I don't know why people are using items to reference counterplay to Zed's assassination combo.
I honestly think that people that use this argument are delusional and/or are Zed mains. Zed has no weakness in laning to compensate for how well he does in fights and how reliable his combo is if he is not behind, especially in soloqueue, and the fact that people use "but such and such item" to "give" him counterplay just shows how truely dumb this champion is. I don't even agree with the current nerf (hardly a nerf) that was given to Zed this patch, he needed either nerfs to his waveclear or his braindead teamfighting/assassination combo, because frankly he's overbearing in every game I play.
TL;DR Saying "get a qss" at the 15 minute mark to couter a clearly dumb mechanic is not a good defence of a clearly dumb mechanic.