Proposing a Change to Zed's R
Instead of instantly blinking behind his opponent, Zed instead becomes untargetable for X/2 amount of time (considerably longer than the live 0.75s) , and unable to basic attack or cast abilities/items during the duration. Additionally, Zed gains a movement speed buff if he is moving toward the target. After X amount of time after casting the ability, the mark pops for an amount of damage as usual, and he has Y amount of time after the untargetability ends to blink back to where he casted the ability.
I was also considering changing the ability so that we cut down the ratio that the mark damage has, but changing it so that it stores a percentage of all the damage Zed and his teammates deal to the target, as opposed to just Zed himself. Also the time amounts and percentages are less relevant, this is more of a change to how the ult works and fine tuning these numbers for balance could happen later.
Problems with Zed that this fixes: -Zed feels very, very oppressive to squishy champions when he is significantly ahead. The fact that we don't instantly blink to our target there is a lot more interaction between the two champions (and therefore, more counterplay) when he does decide on a target. -This blinking creates silly interactions with escapes like Flash, where pressing the ability too early will have Zed behind his opponent after the escape and basically landing him a free kill. While it is true that this completely the victims fault, this can make playing against Zed as an adc much less of a headache, especially in teamfights, and makes dashes and gap closers (that are not instant like Flash) become more relevant escapes from an experienced/good Zed player -Zed suffers greatly against coordinated teams where he can get peeled from his ult target during the duration and is unable to maximize his damage. Additionally, Zed really has no utility outside of his damage output (maybe splitpushing?) to give to his team, which is especially a problem when he isn't winning his lane. This ult address both problems: it allows Zed some freedom to position himself without interruption to optimally take down his target, and allows him to "weaken" opponents with his ultimate with the second change, as his teammates can help him take down his target and get his bonus ad. -With the previous point, as the ultimate currently is, good players have more choice than Zed on where he is positioned, because of the fact that his ult forces him behind them. This ultimate obviously alleviates this problem, as stated before. -This ultimate lends to Zed's theme of using your shadows to avoid your opponent's damage and putting your own onto them, and I feel it would more interesting for both Zed and his opponents to play the mindgames that would come with an ultimate like this. -Lastly, Zed can be weird for tanks and bruisers to fight, especially when he has a bork, since he just autos them and spams abilities for a HUGE damage output on his mark. Since we take away Zed's ability to deal damage for half the mark duration, this greatly inhibits Zed's ability to fight tankier targets, especially one on one, which is important for an assassin
About me: I'm gold V mid/top main, and I've played Zed in games pretty regularly for a couple of years. My goal with this is to make Zed more playable in the teamfights of the current meta, and hopefully see Zed as a staple in competitive play without making him ridiculously overpowered. I feel like having Zed as an option in competitive play to punish squishy mage picks in the mid lane could make watching competitive play more interesting, especially when he is in the hands of mechanically gifted mid laners, and allow one of my favorite champs the spotlight.
