Zeri: League of Legends’ New Electrifying Champion – A Spotlight

By | January 19th, 2022 | Categories: League of Legends

Zeri: League of Legends’ New Electrifying Champion

2022 sees Riot’s major games off to a great start. With the release of Neon in Valorant, thousands of players queue every day with the intention of trying out Neon. The newest agent’s Southeast Asian roots have made her extremely popular. A similar notion is happening in League of Legends: Zeri will be making her grand entrance into Runeterra’s roster as the newest ADC champion. Riot’s MOBA game’s next champion is going to be similar to Valorant’s newest agent.

Zeri, The Spark of Zaun

The region of Zaun has been notorious for being a rough place filled with toxic fumes, pollution, and Chem barons vying for control. The League of Legends community has seen various champions rise from the slums of Zaun such as Singed, Warwick, Blitzcrank, Viktor, Seraphine, Ekko, Jinx, and many others. Though summoners see the undercity as a polluted city filled with corruption, they have forgotten that Zaun prides itself on placing its community above all else. This is where the Champion Zeri comes in.

Zeri is a young middle-class girl living with her parents in the slums of Zaun. Incensed by the Chem baron’s continuous corruption of the city, the young Zeri joins the Undercity’s resistance against the barons. The young girl was able to harness her electrifying powers with the help of some Zaunites. With an emotion-charged electric rifle and a special jacket to control her powers, Zeri makes her way into Summoner’s Rift to show what Zaunites are truly made of.

Zeri’s Champion Spotlight

The Spark of Zaun is set to dominate the bottom lane with her electrifying abilities as the newest ADC champion in League of Legends. Unlike other champions who were brought in the game due to lore, connection to other champions, or community-inspired art, Zeri’s concept came from Riot’s need to introduce an FPS-like movement in the popular MOBA game. The next champion’s kit will give summoners a shooter game’s feel to her gameplay. Here are Zeri’s confirmed abilities:

Living Battery (Passive) – Whenever Zeri gets a shield, she gains bonus movement speed. Once she attacks an enemy with a shield, Zeri obtains its energy and shields herself.

Burst Fire (Q) – Passive: Zeri’s auto attacks are treated as ability attacks and deal magic damage that scales with her ability power. Moving and casting Burst Fire will charge her Sparkpack. Zeri’s next basic attack will deal extra damage and slow her target after Sparkpack has been fully charged.

Ultrashock Laser (W) – Zeri will launch an electrically charged pulse that will slow and damage the first target it hits. If the ability hits a wall, it will activate a long-range electric beam starting from the point of impact.

Spark Surge (E) – Zeri will dash for a short distance and cast three charges of Burst Fire which will pierce through enemies. Depending on the angle, she will either jump over terrain or grind along the walls. Hitting enemies with attacks or abilities will reduce the cooldown of Spark Surge.

Lightning Crash (R) – Zeri will overcharge herself for a medium duration and release an orb of electricity that damages nearby enemies. She gains bonus damage, increased attack speed, and extra movement speed while she is overcharged. Attacking enemies will extend the duration of overcharge and provide an additional stack on her movement speed. Her Burst Fire will transform into a quicker triple shot which chains between her enemies during the duration of overcharge.

Looking at her kit, it seems that Riot really designed the champion to satisfy summoners who crave FPS-like movements and gameplay in League of Legends. Hopefully, the champion doesn’t dominate the meta too much. After her launch into League’s PBE servers, Zeri was immediately nerfed as her kit proved too much for other ADC to handle.

Zeri and Neon Crossover

Zeri was already teased during one of Arcane’s trailer videos. However, fans never expected that the League of Legends and Valorant would have crossover characters. With speed and electricity as their core abilities, fans almost mistook the two characters as the same before the developers shut the notion down. Though Riot has clarified that Zeri and Neon are not the same people, they still consider both of them as crossovers since they feature a similar electric theme, voiced by the same Filipina voice actor, and designed by Filipinos. They are essentially the same since their looks and styles are almost identical.

What Do Zeri and Neon Means for the SEA community?

With the introduction of two characters who represent the Philippines, the thought that Riot introducing new characters influenced by other SEA regions is not far-fetched. The Southeast Asia community has been one of Riot’s largest and most loyal communities ever since the conception of League of Legends. Introducing more characters to represent other SEA cultures will definitely reignite the spark the community has for Riot’s games.

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