope some changes happen for it to become more viable. Stattik is just not at all useful on her anymore though. Even after all it's nerfs old Stattik still had it's energized proc that scaled with AP so you could advance your game state with it while still bursting people but new Stattik's damage only procs on kill and it has no scalings whatsoever. It's still her main item for AD builds but it has no synergy anymore with AP. The waveclear doesn't even matter that much anymore because it's on kill rather than on energized stack.

[@abzt8369]

i always built lich bane bc i loved the burst, but imma try sacrifice it and see how better it is. also how do you feel about lethality zeri. Hitting the crit W is always so satisfying for me.

[@joshay333]

I only tried the lethality build once and didn't do too great with it. To be honest I doubt I can play Zeri without attack speed anyway lmao, I swear without 1+ attack speed all my mechanics go out the window. And yeah Lich Bane just feels meh without her Q proccing it. Shadowflame's crit feels so good now.

[@hummun-e5y]

Hey! I’ve been playing AP Zeri for years now, and I’ve settled on something like your hybrid build. I have found that the early game is just too weak if you don’t start with some AD/AS items (the build was most strong with the old AP scaling shiv :[ ), so Rageblade > Nashors is the only start that feels good for AP. The rune setup is extremely important, BY FAR the best keystone is phase rush. You want to E in, then drop all your burst, and use phase rush to kite to safety to chase people down. I’ve tried dark harvest but it’s borderline unplayable without the movement speed. Fleet footwork is fine, but you don’t get much value from the precision tree when playing AP. With gathering storm and absolute focus you get so much more value. Red tree for secondary as you have it. Played it mostly jungle btw :]

[@joshay333]

Playstyle changes significantly if you aren't playing mid, especially if you're jungling. There's no other option for runes other than fleet IMO for lanes, the value you get from Absorb Life + Fleet in lane lets you exist against higher range threats and having the AS from alacrity is so crucial to being able to play the game. Phase Rush sounds fun but I think the big issue with it is just settling into the curve of the game. AP Zeri can do good damage but only if you're setting the pace of the game/ahead of the curve. A 2-3 item AP Zeri is going to be far less useful than a 2-3 item Tristana or Hwei so you can't just sit back and farm fest against them, you gotta be able to move around the map a lot more. That's why I think the changes to Stattik really hurt her laning, you could run First Strike and Stattik and always have prio in your lane but without it the normal AP burst build feels a bit too coinflippy.

[@hummun-e5y]

@@joshay333 Yeah power curve is a big reason for going Rageblade > Nashors. If you build full burst, then your oneshot power doesn't come online until lv11 + two items, if you're ahead. If you're on curve youi just don't have the oneshot potential. Rageblade > Nahsors is a surprisingly decent core for DPS, and gives you a lot more play if you aren't snowballing super hard. Hitting Deathcap on your 3rd item gives you enough burst to start oneshotting - so you delay your oneshot spike by 1 item, but it makes the early game so much more playable. You can even rush double Recurve Bow, which combined with Pickaxe is some stroing early game DPS if you need it for the matchup. You just dont get any value from AP scaling until later in the game, it's a wasted stat pre 6 and barely useful pre 11. Rune choice makes sense when you put it like that [: You don't care about the sustain in Jungle so you can afford to be greedy and go for damange/ mobilty runes. I found she works best playing heavily into bot, her best trait is her nasty gank angles and her strong potential for double kills with her AoE - definitely her best path to a snowball.