Not even Lissandra can counter Zed anymore...

SaltyToplaneGoat·Feb 16, 2016·39 votes·4,861 views

Usually the ice mage had been my solid pick against him. Not necessarely OP and by far not a free win in lane, but a solid pick with a kit working great against his. Also, you can't really counter an assassin in lane. they just roam and murder your botlane that then keeps flaming you despite them not having any wards or map awareness...

Now Zed just gets Hexdrinker and Merc Boots and sits on 103 MR without dealing any less damage...

If I remember correctly Liss had always been his hardest counter in lane. But if not even that works anymore...? I don't even know what to pick against this champ anymore. I either counterpick myself or can pick something that barely, BARELY goes even with him. But there's nothing I could pick that would be actually strong against him.

GJ Riot, your balance team playing favourites finally ruined midlane completly. Now there is one champ who's the best and that's it.

81 Comments

Lazypeon100Feb 16, 201612 votes

It would appear you have F- Urgot ten me.

Liss should counter him, though I haven't played her in quite some time truthfully. Urgot still works, but he's a bit out of the meta.

Fear buffs coming though at the cost of his W and passive.

Krys StarFeb 16, 201612 votes

I just had a match where this happened late game.

http://i.imgur.com/dV2JppN.png

How is this okay?

MasterSomethingFeb 16, 20162 votes

Key word: Late game That means he unloaded a full combo with his full build

Masala ChaiFeb 16, 201611 votes

No Diana, Akali, LeBlanc, or Katarina can do that much damage in that timeframe. Diana's Q R W combo at full build can only do half that, I'm not even sure about Akali, and she and LeBlanc can easily be peeled away, and Katarina's ult can be easily disrupted. Akali and Diana also have no escape.

MasterSomethingFeb 16, 20162 votes

Then they clearly aren't good at doing their job as assassins. I've done faster killings with Diana, who is a slightly slower assassin. Akali's killed me faster than I could react, and LeBlanc is a deceptive assassin, whittling them down until they are good enough to kill. Katarina can pull off 1v5 pentakills with the right timing.

Masala ChaiFeb 16, 20165 votes

lol wat, Diana is a fast assassin, if you prime up a moonsilver blade auto you can instagib a no mr adc in .12 seconds. Watch Demonata?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCSrrXu1f9M&feature=youtu.be.

Anyway that damage is enough to 100-0 a tank.

MasterSomethingFeb 16, 20162 votes

Well, I'm also a shitty player. I dunno, everything seems slow to me when I play her, so I guess habit. Nonetheless, you also just proved my point. They clearly do it faster than Zed.

Also, that was NOT a tank. He had a lot of flat armor pen which is useful on squishies and weak tanks, but full tanks should be able to laugh at flat pen (200(a really low amount for a dedicated tank)-20=180) and he wouldn't have had time to stack Black Cleaver before doing that much damage in said time frame. So the results are a bit fuzzy here.

Masala ChaiFeb 16, 20169 votes

nonetheless, his assassinations are way too safe. He can 100-0 a carry and then get out for free by swapping places with his shadows. Combined with how OP thunderlord's is with him, he really is worthy of a nerf.

Let's not forget he was designed as a high skill cap champion, and therefore should have a winrate lower than 50%? and not some stupid bs like 53%.

While I'm at it. If you want to assassinate people faster as Diana, you can first start off by Qing a target, and then ulting then while the Q is flying, you'll still get the reset on the ulti. If you get really good with her and your ping is pretty low, you can ult first and then while traveling fire the Q, pretty hard to pull off.

Krys StarFeb 16, 20162 votes

Some of you guys are missing the point: he did all this in a matter of 2.79 seconds, time that I could barely react to because all he had to do was: R>AA>Q>E and leave immediately through his R shadow. I can understand him deleting me, because I was Miss Fortune, but the fact that he did well over 200% of my health in 2.79 seconds while being extremely safe is ridiculous.

Not only that, but Riot got rid of DFG because it was too toxic, and then introduce an item that is similar to DFG, but compliments AD assassins. That is extremely, and way too cost efficient. I seriously wish I knew what Riot's balance team were thinking when they decide the numbers for champions and items.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 16, 20162 votes

I agree with you completely. I played Ashe last night and his ult pop damage killed me at over half health. I had to get item 3139 to save myself as he was completely ridiculously overpowered. Not to mention even harder to kill because he went tanky with Sterak's and Black Cleaver. I had to ult him in a team fight and let my Nasus (who Zed had been able to take over half health with a full combo and Duskblade on) and the rest of my team peel him off for me so I could help the fight after.

There are no words for my hatred of this champion.

Krys StarFeb 16, 20161 votes

Yeah. I'm fine with him assassinating me, but it aggravates me that there is no true way of shutting down or bullying a Zed out of lane. A good Zed can't lose a lane. If he can't trade, a good Zed with just farm safely, and either kill you with his safety farming paying off, or roaming. The champion is without weaknesses. I especially hate how his shadow's E can shred you, on top of slowing you by so much.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 16, 20163 votes

I agree with all those points. With Kat you can CC her and completely stop her ult. Talon you can abuse just as easily. Zed? Nope he just blinks back after he ults you. And what's even more ridiculous, is that Riot Gaussrik said on his ask.fm page that Duskblade was made for him in mind! He's even more out of control with it then he was without it.

Sometimes I think why do I even play anymore. I wish I could go back to season 5 where I didn't have to fear who I was laning against.

Kanzaki RankoFeb 17, 20162 votes

[{quoted}](name=Frozen Sovereign,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QiTNXNKx,comment-id=00080003,timestamp=2016-02-16T17:52:04.178+0000)

Some of you guys are missing the point: he did all this in a matter of 2.79 seconds, time that I could barely react to because all he had to do was: R>AA>Q>E and leave immediately through his R shadow. I can understand him deleting me, because I was Miss Fortune, but the fact that he did well over 200% of my health in 2.79 seconds while being extremely safe is ridiculous.

Not only that, but Riot got rid of DFG because it was too toxic, and then introduce an item that is similar to DFG, but compliments AD assassins. That is extremely, and way too cost efficient. I seriously wish I knew what Riot's balance team were thinking when they decide the numbers for champions and items.

http://puu.sh/m3QZq/41e84899c2.jpg ?

Krys StarFeb 17, 20161 votes

That's terrifying, but at least Veigar can be shut down, bullied, and lacks mobility/escapes outside of Event Horizon. You can easily bring Cleanse as well, and buy Mercury Treads, to further deny Veigar an opportunity to kill you while also building what should work against Zed: Zhonya's Hourglass. Veigar has to get in to ult you. Zed can ult in on you, do everything he needs to do, get you to chase him, and blink all the way back to his previous position. Or use Living Shadows to get over a wall, escape, and slow with his escape.

WadeWilson1337Feb 17, 20163 votes

Also Maw of Malmortius is such a valid rush item now that it makes champions like zed almost impossible to compete with as rushing zhonyas is incredibly ineffecient. You even get god damn armor pent.

Krys StarFeb 17, 20161 votes

Rushing Zhonyas leaves you starving for mana, and forces you to miss out on valuable cooldown reduction that a large amount of mages need. Meanwhile, ad get ease of access to anything offensive with a nice bonus of cooldown reduction slapped onto a third of them. :\

WadeWilson1337Feb 17, 20163 votes

All the while most of the pain in the ass AD laners dont even have to build a mana item, Zed the most problematic doesnt even fucking have mana to begin with. The AD assasin/bruiser class is absolutely retarded right now and they nerf steraks when maw is the real issue. If you rush maw, it should be a you have to give something up type thing, what do you lose? Oh no, i lose the youmoos active and some cdr for 55 magic resist_ and the ability to make my enemy laner absolutely impossible to kill me 1v1. Oh and lets just add that insane steroid passive cuz fuck it. Edit: To anyone who thinks Zed isnt problematic, he is the solo reason that many immoble mages like Velkoz and Xerath are downright unplayable right now, atleast to blind pick.

ScumbagZedFeb 16, 20165 votes

lol another person complaining about zed

SaltyToplaneGoatFeb 16, 201612 votes

Another person who is sick by midlane being dominated by single champion. Zed alone doesn't bother me, it's how strong they mdae him with the itemization changes over the last patches.

TroiannFeb 16, 20164 votes

Hexdrinker is the same as always and mercs even got nerfed, zeds rarely even build them now.

Lissandra was never a "insta win" against zed. She's a solid pick because post six she can completely evade all attempts to kill her, and a non fed zed isn't very useful and generally resorts to splitpushing because liss outscales in teamfights. If you want an insta win pick malzahar.

YumaS2AstralFeb 16, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Hexdrinker is the same as always and mercs even got nerfed, zeds rarely even build them now.

Lissandra was never a "insta win" against zed. She's a solid pick because post six she can completely evade all attempts to kill her, and a non fed zed isn't very useful and generally resorts to splitpushing because liss outscales in teamfights. If you want an insta win pick malzahar.

Malzahar isn't an instawin pick against Zed either. To be honest he is not even a counter like many people claim. It is a skill based matchup, because Malzahar will be harassed a lot by Zed and he has no mobility to respond against Zed's gap closers and against ganks. Also, Zed is an AD champion, so there are no downsides for him when purchasing QSS. However, Malzahar still outscales Zed in teamfights.

To be honest due to the nature of Zed's kit, there are no instawin champions to use against him.

There are picks that can deal with hm such as Malphite, Vladimir, Cho'Gath, and Fizz. But they are still not instawin.

TroiannFeb 16, 20163 votes

Ok let me spell this out to you.

Malzahar has very little mana issues if you know how to chain your E among the minions properly. Pre six zed will never land anything more than maybe a shadow E Q (never double Q unless you're walking in melee range). If you chain your E among the minions you completely zone him from the wave in fear of him losing a chunk of his HP from the E bounce. He cannot all in you pre six because you have your voidlings. Post six Malzahar cannot be dove (obvious reasons), and will only die if taking massive poke damage (again you have to be really bad at dodging because after a catalyst you don't even need to sit near the minion wave to clear it with your W Q E), basically denying Zed all kill potential.

There are obvious downsides to building QSS in lane, like having absolutely no combat stats and then making both your poke and all in potential worthless against any champion, even squishies.

Malzahar vs Zed is completely in the Malzahar's favor. If a Malzahar loses to zed he is either inexperienced or simply worse than the zed.

Hell if you look at champion.gg, zed has a 46% winrate against Malzahar. And that's generally because people in plat+ can shut down malz in teamfights where he is weaker because he can get gangbanged. But Malz in lane has a massive advantage against anything squishy.

Rundus1Feb 17, 20161 votes

When I do that he builds qss semi-early and goes all pansy until then. If I'm against a zed I find Ryze can do the job pretty well if you can manage him (or could pre-nerf. idk now) and so can Riven or Vlad (vlad having some issues with poke early but being fine after he gets some spellvamp).

alfavhunterFeb 17, 20164 votes

The problem with zed isn't his ability to assassinate

It's that he is also extremely Safe Good at split pushing Mobile And mana less

Talon is the healthiest assassin in the game even though he can do more damage and more aoe damage. Why? He isn't safe (go in and stuck in fight) And he has mana

Zed can kill a target and be gone from the fight, he can reliably jump walls, he can safely farm when losing lane to even HIGH range champions, and he does it all without being resource gated

The one nerf zed needs is his shadow return range

Example

Zed shadow return (not the initial cast this is for trading spots with the shadow) range nerfed by 50%

It gains 100% bonus range (putting it at live values) when the shadow is within 600 units (example value) of an enemy champion

Bamb he is much more balanced

ElindiirFeb 16, 20162 votes

The MR that Zed can build without severely limiting him can be negated by items that don't severely limit Lissandra. item 3151 is ALWAYS a good item on Lissandra, and item 3135 isn't a real detriment to your AP numbers... Lissandra also builds item 3020 which all together gives 35% + 30 pen. These together would bring his MR down below 40... If you have an enemy AP jungler, you have reason to also build item 3001 bringing the effective MR below 20...

In other words, if Zed is trying so hard to build MR against you, you can try JUST as hard to negate it with good results... If you are forcing him to rush item 3139 item 3156 item 3111 , you are keeping him from building item 3142 item 3072 item 3147

YumaS2AstralFeb 16, 20169 votes

{quoted}

The MR that Zed can build without severely limiting him can be negated by items that don't severely limit Lissandra. is ALWAYS a good item on Lissandra, and isn't a real detriment to your AP numbers... Lissandra also builds which all together gives 35% + 30 pen. These together would bring his MR down below 40... If you have an enemy AP jungler, you have reason to also build bringing the effective MR below 20...

In other words, if Zed is trying so hard to build MR against you, you can try JUST as hard to negate it with good results... If you are forcing him to rush , you are keeping him from building

The problem is that you need to build item 3157 first so that he doesn't kill you. And then you need to build either item 3027 or item 3165 so that you don't go OOM after a single spell rotation. And after all those items you still need item 3089 so that you have enough burst to actually out-trade Zed. Basically, Lissandra needs a lot of items to be able to deal with Zed, and by the time that she gets those items, the game is over.

ElindiirFeb 16, 20167 votes

The idea isn't to really be able to outtrade him, but to stall him. Zed is a champion dependent murdering his lane opponent... again... and again... Lissandra on the other hand has enough utility to be a potent part of the match to not need to really be ahead. The other reason (other than the ability to deny his execute) Lissandra is potent against Zed is that Lissandra has enough CC and disengage to be extremely hard to gank, further denying Zed's ability to get ahead. If Zed can't execute you, you WILL get camped by the jungler, and if you can survive that, neither Zed or the JG can really get ahead. Completely abandoning mid lane is never good, so as long as you ping MIA and the other lanes don't feed him, he falls off.

kile147Feb 16, 20161 votes

Why do you need Zhonyas? Liss seems like one of the few champs who doesn't need that to play against Zed because her ult functions the same way. This isn't a match up I have done so I could be wrong but it seems like RoA into Liandry's Torment would be fine against him.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 16, 20161 votes

Because he can just wait the ult out and delete you after. It's happened to me before many times. That's why you get Zhonya's, and even then he can wait you out of it. He can also build enough armor pen to negate the armor it gives you too.

kile147Feb 16, 20161 votes

I guess, it just seems to me that Zed doesn't delete anyone without his ultimate actually popping on them, which you can avoid with your ult. Regardless I'm interested now and am going to try this matchup at some point.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 16, 20161 votes

Yea..it's not a fun matchup. He outpoked me, out farmed me, everything. I couldn't do anything. He dived me and would get away with less than a hundred health while I died.

I hate him so much.

CatastropFeb 17, 20161 votes

The ability to ult a high priority target and still have one invulnerability up your sleeve is too good to pass up.

kile147Feb 17, 20161 votes

I mean I would build item 3027 item 3001 item 3157 item 3020 item 3151 item 3089 eventually, but I would rush the RoA because you want that early, and the sustain it gives you seems more important in lane against Zed when you already have a counter to his ult.

CatastropFeb 17, 20161 votes

That is what you do actually, but you go right into Hourglass. Liandry's might come later on, like 5th or even 6th item. The reason I say this is because Lissandra wants to get the big ticket AP items as fast as possible so she can make use of her scalings. Sometimes you might not even get Liandry's because a item 3165 because it allows you to spam your ult more often. Actually, to be completely honest, Liandry's is only good on Liss when there are really beefy champions on the enemy team so it's not always going to be part of your standard buildpath. Most of the time, it looks like this, item 3027 item 1313 item 3157 item 3165 item 3001 item 3089 Not much has changed, just swapped out Liadnry's for Morello because of how much she can do with the CDR.

kile147Feb 17, 20161 votes

I just like the massive amount of flat pen that item 3020 item 3151 item 3001 gives. True damage to squishies is fun.

CatastropFeb 17, 20161 votes

Lol, I know the feel. Normally people aren't scared of you because of your "crappy base damage." Then they die and realize I'm ripping through all their MR and doing true damage.

ElindiirFeb 17, 20161 votes

Also, with those as the primary damage items (and a ROA), Lissandra can proceed to build straight tank and still outclass most tanks in damage, especially with the powerful initiate ability that Lissandra can do with her E-E-W combo... And then she can use her ult to either save herself (if she is going down too fast) or focus target carry coughzedcough for your team to focus...

Solidair3Feb 16, 20162 votes

If you want something that counters Zed, look no further away (alphabetically) than Zilean.

Zones zed, counters his ult, ezpz.

Hayaishi2Feb 16, 20161 votes

So Zed finding ways to be useful to his team besides destroying his lane opponents is bad?

Zed is not the best mid laner, Lissandra still counters him but you can't expect the counter to be so absolute that he CAN'T have an impact in the game that's not how counters are meant to be and this is just a shitty hate thread made by a bias summoner that apparently can't play Lissandra.

Maybe people will finally realize that this game is about skill and not counterpicks.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 16, 20163 votes

And you sound like a biased Zed lover.

Liss doesn't counter him anymore, I've played it and he absolutely was able to destroy me and everyone else. It's not cool when an assassin can now delete not just a mage that was supposed to counter him but also now can take over a tank's half health thanks to the new assassin item.

Hayaishi2Feb 16, 20161 votes

{quoted}

And you sound like a biased Zed lover.

Liss doesn't counter him anymore, I've played it and he absolutely was able to destroy me and everyone else. It's not cool when an assassin can now delete not just a mage that was supposed to counter him but also now can take over a tank's half health thanks to the new assassin item.

Then you're you playing the match up wrong.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 16, 20164 votes

{quoted}

Then you're you playing the match up wrong.

Of course, I would expect nothing else from a Zed main. They always talk like you do. Sorry to disappoint but I played the match up exactly as I should have. I'm not a Lissandra noob.

CatastropFeb 17, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Liss doesn't counter him anymore

No words have ever stung me as bad as these. These are troubling times for our resident Ice Witch. You're like the only person who actually seems to understand the struggle.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 17, 20161 votes

I know :/ It's hard finding people that share the struggle and agree with me.

CatastropFeb 17, 20161 votes

Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if the people disagreeing haven't played this match up since before the Preseason.

SnugglePuggle94Feb 17, 20161 votes

I know, either that or they are biased Zed mains.

Hello I am BirdFeb 16, 20161 votes

There's another ice mage you are forgetting about that stomps Zed: Anivia

JQKAndreiFeb 16, 20165 votes

*goes even

Mestm97Feb 16, 20161 votes

A good Zed don't have many problems agaisnt anivia, even more pre 6 you can easily go all in just when you hit 6 as Zed. That being said a good Anivia is still strong against almost everyone.