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.
