Pun aside, nerfing his attackspeed was the most useless change you could have done. Energy sustain, mobility (safety) and burst - especially the interaction of his ultimate with active items - are the main issues for him being over the top.
Sire Hippington2 votesi hoenstly disagree here.
his AS was the best point to nerf, it just wasn't nerfed hard enough.
The idea behind lowering his as(especially base AS) is reduceing his synergie with 
, makeing them and their actives a suboptimal choice for him.
The main problem with Zed is that he's a ad-caster/assasin, but he itemizes for dps and thus can easily kill tanks 1v1. Further more, thanks to the AA focus, he doesn't really need to land his Q, and thx to the double active+his own mobillity, it's impossible to kite him even with high mobillity champs.
In theorie, Zed is actually a healthy assasin, he needs 3sec to kill, he needs(should need) to stick those 3 seck to the target, and he needs to land his skillshot(s)
currently he bypasses all that by getting BotrK+yomuuns, going melee-adc with a 25% ad steroid and a 50% damage amp.
without those items, you could counterplay him better, actually stand a chance as a tank and he would be less threatening without ult while haveing less dps vs objectives aswell.
If simply scraping his AS to take away AA-centered builds isn't enough, i think lowering Q damage but increasing the damage for landing two Q(own+shadow), so he actually needs to land the double hit.
If he starts to one-combo people as ad-caster without needing to stick 3 sec to a target. simply lower his E damage and cd, so he needs to land two Es duering ult for a kill combo
as a sidenote, his splitpushing is what pushes him over the top, mostly resulting from his AA-focused build allowing to 1v1 tanks/bruisers with ease while shredding towers.
ProfDrDeath1 votesTheoretically, it could be enough. Zed loses over 10% of his attack speed with the change, even with BotRK, and only loses less than 10% with Youmuu's being active, as well.
That being said, if the nerf is not enough, they could theoretically go and convert Living Shadow's bonus AD into bonus damage for Q, E and R, based on AD ratios. For example, like this: Bonus damage on Q and R: 5/10/15/20/25% bonus AD. Bonus damage on E: 4/8/12/16/20% bonus AD. This would serve to make his abilities hit harder, but to not increase the power of his auto-attacks further - reducing his affinity for auto-attacks.
SmokinSickStyle1 votesJust a correction, his 25% AD steroid comes from BONUS AD, which means that if you don't build any AD, barely any AD will be give out for free, W is also maxed last so 25% Bonus AD steroid is not as impactful as you think, it's just a very small bonus if you go for a DPS build.
Riven's ult or Yi's are better steroid because they scale on TOTAL AD.
Kuroi861 votesIn the 5.1 notes, we mentioned Zed as a good example of what we refer to as a "Healthy Assassin" - but that doesn't come without its own set of balancing woes. To help bring Zed in line with other champions while preserving his power as a competitive option, we've looked toward his strengths outside of pure assassination - in this case, attacking his ability to split-push by lowering his attack speed.
Zed's pattern of poking from a distance and waiting for the moment to strike is layered with counterplay and complexity. That is, up until his AD items remove the need for his spells, allowing just a few auto-attacks to seal your fate. With a base and scaling attack speed rivaling that of Xin Zhao and Tryndamere, Zed's auto-attacks were as much a menace to champions as they were to towers. He'll still be effective in a side-lane due to his strengths in 1-v-1 duels, but taking power here allows us to keep his damage output focused in landing spells and using combos effectively.
Looks like Riot hit him where expected, in his wave clear and split pushing. What you listed, are what Riot calls healthy.
