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How to deal with Zed / Why do you think he is OP?

LA Losty··7 votes·687 views

**Before you read this, im not trying to justify any of Riots changes im just trying to give you some insight as how to deal with Zed and to gain some insight as to why people find him problematic. All i wish for is a civil discussion, and i hope that you will participate in this discussion instead of just downvoting. **

Alot of people are complaining about the state of Zed, but as someone who plays him a fair bit i dont find it too difficult to deal with him. I understand that he can feel a little opressive if you fall behind in laning, but at the same time he will really struggle if he falls behind aswell.

Laningphase and midgame is where he really shines, which is why shutting him down early on is the best way to deal with him. There are a couple of ways to shut him down in laning:

  • Champions that shove the minionwave under tower are good against Zed, as he is easy to harrass while farming there, it also limits his agressiveness, unless he wishes to tank minions and lose cs. (If you are afraid of ganks you can always set up vision on your own or have your jungler help you to do that, or even have the jungler countergank).

  • Its important that you play around Zed's W as it is crucial for his bread and butter W+E+Q combo. Its his primary way to go agressive aswell as his primary escape. His W also has a 22 second cooldown at rank 1, and since its the ability that he maxes last you have a fairly big window of oppotunity if you wish to hurt him back.

  • Zed is quite easy to gank when his W is on cooldown, if you pressure mid as a jungler he will either have to play safe, or you can easely kill him if he still decides to go on the agressive. Always communicate with your midlaner to keep track of Zed's W.

  • Exhaust is a very good tool for shutting down Zed's ultimate, as it massively reduces the damage he is able to deal before it procs, aswell as the ultimate proc itself.

Other tips to keep in mind when laning against Zed:

  • His Q can deal quite alot of damage, but standing behind minions literally cuts the damage in half.

  • As previously mentioned Zed's W is his main way of going agressive. Walking at him and turning around or making a sharp turn as you get in his W range can bait out his W, if he wastes the W he is easy to gank and has very little kill pressure on you.

  • Always keep an eye on the shadows, both his W and his R, as he can use them to finish you off with or jump to right before they disapear. Never walk close to the shadows, even after he ulted.

  • Lastly keep an eye on Zed's energy, as he cant do much without it, when its low you can easely go agressive, when its not and his W is up you will have to play more passively.

Now i would like to talk about a bit about the item changes. Riot decided to change both QSS and Hourglass for a couple of reasons:

  • Hourglass gave very good stats and Riot wanted the players to buy Hourglass for the unique ability, rather than for the stats . Hourglass was always a viable option but it was changed to make you have a more diverse buildpath.

  • QSS was changed since Riot didnt want to balance champions around items, as it is rather problematic. Without the item the champion might be too strong, but at the same time you need tools against certain abilities.

Here is the part where you come up with the argument about how QSS still completely shuts down other champions such as Warwick or Skarner. Honestly, i agree to some extend, especially when it comes to Warwick as he doesnt offer a whole lot more than that. This is also problematic in my opinon, however i wont quite compare a Zed/Fiora/Trundle ultimate to a supress that makes you unable to move for quite a while.

How does this affect Zed you might ask? Well obviously its quite the buff for him for several reasons:

  • First of all the ADC's will now have a harder time against Zed since they cant remove his deathmark, but there are still other options such as Steraks that can be quite affective. Overall, this is a pretty significant buff for Zed, especially in the lategame, as the QSS could shut him down quite hard previously.

  • There is no denying that the changes to Hourglass are quite good for Zed too as this was the mages primary Item to deal with Zed with.

Overall, you can really see why balancing champions around items can be very problematic. Either it completely removes his ult, thus giving him a hard time later on in the game, (especially if the targets are a little slippery like Vayne or Ezreal) or it leaves you with limited options against Zed.

Lastly i would like to talk about a few statistics aswell as Zed's resourcebar:

  • First of all, looking at the statistics from Champion.gg, Zed only has a winrate of 50.85%, which seems fairly normal to me, so it would seem like there were a fair bit of more problematic champions out there? Still Zed is sitting at a 77.44% ban rate.

  • Zed's energybar is very strong for laning, but it does fall a bit short lategame compared to most other champions with mana. The upside with energy is that it always regens fairly quickly, however you cant spam your abilities quite as much compared to someone who has alot of mana. This means that for extended fights, Zed will always be able to regenerate his energy and keep fighting, but for shorter skirmishes he wont be able to spam his abilities as much before he runs out of resources as lets say a champion that builds a tear.

Now to the main reason for this discussion, why do you personally think Zed is OP? Alot of people seem to find him opressive to lane against, or hard to counter. Personally i dont find him that problematic to deal with, but that is easy to say for me as i play him quite a bit. I would like to hear your arguments in the comments below, and i hope you can enlighten me as to why he is so widely disliked. Also do keep in mind that Riot is keeping an eye on Zed and due to the item changes its also very likely that Zed will be reworked towards the end of the season. Either way i hope my discussion helped you to learn about how to lane against, and how to deal with Zed. Please keep the discussion civil. That being said i still expect some downvotes.

Sincerely, Nikolai

9 Comments

xl Kirito lx2 votes

He has a safe early game, a strong mid game, and a respectable late game.

  • Incredibly safe farming. If he isn't consistently being harassased, he will last hit perfectly. His passive allows for perfect CS under tower, his Q allows him to farm from range, at least 70%- of the wave. This translates into his poke rotation. He can E-W-Q, typically proc thunderlords, and then sit back farming with Q until his W comes back up.

  • Utility. This isn't a unique thing with assassins in general, but Zed does have slightly more options then most, save for leblanc. He has multiple options to dodge skillshots, and if someone like Brand misses his Q, he dies. Also gives him relative safety in tower diving someone.

  • Itemization. This is more in general to AD champions, but they have incredibly strong itemization, and didn't really change from the mage update. Zed can still buy a hexdrinker if he's having trouble in lane, otherwise he'll rush Yommus, giving AD/Arm pen/CDR. Not to mention, Duskblade isn't necessarily a god teir item, but it does solidify his assassination potential. The second proc will typically finish off an ADC, even through SS/supp intervention.

I do have to say though, I prefer the Hourglass changes. The significant cost reduction + better build path is nice, even with the nerfed stats.

Looking at your suggestions, they all equate to the same thing though. You're waiting for the Zed player to make a mistake. Wait for him to overextend, wait for him to waste his W, idk. The statistics are interesting though. I thought his ban rate would've been much higher. 50% win rate isn't surprising though. He has a pretty respectable pick rate. These stats seem off tbh, playrate went down, and winrate barely went up after getting heavy buffs.

Personally, I don't mind Zed. I know enough to rush a Seekers, and take Exh. But I don't trust my team enough to back at low HP, or to retreat from tower when Zed rotates down. I don't trust my team to deal with his splitpush, and we both know Zed has a better splitpush then tryndamere. He's too strong of a soloQ champion.

LA Losty1 votes

Im really pleased to see some proper arguments, ive been missing those lately. I agree with you that he is a very safe pick if he doesnt take risks, however if he doesnt take risks by using his W offensively he shouldnt expect to snowball. I agree with your other points too, and i can see why some people find him problematic, however i personally do not consider him OP if you just know how to play against him. Lastly, you are correct about him being a very strong soloq champion, as it usually does require a fair bit of communication to properly shut him down in lane, to me thats what makes the difference between good players and great players though. Anyway, a pleassure talking to you, and thanks for your input on the matter =)

OurLestrade2 votes

I think the issue is that if he ults you as a mage or ADC in a 1v1 scenario there is essentially no real way to fight back. He'll just blow you up instantly and ult back to safety before you can even press a summoner spell. Assassins tend to overkill, so Sterak's is certainly hit or miss. Now I know he's an assassin and that's kind of the point, but he has such efficiency in doing it that he's a bane to most people's existence. That and he's an AD assassin which is something I've always felt is a bit iffy (Always mention it, ZzLegendary as a Kalista video where he dodges an entire Zed burst but he autos him once with his AD auto attacks and blows him away :P)

LA Losty1 votes

That is very true, if you arent a champion with a whole lot of mobility you will be punished quite heavely for being out of position. If you are someone like Ezreal or Vayne however, you can get away from him, even if you are on your own. If you kite properly, and utelize your slows as Ezreal, he will have to W to you to get in R range, even if he uses youmuus, once he R's you can simply E away. Vayne has both her E and her Q to deal with him, stealth or not its usually quite effective. He can be slightly opressive one on one, but compared to other assassins such as Talon he doesnt offer nearly as much in a teamfight. He does do alot of dmg too, but there are many champions that can kill as fast as him, or faster, and Qss wont help you there. Just to mention a few: Khazix, Rengar, Diana, Leblanc, Talon. :P

MunchCrunchLunch1 votes

he is one of the most safe champions to pick even against his hardest counters. harass and easy farm under turret. you can just sit back until you can 100-0 your opponent.

though i dont hate playing against him as much as say fizz. i don't like playing against zed because 100% of the time my team underestimates his damage and ends up feeding him. usually the bottom lane. i can play a bunch of champion and beat zed in lane and after the problem is how the rest of my team reacts to him. and every other assassin really.

LA Losty1 votes

He cant really farm that well under tower if the other laner has some form of ranged harrass. In fact, one of the besst ways to deal with him is to shove him under tower and then you can pretty much freely harrass him, this why champions such as Azir, who normally arent too hard to deal with for Zed, can beat him quite hard early on if he manages to get him under tower.

Sdars1 votes

His burst is too high for how hard it is to counter without zhonyas.

The reason his win ratio seems balanced is that after good players pick Zed, enemies want to ban him, which makes people question if he's strong and try him out, and all it takes is 1 abusive situation to make someone start permabanning Zed, which starts making him be banned more and more, and results in a permaban status where people go like "omg zed free" and pick him, just to fail, because they can't get a lead on him.

I would nerf the damage and cooldown on his Q, but make it so he gets partial refund on cooldown and energy if he kills a minion with it. There are other ways his kit could be improved, but that's the simplest I can think off.

Champions which are seen as highly mechanically demanding should have sub 50% win ratio, because you have to factor in the new players who just think they're cool (or the wannabes) and want to try them out and do a montage to show their friends how they're so good for playing a "skill champ".

LankPants1 votes

First of all, looking at the statistics from Champion.gg, Zed only has a winrate of 50.85%, which seems fairly normal to me, so it would seem like there were a fair bit of more problematic champions out there? Still Zed is sitting at a 77.44% ban rate.

The problem I have with this is that other high skill champs don't have a 50% winrate. They're all sitting at 46-48%, which means Zed is up 3% at minimum on them. If Zed were actually balanced his winrate would be at around 48%.

LA Losty1 votes

Yeah another guy mentioned this aswell, and i didnt think about this argument. The harder the champion is the lower its winrate should be over all, due to newer players etc.

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