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Zed Balance Discussion

Arkerin··1 votes·1,055 views

I know a lot of people have a hatred for a lot of assassins, and this guy Zed tends to be one of the champions that the community constantly criticizes. In this thread, I would like to have a discussion on why I think (and what the community thinks) is balanced and what is broken about Zed. Here, I am going to list what I think is balanced about out shadowy friend.

  1. Zed's kit has quite a bit of counterplay to it.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Arkerin-sempai, how could a champ that has two blinks and tons of damage have counterplay?" There are quite a few answers to this question, the first having to do with itemization. Yes, you heard it here folks. For just one small payment of 3300 gold, you can get yourself a shiiiiiiny new car item 3157 Zhonya's Hourglass! This magical item allows you to become invulnerable to all damage sources for 2.5 whole seconds. Don't use AP? No problem! For just one payment of 1250 gold (down from 1550 a few patches ago), you can cleanse the Death Mark of Zed with a item 3140 Quicksilver Sash, causing him to completely waste his ultimate on you and cry. Purchasing either of these items vs Zed is going to make it way harder for him to kill you straight up.

Another reason why his kit has counterplay is because of his Energy Costs. There is a big yellow bar underneath Zed's HP that displays just how much energy he has at his disposal. This gives the opponent playing against Zed ample opportunities to punish him where he can't really fight back. This also requires the Zed player to be good at managing his Energy and knowing when he has enough to be a threat or not. This displays healthy patterns in playstyle where Zed has to constantly decide whether to use his energy now to poke you, to save it for an escape, or to wait for a better opportunity. It also allows his opponent to act accordingly.

The final reason is because a lot of his damage is avoidable. His Deathmark can be QSS'd or Zhonya'd. His Q is a skillshot, his E is basically melee range and if you avoid his shadows you avoid a lot of his potential damage. With time and practice, you can actually learn to counter Zed pretty well.

  1. Zed is extremely inefficient in teamfights.

This is a bit more debatable, but I believe that Zed, unless played at his highest possible level, just sucks in teamfights. He gets CC'd, he gets bursted, he gets kited, he gets peeled, and all these other amazing things I'm glad are in this game. Honestly, Zed is hard as hell to play, and even more so in teamfights. Seriously, go watch a high level game where Zed tries to join a real 5v5 teamfight. He'll stay in the back doing nothing but throwing Qs until one target happens to misposition. This is an even bigger weakness in competitive, as it forces Zed to stick to splitpushing for most of the lategame.

  1. Zed tends to get outscaled by other assassins.

Compare Zed to Fizz Leblanc Rengar Talon Akali Katarina . All of these champions have reliable, unavoidable damage that comes in huge bursts. A lot of these champions also have ways of efficiently teamfighting, while also having amazing dueling potential. A good Leblanc can kite Zed with her chains and outplay his shadows with her Distortions. A good Fizz can just avoid his damage window altogether with Playful/Trickster. Talon can 100-0 Zed once Zed ults, and can use Shadow Assault to hide from Zed's combo during Death Mark. And the list goes on.

However, I do agree that some aspects of Zed can be completely unhealthy. But one tends to stick to me the most.

CRITS

Crits themselves aren't as bad as people make them out to be. It's when a champion who is supposed to have windows of opportunity to kill you, can kill you off of randomness despite you outplaying his damage window in his Death Mark. Just imagine, you're playing Ahri. Zed Deathmarks on you, and then you zhonyas. You then use your spells to get away from his damage at half HP. Suddenly, BOOM. Crit + Passive Damage. Oneshot. Tears and blood. And then Lucian's level 2 power spike. Ugh.

I don't really see a way of getting around this though. As an Attack Damage based champion, Zed always will have the option of buying crit. And reworking Zed into an AP champion would be a poor choice for identity reasons. If Riot could find some way to stop Zed's critting from being so oppressive (maybe making Death Mark not scale with crits, therefore making it far less efficient on him?)

And with all that said, now I turn to Rioters and the Community and ask, what do you think should stay the same about Zed? What do you think should be different? Discuss.

7 Comments

Lord Dusteon1 votes

Uhm. When your list of counterplay is stuck to a 3300 gold AP item that must be rushed, or a 1250 item that ONLY PROVIDES MR VS AN AD ASSASSIN, you know something is wrong. Counterplay shouldn't be stuck to "buy these massive cost items first or die" or "instantly flash if I press R and try to never get hit by my Q spam".

DeadXera1 votes

Well I mean, another option is use your range advantage and keep him low enough that to all-in you would mean death...

Arkerin1 votes

It's not just the items themselves. Say you're an AP mage and you get item 3191 . You now have 30-50 armor for your laning phase. This will be a burden on Zed, as without decent ArPen and assuming you can farm well enough, he won't be able to 100-0 you through it.

In lane, when you see Zed has enough energy for a good combo, just play a bit safer. If he uses skills to farm or poke, abuse his cooldowns and initiate a trade with him. Then, after you've taken off, say 1/5 of his HP, just back off when his energy regens. Rinse and repeat. If he never chooses to poke with his abilities, you get a safe farm lane that allows you to grab Zhonya's as quickly as possible.

Knight SoIaire 1 votes

you know that those items dont counter zed? they stop him indeed but they dont counter him the only real counter item is mikaels cruicible and the only real counter summmoner is exshaust

zed sucks when it comes to counterplay because his kit is made around weaknesses that are removed by other gimmicks of his kit -he is the most healthy assasin due to his ult requiring 3 seconds to blow up, yet the rest of his kit allows him to effectively kill without it or even before it detonates -he can get zhonyad or qqs'd but he can get crits and become completly unreliant of his ult besides gapclosing, not to mention that his ult's cd is lower than this of qq's and zhonyas after her puts a second point in it -he is meele but his kit allows him to effectively outrange mages on top of safe farming -he is an all inner but has outshining poke

basicaly any weakness you can find about zed is negated by other part of his kit but thats not a real issue the real issue is that mana regen nerfs made him actualy op before zed was tradeable, other mages could just fir back, now they cant since they will run out of mana fast, so zed is free to deny their cs and slowly churn their hp while he is at it, all of it while holding his w to escape, while mages need to conserve their little mana pool

zed's ballance is off because mana vs energy ballance is off, zed needs to e tuned to match the man vs energy ballance

some people say zed isnt op, and they are right zed isnt op, but riot made everything else up so zed has no equal atm

the energy mechaniic makes him the healthiest assasin ecause he does everything he needs to do to e viable and good, but he cant just spam you to infinity with it, but as i said mana nerfs made him able to overcome his weaknesses (or rather enemies became unable to actualy exploit them)

Arkerin1 votes

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question but, how exactly does Mikael's counter Zed? The active only removes Crowd Control, therefore not working on his Death Mark.

The first point seems just like numbers are too high then. Tune down the numbers on his basic abilities and it will make him more ult reliant. Or, in theory, at least.

I already covered how crit is the one thing I always thought was keeping Zed in a bit of the OP status in my opinion.

Also Zed's poke damage isn't really that great. Unless you're sitting in a spot that both his Q and his shadow's Q are going to hit you first, it's actually not as good as a Mage's poke.

And I never really thought about the whole Mana Regen problem. Seems to me more like Mana Regen is in need of a buff. And I'm totally not just saying that because I play Lux and Anivia. tsk tsk What could make you think such a thing?

Knight SoIaire 1 votes

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question but, how exactly does Mikael's counter Zed? The active only removes Crowd Control, therefore not working on his Death Mark.

sorry then i though it works on death mark

Also Zed's poke damage isn't really that great. Unless you're sitting in a spot that both his Q and his shadow's Q are going to hit you first, it's actually not as good as a Mage's poke.

this is a skill dependant topic on the other side he can spam this poke into infinity meanign that it will eventualy outpoke the enemy

And I never really thought about the whole Mana Regen problem. Seems to me more like Mana Regen is in need of a buff. And I'm totally not just saying that because I play Lux and Anivia. tsk tsk What could make you think such a thing?

the thing is that mana was op mages were gated by it only for a couple minutes then they had chalice and infinite literaly infinite mana zed was ballanced to keep up with manaless mages, thats why he is a problem now, mages cant fight him back because they go oom while zed pokes like mad also mana nerfs created some very effective and very toxic strategies zeds use with the biggest offender being zed pushing the vave like made just to force enemies to waste mana by keeping their minions from dying to the turret, in the end mage was either out of mana or out of farm, so mages got rekt and zedgot loads of ways to toy with that

GummyBearWookiee1 votes

Run exhaust, know how to bait out his shadow...gee...balance achieved.

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