Why Zed FEELS Unfair (Even if He Really Isn't)

I've seen that Zed is a massive debate amongst the boards and possibly the League community in general. And to be honest, I think I might know why. First and foremost, I want to say that I love playing Zed. He's one of my four MR5 champs and I own both Shockblade and PROJECT skins. He's a fun champion that can make plays and be relatively consistent without being abusive or binary- a rarity among League's assassin class. But that's not to say he's above accusations of abuse.

Back in Patch 5.17 Riot made a change to Zed that meant he could no longer get a mimicked shuriken if he used his W fast enough after activating his Q. While Riot fixed this, what they haven't changed is something that lets him pull off the very same combination of E into W to get the mimicked Shadow Slash the instant the shadow appears.

Shadow Slash's mimicked version has a 20-40% slow attached to it, and landing that spell makes it much easier for Zed to follow-up with his Shadow Shuriken, possibly landing both of them and getting not only that huge chunk of damage, but adding onto it with the most common keystone taken by Zeds; Thunderlord's Decree. I think this combination right here is why Zed feels so infuriating to some people, even when the statistics might say he's in a good spot performance-wise. And I think changing this might be what helps mend the divide.

Riot has made it clear (especially with the recent Nidalee changes on PBE) that they prefer removing invisible power over giving opportunities to display mechanical mastery. Perhaps by reducing the reliability with which Zed can land that deceptively long-ranged slow and redistributing that power to a more visceral aspect of his kit, Zed can be made to feel more fair and less oppressive to his enemies while still maintaining relative gameplay and performance balance.

Something like this would reduce Zed's flashy highly-technical playmaking (I've seen the duel of Zeds video a few times myself, I know this little technique has been around for quite a while), but to be perfectly honest I don't think Zed needs something like this. He's got a solid theme, a solid kit, and all-around solid ratios. Removing the ability to near-instantly place the copy-E wherever one wants to without tipping off the enemy would mean that the things that already make Zed fun and great could be further improved upon, and perhaps people playing against Zed wouldn't feel so shitty about it. I mean I'll admit, the only reason this came to mind as a reasonable course of action was because I thought Riot had said they removed his ability to do this, and I was quite annoyed to see that people were still "abusing this bug". The egg on my face when I realized my mistake; thank Bard/Aurelion Sol/Nagakeboros/Kindred/etc for actually checking your references.

TL;DR: I think removing Zed's ability to place Living Shadow while it's performing Shadow Slash and putting that power elsewhere in his kit would make Zed feel less oppressive to play against without actually sacrificing his viability and performance. Win-win, right?