Is it just me, or has Zed felt really weak lately?

high skill gamer··17 votes·1,644 views

For some reason, almost every time I see a Zed in game, whether they're on my team or the enemy team, he seems to do nothing unless if he snowballs out of control. His W - E - Q(x2) combo feels like it does no damage in lane, and even if he does get a lead, it seems like he rarely has the ability to do anything with it. He's currently sitting at one of the lowest winrates in mid, and it feels like having him on your team is just a burden. Within the last three weeks, I can only think of two instances where the team that had a Zed won (out of the games that I've seen). His winrate has been steadily declining, and his mid game appears to be laughable at best, whereas his lategame is his best point (at just below 50%).

I understand that winrates and personal experience (in low elo) isn't that much to go off of, but I can't be the only one who thinks he's in a shit place right now... Right?

34 Comments

jr deputy meow10 votes

i agree. for perspective, i'm an ori main. The matchup used to be a dreaded one for me, but after the nerfs, I can honestly say that i don't fear zed at all. The only chance he has to kill you is if he gets a gank when you're overextended. He still snowballs well, but he really can't solo kill the enemy laner if he doesnt massively outplay them.

NightmareAmazoX5 votes

The community needs more people like you, Majority of people in this community who don't play zed would have said something else & be pretty ignorant about it. You are an awesome person for being an Orianna and giving honest feed back about Zed.

jr deputy meow3 votes

aww! thank you : )

NightmareAmazoX2 votes

Have a good day/night.

DoktorKaiser1 votes

I also main Orianna and I like playing against Zed because I always felt outplayed if I died and there was a chance that I can kill him too. But dont think that I have same opinion on some other unpopular champions, Yasuo and Ahri always made me feel like RIOT's balance/design team outplayed me, not to mention LeeSin as a jungler...

bbQsauçe6 votes

[deleted]

MissingKayo1 votes

He's an assassin?

Reaper Soraka4 votes

Zed isn't too scary at the moment.

There's a problem when the squishy utility supports say that. :P

Either the Zed needs to be outclassing the enemy team by a gameplay skill gap or he seems kinda useless.

Hi lm Negan4 votes

Zed main here, he is really weak early. Champions like orianna and syndra can easily bully you out of lane. Lethality got nerfed because of ad's like jhin and Lucian, it hit him hard. When you completed all lethality items and botrk you deal some serious damage onto a carry but there is so much peel in the game plus mobility denying spells, heals, shields it's simply hard to do much when you completed those items.

His w cd being at 20 seconds at rank 1 is also disgustingly high (you max w at last) and hard to deal with.

What they could do is his combo deal more damage or give him more waveclear. Like let his q damage not decrease when it only hits minions.

At this moment it's just unfair that a Cassiopeia scales better and can deal with me early easily. Another problem are strong early junglers like lee sin who can easily 1v1 you at lvl 3 going onwards. If he can't he just escapes.

NightmareAmazoX3 votes

All they had to do was make Armor Penetration items like item 3142 & item 3147 Melee only.

Wyrmblade4 votes

I'm okay with this, he was extremely toxic to play against when he was strong.

NightmareAmazoX3 votes

300K on Zed & I agree.

Sexualsaurus3 votes

A lot of zed mains have a 56% win rate with him, zed as a champ is much more skilled based after the nerfs. He is designed in such a way now that good zed players get more rewarded now while bad ones will end up sucking more. For example a zed player mindlessly spaming q at his oppenent will not do much damage but if lands both with his shurikens with his shadow then the damage will be way higher than it was before the nerfs. His ult as well rewards him with damage rather than just gaining it. A good zed player will prioritise high value targets such as the adc with his ult and successfully be rewarded with ad.

Edit: look at here http://champion.gg/champion/Zed and check his win rate % by games played.

NightmareAmazoX2 votes

Champion.gg is always outdated.

VoraciousX3 votes

It wasn't thunderlords making him strong that they nerfed him for. It's because the entire boards was in an uproar because he got a small buff and everyone just started banning him claiming he was op and had no counter play and other bs when you couldn't even try to play him the entire patch because Phylol made a video saying if you can't play against Zed you should ban him because the buff would cause more people to play him.

So then they started nerfing him over and over until he had no reason to be played (and people were still banning him for months after that)

His rework imo is a failure because it requires the enemy adc to be fed and likely a jhin to be useful.

MunchCrunchLunch2 votes

an assassin that doesn't have 1 basic ability with 1.0 bonus ad scaling is fine? lol. hes weak. they nerfed him to the ground a while back because thunderlords introduction made assassins a little strong. kha zix Q does more damage than a triple shuriken.

Ahristocats2 votes

in the same tier of rengar fizz talon

all have 46% win rate

asassin rework they said

Calabok1 votes

it's just you.

Suspicious Xebra1 votes

I am no longer as concerned about him as I used to be

DunkinNoobs1 votes

The Koreans are still terrified of him for some reason; he has like a 65% banrate over there or something.

nm10101 votes

I knew leblanc would have taken his spot before I even opened that lol, she took zed's spot as hyper aggressive early game that can snowball.

NightmareAmazoX1 votes

If you look at monthly ban rates, Zed isn't there.

nm10101 votes

https://i.gyazo.com/f6504040884a217543cf7005b93a356f.png

The assassin update launched 11/23 (or close to there) the ban rates are for 11/26-12/26 so Leblanc would still be favored over zed for a large part of that.

NightmareAmazoX1 votes

Good point.

VoraciousX1 votes

Well I mean, he's seen nerf after nerf because ADCs and mages hated playing against him. His W bonus AD being replaced by this situational ult makes him only a decent choice if there's a Jhin around, and the Jhin has to actually be fed for him to get the AD off of him. I think his mini rework was a bad design. You're basically hoping the ADC is fed because then you get more AD from your ult, but you're supposed to STOP the ADC from getting fed in the first place.

Shaydrox1 votes

Lethality is currently weak, it's that simple. Armor pen reliant adcs are performing badly, and Talon/Zed are utter garbage. Riot said they're looking into lethality buffs, only issue I see is that Rengar/Kha will get out of control when that happens but we'll see how they perform.

Spacesuit Spiff1 votes

I can live with that. Better to have him be the guy thats kinda weak but can do those crazy "win 2 1v1s at the same time" plays in the hands of an expert, than to have him performing decently no matter what you do. If he needs a buff, give him playmaking instead of poke or waveclear.

Thats my philosophy at least. Zed, Yasuo, Lee, and Vayne are all actually pretty neat in the hands of an expert, but Riot trying to make them accessible ruined them. Champs that can outplay are neat if you win if you don't let them outplay you... not so much when they can just win through their stats and then use ther "outplay potential" to erase any fatal mistake they make. I've never played these 4 outside of ARAM but when they're strong it's not because they can outsmart you, it's because their most basic mechanics are S-tier even without doing anything clever.

Carl Fredrickson1 votes

I haven't been able to play much Zed since the update as I am in EU right now for work but I did notice the few times I got to play that his energy management is more difficult. I play a ton of Zed on NA but also haven't played a lot of LoL for the last few months. So I didn't know if his energy use was nerfed or if I was just super rusty.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

Had a Zed hard carry us in a game where there was an enemy Trundle who was stacking armor (and I fed, oops). We were a full AD team too. Then again... the only times I've played against Zed, he's been fairly weak early, but comes back late game and 80-0's me anyway ;(

Shadòw1 votes

ye.. usually you could win lane with him easy.

now his best phase is late game where he still is easy countered.

MysticDreams121 votes

To me he's still strong as fuck. He's not weak at all.

takeZOOOOOO1 votes

i think zed's w e q combo does a fair amount of dmg with thunderlords assuming u land both q's

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