Why is Riot refusing to do anything about Zed?

Zed genius·1/6/2019, 3:12:18 PM·36 votes·14,753 views

Like, half the players complain about him being oVeRpOwErEd,another large part of the playerbase complain about him being garbage. Clearly something is wrong with the champion don't you think?

Edit: What people don't realise, is that when zed players say he is weak, we are not saying "give him more damage", with a few items the damage output is respectable imo, but most of the time you don't get to do damage because of Zhonya's and abilities like that, giving more damage means jack shit if you can't use it, and that's why a simple buff wouldn't fix him. One good change that I heard somewhere is that instead of a pop, your ult amps the damage you deal on said target for a specific amount of time.

142 Comments

Moody P1/6/2019, 4:43:29 PM36 votes

There are worse champions than Zed right now

Thefrostyviking1/6/2019, 4:14:37 PM19 votes

The problem with Zed is design.

By no means is he bad right now though, rather he is OP just looking at his performance sitting at 11% pickrate, 50,5% winrate and 30% banrate for diamond.

He has one of the best winrates in the game given his ban and pickrate up there, and the lower elo you look at the greater his pick and banrate rises although his winrate doesnt really rise by much.

But the fact that he is so successful in Diamond while picks like akali and Irelia sit at 46% winrate suggest that Zed is in fact really, really strong when conditions are met.

However i find him to be a feast and famine champ, either he can succeed and is a absolute nightmare or he has something stopping him like a taric or whatever and he´ll struggle a lot to do anything.

So, design issue´s, he hasnt aged well.

charge attack1/6/2019, 3:21:14 PM15 votes

People in low elo only complain about him being OP because he's popular. There are way more broken champions in the game: i.e. Talon, Camille, but are rarely played in Silver so you don't see anything on boards.

Also he's bad for reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to 1-shot someone. He overkills people with his ulti, but is pretty bad without it (they keep siphoning power into his ulti away from his kit).

So the idea is that: It's not hard for Zed to become very fed (10+ kills) - which makes silvers lose their mind as they die. But if you have any clue what you're doing, the 10+ kill Zed will still be worthless in determining the outcome of the game. Like you see Faker play Zed and be 20+ kills, but still seem to have little impact. Then take most other "snowbally" champions like Jax, Lucian, Camille, Akali, Ekko etc... and give them 20 kills, and the games absolutely over.

But in lower elos, people have no idea how to group and abuse, so Zed just getting fed leads to people running mindlessly in their jungle and dying 1v1.

So pretty much this: Zed's always been complained about by low elo, like every assassin in the game. He's complained about more only because he's popular. If Ekko was as popular as Zed you would see the same amount of complaint threads.

He's bad in high elo... because he's just bad. He doesn't have the tools to close the game with his lead, because he puts himself in too much danger. A 5/0 Zed and a 10/0 Zed just don't really accomplish anything different. They will 1-shot you with ult, and not accomplish much without. Which really sucks for a player trying to carry.

ﬂoo1/6/2019, 7:09:14 PM7 votes

It's not like he's the only one with that problem Akali Yasuo And they showed they refuse to care jack shit about Yasuo's banrate since he's been released.

Winterkill1/6/2019, 5:54:07 PM7 votes

I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with Zed. I think Duskblade is the problem and they need to get rid of it. Assassins shouldn't be one shotting with no counterplay. Duskblade makes that 10x worse. Plus assassins have way too much survivability. Adding more damage to them is thr problem.

Sex With Annie1/7/2019, 12:49:22 AM5 votes

only people who play zed complain that he's underpowered

Sewer Side1/6/2019, 11:01:26 PM5 votes

Only biased Zed mains like yourself think he’s garabge lmao.

Go away

The thigh guy1/7/2019, 10:39:31 AM4 votes

I love how zed mains complain that one item makes them irrelevant, yet tank mains have had to deal with this since the inception of %pen and %hp damage.

Also no. Zed should continue to be hard countered by Zhonya so long as just about every cc based mage is hard countered by qss.

Abibyama II1/6/2019, 3:38:50 PM3 votes

He used to be a splitpusher right?

rayzo1/7/2019, 3:12:01 AM3 votes

IMO everyone that says he's weak can't land any abilities, they think you should be able to R AA summoner 14 item 3147 and get the kill

Keystone Cowboyz1/6/2019, 7:56:56 PM3 votes

I think using the term “refuse” is really negative and angry. I get you love your champion but its not like riot said “yes we’re refusing to touch zed hahaha”. Riot has a lot of other shit to balance before they touch Zed. His design is a hard one to balance because the difference in low elo to high elo. Riot themselves said they could buff said to relevance for worlds but that would leave him broken in low elo beyond belief.

Anyway i wouldnt say Riot is intentionally “refusing” like you seem to make it as if they’re out to spite you. They just have bigger fish to fry atm balance-wise.

Crescent Dusk1/6/2019, 5:15:56 PM3 votes

If they tied his damage to melee range it would balance him out a lot better. Like, remove the slow on his shadow E or make it not copy E's damage so it's either you get easier 2 shuriken hits but no ranged E damage or E ranged damage but no E slow to guarantee shuriken hits.

Then there's also the fact that at 1-2 items pressing his ult alone and landing a single Q and E means >60% of the target's HP gone from ult.

On a champ with multiple juking tools, 2 shadow returns, and an invulnerability window on ult activation to further dodge skill shots.

His ultimate is hella overloaded, and the fact his passive and energy resource allow him to safely farm with Q and last hits while he just needs W combos landing once to trade and gain kill pressure is ridiculous.

Alternatively, they can keep the rest of his kit the same but remove the ridiculous passive so he doesn't get such a trivial farming potential during early lane which is supposed to be his weakness.

The problem with zed is that he's this hybrid of assassin and AD mage with all the perks of AD assassins but the range of a mage in his WEQ combo where he can avoid most of the weaknesses other assassins have (being outranged and bullied in lane like Katarina/Talon/Fizz by longer range mages who Zed can outrange and outtrade with his shadow combos).

If you removed the E damage from his WEQ combo it would force him to enter the risk zone of melee to get his full damage in and remove a large part of his safety compared to other assassins.

Jerry SeinfeId1/7/2019, 12:37:58 AM3 votes

i feel like zed's problem right now is that he just doesn't need his flashy plays anymore.

I remember being scared of zed because he might be good, now i'm just scared he knows i exist.

Ragnaveil1/6/2019, 5:04:20 PM3 votes

I feel like so much power is allocated to his ult that low elo finds him op, while high elo can contain him. If low elo started buying item 3157 on their ap champs, Zed wont do shit, because the item straight counters his ultimate, which adds to the shitty feeling of playing him.

Tobykachu1/7/2019, 4:10:59 AM2 votes

What would you suggest they do? He's a popular assassin with many ways to get in and do his job and so many people hate playing against him, even when he's in a 'weak' state. However, they can't really alter him out of fear of the Zed mains being unhappy.

OP Garen Support1/6/2019, 10:52:55 PM1 votes

Zed shits on squishy champs and is worthless against tanky champs. I guess the other carry classes are bitching when hey build glasscannon and the trash noobs cry that they cant 1 vs 1 tanks.