The REAL problem about Zed

He synergizes too well with low cost items.

1. Brutalizer. If he gets this on his first back, he has such a strong kill potential. And good luck itemizing against him because he has armor pen now!
2. Yomuu's. Adds chase potential or disengage potential on top of his ability to shadow play out of any situation, as well as give him extra split pushing power
3. BOTRK. While not so cheap, the early cutlass helps his ult and helps him stick to targets (with a slow and 2 shadows to play with already). When he finishes BORK, it gives him a massive power spike and split pushing power
4. Last Whisperer. Ehhhh this item is just too strong in general, but there goes any attempt of trying to survive his burst

As you can see, he gets these low cost super efficient items and then becomes a monster. Riot addressed that the fact that he can 1 v 1 anyone and still have super splitpushing/tower wrecking ability is why they think he is too strong. Simply, it's because of these items. Jax, Tryndamere, Master Yi, etc. are all examples of excellent 1 v 1 champions who excel at split pushing, yet they aren't considered "OP". So why does Zed stand out?

1. Super strong lane phase from level 1 with no weak point. Q damage early prohibits any sort of favorable trades, as well as his passive. At level 2, he now was high range poke, and safe farming as well as an escape. At level 3, he has an abundance of waveclear. At level 6, he has all in potential, even under turret with ease of escape. Once he gets an early kill, he snowballs incredibly hard, with a safe escape to ensure that he doesn't get shut down.

2. A "fail save". When Riot changed his ult way back when so that the shadow appears at his target rather than shooting one behind his target, he is able to chase someone and then shadow back (on a 6 second delay too, which is a long time to hold it). This means that if he doesn't kill his target he can use his fail save to get out with little to no drawback (ult is on short CD).

3. AD bonus on his high scaling/base kit. He has high amounts of scaling and damage on very very short cooldowns, but the real kicker is that he has a secondary bonus AD passive. This means that low cost items (as mentioned above) are extra efficient.

4. 625 range Invulnerability. I love this part of his kit, I think it is a great mechanic to allow flashy plays, and great outplay potential, but on top of his overloaded kit, there needs to be some sort of drawback, like perhaps making it not at 625 range so that he can use it from farther than most champions (like 95%) auto range so that there is an ability to kite him. Having it at 300-400 range to allow counterplay (he has a good gapcloser as is) would be a healthier range to add more high risk high reward. If you can keep him at bay, then you have countered him, but if you can't then he deletes you. High risk, high reward. See how that works? Not 625 range with a 550 instant gap closer.

5. He has so much damage, that his ult becomes just a gap closer. Zed's design is to use his ult to reflect large amounts of damage within 3 seconds. However, he deals so much upfront damage in less than a second (remember how panth could use abilities before he landed in man drop? Zed can use abilities slightly before he is targetable allowing him to pull off full combo before even being targetable). This turns his ult into more of a gap closer/ way of getting the shadow to get out, rather than being an addition to his burst

All in all, this is a lot of blah blah blah, nerf zed, his kit too strong blah blah. Which yes, it is. Mechanically he has potential to be such a fun to play/watch champion with ability to make some flashy plays, but at this point, he has soooo much power that it is not fun to watch or play with or against.
Lower his base damages, scrap his bonus AD, revert his ult shadow, lower its range and Greatly increase his ult percentage damage. This way, he has less power up front but with good ults and shadow play can still instantly delete ANYONE, not just squishies, but with counterplay potential and smart play.
To me, this is how his design should be, revolved around his ult with shadow mechanics, not ult from a great distance, mash all your keys at once and then R to safety.

I hope that I don't sound like another sour Zed critic because I really enjoy his design, and when he first came out, watching some of the highlight reals of his plays was exciting, but now its just frustrating, and I want him to a place with a high skill cap, but not sooo low of a skill floor.

And I know this thread is probably a little late, but I want Riot to do it right. I know they are trying to make champion design itself stand out as what that champion is, and this is the effective way to do that.