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I hit Challenger 1tricking zed and here's my thoughts on how to balance him

Laceration·5/24/2018, 10:54:22 AM·55 votes·19,116 views
Laceration - Summoner Stats - League of Legends

This is all my opinion on what I think zed needs to be at the right spot, obviously i'm bias but read my reasons and tell me what you guys think if you have any better ideas

  • W cooldown reduced from 22/20/18/16/14 to 16/15.5/15/14.5/14
  • R AD reaping removed and W %AD bonus brought back but lower 3%/6%/9%/12%/15%
  • E base damage increased from 70/95/120/145/170 to 75/105/135/165/195 ~ Radius lowered from 290 to 250
  • Base AS increased to 0.658
  • Passive changed, Zed now gains 4% movespeed while unseen scaling to 8% at lvl 18
  • R snapback delay reduced to 0.2sec

For the W changes, I typically find myself rarely even casting W while in lane because of how crippling the cooldown is. I'm always worried If a fight breaks out I won't be able to help, If my laner is playing aggressive it will be very difficult for me to follow up on my junglers gank or i'm worried of the enemy jungler so I just hold onto it unless I can see him/her. The lower cooldown will help zed keep up with the pace league's at right now.

Removing the Reaping passive on zed's ult will nerf his earlygame quit abit, but that's not why it's there in the first place. The designer of Zed said while making him they needed to find a way to make sure once he got to late game he didn't just lose outright, The Reaping passive was so that Zed would be more of a niche pick and not bully out the rest of the assassins from being picked. I can tell you with certainty it does neither of those things. When Zed kills his enemy under deathmark at level 6, he will gain 8 AD for free along with 300gold(8 AD is worth 280g). As you can see this basically means he's killed you twice. The Reaping passive didn't change anything about how or when Zed should be picked, instead it added a really shitty mini game that nobody likes, and makes Zed's power curve wonky.

the W % ad being brought back would smoothen out the powercurve but at a reduced % than it used to be because there's more AD available than there used to be.

the E base damage increase because it feels like it doesn't have much of an impact when you land it. The Range nerf making it harder to hit and harder to use it for W-E-Q poke combo. (for those who don't know, Zed will try to place it either on the right or the left of his target and shoot the Q's the other way which guarantee's 1 hit while making it easier to land both)

Base AS returned to what it was on release so it feels smoother. (it's not big enough of a buff to grant any additional damage, it's just to make his auto feel smoother)

Zed's passive makes Zed harder to balance. Rsnapback delay was added because Zed was riskfree diving low hp targets and pulling off his combo in around 0.25sec. Removing the passive will reduce his damage for a dive by around 10% but also give zed more outplay potential by having more room to decide when he wants to R back while also making him feel smoother. The Passive being changed to MS would just help Zed on doing midlane/assassin things like roaming and flanking.

TLDR: W isn't up enough, Reaping AD passive doesn't do it's job while also giving zed a double kill if you die at 6 and needs to be replaced with a slightly weaker version of his old %AD passive to smoothen his power curve while accounting for the extra AD we get in our build compared to before, E does more damage but has lower radius, QoL AS buff, Trade passive for %movespeed while unseen+ more outplay potential by reducing R snapback delay to 0.2 from 0.5

61 Comments

DW Diana5/24/2018, 12:05:26 PM14 votes

I was expecting a hidden buff but I'm actually liking this idea. Despite what Whoisthisdude says the boards don't hate zed, they hate what he has become, which your propsed changes seem to fix. I especially like the passive changes. As someone who plays both diana and talon mid I know how much you depend on roams and how hard it be with a river of wards. His passive would also help him know when he's been spotted which would be cool for him

dunder kill5/24/2018, 11:53:47 AM10 votes

Oh boy you've come to the wrooooonnnnngggg place. This board has a hateboner for Zed.

Madsin255/24/2018, 3:51:08 PM6 votes

"I don't throw my W out in lane"

Wow I wish I fought more zeds that never use W.

I just have one issue with the W cooldown decrease...it is also your escape. You have a choice to make and the trade off is pretty clear.

BALDG1VEN BOOMER5/24/2018, 1:19:17 PM5 votes

While I usually expect a main to be bias the changes aren’t too bad.

But, Zed is doing fine right now and is already at a pretty marginal ban rate of 30% because people don’t enjoy playing against him any buffs to him at this point is just playing with fire.

TricolorStar5/24/2018, 7:55:25 PM4 votes

How can you play him if I keep banning him

D357R0Y3R5/24/2018, 1:38:50 PM4 votes

before you change him wait to see what would happen with total armor pen being back

i like the changes except ult snapback

Elohaven5/24/2018, 8:59:47 PM4 votes

Good post.

I hate Zed with a passion but I can't argue against this. I agree with these changes.

BobaFlautist5/24/2018, 2:27:47 PM3 votes

I like the passive change because it means he has to actually last hit.

Zerenza5/24/2018, 6:25:46 PM3 votes

I kind of agree, but kind of disagree. The only part of laning against zed as a really squishy low mobility target is playing around his W cooldown, his trade in lane is pretty hard to avoid sometimes and if he chunks you enough he'll just snap to his W and kill you with an auto attack+ignite, though i guess removing his passive bonus damage would alleviate that though.

I will say this to, the passive change is good but should be higher, 4% isn't very much, i think it should start higher, scale the same, so start at 8 scale to 12%. His R execute can be annoying but it's honestly not the core reason he can be such an oppressive champion, it's mainly his safety in lane and high amount of escape's, so the R snapback change i don't really like, since insta-gimping a zed who made a bad choice(just like any assassin) is kind of the best way to stop him.

I'd honestly just lower the damage on his Q's a little bit, since they did recently buff it and you can definitely feel it when he W+Q+AA's you late game from a bush, like good on him for landing them but i do think it could use a tiny little nerf to it's scaling, since most of the time the trouble i have with Zed is Mid-Late not Early game.

Total Eclipse5/24/2018, 7:46:55 PM3 votes

These changes sound really healthy, my only problem is that Zed is completely broken right now. He can 1shot ADCs with suuuch a minimal amount of gold. I like a lot of these ideas, but if all of this went through, he would also need his Q damage nerfed. Thats my opinion. REally good insight on the passive though.

Leonerdo5/24/2018, 10:57:11 PM3 votes

W cooldown reduced from 22/20/18/16/14 to 16/15.5/15/14.5/14

W is Zed's most powerful ability in-lane. It provides his best poke, wave clear, and escape. So 6 seconds off the CD is a HUGE buff. I'm not saying this is a bad suggestion, but I think 6 seconds is way too much.

R AD reaping removed and W %AD bonus brought back but lower 3%/6%/9%/12%/15%

I agree that the passive on his R currently gives too much at lvl 6 even against mages. However, it serves a purpose that you didn't mention: to focus Zed on killing AD targets. I think a better solution is to just change the what the scaling is based on from target's total AD to target's bonus AD.

E base damage increased from 70/95/120/145/170 to 75/105/135/165/195 ~ Radius lowered from 290 to 250

I think the goal of making his E less reliable is a good goal, but I'm not sure this will be enough, considering how quickly Zed can position his shadow/himself next to his target. Additionally, it has potentially side-effects like decreasing his team-fight AoE and messing with his waveclear patterns. It would require some playtesting to really know what this change does in reality. I'm pretty skeptical.

Base AS increased to 0.658

Giving Zed more AS just means he can splitpush better and maybe kill people better without abilities. I'd rather just give him a better attack frame (although that's a more than a number fix and would require more resources). Maybe give him some level 1 AS, but worse scaling. I doubt this is a serious issue in any case; I don't think it's worth changing at all. I could be wrong, though.

Passive changed, Zed now gains 4% movespeed while unseen scaling to 8% at lvl 18

Does Zed really need more mobility? Even more than the W buff gives? And doesn't this kinda step on Talon's toes (map-mobility). It can also be abused for checking for wards: no MS boost = Zed is standing on a ward. And besides if Zed wants for mobility, he can always get mobi boots or Ghostblade. I just really don't think he needs any more.

R snapback delay reduced to 0.2sec

Honestly, I think the snapback just makes Zed feel like crap more than it provides his enemies any realistic chance of killing him. Either you have the CC to stun-lock Zed while he's comboing his target, or you don't and he gets away. The snapback delay hardly factors into it all. I'd say the delay should be removed entirely, except there needs to be a tiny one for clarity purposes and so that Zed can't abort instantaneously if he realizes he ulted poorly. Basically the duration of the delay should be the same as (or less than) the time it takes for his combo, so there's always a tiny window to CC him (and time for Soraka's Silence or Singed/Cass's Grounding to take effect). But it shouldn't be so long that Zed has to sit around waiting after doing his whole combo just because of the artificial delay. (I wish this wasn't my biggest paragraph, but that is the nature of how nit-picky the snapback delay really is. Ugh.)

KZ Engel5/24/2018, 10:58:20 PM3 votes

2tricking zed and kayn*

Beacon Academy5/25/2018, 7:16:33 AM1 votes

Upvoted simply for no longer being able to easy farm minions under tower.

taleofsonata5/25/2018, 1:34:29 PM1 votes

So you want him to spam more WEQ 1 shot?

BakedLotion5/25/2018, 4:26:02 PM1 votes

How'd u onetrick Zed if he's always banned xd

Goku San8/21/2018, 8:57:43 AM1 votes

Do you stream bro? I'd love to watch you play. Stylish is cool and entertaining but he doesn't always tryhard and hes lower elo

FéliXXX9/1/2018, 2:44:44 PM1 votes

i hope they look at ur post i think is quite reasonable it would be nice to feel good playing zed again like i agree with u and the post specially with the w cd ive been playing him since s5 and id like to see some changes on him to keep it up with other champs of his class

nm10105/24/2018, 4:24:09 PM1 votes

I like the changes, though without the passive he could probably get ~5 ad to help low elo last hit.

ForFoxSakes5/24/2018, 5:42:55 PM1 votes

You want to get rid of his execute auto attack w the passive too? That's a good chunk of his all in damage

KlydeFrog5/24/2018, 6:36:24 PM1 votes

Or people should be smart and start playing zil agaisnt him since zil counters him more then anyother champ

Kyunsei5/24/2018, 8:58:48 PM1 votes

Removing damage from passive ?

Upvoted.

Backup4now5/24/2018, 10:56:09 PM1 votes

That passive is a huge change, and one that (even if balanced) will probably remove fun from the character. Unseen movement speed? And at such a low quantity? Am I reading this right? That's the most unnoticeable unsatisfying ability I've ever seen. Even Riot would never do that. Think of something else.

Noor Sakata5/25/2018, 12:56:01 AM1 votes

Actually , the W buff is big , he is already using it a lot to poke in lane , with e and q , as for lowering his E radius , not sure if it's a good idea since he isn't that great in team fights , but as for the rest , yeah good suggestions

Malicious Metal5/25/2018, 1:10:39 AM1 votes

God bless that passive change. Part of my strat as Mid Mordekaiser is pushing in my lane opponent and making them miss a shittton of minions since I force them under tower 24/7, it's how I assure I do get at least a gold lead in that regard.

And then there's Zed who doesn't seem to give a shit about being forced under tower since he gets free last hitting.

Asolend5/25/2018, 4:15:47 AM1 votes

I think the .5 r snapback should be kept. It leaves some room for counterplay, and forces you to decide on whether to go in or not, depending if they have cc. It also forces you to choose between setting up a w before to escape or using it to chase. I like the other changes though.

I NEED HEALlNG5/25/2018, 4:18:45 AM1 votes

i'mma tell you rn, Buffing his E is NOT a good idea. Almost everyone already gets one shot by it already

PokladnicaZla5/25/2018, 4:33:58 AM1 votes

Instead of reverting the bonus AD to his W , why not let him gain %AD based of the target he ultied? if he kills the target the AD remains for X seconds* Using R on AD would be better than on AP champions ( especially mages who struggle against him)?

Skorch5/25/2018, 4:42:09 AM1 votes

Personally a few of these look like buffs to good players, nerfs to bad ones. Which wouldnt be much of an issue if Zed wasnt a pubstomper in low elo if you know what your doing anyway. In otherwords, with the context of skill, this (while being somewhat neutral) can be a decent buff to zed as well.

Also dont touch my last hit passive, I dont play zed, at all, but god do I love his passive.