the fact that when people say the word balance nowadays they mean fix zed.

D1rtFarmer·Jan 30, 2015·2 votes·815 views

Does that not speak volumes? every convo about balance comes back to One champ.. the fact he alone is carving out the meta is crazy.

12 Comments

AdanimJan 30, 20151 votes

He is not carving out the meta. People just like to think that he is because he is effective at what he does. Zed can be beaten, we have all seen it, but instead of trying to figure out how to do it people waste their time and energy complaining that a certain champion is op instead.

How can he be beaten? Let's take a look.

Items

There are 2 items in this game that completely shut down Zed's ultimate, which is the core of his power: Zhonya's Hourglass and Mercurial Scimitar. Building one of these items negates the entirety of Zed's ult, which can save your life in teamfights or 1v1 situations.

But people will argue that "If a champion forces you to build an item first that isn't part of your standard build path then that champion is broken and needs to be nerfed."

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. This is all wrong. A champion that is countered by an item has a CLEAR AND DEFINED WEAKNESS, one of the things Riot is trying to push to all champions. If you are fighting Riven/Renekton/Darius/ (insert physical damage top laner here) you build armor to counter their damage output. If fighting Rumble/Kennen/Lissandra/Maokai/Malphite, you build magic resistance to counter their damage. Frozen heart and Thornmail counter Fiora. Frozen heart counters Irelia. Banshees counters burst mages and combo mages. So on and so forth. Building an item to counter a champion does not make them broken.

Zed is an assassin.

An assassin is a champion designed to deal a significant amount of damage to a single target while being mobile yet squishy. Zed is perfect at 1v1. It's one of his main strengths. People try to fight Zed head on by themselves and die and they say "Omg so broken I didn't even have a chance." Of course you didn't have a chance! He is designed to win in those situations. Fight him with 2 people, one with damage and an item listed above to counter his ult, and one with crowd control to hold him in place. Now it will be difficult, but he is supposed to be hard to deal with in the late game.

BUILD ARMOR!

I cannot stress that enough. Yes there are 3 armor penetration items that he builds. Yes that means that he does a lot of damage. But he still does LESS DAMAGE the more armor you have REGARDLESS. BUILD ARMOR.

I know that Zed has energy. I know he has a substantial amount of poke in lane with a gap-closer and an exceptionally powerful single target ult. But he can be beaten. Bait out the shadow before a gank. It's a long cooldown, so force him to flash away. Try again in a few minutes. BUILD ARMOR EARLY. People say that when he builds a Brutilizer he negates a cloth armor. Yes, he does, but if you have one then it's less damage than if you didn't have one. It's math. 10 armor pen removes 10 of the 15 armor on a cloth armor. so if you have 40 armor + 15 from cloth, you have 55 armor, with 45 of it being effective armor. That's 5 more than before. You are still negating more than he is penetrating.

Please, my point here is, try to actually fight a champion with the idea and goal to learn what they can do and learn how to beat them BEFORE you go complaining that they are op. With that mindset you are more likely to be successful. With the "He is op I can't win" mindset, you won't win, because you don't think you will.

"That which you manifest is before you" What you think and believe is what is true.

ValyrianBladeJan 30, 20153 votes

All I'm getting here is that he's supposed to win 1v1 early and mid. He's guaranteed to win 1v1 late, and is going to be hard to beat even 2v1. On top of that, he's incredibly mobile (so if he's in a bad spot he can just escape) and is an exceptional split pusher (partially because he's mobile and a duelist, but also because he wrecks structures fast).

Then the item thing... well firstly there was a patch a while back that made Zhonya's no longer remove death mark (unless that got reverted, I haven't noticed it though). Then on top of that, even if you rush Zhonya's you're not going to have it before Zed hits 6. Meaning he's going to get some ultimates off on you before you have the item to counter. Add to that the fact that Zhonya's is built out of NLR which requires you to base with 1600g. Zed has free poke as you mentioned, he can force a lane where you trade heavily and often and have to base frequently. Nothing in his build requires saving up 1600g. He doesn't even need to rush 1550g for BF Sword on an early item. So he can force repeated backs and come back with items every time, whereas his opponent would need to choose either to return with an item disadvantage to save for NLR (and then you'll just start losing lane) or to buy something else (so you can't rush Zhonya's). At least QSS is more practical (you get the active before the BF Sword needed for Mercurial Scimitar) but you shouldn't be building it against a Zed in lane, so suggesting this item is garbage. It's an item that the ADC builds to deal with Zed later. Why are you building Magic Resist in lane to deal with a champion that has no magic damage? Further, if you're AP, Mercurial Scimitar is a waste of stats for you. So Zhonya's is your only real option.

I'm not saying Zed is unbeatable. I'm just saying he's too good at too many things. One item that is difficult to build is not a meaningful weakness - especially when using said item renders you useless for 2.5 seconds meaning he can just walk away (so you defend against his ult but have no kill potential on him for the outplay). The fact is, right now you have to be significantly better than Zed to beat him in lane. If you're equal in skill or even a touch better, Zed will win in lane. Then he'll roam and win other lanes. Then he'll split push and take objectives and be more impactful late game than you are anyways. Zed is strong all game long - he needs a weak part of game to be bully-able. He's safe in lane due to mobility, has high kill potential with his ult and tower dive ability while being one of the hardest opponents to kill in lane. He's incredible mobile for ganking top/bot via roaming. He's an exceptional duelist. He split pushes late as well as anyone else.

TOO MANY STRENGTHS.

His skill cap is ridiculously high. That's really the only thing keeping him in line right now. It has nothing to do with him being balanced in any way.

SerevasJan 30, 20151 votes

No Zhonyas doesn't stop the application of deathmark, but the stasis prevents the damage, which is just as good. While the build path to Zhonya's is expensive, it's typically a core item on just about every mid lane in the game anyway so I don't see the issue. You're not locked into starting at the 1600, you can pick up Seekers for a total of 1200 which has a build path making it easier to build into anyway. Not to mention that Seekers helps prevent you from getting completely poked out of lane since it starts with 30 armor and it comes with a 25 AP, both of which scale up higher just for you CSing to a total of 45 armor and 40 AP.

As to magic damage you shouldn't forget that Zed's passive does a % of your maximum hp as magic damage so it's not entirely useless to build QSS, while suboptimal, it's not completely wasted.

At the same time, while I entirely agree that he's too strong at too many things, please tell me how to fix him without obliterating all of those things at once? I know I sure can't find a way. He's an assassin, so he needs to do high damage and be mobile to get to his target and do what he is supposed to do, he's AD based so naturally he's going to be strong against turrets which require you to auto attack them to take them down. The only way I can see damaging his game is through item and objective changes, all of which harm every other champion just as much as him. Zed balance is no walk in the park to achieve.

ZetaFLJan 30, 20151 votes

Here's the problem. They are fine with nerfing other champions to the ground in the past, but since they literally have said they like Zed, they are afraid to touch his power, just an AS nerf. Examples? Kassadin could be beaten, albeit hard, it was possible. Now he has the lowest damage out of any assassin. Fizz just got nerfed HARD, but is still somewhat playable. Eve was completely murdered way back when. TF went from must ban to kind of relevant, sometimes (lol yep). Give him a damage amp on his R and reduce other abilities damage. There we go. But dont reduce them to nothingness (poor fizz W).

D1rtFarmerJan 30, 20151 votes

As ive posted before "Another Win For Manaless Champs"

Sightless66Jan 30, 20151 votes

I know I sure can't find a way. He's an assassin, so he needs to do high damage and be mobile to get to his target and do what he is supposed to do, he's AD based so naturally he's going to be strong against turrets which require you to auto attack them to take them down.

I can say the same thing about Talon, and yet he's not nearly so warping. The problem Zed has is extreme safety and an abundance of options at any point of the game and in almost any situation. Solutions would be things targeted at that. There are quite a few options here. If the goal is to make using his shadows riskier for him, solutions could include slightly lowering the damage of his abilities but giving increased reward to hitting with multiple abilities (for example, the second E could actually do damage), or lowering the time that his shadows (ult, regular, or both) stay active for. Other solutions could include lowering his waveclear potential or

There are a lot of options for reducing Zed's extraneous power without hitting either mobility or 1v1 power. Split-pushing, waveclear, great poke, general AoE damage, etc. Any of these can be touched to make up for the strengths has over other assassins. Riot already realized this when they reduced his attack speed. That was a good change, aimed at his split pushing. The problem is that it was nowhere near enough by itself. It's not that hard to nerf Zed without killing him. Riot is just being much, much more cautious with him than they normally are with other champions, because they value him more.

SmokingPuffinJan 30, 20151 votes

At the same time, while I entirely agree that he's too strong at too many things, please tell me how to fix him without obliterating all of those things at once? I know I sure can't find a way.

Proposal:

W costs more energy (100?). A shadow Q or E landing refunds that additional energy (50?). Numbers are placeholders; target is that Zed shouldn't be able to WRQE immediately, and should need to WQRE in order to make 1000 range assassination.
R2 out activates on kill, assist, or death mark trigger. Before that, you can't use it.

With these changes, I'm trying to make Zed less safe. He's still good at killing people, but he can now dive badly and it's also possible for him to not have enough energy to W out of a sticky situation.

ValyrianBladeJan 30, 20151 votes

I'd hit his mobility AFTER he's engaged.

I have no problem with him using W-R to dash a great distance on to me. I hate that he can basically instantly teleport back out before death mark has even popped and be safely away.

I'd suggest changing his W to have a delay before he can dash back to it. Make his R so he can't dash back until Death Mark has popped or been removed. Or even make the death mark deal less damage the farther Zed is away from his target - so if he needs to escape to safety I won't get killed when it pops - give him incentive to stick around after applying it.

He just feels way too safe to me. Honestly, any of the champs that have the ability to dash in and out, or in Lee Sin's case to get vision before deciding whether to go in or not, is problematic. It gives them too many options and too much safety while also introducing offensive power. It's why Lee Sin has been repetitively hit with nerfs - there'd have never been a problem if he didn't get to choose whether to follow his shot in or not (or had a significantly smaller amount of time to choose). Same goes with LeBlanc, I doubt she has her silence removed if she isn't able to dash back with her w. Same goes for Zed - if they don't hit the safe mobility they'll have to ruin another part of his kit to compensate.

SmokingPuffinJan 30, 20151 votes

There are 2 items in this game that completely shut down Zed's ultimate, which is the core of his power: Zhonya's Hourglass and Mercurial Scimitar.

This isn't like "build armor to counter X". Many champions can't reasonably build either item.

For example, Talon versus Zed in the mid lane. What do?

NahuiFeb 4, 20151 votes

You win. Talon beats Zed pretty hard with his counter ult and damage amplification

D1rtFarmerJan 30, 20151 votes

All i heard was.. "Yes, so hes aggressive and yes, he excels everywhere...Everybody knows by now, WAIT FOR A MISTAKE!... DEFEND DEFEND DEFEND Yourself! DUH!"

lol thats all i got from that extremely long defense.

D1rtFarmerJan 30, 20151 votes

i mean hes always in the games. so it seems like u must always defend yourself from this guy whether with specific champ selections or rushing build paths. or so it seems.