HOW TO COUNTER ZED: ADVANCED GUIDE-LANING PHASE & TEAM FIGHTS

If you want to counter zed, you need to know his weaknesses which I am about to tell through over 700 games of experience BY PLAYING ONLY ZED. PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING SINCE MY 700 GAMES WOULD TELL YOU ALL ABOUT HOW TO COUNTER ZEDS.

I have been playing zed, azir, and syndra a lot. But among my champion pools, zed has been getting a lot of complaints. But, don't worry he is GETTING SIGNIFICANT NERF AND HIS DEATH MARK DAMAGE IS SHRUNK DOWN TO HALF FOR HIS POP DAMAGE EXCLUDING ADDITIONAL DAMAGE. I think people are banning zed because he seems fancy and stuff and it makes him look hard to counter.

However, as soon as RIOT changed his r shadow and made him wait for 1 second to press r to go back, things have changed. Because of this lots of people are going to do double jump which is placing w before using death mark to avoid cc if they are experienced zed players since there is no delay for teleporting to w shadow.

Using this fact that they would place w before using death mark, you could throw out cc to w shadow's direction predicting enemy zed would teleport to there to avoid being locked down. HOWEVER, they could use flash to jump and dodge your cc again so time it right. But, if they don't place w first and use flash to create distance from being locked down, enemy zed will mostly weq to you again and w back, auto attack, and r back which is really safe since enemy created even more space after flash, and e and q one more(if enough cdr) even in 1vs5 situation to assassinate squishy and escape. This combo is hard to counter so this is when you will use zhonyas since trying to cc him down is pointless since he has 4 teleports. REMEMBER TO USE ZHONYA'S ABOUT 2 SECS AFTER ZED USES DEATH MARK SINCE DEATH MARK LASTS LONGER THAN ZHONYA'S. He will still escape safely since he is zed but he would have wasted his w and ultimate or ultimate and flash. Then, your teammates could lock him down and kill him.

Tips on how to counter zed in landing phase:

One of the first things I learned when I was playing as zed was that when I used wqe combo and let the shadow sit there, enemies would come near the shadow to cs. DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE SINCE ENEMY ZED COULD W BACK AND USE DEATH MARK AND IT WILL BE HIS FREE KILL AFTER WQE THUNDERLORDS. Always keep track of his shadows and its locations. As I told you before, if enemy tries to w back and flash to you and use his ultimate, use cc at right time.

Also, for his wqe combo, most zeds will fire it quite fast so when the animation of w starts he already decided the trajectory. You can abuse this to move to side a bit kinda like playing against blitzcrank or thresh after tricking him that you will stay in place. Now, players like bjergsen would do w,e( to slow enemy to land skill shots better), and q. You cannot dodge e for sure but to dodge q, just use your mouse to move side to side since it will prevent him to land double q since single q won't do much damage. AND, ALWAYS BE AWARE OF ENEMY ZED BEING ABLE TO TELEPORT BACK TO W SHADOW AND USE DEATH MARK ON YOU.

My favorite tip against zed: play aggressive pre-6 and when he reaches pre-6 still play aggressive but not too aggressive to a point where you will lose trade. Then, he will use death mark to dodge your damage and you can flash away AFTER HIS ANIMATION ENDS BECAUSE HE CAN FOLLOW YOU UP IF YOU FLASH AWAY TOO FAST. Then, boom he does not have ultimate so you can basically gank him since he will try to wqe you and he has no w and r, which makes him vulnerable.