5 Changes to balance Zed

Kingsgrave·Jan 19, 2015·9 votes·1,673 views

An AD Caster Assassin shouldn't be able to build and instaburst people with practically no actual AD nor should he be able to siege towers or push nearly as hard as he can

Honestly though, I don't think any of Zed's problems are related to his wave clear or his poke. Its his ability to just R you and insta kill you without any real amount of AD or effort. He also has no real risk since he can easily escape after using his R.

Zed must be within 550 range of a shadow in order to jump to it whether it be a W shadow or an R shadow
Death Mark only counts damage dealt by Zed's abilities and passive instead of counting any and all damage from Zed including items
5/10/15/20/25% increased Bonus AD on Zed's W removed
Base Attack Speed and scaling per level reduced to .625(+1%) from .658(+3.1%)
Zed no longer becomes untargetable upon casting his Ultimate

50 Comments

JunkοJan 19, 20158 votes

1 and 5 would make Zed unplayable and unviable.

2 and 4 won't solve anything because Zed will just buy glass cannon AD, making his burst hurt even more than now since atm he builds fighter(ish)

3 shouldn't have ever existed in the first place, it's literally just there for free power

RaptameiJan 19, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Rainbowe Dash,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p63FuQyw,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2015-01-19T14:03:36.307+0000)

1 and 5 would make Zed unplayable and unviable.

As if that made a difference for Syndra.

JunkοJan 19, 20152 votes

Syndra is bugged to hell atm (mainly stun)

FadedpfJan 19, 20154 votes

More like.

Remove W passive

Lower attack speed per level

Make ult take 4/2/0 second to go back to its original place. (no more level 6 dives with no consequences boyz)

Make damage of ult only apply to zeds damage as you said.

Make abilities cost more energy but regain if enemies are hit. So you can spam for a while but no more than 4 pokes....

Make passive only work on champions. (no more easy cs under turret and etc just because YOURE A NINJA)

And there you go. Zed will essentially a talon with slight more mobility. AND WEAKNESSES.

KingsgraveJan 19, 20152 votes

{quoted}

More like.

Remove W passive

Lower attack speed per level

Make ult take 4/2/0 second to go back to its original place. (no more level 6 dives with no consequences boyz)

Make damage of ult only apply to zeds damage as you said.

Make abilities cost more energy but regain if enemies are hit. So you can spam for a while but no more than 4 pokes....

Make passive only work on champions. (no more easy cs under turret and etc just because YOUR A NINJA)

And there you go. Zed will essentially a talon with slight more mobility. AND WEAKNESSES.

Honestly all of the problem is in his Ultimate and W. It gives him way too much power generally.

Sinister AnubisJan 19, 20154 votes

I dont even really play zed i fought more zeds then i have played and i fine hium perfectly fine. You can do so much vs his ulti.

1 let him ulti you, then flash under tower taking him with you then stun him boom dead. 2 buy qss so when the mark is applied you can remove it. 3 buy hourglass and pop it before death mark explodes 4 Buy banshes and hope the shield bocks it. Yes i know its not very reliable. 5 Play Kayle Sivir Noc and use spell shield to remove it.

Those are my 5 things to deal with zed.

TalamareJan 19, 20153 votes

[{quoted}](name=Master Anubis,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p63FuQyw,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2015-01-19T13:13:58.193+0000)

I dont even really play zed i fought more zeds then i have played and i fine hium perfectly fine. You can do so much vs his ulti.

1 let him ulti you, then flash under tower taking him with you then stun him boom dead. 2 buy qss so when the mark is applied you can remove it. 3 buy hourglass and pop it before death mark explodes 4 Buy banshes and hope the shield bocks it. Yes i know its not very reliable. 5 Play Kayle Sivir Noc and use spell shield to remove it.

Those are my 5 things to deal with zed.

1 - He probably will use his burst, killing you, then use his ult again to get out of tower range. AT WORST taking 1 tower shot 2 - Then all you have is MR, so he can kill you without ultimate 3 - Effective, but not everyone is AP 4 - nope 5 - Ah yea, awesome...

Sinister AnubisJan 19, 20153 votes

{quoted}

1 - He probably will use his burst, killing you, then use his ult again to get out of tower range. AT WORST taking 1 tower shot 2 - Then all you have is MR, so he can kill you without ultimate 3 - Effective, but not everyone is AP 4 - nope 5 - Ah yea, awesome...

instant stun under tower = he will burst you and hit r again? Um i dont think you know how stuns work he can not all in you if stunned, and if hes taking tower shots hes not gonna all in you he will try to r back. 2 just because there is mr does not mean it does not have useful stacks and the remove active is awesome. Not to mention you dont always have to build they way you think removing the active means most zeds will not kill you because they relie on the deathmark proc to kill you. 3 I build hourglass on talon yes i said it i build it on talon. Why well lets see the active of becoming untargetable is too good to pass up. The cool down is lower then ga meaning i'll have it every fight. Also this means i can pop it to bait out enemy cooldowns while my team re-engages for the ace. So yes this item is amazing even if yout not ap. 4 Like i said unreliable but i have seen the shield up up on deathmark proc. It also stops one or more of his abilitys if he spams them all at once due to the timing of spellshield on banshees. Block 1 or 2 abilitys efftivly weakens zeds burst and all in and makes death mark proc weaker. And who can resist the hp on the item and the potential it has in helping you stay alive and keep fighting. 5 and well we can all agree on this one.

cshakesJan 19, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Master Anubis,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p63FuQyw,comment-id=000400000000,timestamp=2015-01-19T13:55:39.658+0000)

instant stun under tower = he will burst you and hit r again? Um i dont think you know how stuns work he can not all in you if stunned, and if hes taking tower shots hes not gonna all in you he will try to r back.

Most stuns are at most 2 seconds in length. If Zed were to immediately blink away after the stun ended, he'd take like 2 turret shots max. 0 if he doesn't deal any damage to you (unsure of Death Mark + turret targeting interation). If you apply a longer duration CC (Morgana bind, 3s), he'll take 2 turret shots and be able to kill you.

Sinister AnubisJan 19, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Most stuns are at most 2 seconds in length. If Zed were to immediately blink away after the stun ended, he'd take like 2 turret shots max. 0 if he doesn't deal any damage to you (unsure of Death Mark + turret targeting interation). If you apply a longer duration CC (Morgana bind, 3s), he'll take 2 turret shots and be able to kill you.

Ok now you want to take what i said the 1st time out of context here. I said flash into your tower when he ultis you meaning there is no minions at your tower. So that means hes taking tower shots 2 is huge and 3 is even better your timing is wrong tho even a 1.5 stun is enough to have a player take 2-3 tower shots. Also how can he kill you if hes taking tower shots plus your damage hes taking 3 times the damage then hes out putting. I dont see how zed is going to kill you in this situation. I have over 1k rank games this season last season and season 2, I been playing league since season 1 so i have play vs a many many zeds and i hardly ever have any problems dealing with him in those situations. I have used these tactics my self and have won with them. I do not speak about something without having done it my self. So please dont try to argue this point because i have done this my self vs zeds and it works also the 1-5 i gave is very valid and does work. Look at any zed guide made by the pros they tell you those same exact things hell even go watch redmurcys vidoes who is a challenger zed main. You'll see why i say these things. Zed is a health assassin with a idenitiy crisis and riot is going to fix that. Basic they dont think he should be a pusher and a assassin at the same time with extream safe laning.

cshakesJan 19, 20151 votes

Unfortunately, sometimes his minions are there to tank some of the damage for him. And my point was that even if he doesn't kill you, he'll have just traded his ult for a flash. Sure, he might have to back, but if he was diving you, so do you.

As a support main, I'd like for Zed, Fizz and other untargetable assassins to be just deleted. Akali and Talon I can deal with, Katarina too, but the untargetables? Ughhh.

Sinister AnubisJan 19, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Unfortunately, sometimes his minions are there to tank some of the damage for him. And my point was that even if he doesn't kill you, he'll have just traded his ult for a flash. Sure, he might have to back, but if he was diving you, so do you.

As a support main, I'd like for Zed, Fizz and other untargetable assassins to be just deleted. Akali and Talon I can deal with, Katarina too, but the untargetables? Ughhh.

However i understand your frustration of zed i find him less annoying then fizz akali

cshakesJan 19, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Master Anubis,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p63FuQyw,comment-id=0004000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-01-19T15:27:31.987+0000)

However i understand your frustration of zed i find him less annoying then fizz akali

Well, he's only the third-most annoying assassin of all time. Fizz takes the cake with Yasuo as a runner-up. (They both have some pretty annoying abilities like Troll Pole and Wind Wall.)

PrescøttJan 19, 20154 votes

{quoted}

An AD Caster Assassin shouldn't be able to build and instaburst people with practically no actual AD nor should he be able to siege towers or push nearly as hard as he can

Honestly though, I don't think any of Zed's problems are related to his wave clear or his poke. Its his ability to just R you and insta kill you without any real amount of AD or effort. He also has no real risk since he can easily escape after using his R.

Zed must be within 550 range of a shadow in order to jump to it whether it be a W shadow or an R shadow

Death Mark only counts damage dealt by Zed's abilities and passive instead of counting any and all damage from Zed including items

5/10/15/20/25% increased Bonus AD on Zed's W removed

Base Attack Speed and scaling per level reduced to .625(+1%) from .658(+3.1%)

Zed no longer becomes untargetable upon casting his Ultimate

Thats like practically killing zed as a whole. Zed Zed already has a HUGE learning curve, why make it so that its not even worth it to play him anymore?

Zed is very well known in being able to juke with shadows and being able to outplay with them; taking away the range from the w and r shadows completely kills his play style and will make him practically always 2 steps away from ranged carries when attempting to duel. If you want to counter his ult damage all you need to do is buy a banshees (possibly wont work), zhonya , qss / merc scim or a simple crap ton of armour.
Seeing how the deathmark has 3 seconds to pop, youre basically making it so that zeds deathmark burst damage can only come from one q(6 second base cd), one 3(4 second base cd), and possibly 10% of the enemys max hp(not including mr/armour). Miss the q and you do zero damage(not including mr/armour)
A nerf would make more sense then complete deletion.
Shouldnt be reducing both so dramatically. Per level by 2 percent and base by .03 makes him attack slower then karthus (seriously?).
He can still take damage in the current patch like fizz ult, making him not be able to dodge skills will just make it so that the teleport part of his ult makes no logical sense(how can you hit someone who isn't there)?

To me, it just seems like you hate zed Zed as a whole. **Learn **how to play vs him or play as him and you'll be fine.

btw im a gold 1 zed Zed player thats where my opinions come from.

KingsgraveJan 19, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Thats like practically killing zed as a whole. Zed already has a HUGE learning curve, why make it so that its not even worth it to play him anymore?

Zed is very well known in being able to juke with shadows and being able to outplay with them; taking away the range from the w and r shadows completely kills his play style and will make him practically always 2 steps away from ranged carries when attempting to duel. If you want to counter his ult damage all you need to do is buy a banshees (possibly wont work), zhonya , qss / merc scim or a simple crap ton of armour.

Seeing how the deathmark has 3 seconds to pop, youre basically making it so that zeds deathmark burst damage can only come from one q(6 second base cd), one 3(4 second base cd), and possibly 10% of the enemys max hp(not including mr/armour). Miss the q and you do zero damage(not including mr/armour)

A nerf would make more sense then complete deletion.

Shouldnt be reducing both so dramatically. Per level by 2 percent and base by .03 makes him attack slower then karthus (seriously?).

He can still take damage in the current patch like fizz ult, making him not be able to dodge skills will just make it so that the teleport part of his ult makes no logical sense(how can you hit someone who isn't there)?

To me, it just seems like you hate zed as a whole. **Learn **how to play vs him or play as him and you'll be fine.

btw im a gold 1 zed player thats where my opinions come from.

Karthus autoattacks don't deal 10% of missing health damage Karthus autoattacks don't scale directly with his damage stat Karthus doesn't build 2 AS items Karthus has no turret sieging power only wave clearing power compared to Zed

I actually love playing Zed and have no issue facing him.

PrescøttJan 20, 20151 votes

See I never said anything about karthus Karthus other then comparing his attackspeed to zeds Zed attackspeed if he were to be nerfed like that. If you love playing zed Zed then you should understand that the ult nerf you came up with would render zeds Zed ult completely useless and no longer make him a viable champion.

KingsgraveJan 20, 20151 votes

{quoted}

See I never said anything about karthus other then comparing his attackspeed to zeds attackspeed if he were to be nerfed like that. If you love playing zed then you should understand that the ult nerf you came up with would render zeds ult completely useless and no longer make him a viable champion.

Just because I like playing a champion doesnt mean I want them to be broken all the time

Gym Leader YakiJan 19, 20153 votes

Remove Zed's invulnerability? LOL? Might as well delete Zed.

No more potential on that champ if you remove that from his Kit.

TerntJan 19, 20152 votes

I was on Thresh the other day and just flayed then hooked Zed after his ult and it did nothing lol.

AlphariteJan 19, 20152 votes

Yes, let's kneejerk every change there because Zed can kill ADCs. I mean, no assassin should be able to do that. He definitely needs to have every aspect of his kit gutted just so your sodium levels can return to normal.

Buttigieg 2020Jan 19, 20152 votes

Getting rid of the shadow passive would hurt zed much more than you think. It would essentially subtract 100 ad from a full build zed.

It Is I EmotoJan 19, 20151 votes

thats 100 less damage he would do on his auto attacks, his shurikens and his ultimate... well it would hurt him, maybe tune the number down? or instead of bonus ad scalings he can get full ad scalings and get those bonuses removed..

Buttigieg 2020Jan 19, 20152 votes

How to play against zed. item 3140 item 3157 item 3026 also you can outburst him when he jumps on you if you are an assasin because zeds burst takes much longer then a talon/fizz/akai/lb.

asktiksJan 19, 20151 votes

so you are telling me that I have to , not only waste a slot to not go oom with downright shit items , I have to also waste two more slots to counter zeds bulshit and you tell me hes balanced?

so sick of this zed mains hiding under smurfs trying to convince us that hes "fine" and him turret diving me at six is my fault for not having a zhonyas at 10 mins in game

gtfo

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

If you're playing an AP champion, Zhonya's is the best item against any team you can ever get If you're an ADC, QSS will not only save you from Deathmark, it'll also come in handy when you get crowd-controlled because you positioned like shit If you're an AD assassin, well, just burst Zed faster than he does you

TLDR, L2P

asktiksJan 19, 20151 votes

oh says the 497 GAMES WITH ZED MAIN IN GOLD

I mean , you are in gold, got there with ZED but yeah hes fine right?

fucking hypocrite gtfo

guy spams yasuo/zed in every game and he comes in here and tells me "zed is fine"

yeah we know what you are now, your opinion on the matter is worth shit since you are obvisouly a zed main trying to not loose his edge

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

You being Bronze would help your cause in what way, exactly?

For the record, yes, I'm Gold. Yes, after 500 games of Zed. So what? I'm spamming Zed because I love his kit, not because I find him OP Tell me more about OP when you can't even use the available counters to Zed, and probably many other champions

asktiksJan 19, 20151 votes

the point , wich you convinently keep avoiding is that give you are playing at A HIGH LEVEL OF RANK people should be able to counter zed, why aren't they?

maybe because hes too strong right now?

yeah "I like his kit" I also like overloaded no risk kits , wich is why im saving up for him to join the bandwagon much like you , but then again , I like to play challenging champs wich is why I might be insisting on playing ap mid champs like xerath or velkoz

used to syndra too . thers a reason I am bronze....given my total of oh 11 games counting provs, wich were done in 4.21 , where other people can tell you , there were literally constand DCs for EVERYONE

what counters are these you speak off? the ones that somehow your gold level opponents forget to use too?
give me a fkn break , still a hypocrite that doesn't play any champ

tell you what, come back here in a few days when you got wins with any mana user champ mid, go ahead I dare you to show me how easy is to play ap since zed is "so easy to counter"

lets see your "gold level " skill then , come back here when you got a few more wins as any other champ/archetype and then your opinions about zed being "balanced" might hold some fkn water till tehn you are still a hypocrite

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

50% win-rate in Diamond and Masters league, lower than 48% below Platinum. KDA's about average for an assassin at about 2.1
He's as strong as you allow him to be. In other words, knowledge about his kit/counters
I'll sure as hell be entertained by your failure at playing Zed. Never saw a mainstream Zed win any game by himself, against competent opponents. Got to be creative about your shadow management
I can 4V5 and still get out of Bronze. And I actually did, for that matter. If you're in Bronze, you belong there
What's a support? What's a team? What's a rightly timed Flash? What's QSS/Zhonya's? What's dodging Qs (Yes, if you dodge Zed's Qs, his Deathmark loses 60% or more of its damage)? What's Exhaust? What's Heal? What's CC?
I had some games on Syndra, Ahri, LB, Jinx, Graves, Orianna, Yi and Nasus and still did good enough to be able to carry

TLDR, get good mate

ChargeItDownMidJan 19, 20152 votes

[deleted]

asktiksJan 19, 20151 votes

thank you someone that actually gets it, meanwhile Im supposed to make my ap champ dam near usless without mana regen items just to counter zeds bulshit and its my fault cuz "l2p"

tldr : guys name is ZEDtastic ffs, I aint trying to convince a zed main that zed needs a nerf, let me guess hes one of these zeds that spams /laugh like he was lcs material cuz he plays zed... disgusting

RaptameiJan 19, 20151 votes

Also Q 50% damage vs minions.

JunkοJan 19, 20152 votes

It already deals less to every target after the first one. Look up stuff before commenting...

Aboylova92Jan 19, 20151 votes

I made a similar post yesterday, some of the ideas were that his passive could only proc only so often or only say every 10 seconds on one target, similar to J4's passive. Upping his energy cost, or lowering his energy regen. Reducing the scaling on his W passive. Stopping his Q from damaging anything after so many targets, similar to Lux's q. As it stands, he just does everything a little too well. It's not like I hate AD assassins, I actually like Talon, but he actually has a poor early game, is mana gated, and absolutely needs Hydra to push the lane to do anything. Something needs to be done to him though, especially with the mana regen nerfs. Simply makes him even stronger than he already was.

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

You should get better informed before requesting changes. His passive already has a 10 second per target cooldown

Besides, limiting his Q to only 2 targets would make it useless. Try limiting Talon's W, LB's W, Katarina's Q, Riven's R, ... to 2 targets only and tell me how it goes

TalamareJan 19, 20151 votes

Reduce the travel speed of his W, increase slightly increase the delay before he is able to use abilities

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

It was already reduced once. In exchange, he got an escaping R. You really want to see what he gets for another W speed nerf?

It Is I EmotoJan 19, 20151 votes

How about that the damage from the trigger of death mark would become magic damage instead of physical damage? Since his burst comes only from that ability, and the armor pentration would not apply on the magic damage too. And if people would come around with magic pen; there are only 3 (4 with abyssal scepter) magic pen items, and all of those scale horrible with zeds ad scalings. This would actually make item 3140 an viable item to counter zed efficienty as adc or ad caster.

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

{quoted}

How about that the damage from the trigger of death mark would become magic damage instead of physical damage? Since his burst comes only from that ability, and the armor pentration would not apply on the magic damage too. And if people would come around with magic pen; there are only 3 (4 with abyssal scepter) magic pen items, and all of those scale horrible with zeds ad scalings. This would actually make an viable item to counter zed efficienty as adc or ad caster.

Want to witness an assassin version of Jax?

It Is I EmotoJan 19, 20152 votes

Whats your point? If Zeds ult would not do Physical damage but instead magic damage, most of his armor Pen would become useless if he builds it, and he'll be more forced to do as much damage as possible, instead of just doing some damage and then just go back with R.

Jax is doing hybrid damage, thats true, but it does not scale on his physical damage.

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

Here's an example: With a standard Zed build, you would usually only build armor to counter it. After your proposed "nerf", if you build armor, Deathmark would seal your fate, no questions asked. If you built MR, the rest of his kit would get rid of you Your tank couldn't really tank him either because he deals mixed damage

It Is I EmotoJan 19, 20151 votes

Let me think about it.. Yeah, that's true. Though, His numbers are pretty overtuned on his kit. Mostly if since if his shuriken hit multiple targets, it only counts from the secondary for every other target after the first target hit. Though, do you think it's still okay for Zed to do so much damage on his ultimate? after all, if he builds armor pentration, the death mark will seal your death. The idea was, to make QSS an more effective item to counter his ultimate then now, since it still does physical damage, and scales with armor pentration. The change should make him easier to deal with if you rush an QSS. For mages it'll be still harder though they'll buy usually chalice and gain some magic resist with it.

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

If you really want to make QSS more effective against Zed, why not put armor in it's stats? Far more effective than making Zed's Deathmark deal magic damage

It Is I EmotoJan 19, 20151 votes

its already effective enough with removing the death mark from yourself. Im pretty sure that carries do start with some armor from runes so they won't get bursted down at early game. But honestly, you don't seem to see that the main problem of zeds deathmark is, that it scales extremly well with armor pen after all, and makes zed to an extreme strong Assasin at late game, because of all the armor pen he will build at late game. With magic damage, it'll scale on magic pen, making his armor pen useless in terms of assasinating certain targets.

Of course, putting on QSS some armor would be great, and it should really become an item like Guardian Angel because that'll open more item optimazations, but we'll see what riot will come up with Zed. :0

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

Hopefully not what they came up with 3.13 (Slower W, Escape R instead of all-in)

asktiksJan 19, 20151 votes

inb4 the zed mains start bitching about how he is fine and he will be trash tier if you cant return to safety with R

I mean its not like other assasins have to actually comit to a kill , lets do more champs like zed and lee sin with zero risk factor and infinite resource , that's balanced

ive taken to just leaving /afking/ or flat out banning zed everytime I can, I simply refuse to lane against this bulshit cancer champ

not even teemo makes games as miserable for an entire archetype in a game like zed players do, and they are ALLL condescending pricks that spam /laugh too like they were they biggest skilled persons out there yeah right...

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

It's not like he had his escape-ish R for no reason Oh wait, GD QQ did it

asktiksJan 19, 20151 votes

zed main with 500 ranked games with him...yeap nothing to see here, if zed is so able to be countered why then the spam? you are GOLD RANK right?

people aren't noobs at gold right?

so why aren't they countering him as easy as you say?

let me guess you are "just that good?" right?

gtfo hypocrite

Azirion SolJan 19, 20151 votes

If it was as you claim it to be, I'd be Diamond, not Gold. Besides, I don't think your Bronze status would help your claims either

JustBoneBrookJan 19, 20151 votes

well his w damage incresse should not be remove because well like you said "instaburst people with practically no actual AD" And % of damage is a good way to make them build more ad and less atk speed.