Zed Balance Suggestion

As of right now, Zed is constantly banned in every ranked game and heavily favored in the pro scene due to his high damage tied to his spammy abilities. After careful analysis, I believe that his problems lays directly in his W and it would potentially be solved by shifting his passive steroid to his ultimate and it would look something like this:

Living Shadow passive: Removed.

Death Mark: Zed becomes untargetable for 0.75 seconds and dashes behind the target enemy champion. Upon arrival, he marks the target for death, ignores unit collision, and spawns a shadow that lasts for 6 seconds at the cast location. Reactivating Death Mark will cause Zed to swap places with this shadow.

During this time Zed's bonus attack damage is also increased by a percentage based on Living Shadow's rank. BONUS ATTACK DAMAGE: 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% Bonus AD

Zed's biggest problem right now is that he is able to harass down squishes and clear waves in lane with his ultra safe w-q-e combo or by just by spamming q. When Zed R's to an enemy below 1/3 health, he doesn't not need to land all of his skillshots because the enemy is low enough for his passive to proc and then the Death Mark finishes them off. Even if he does manage to land all of his skillshots, the detonation goes off anyway making it an overkill if it kills the enemy at all. By shifting his ad steroid to his ultimate will most likely promote healthy assassin gameplay because he only gains that insane kill potential when he activates his R so he can't q his opponent to death when his ultimate is on CD.

How it works:

Most of us can agree that Zed's pokes are too strong with his ad steroid in consideration as a part of his kit so I decided to shift his bonus power from his basic abilities on to his ultimate. Why? Because it should feel more rewarding to Zed players to cast his ult while also adding that "risky" element into it so Zed players have to actually think and plan when and how to use his ult for maximum potential. For example, if zed is facing a tanky mage like Ryze or Cho, he would max W first so his auto's would deal more damage to the champ when he ults but his other abilities would hurt a lot less. On the other hand, if Zed is facing a long range AP mage with CC and kiting abilities like Ahri, then Zed would max Q and E first for safe harass but a big portion of his potential bonus AD is missed.

This hopefully trades off some damage early-mid game whether if the player decides to play safe by maxing q and e or prefers the aggressive route by maxing W so he can deal more upfront damage with his autos for the cost of vulnerability of CC in teamfights. The point of this change is to drop some of his power after his ult goes on CD and make Zed a more combo dependent assassin so his detonation actually kills someone after he successfully landed his combo. In teamfights, when Zed ults the carry he gains bonus AD and even if that target is bursted down by the team right afterwards, Zed still have ramped-up damage so the player might want to consider fighting for the full 6s duration before he withdraws. Basically, nothing from his ult feels totally wasted when the detonation fails to kill someone or overkills. This is the definition of decision-making.

tl;dr: The purpose of this change is to provide his opponents some breathing room and counterplay by shifting the AD steroid from his W's passive on to his ultimate so that the good zeds can be separated from the bad zeds, also creating more AGGRESSIVE gameplay in the process.

I would like to know what you guys think so please comment below and/or vote.

Cheers,

Truthteller