Time to Talk About Summoners

Right now Summoners in set two of Teamfight Tactics are woefully unbalanced. They are seemingly in every winning comp. While that is normally not a bad thing, as was seen with different metas in set one, the problem is that they are extremely oppressive, even the champions that aren’t as strong. There are videos and pictures of people with so many Zeds that the entire board is filled. Zyra plants litter the board. It is making the game hard to watch and in some regards not fun to play. The best part is that the game is still only on the PBE and Riot has a chance to balance everything out. Here are a few suggestions on how they could do so for each summoner.

Annie

Annie does not feel all that oppressive like so many of her counterparts. She does not do much damage herself (as most summoners don’t) and she is not able to summon Tibers all that quickly either. With the newest round of patches it feels as though she is in a pretty good place where she gets Tibers out and then likely dies. Riot should keep her as is.

Azir

Similar to Annie, Azir is actually feeling pretty good, if not under-powered. He does enough damage with his soldiers without spawning an overwhelming amount of them. It also helps that he is not seen in many comps because desert is not currently a top synergy. He can still be useful and pump out some damage without being the main carry for the team. That said there are a couple changes that could be made to make him more balanced.

The first would be lowering his mana cost to 80 and slightly upping the amount of damage that his soldiers do to 150/275/400. To combat this from making him overpowered they could make it so that his soldiers only live for 4.5 seconds. Also that he can only have three at a time. This would allow him to still be strong without having an overwhelming amount of soldiers on the board.

Malzahar

Here is the first summoner that severely needs to be balanced. Malzahar as a champion and his voidlings aren’t overpowered. The problem is when there are ten or more of them out there just bashing on the enemy. Not only is there a lack of consistent AOE in the game to currently wipe them out but with the shadow bonus they hit extremely hard. Add on the summoner bonus and they are entirely too strong.

To combat this, they need to add a limit to the amount of voidlings. As a heads-up this will be one of the main fixes for most of the summoners in the game. Right now per level, Malzahar can summon 2/3/4. To balance out this major nerf he should instead be able to summon 3/4/5. They will still be able to do an appropriate amount of damage with the shadow bonus and have enough health with the summoner one. This change should put him in a stable place within the game.

Yorick

Currently, Yorick is one of the most oppressive summoners in the game. Luckily he does not summon anything until a unit dies. This by itself solves the issue of having too many units on the board. The bigger problem is that even with the nerfs he recently received, it feels like Yorick is summoning units that are even stronger than some of the ones that are dying.

To fix this these units need to have their health nerfed to 500/800/1200. Then their attack damage down to 125/200/300.This will be a massive hit to Yorick and he will need some sort of buff in order to make sure that he does not become completely useless. They can make it so that he can get his first blessing off earlier by making his mana, 25/75 and give him more health with 900/1500/3000. He will survive longer and be able to still do the necessary summoning without making it feel like his units are uncontrollably powerful.

Zed

After seeing the video of a full board of Zed and then playing against him, he has to have something changed. Just picking one up even when he does not fit with the current synergies is enough to keep anyone in the game. While Zed is a five-cost unit, that does not mean that he should be able to be as over-powered as he is. Like most of the other summoners, he can have too many units on the board. But the most egregious part of hit kit is that his clones are him with his current stats and items. This means that if he has Guardian Angel, they all do. If he has Warmogs or Redemption they all do and can just heal to full.

Fixing Zed has two steps. The first is limiting him to only two shadow forms. Second is taking away the items other than the on-hit effects. This is easily the most major of the nerfs suggested so, to try and even them out his shadows spawn with full health instead of his current health. Also they can increase his base health to 750/1100/2100. This allows him still deal damage and clone himself without dying early and also having infinite units.

Zyra

The last one is one that also feels like they have a few bugs. Zyra is likely the strongest one-cost unit in the game, potentially of all time. Her plants multiply to the point that she is topping the damage boards consistently and building around her is almost a must if one is running inferno. While they have tried to nerf her a bit, it has yet to be enough.

The changes they need to make with her are similar in limiting the amount of units she can have out at a time. Also the fact that they can hit units all the way across the board is way too strong, especially for a one-cost unit. Instead they should only be able to hit within two or maybe three hexes. Normally there would be a suggestion to combat this big of a nerf, but again, she is a one-cost unit. She has to stop feeling like a three or four.

If summoners are not dealt with soon, then they will completely dominate the game. Their lack of counter and ability to multiply uninhibited could make it so that Riot loses a lot of their fan base for what is a solid overall game. Hopefully Riot are watching and are ready to make the changes necessary.

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