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Can Zed be changed to have more difficulty managing costs?

BearExperiment·9/8/2016, 12:28:21 PM·1 votes·523 views

The character is incredibly popular. Part because he looks like a bad ass ninja, but it is also because he is very easy to play. There isn't really any thought in his burst. I don't think he needs a nerf by any means, I would just like to see him tweaked to take a bit more skill to play, but be more rewarding for skilled players.

Lee Sin is an example of an energy champion that takes some thought in cost management, Lee can't just slam 4 fingers on QWER if they are off CD. You are limited to not being able to use every skill at once, which is the way energy champions should work.

I would like to see if anyone has any better ideas than what I have to make him harder to play, but still about the same in power.

Make poking more rewarding by increasing the damage dealt by your living shadow clones mimicking your abilities, (specifically the shuriken, right now I hardly see Zed players making any use of the fact that the shadows can throw shurikens too, because they don't need to.) Then make it more difficult to ult in and delete some one safely by increasing the energy cost of the second part of living shadow, so if you throw all of your damaging abilities at some one at once, there will be some wait to gain enough energy to swap positions with a shadow back to safety.

Skilled Zed players would be more rewarded by being creative with their poking in lane, but would have a harder time 100-0'ing someone with absolute safety. If you poke well enough you can still have enough energy to swap with a shadow to safety since you did a good job grinding your target's health down first.

4 Comments

Tea Enthusiast9/8/2016, 1:36:28 PM2 votes

'easy to play' jesus save me

dominusx9/8/2016, 12:40:54 PM1 votes

so bla bla bla maybe makes his shadow cost energy to teleport? dunno i always found zed MEH after the mobility nerfs he got so i dunno they just need to make scimitar remove his ult NOT QSS the whole item and he is balanced

Lao Fu the Tiger9/8/2016, 5:08:33 PM1 votes

*...right now I hardly see Zed players making any use of the fact that the shadows can throw shurikens too, because they don't need to. *

As somebody who plays Zed rather extensively, my perspective is quite opposite yours. People who really understand how to play Zed will almost always make it a priority to hit both Qs on the enemy for three key reasons:

  1. W>E>Qx2 procs Thuderlord's Decree. Hitting one alone does not. This is a fairly large chunk of damage missed if the shadow's Q doesn't connect.
  2. Recently, Zed's base Q damage was nerfed and his reward for hitting both Qs was bumped from 50% the original damage up to 75% the original damage.
  3. The shadow's cooldown is massive for a significant chunk of the game. In the early game, wasting a shadow by using it as nothing but a zoning tool / E harass mechanism is never worth being 20+ seconds without a shred of mobility outside of Flash.

Remember, Zed's strong points are his early and mid game. His primary design revolves around him being able to kill you in lane. By comparison, his teamfighting and late game are very weak. On the other end of the spectrum, consider Katarina, who has a rather hard time in lane due to low base health and weak harass but who scales incredibly well and cleans up teamfights with ease.