Suggested Zed Changes

Recently, I have seen many people both on the boards and in-game complain about Zed, culminating with PBE changes to nerf his attack speed. However, these PBE nerfs only hurt Zed's split pushing, something that isn't one of the most complained about issues, and even then they don't hurt his splitting that much. Some of the issues I've seen people have with Zed are his incredibly safe, yet still powerful, laning and assassinations, and overall a lack of weaknesses. In addition, while playing as Zed, the amount of things that make his lategame assassinations hard to pull off (qss, zhonyas, exhaust, etc) can be frustrating.

While thinking on these issues, I came up with a number of small kit changes not intended to either nerf or buff Zed, but to shift his power around to give more meaningful weaknesses while also making playing Zed more enjoyable.

Suggested changes and reasoning:

Passive: Activation range changed to below 20% health, damage changed to 10/12/14% max hp. This change is meant to both nerf Zed's assassination potential with ult, and buff it without ult. By greatly decreasing the activation range, Zed's ability to ult, burst, and then wait for a pop is decreased by preventing his passive from activating in these situations. Meanwhile, if Zed does choose to stick around to auto-attack a low health target, he'll be rewarded with additional damage.

Q: Energy cost changed to 90/80/70/60/50. While this change has almost no effect on Zed once Q is maxed, at lower ranks it increases the amount of energy Zed loses while spamming Q, and makes it so that if Zed uses Q as it comes off cooldown, he will lose all of his energy much more quickly. This will decrease his csing and harassing ability early on, giving enemies a clear window to attack him.

W: Max reactivation range removed. Very slight buff that will have low impact, but makes playing Zed feel better and can add to his safety.

E: W cooldown reduction per enemy champion hit changed to 3 seconds. This change makes it so lategame and midgame, Zed's w has a lower cooldown provided he can consistently hit multiple enemies. Energy gating prevents him from spamming it, but a lower cooldown allows him to better deal damage in teamfights without having to dive, giving Zed a way to continue to contribute even if all enemies have counter items. On top of this, more shadows for Zed is much more enjoyable for a Zed player, providing additional play making opportunities.

R: Cooldown changed to 150/115/80, time spent untargetable changed to 1 second, time before pop changed to 2 seconds. The first change makes Zed's ult not available to him as often at ranks 1 and 2, making it so that while Zed has safe assassinations, they are less frequent. The second change, while minor, provides additional time for an ulted enemy to react to Zed. The third change makes it so zhonyas completely shuts Zed's ult down, and gives Zed less time to auto attack an enemy after his burst is finished.

Overall, these changes, some minor, others major, are intended to give Zed more meaningful weaknesses in the form of a weaker early game and less reliable/frequent, though still safe, assassinations, in exchange for giving Zed more options.

Thanks for reading!