General

• He might not be getting another skin yet but he is getting a buff. Zhong Kui is surprisingly underperforming in a meta where solo lane mages have been quite potent. Zhong is intentionally designed with slightly lower damage traded for tankier stats, but his damage numbers looked surprisingly low in a few places, even for a solo lane mage. We are buffing a base damage and a scaling effect in his kit to bring his damage up across multiple build paths or roles.

Book of Demons

• Increased Base Damage from 60/115/170/225/280 to 80/135/190/245/300

Recall Demons

• Increased Magical Power Scaling from 20% to 25% per tick
• (100% to 125% total, hits 5 times)

General

• Zhong had a short period of complete meta dominance, which resulted in a rather heavy nerf to his passive and his tankiness. This has harmed Zhong Kui's identity as a battlemage, and meta shifts since then have pushed his metrics even further down. We feel comfortable at this point to completely revert this change, hoping that this Mage can be more than just a ghost of the past. Olympians pathnotes.png

Demon Bag

• Decreased Max Souls from 60 to 40.
• Increased Magical and Physical Protection per stack from 0.5 to 1.
• Total protections increased from 30 to 40.

General

• Fixed an issue where his ability 3 was not working, this God will be re-enabled when The Vigilant Update releases.

General

• Zhong Kui has rose to power in the current meta. This god accumulates a ton of protections while also dealing high damage, and is extremely difficult to deal with once he has a gold or XP lead. We are making his passive harder to stack to prevent him from coming online as quickly as he can right now.

Demon Bag

• Increased Max Souls from 40 to 60.
• Decreased Magical and Physical Protections per Stack from 0.8 to 0.5.
• Maximum Protections decreased from 32 to 30.

Expose Evil

• Increased Cooldown from 10s to 12s.

General

• Zhong Kui has come back in a big way. His ability to reliably stack and the protections he receives for keeping those stacks really allows him to be the up front damage dealer he is known for. While the changes have really helped him, he is now too safe for the amount of pressure he brings to a fight. We are reducing the amount of protections he receives from Demon Bag and toning down the stun duration on Book of Demons.

Demon Bag

• Decreased Protections per stack from 1 to 0.8.

Book of Demons

• Decreased Stun duration from .7/.8/.9/1/1.1s to .6/.7/.8/.9/1s.

General

• Zhong Kui is getting some changes targeted at reducing the frustrating interactions he can sometimes have. Zhong Kui needs stacks to be effective, but his teammates can quickly remove his abilities to gain stacks. This is especially prevalent in non-conquest modes. Zhong Kui will now steal the souls of anything that dies around him, freeing up his ability to use his 1 + 2 combo as he wants. The amount of stacks, protections gained, and amount lost from using the ultimate and dying have been changed to fit this new stacking method. Finally, Book of Demons is seeing a stun increase. Early on, .5s offered very little opportunity to make plays while triggering his opponents diminishing returns.

Demon Bag

• Increased Stacks from 20 to 40.
• Decreased Protections per stack from 2 to 1.
• Zhong Kui now gains stacks when witnessing any death. He no longer gains stacks from consuming marks with Exorcism.
• Decreased Stacks lost on Death and after using Recall Demons from 100% to 50%.

Book of Demons

• Stun Duration Increased from .5/.6/.7/.8/.9s to .7/.8/.9/1/1.1s.

Book of Demons

• Decreased Mana Cost from 75/80/85/90/95 to 60/65/70/75/80.
• This ability no longer takes away Zhong Kui's book basic attacks while on cooldown.

General

• In 4.4, we updated Expose Evil to deal 75% of its remaining Damage when consumed, but we discovered it was accounting for its Base Damage and scaling Damage differently. Even though it was bugged, the 4.4 change helped him a lot so we will be keeping a close eye on how he performs with the correct implementation of his previous buff in this patch.

Expose Evil

• Expose Evil should now deal 75% of the remaining scaling damage in addition to the Base Damage it was already dealing.

General

• The Demon Queller is gaining more control over his damage and utility this patch. First, the Demons from Exorcism and Recall Demons now move quicker. This will help Zhong Kui feel more responsive and lower the window that enemies can react to chasing ghosts before they get hit.
• Expose Evil will also now deal 75% of its remaining damage when consumed by either Exorcism or Book of Demons. These abilities have strong additional effect, but often losing the long duration slow and damage from Expose Evil left Zhong Kui in a worse spot.
• By getting some of the damage back, Zhong Kui players will be able to make smarter decisions about when to or when not to remove the card.

Expose Evil

• Increased the remaining damage dealt from 40% -> 75% when Expose Evil is removed by Exorcism or Book of Demons.

Exorcism

• Reduced the time it takes for Demons created by Exorcism to reach Zhong Kui and heal him.

Book of Demons

• Updated Tooltip to make it clear that when Book of Demons removes Expose Evil it deals 75% of Expose Evil's remaining damage.

Recall Demons

• Increased the Travel Speed of the Demons released by Recall Demons.

General

• Zhong Kui is a Mage that needs to get into the middle of the fight to be effective. While he has tools in his kit to help him, we felt that in too many situations he just didn't have what he needed to get the job done. We have increased some of his base stats, as well as allowed him to have Magical Protection scaling to help him in later phases of the game. We will be watching these changes closely to see how it affects The Demon Queller.
• Base Stats
• Increased base Health from 400 to 450.
• Increased Health per level from 75 to 85.
• Increased Magical Protection per level from 0 to 0.9.

General

• Added extended lines for Standard Voice Pack.

General

• Fixed Basic Attack trails showing green fx from Standard skin.

Expose Evil

• Fixed crowd control immunity removing the card and damage over time.

Expose Evil

• Updated tooltip to correctly state “40% of remaining damage is done instantly” instead of 50%.

General

• Fixed an issue where his basic attack projectile was invisible.

Recall Demons

• Zhong Kui is now immune to Knockback and slows while channeling Recall Demons.

Exorcism

• Reduced cooldown from 13 to 10s.

Book of Demons

• Cooldown increased from 10s to 15s.

Recall Demons

• Reverted previous change that prevented Zhong Kui from using abilities while channeling this ability. He may now take all actions again.
• Zhong Kui is no longer CC immune while channeling this ability, however it will continue to channel while he is under the effects of CC.

Recall Demons

• Fixed an issue in which jumping would cancel this ability.
• Fixed an issue in which Zhong Kui was sometimes unable to use basic attacks during ability. As a result, he will no longer be able queue up and have another ability ground target ready when Recall Demons is finished.
• Fixed an issue with Polynomicon passive not working.

Recall Demons

• Can no longer cast other abilities while using this ability, although you may still use basic attacks. Right-clicking will now cancel this ability early.

Expose Evil

• Recovery time reduced from 0.4 to 0.1.

Demon Bag

• Buff tooltip text updated to show correct value of 2 protections per stack

Demon Bag

• Bonus protections granted for each captured demon reduced from 3 per demon to 2.

Recall Demons

• This ability will no longer heal allied players.

Exorcism

• The amount of healing per captured demon has been reduced from 25/40/55/70/85 to 20/35/50/65/80.

Expose Evil

• The percentage of remaining damage done when removing cards early has been reduced from 50% to 40%.

Exorcism

• The base healing of this ability has been reduced from 30/45/60/75/90 to 25/40/55/70/85.

Exorcism

• An issue has been fixed where the tooltip was showing incorrect mana costs for the ability.

Expose Evil

• The duration of the mark has been reduced from 6 to 5s.

Book of Demons

• The magical power contribution was reduced from 70% to 50%.