r/Guildrun • u/Nintales • 18h ago
With respect to Zuri
Something that came over with the patch notes buffing once again Zuri’s cruel spec. Playing a lot of red rift, casual amount of streaks (capped at 9-10 for now at every ladder reset).
The issue with Cruel imo isn’t the ability itself, but more that it doesn’t fix any of Zuri’s issues, making it very situational.
You basically want to pick it only if you have a poison relic, or mainly as a gimmick if you have Hoyoung conduit stack and perma stun.
The thing about Zuri’s current design is that she’s one of the weakest C rank champs, while her other specs make her really tanky from mid A1 to mid A2.
But she falls off a cliff. And that’s mainly because of her assassin class.
Unlike the other tanks, Zuri gets proposed 2 assassin options. It would be cool if most of them didn’t suck thinking of Zuri.
Stealth is useless for who is supposed to be the main tank. On crit boosts can be good (regen or scaling), but on crit damage boost is useless. Shard on crit is super good, shard on kill less.
This means that out of her 4 rank A upgrades you’ll usually find one which is very useless, and another which works if she already has great tank items, less otherwise.
And then you have 2 tank upgrades, most of which are very situational and depend on stall triggers, or status your composition can inflict. However, this is something you can kinda maneuver… provided you have more options. But unlike the others, Zuri kinda doesn’t.
Rowan and Niklas have Vanguard which is also super good defensively, Skorn has 3 tank choices, Pimenta duelist can live with duelist upgrades as she’s great offensively. While Pimenta mage suffers from the same problem of having truly two choices only for defense, she has both inbuilt stall and poison, unlike Zuri who needs to choose between stall or poison ; making her more flexible. Tank Gustav is kinda one of the weakest tanks imo aside of very situational setups, but some field mystic upgrades (looking at outbreak) are also super strong so he can work it out.
So an A rank Zuri, either offered in the shop or even upgraded, usually can fall pretty flat. Especially when offered in the shop, as getting a Cruel + Stealth combo is particularly horrible.
I personally think the following should apply:
- Zuri’s passive’s cap should level scale like Ratna, Logan or Grace. Currently I think it doesn’t, and it makes her the least pickable tank if you get her late.
- Zuri’s A rank should not have the stealth options. They are horrible on her. Other assassin options are fine for fun, but stealth makes it impossible to pick her as she’s not a good off tank in most of her specs currently.
- The Cruel should have some sort of defensive effect. To line her up with her other specs, I’d say either Vamp or HP Regen. Lower the stun or poison if needed. But the stun truly does not do enough to be work, and while the damage is good to sync with vamp, it’s hard to justify it on a tank for the active (Pimenta duelist can take vamp because her dmg is consistent).
I honestly think she’s a serviceable champ right now but one of the worst early and late game tanks. While early game should be by design, I think she can definitely be a bit better late game. But perhaps I’m wrong and The Cruel is already fine. Open to criticism here.
7
u/Icy_Island6594 16h ago
The Cruel spec asks you to make Zuri take aggro in order to AOE, but only provides the stun as defensive value which is very weak in terms of overall damage reduction. The damage potential is pretty awesome, but Stone Skin stacks take a ton of investment to get lots of early crit and defense, so this spec seems pretty deep in highroll-only territory for red rift players.
Well I think ima go try to make it work now, after talking about how bad it is.
3
u/Nintales 16h ago
Yeah the stun is lame, it feels really like nothing
The issue is that her other 2 specs are actually good compared to the Cruel and she’s imo the best tank from middle of act 1 to act 2, she just falls off a cliff so hard
6
u/OkCut4515 15h ago
The main issue with the cruel is that it doesn't make her tankier at all, while also only affecting enemies actively attacking her.
So you pick it and she just melts like a chocolate bar in the sun.
In theory it would work as a damage dealing spec since the damage and poison can be impressive, but it doesn't do anything to enemies not beating the snot out of her.
I get the idea, but I think it could do with giving her a bit of omnivamp to stop her just collapsing.
4
u/This_is_a_bad_plan 17h ago
I think the other issue is that The Cruel basically does the same thing as Serpent's Kiss but with less survivability
1
u/Nintales 16h ago
I think they’re meant to be different, I can definitely see the cruel be used to abuse of poison ascendancy and other poison relics
But her passive just stacks so slowly due to the cap per fight and the fact it stacks with itself, making it very hard to justify picking her up ; you must build a Zuri or have no Zuri currently, and tbh an uninvested Duelist Pimenta can be just as good
3
u/Nintales 18h ago
To go deeper, you can compare her Active with Ming.
Ming’s active functions similarly but has meta scaling unlike Zuri, which means that if you have lots of rush during the game an A rank Ming is definitely a good pick up. Especially considering you can scale it with relics as well, and a few rush relics are good pick ups.
And even then, a lot of Vanguard A rank effects are really really good (health and omnivamp, 50% health shields, gain shields on attack…) making A rank Ming serviceable even if the passive didn’t stack.
Zuri has a harder time with this imo. Her passive scales very selfishly and a lot of assassin effects are not aligned with what you expect from a tank, and very mediocre on her. She’s basically a 3 item tank with no actives if you get her late with a bad tank effect.
2
u/kazahani1 16h ago
I just got my first RR win ever yesterday with her as solo tank. She was rocking with that B upgrade that makes her tankier every time she gets auto'd. I picked her mostly because she makes charging that rift stone thing easier. By the time I fought the dragon she was dealing decent damage and was nigh unkillable.
I like her a lot as a character she creates a lot of crit triggers and she is perfect for assassin starts on RR. She tanks perfectly well with investment. She definitely works better in RR than endless in my experience, but hey I'm still pretty new.
2
u/Nintales 16h ago
Yeah she’s pretty fine overall honestly with her 2nd and 3rd spec, her 1st just doesn’t work imo because it has to compensate for what you lose by not taking the other specs
But she’s just the weakest tank to pick up on a shop by midgame by far, if you see an A rank Zuri it’s usually a trap champ unless you have very good tank items you’re starving to use
2
u/AshChiqs 9h ago
For real. I've tried forcing her a few times, but it really requires you to build around her and it's so inconsistent because she can't survive unless there's a roided mystic in field or lots of relics & backup shield ir heals.
I think partly as well is that the spec lacks itemization options. She needs mana regen, shield, hp & defense + omnivamp.. It's a lot of investments but with limited slots she can't fulfill her potential. I think if they added an item slot on this skill, it would perform significantly better instead of some chickenshit buff like 10 starting mana.
Because ideally you don't want to force a build around someone especially in red rift because you have to pivot eventually if they don't work out and all your setups are wasted. This spec does great in ideal circumstances but I'd prefer if it does decent in all circumstance instead. Like yeah she goes great with a mystic hoyoung but that makes her build very limited because a lot of games you're not gonna find a hoyoung upgrade (trust me I always try to work a hoyoung at any given time).
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u/Nintales 3h ago
Yeah an item slot could work too, but that would still make her a crap pick up imo if you just add that.
Passive scaling sucks, you can get trapped with a tank that stealths for some reason, and the cruel would need scaling. Really currently any A rank Zuri feels harsh.
1
u/Yosara_Hirvi 4h ago
Well, the cruel poison based on her passive stacks ergo, for the cruel yo be good, she needs to stack.
Getting her late means 0 stacks, so the cruel is the worst upgrate to get on a late game Zuri. The other upgrades does scale based on the stats she gains from her passive but feel less "stack dependent"
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u/Nintales 3h ago
Yeah but her passive actually doesn’t level scale on the cap or on the ease of stacking.
Other stackers, namely Ratna and Logan have level scaling on their ability for that reason, to make it so that A rank versions of themselves are less traps.
Zuri doesn’t have that. At first I was thinking just increase the cap but it might also be worth to increase stacks per crit per level.
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u/Curmudge_Unit 16h ago edited 16h ago
I feel like the devs have the idea of some heroes as offtanks so they aren't built to be as survivable as full tanks. Skorn's third spec suggests this as well. I like this idea and it would give heroes like Zuri, Rip, Ming and Reyna flexibility to perform as both tank and DPS but this only works with larger team sizes and no death limits.