Zed needs to be fixed. Here's why.

Hey guys, i'm Nightlash, a diamond zed main. I am also an officer in the Zed club on NA. I usually play in d5-d3 a lot and I wanted to address the problems that I feel Zed has right now. These opinions are shared with me and my fellow Zed mains in the club whom are all plat and above. Zed is a champion that once mastered to a high level of skill, can carry games by mechanics and smart play. Or so he should be. The state of zed right now is in dire need of fixing. I will divide the post on why zed is weak into multiple sections. Please give this post a read before throwing biased opinions against the champion, it would mean a lot.

I. Lane Phase and Gameplay

1. Living Shadow (W cooldown) Zed's lane phaseused to be a notorious part of zed. His ability to dominate lane was well known by all players. However now his laning feels terrible. First off, his W cooldown. Level 1 W is 22 seconds. For Zed's main source of trading this is an outrageously long cooldown. In higher elos, W has to be used very carefully. Sometimes you cant even trade because you need to save it for when you get ganked or roaming to help your jungler with scuttle control. You usually do not level up this ability after you get it at level 2/3 because you need damage from your other abilities.
2. Itemization Right now it is very easy to itemize versus Zed. With how cheap seekers armguard is you can almost always achieve it after an early back which significantly decreases Zed's damage. Along with that, they can also go tabi. That completely takes away Zed's damage for a significant amount of the early and even mid game. Even with those two items they still can outrade you due to how weak you are. Magic pen is easily accessible while armor pen is harder to get built, stuff like LW and BC arent very strong until later in the game. Zed is completely useless versus many tanky/bruisers champions until LATE LATE into the game. You have to have a LDR BC and rest of your lethality items in order to have a CHANCE in killing them. Most of them will still be able to fuck you over. Examples of this are: Jax, Garen, Renekton, Darius. Stopwatch is another pain the ass for Zed. Not really from the active, but because of how it builds into Zhonyas. With how cheap the other two components are it just makes it very easy to rush this item.
3. Nerfs to Domination Tree When nerfing other electrocute users riot messed with Zed and did not give him any compensation buffs in return. In theory, the electrocute changes SHOULD be better for laners due to the lower CD and more frequent trades. However the amount of damage zed does is already too weak and the damage nerf on electrocute, sudden impact, and scorch hurt him pretty bad. Another thing I wanted to mention that might not have to do with Zed but the general state of the game is the new runes system. Riot implemented the new Runes Reforged system with hopes of creating more diverse playstyles for champions and for the players. However in my opinion it ended up leading to the same result as before, and actually made it worse. Before with old runes you were able to customize what you wanted to take into certain matchups, there was more flexibility. Anyways back to Zed.
4. R snapback delay Back then riot implemented a delay to zed's ultimate shadow so he cannot instantly port back. However curently theres just too many ways to screw Zed over once he ults, especially in the later game. You are forced to W R W if you want to port out instantly from ur R which forces u to use ur W earlier on. This also means that your W is set out and your opponents can play against it. Late game you are almost forced to buy an Edge of Night to play around the snapback delay.

_II. Why play Zed? _

1. Perception of Zed When people think of Zed, they usually think about those high elo Zed mains who make those awesome 1v3 outplays like LL Stylish does, or they think of the silver/gold Zed mains who try to do that and end up feeding. The point being, Zed is a champion that allows players to showcase their level of mastery on the champion. Yes, most of the player base is in lower elo and that means Riot has to cater towards the whole player base, not just the higher elo ones. But I don't think thats a good enough reason to completely allow a champion to be irrelevant for so long due to certain players whining about how they dont like playing versus the champion. Zed mains have feelings too guys.

2. Why play Zed when you can play stuff like Talon? Talon is a the best example of a champion that does Zed's job 100x better. Talon has a great laning phase, even after the nerfs. He has great roaming, even after celerity nerfs. He has lower cooldowns. He is punished less when he uses CDs. Talon is just BETTER. So why would I play Zed when I can play Talon which requires way less time to master and is completely better than Zed, no dispute. You could even say Talon is a better Zed than Zed. Talon is able to buy tiamat and still do more damage than Zed. He also gets wave clear from it then just roams all game?? Zed? Nah. If I wanted to do that as quick id have to spam all my abilities then wait 22 seconds for my w to comeback up! _ III. Zed Masters_

Currently we only have ONE consistent masters/challenger player who MOSTLY plays Zed, Laceration. Other notorious zed mains have just been in elos that they shouldnt be most of the time. LL Stylish is an example of a challenger level player who is struggling to get to challenger only playing Zed and has to rely on other champions to climb.

IV. Future of Zed

1. Riot has mentioned that they are going to buff tanks, and with how zed is hes going to be bad I think thats enough said.
2. Other champions will be way more viable than he is if this keeps up
3. No consistent way to climb with Zed due to shifts in meta

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant on Zed's current state, and feel free to give back your opinions. I'll try to reply to them when I have a chance and give my input.