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Let's take a moment and realize what riot has done to Zed

Final Høur·6/5/2015, 1:13:40 AM·1 votes·780 views

"Zed is a great example of a healthy assassin" ~ says riot.

Riot has proven themselves wrong, first, by decreasing his base attack damage AND the rate as which his attack speed increases. To many of you guys, it would be,"oh, it's just a 0.06 difference" but goes more in depth than that. So what is riot trying to do? Riot is trying to make more of a champion that relies on using his SPELLS, not AAs. Which is odd, because most of the AD assassins rely on their auto attacks to poke, such as and his q damage amplification.

And second,his ultimate and the new 1 second delay. Now what I think riot is trying to do here, is make Zed players play more safe with their ultimates. So what exactly do they mean by this? Let's take and her ultimate against and his. Normally, Zed would just ult, and juke Cassiopeia ultimate with his ultimate shadow, but now with the 1 second delay, Zed would have to rely on his ultimate AND his W shadow, to escape the Cassiopeia.

Now with these hits to Zed, I'm really starting to question what riot really thinks a "healthy assassin" really is.

Feel free to drop links, thoughts/inputs, whatever the @#$%.

A Lone Samurai ; main and i approve this message

11 Comments

Abyssphere6/5/2015, 11:17:43 AM3 votes

"Let's take and her ultimate against and his. Normally, Zed would just ult, and juke Cassiopeia ultimate with his ultimate shadow, but now with the 1 second delay, Zed would have to rely on his ultimate AND his W shadow, to escape the Cassiopeia."

Why should Zed's ult give him a gapcloser to get to Cass, the damage to kill Cass AND invalidate her ultimate with no skill involved at the same time? I'm sorry but that is not a healthy amount of power for any ability to have. Zed's ultimate can be used to juke a ton of stuff even with the delay on shadow swapping because he becomes untargetable when he activates it, so you can still dodge a Cass ult anyway. You just need to actually predict it rather than just waiting for her to start the ult so you can hit R.

The reason the ult change happened is because being able to do all the stuff you listed is ridiculous and no way fair on a champion like Cassiopeia. Do you seriously think a gapcloser/kill securer with two distinct ways to ensure you juke everything a skillshot mage throws at you was balanced? Because it wasn't. If Zed can't be balanced without effortlessly invalidating the champion he's facing then he doesn't deserve to be balanced.

Leblancs Boob6/5/2015, 1:32:59 AM2 votes

He IS a healthy assassin but that doesn't mean he's balanced. Zed's assassination provided counterplay for his target, the problem is that he was good at everything an assassin shouldn't be. His manaless waveclear and passive allows him to effortlessly destroy waves and splitpush easily and most importantly he was extremely low risk for an assassin. Riot toned down his safety and it was a really good change.

SwiftKitten886/5/2015, 1:37:41 AM2 votes

if zed is "balanced" then other 99% of champs are just plain abysmal... Nidalee is (or rather was pre nerf) a balanced assasin.

LegitBacon666/5/2015, 1:15:47 AM1 votes

I mean Zed is still untargetable for 1.25 seconds when applying the mark so he can juke a lot of things there, and the delay is there for counter play and it forces zed is be a more complex and difficult and he needs to position himself properly. Also it hinders his tower diving capabilities slightly.

Vistha Kai6/5/2015, 1:19:39 AM1 votes

Riot said Zed's a great example of a "healthy assassin" and then followed it with "Zed is problematic".

Don't trust anything Riot say, but what they do. Hell, I'd say half of what they do is a lie too.

PS. Melee champions can't "poke" with auto attacks. Unless you take the term "poke" literally, in which case Zed and Talon are great at - cuz what's better than a blade to poke with, right?

1000angrybees6/5/2015, 1:49:28 AM1 votes

I think Zed is honestly in a really weird spot right now, but I think it's because of his design.

First of all, they made him basically rely entirely on his ult for a kill, while most other assassins can use other elements of their kits to do so- with the choice of whether or not to use their ult. Zed does not have a choice.

Second, the way he did assassinate was entirely unhealthy. While assassins are indeed supposed to do large amounts of damage to their target, they also were supposed to have risk associated with doing it. Zed's idea of assassinating was pressing all his buttons, maybe throwing in an auto attack, igniting, and backing out while the target most likely died without being able to properly retaliate- all in the span of 1 or 2 seconds. So they implemented the 1 second delay. Now, he cant simply just go after any target when he pleases, especially very cc heavy/burst targets.

What's the solution then? Honestly, I dont know. But what I do know is, is that he's not balanced, and he never was. He was made to be a flashy and cheap champ who had practically everything an assassin wanted, but should not have.

TurtleMan8786/5/2015, 1:25:41 AM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=A Lone Samurai,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=2ekI2x0O,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-06-05T01:13:40.194+0000) most of the AD assassins rely on their auto attacks to poke, such as and his q damage amplification.

in that example Talon clearly pokes more with autos cause' he has mana. Zed uses energy therefore his spell-spam poke is free! if Talon were to poke with his q as much as Zed does he would run out of mana in >2:00.