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Prevent Zed from being able to buy crit, but buff him somewhere else.

Desiderium··1 votes·584 views

Hey. I'm a Zed main since release (almost three years.) You're probably wondering why I'd be suggesting a nerf then. It's simple...

It completely ruins the point of playing Zed and playing against Zed if you can miss your spells and still end up critting your target to death with Death Mark.

Zed is balanced around his shurikens being dodgeable. Zed is balanced around his E and passive being melee range. Being able to crit you to death heavily lowers the skill cap AND skill floor of Zed.

Zed, in order to kill you, needs to fulfill these requirements:

  1. He must maintain melee range during his ultimate.

  2. He must hit his shurikens during his ultimate. If he can kill you without them, using just auto-attacks and E (without any crit) then you haven't built any armor.

  3. He is dependent on you not having items that hardcounter his ultimate.

Notice how all of the above mentions his ult? Because he's that dependent on it. So, assuming we take away his ability to build crit, and understand that his ult is designed with him potentially building crit in mind, then his ult is most definitely the best place to buff if we removed Zed's ability to build crit.

How would we do it? Well, it's easy. Just straight up prevent him from buying items that have crit in them. That's it.

Why is this a good thing?

Because now he actually has to hit his spells on you, and your defensive itemization matters more because he does less damage overall.

Additionally, it opens the gate to buff his ultimate, because his ultimate is balanced with Zed potentially building crit in mind. Thus we can make it go from 20% - 35% - 50% up to 30% - 50% - 70%. (*Keep in mind that exactly how much damage the ult would do doesn't actually matter if you have the proper items, and in addition to this fact, Zed would be far more dependent on his spells than his critical autoattacks to make the damage ramp up.)

TL:DR Zeds who build crit are bad at the champion and need a crutch. This crutch NEEDS to go away in exchange for buffs.

11 Comments

SwapShadows1 votes

Zed heavily relies on crits against competent players because his ultimate turns into a gapcloser mid-late

Once that ADC get's QSS you need to kill them with autos and abilities and just abilities won't be enough.

Also Zed is heavily balanced around his ultimate, unlike every other assassin in the game he does not kill anyone instantly and his ultimate has a ton of counterplay to it.

Desiderium1 votes

But you'd need a lot of crit to be able to depend on it to kill an ADC that has QSS. You're building really straightforward to kill the ADC and not be able to survive a teamfight. Sometimes it's more important to be able to kill them (or even just get them low) and survive a brawl. Especially if you manage to take their QSS.

SwapShadows1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tomb of Insomnia,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=3Oopvj2E,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-09-15T02:25:27.924+0000)

But you'd need a lot of crit to be able to depend on it to kill an ADC that has QSS. You're building really straightforward to kill the ADC and not be able to survive a teamfight. Sometimes it's more important to be able to kill them (or even just get them low) and survive a brawl. Especially if you manage to take their QSS.

no you just need 1 crit to have a good shot at killing an adc without ultimate.

This is why youmuus and botrk are MUST haves on Zed, they are designed for helping his major weakness and that is his ultimate being countered.

what a lot of zed players do is throw a W in a teamfight and go to that W when everyone is distracted and automatically use youmuus and botrk and chase the ADC and ult them after the ADC uses their escape so they can gapclose but they will use QSS so you have to get atleast 1 crit in.

With zed you can almost never engage with your ultimate on an ADC that has QSS

Baunjo2 votes

Wrong. If you are able to sit around and auto attack the enemy carry as zed the enemy team is doing something seriously wrong.

SwapShadows1 votes

{quoted}

Wrong. If you are able to sit around and auto attack the enemy carry as zed the enemy team is doing something seriously wrong.

What does that have to do with him relying on autos if the enemy ADC has QSS?

Baunjo1 votes

My statement is true whether the enemy ADC has QSS or not, it's quite simple really. If your enemy team is competant enough to keep you out of auto attack range of the enemy ADC, AND they have QSS, you're gonna need to be pretty good to kill that ADC.

VasilisGreen1 votes

I kind of dissagree.... Buffing his ult in order to compensate for it is a good idea but, what if they completely deny your ult? Ekko, Fizz, Vlad, Master yi, Fiora, Sivir, Nocturne and i am not sure who else, can completely deny your deathmark. Fiora, Sivir and Noc can block either the application of the deathmark or the pop. All the others can dodge it completely. So, with them, those crits can secure that kill that you otherwise will not get... Also, if that fails, there is still Qss and Zhonya's. What about that? In late game, let's say and opponent draven has farmed up to full AD build and has about 450 AD with Mercurial scimitar, IE and phantom dancer. Zed with a full AD build can go more than 550 AD. So, let's say you ult him, you are unable to crit, and heuses W to dodge your Qs, and llet's be serious, Q is your strongest spell as zed... Then cleanses the deathmark and hits you with his Q buffed AAs. Normaly, if you go crit draven you should have IE, ph, and ghostblade and you get 70% chance. With that high chance, he will most likely crit you 2-3 times in a row, and with his range and the W reset, he will delete you from existence in 2 consecutive crits... with 450AD one of his crits hits for 1.5k damage. It hurts, a lot... So, with no ability to crit, you will die, there is no escaping it. He can chase you. In the case that you ult him point blank, there is nowhere to go to escape his crits. With 2 AAs he will do 3k damage on you and with your low armor valueit will still be more than 2k, enough to kill you on the spot. if you can crit him, and you have IE, you should have 510 AD at least with a full offensive build if you go for botrk. This crits for 1275 and with your point blank E, he can't dodge a point blank E, you will do 1.6K damage or more in a split scond, much faster than the time he needs to activate Q, and then use the botrk active and do a last AA to procc the passive and he is dead. You have successfully deleted him without relying on the deathmark that would be cleansed anyway. You can't do that without that crit if your target manages to dodge your Qs. And don't say that "A good Zed always hits his Qs", that's total bullshit. You can't expect to hit everything everytime unless you are playing with mentaly impaired opponents. There is always someonethat knows how to sidestep better than you can aim. Also, a yasuo can use you to escape, just E on you as you appear and block your Qs completely with his windwall. He will crit you do death, what will you do then? Your crits are inherently stronger than his even with the same AD values, so if you can get this lucky crit you can even onehit him because you have a good 100+ AD advantage with the same items late game and you do full crit damage. So, what in those cases? Since your deathmark can be so easily denied, what can you do without crits? Not much, plus, in one rotation, you don't even have enough energy to keep up the damage and so you must use your AAs to ramp up the damage. An Ahri can dodge everything with no effort and damage you at the same time, and when you miss you don't have energy, but she will still have manna for the next rotation and the last time i checked, ahri had more mana than the energy zed has and also she has mana regen. I don't remember seing any energy regen items in the shop....

So, that's why your suggestion should not be implemented.

Wind Whistler1 votes

Holy shit.

VasilisGreen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Wind Whistler,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=3Oopvj2E,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2015-09-15T02:59:17.589+0000)

Holy shit.

What's wrong?

Desiderium1 votes

I read the whole thing and I have two things to say

  1. FUCKING PARAGRAPHS

  2. You can mention numbers all you want, but it doesn't prove your point. In fact, you're proving mine, because you are confirming that building crit on Zed is a way to avoid him having to use his ult, which makes him boring to play and takes away his counterplay. His ult isn't the only place they would buff if they removed his ability to build crit.

VasilisGreen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tomb of Insomnia,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=3Oopvj2E,comment-id=00010001,timestamp=2015-09-15T03:01:07.116+0000)

I read the whole thing and I have two things to say

  1. FUCKING PARAGRAPHS

Sorry about that, i am not used to writing in english, it's not my native language. Anyway

I am not proving your point, i am highlighting the drawbacks this suggestion has. Also, i forgot to mention, you can't just say that whoever builds crit is bad at the champion.

Even pros build crit, most guides have the IE+Ghostblade combo as a must have, Diamond players like Azoh and Redmercy build crit as well. Are they bad at the champion too? I don't think you would say that. Also, the ability to crit denies counterplay to zed?? Wat??? So, Qss removing the deathmark completely isn't enough of a counterplay? Master yi completely dodging the deathmark with a well timed Q isn't enough? Ekko ulting and dodging it isn't enough? Zhonya's nullifying it's damageand even the initial application isn't enough of a counterplay? He has no cc, he is the only champion that can have his ult completely denied, he is easy to pin down, has predictable gameplay and with a wel timed cc you can pin him down as soon as he ults, and has nothing to do after a full rotation because he is out of energy. And you want to remove his ability to crit? Ah please, come to your senses.

Removing the capabilty to crit from zed is the hardest hit you can do to an AD champion. He is pure skillshot based, has little resources and low attack speed. Also, he can have his ult completely denied. Oh please, destroy him completely...

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