Zac vs Locke Counter Pick

Zac takes this clash on a wide margin: 60.3% from 727 recorded games on patch 16.13.1, graded Easy. The reason is durability against a short-range duellist. Locke closes with Ashen Pursuit, a teleport followed by a dash onto his next target, and finishes with Purgatory, which can execute damaged champions outright. Both tools want Zac low on health, and almost nothing about Zac cooperates with that.

• Health: 685 at level 1 and 2,538 at level 18 against Locke’s 655 and 2,508, with Cell Division blobs adding recovery that costs no item slot.
• Resource: Zac spends health rather than mana, so a long fight never leaves him unable to cast, while Soul Ignition damages Locke to fuel its attack speed and move speed.
• Defences: Locke’s damage is physical and meets 33 armour scaling to 112.9, while his own armour ceiling of 103.4 is the lower of the two.

Play follows from that. Unstable Matter bills a percentage of maximum health, so it does not decay as Locke buys resistances, and Stretching Strikes pulling a second target keeps both inside the explosion radius. Silver Stake is the counterplay worth respecting, since its on-hit magic damage grows as the target’s missing health grows. Zac’s difficulty rating of 8 against Locke’s 5 is the real tax on this record, which assumes clean slingshot angles rather than forgiving ones.