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My take on making Zed less dominant overall

dialMARK4acti0n·2/19/2015, 6:05:49 PM·6 votes·2,028 views

Zed has been a little on the unbalanced side as of late, so I decided to take a big long look at his kit and see what made Zed, well... Zed, while tuning him to be more balanced and less of a way too safe assassin. This is my personal view on things and agree or disagree I'd like to hear your ideas and thoughts as well! I put a lot of work into this. Enjoy!

Passive: Contempt for the Weak

  • Cooldown: 3
  • On-Target Cooldown: 10
  • Zed's basic attacks against target enemy champions below 25% health deal 5 / 6.5 / 8 % of the target's maximum health as bonus magic damage. This effect only procs at 10% health for minions and is capped at 2.5 % of the target minion's maximum health.

Passive Change Overview:

  • Zed's passive now has a cooldown to avoid Zed last-hitting low health minions with too much ease.
  • On-target cooldown is the same.
  • The health threshold for champions is now 25% health instead of 50% and deals 5 / 6.5 / 8 % instead of 6 / 8 / 10 % of the target champion's maximum health as magic damage.
  • Minions now require more precision to be last-hit since this only procs when they are below 10% health and the damage is capped at 2.5% of the minions' maximum health.

Q: Razor Shuriken

  • Range: 900
  • Cost: 75 / 70 / 65 / 60 / 55 Energy
  • Cooldown: 6
  • Active: Zed throws his spinning blades forward, dealing physical damage to the first enemy they pass through and deal 60% damage to the second enemy it passes through. Razor shuriken can only hit up to two targets.
  • Living Shadow: Active shadows will also throw a shuriken in the direction of the target point, but passes through all units in its range. Damage reduction on multiple units hit still applies. If more than one shuriken strike the same enemy, the additional shuriken deal 50% damage, restoring energy to Zed.
  • Physical Damage: 75 / 115 / 155 / 195 / 235 (+ 90% bonus AD)
  • Mimicked Shuriken: 37.5 / 57.5 / 77.5 / 97.5 / 117.5 (+ 45% bonus AD)

Q Change Overview:

  • Range, cost and cooldown are the same.
  • The shuriken's AD scaling has been reduced to 90% bonus AD from 100% bonus AD, to help bring his damage down a bit and making it less easier for him to poke you down and destroy you once he gets up close.
  • Zed's normal shuriken now only hits two targets, still dealing reduced damage to the second. Zed's shadow shuriken however still passes through units. Zed's waveclear is way too good. In conjuction with the changes to the passive, this change makes it more difficult for Zed to farm entire waves with just a couple of skills and a few auto-attacks. It's also more difficult for Zed to poke his enemies in lane, if they stay behind their minions, adding some counterplay to Zed's laning phase. His shadow shuriken however thematically made sense to pass through it's targets and was kept to reward Zed for positioning his shadow well and helping him with his now weaker wave clear.

W: Living Shadow

  • Range: 550
  • Cost (1st Cast): 20 / 20 / 15 / 15 / 10 Energy
  • Cost (2nd Cast): 35 / 30 / 25 / 20 / 15 Energy
  • Cooldown: 20 / 19 / 18 / 17 / 16
  • Passive: Zed's bonus attack damage is increased by a percentage.
  • Active: Zed's shadow dashes forward, remaining in place for 4 seconds. Reactivating Living Shadow will cause Zed to swap places with this shadow. Zed's shadows mimic his basic abilities. If a target is struck twice by a mimicked ability, Zed restores some energy and reduces the cooldown of this ability by 2. Energy can only be restored once per mimicked cast.
  • Bonus Attack Damage: 4 / 8 / 12 / 16 / 20% Bonus AD
  • Energy Restored: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40

W Change Overview:

  • Range is the same.
  • The cost of Living Shadow is now divided between placing the shadow and swapping places with it. Zed's extreme mobility is very popular and being ungankable is not too healthy. This change makes sure that Zed needs to constantly be watching is energy expense and make sure to get the energy restoration portion of the ability if he wants to be safe in lane. This is also the overall energy cost of the ability has gone up.
  • Zed's bonus attack damage is now lower with 4 / 8 / 12 / 16 / 20% Bonus AD instead of 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% Bonus AD. Zed already has a lot of damage on his one. Giving him even more although helpful for his assassin play style can be less than healthy at times. Reducing it allows Zed's damage to be somewhat more fair.
  • The cooldown has gone up slightly from 18/17/16/15/14, but the cooldown can now be reduced by striking both mimicked abilities to its original values. This rewards Zed for successfully pulling off his combo, while punishing him a little for not doing so, which is ultimately better than giving him another go too quickly. Thusly, adding Shadow Slash's effect to Razor Shuriken is a good way of rewarding the best of Zed players for pulling off risky plays and removing the portion of the effect that scaled with champions hit was overall very sub-optimal since Zed is an assassin that's supposed to remove high-priority targets from the picture and escaping to safety back with his team and not to stay and assassinate more people alone.
  • Energy restored remains the same.

E: Shadow Slash

  • Range: 290
  • Cost: 50 Energy
  • Cooldown: 4
  • Active: Zed spins his blades, creating a burst of shadow energy and dealing physical damage to nearby enemies.
  • Living Shadow: Active shadows also slash, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies and slowing them for 1 second. Enemies hit by extra slashes are slowed by an extra 50% and for 1.5 seconds and restore energy but will not take additional damage.
  • Physical Damage: 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+ 80% bonus AD)
  • Slow: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%

E Change Overview:

  • Range, cost and cooldown remain the same.
  • Cooldown reduction effect removed to accomodate changes made to Living Shadow.
  • Slow when only hitting the shadow's Shadow Slash reduced to 1 second. Slow by two Shadow Slashes unchanged. This change was made to remove some of Zed's utility. As little utility as he has, he's supposed to be an assassin a slow too big from far away does not reflect that. Thusly, the change was made to remove a little bit of that power. The slow for when he's up close and personal with his victims when hitting his other slashes, which add to that assassin identity.

R: Death Mark

  • Range: 625
  • Cooldown: 120 / 100 / 80
  • Active: Zed becomes untargetable for 0.75 seconds and dashes behind the target enemy champion. Upon arrival, he marks the target for death, ignores unit collision, and spawns a shadow that lasts for 6 seconds at the cast location. If the death marked target dies, reactivating Death Mark will cause Zed to swap places with this shadow. After 3 seconds, Death Mark will trigger, dealing flat physical damage plus a percentage of all physical and magic damage dealt to the marked champion while it was active.
  • Physical Damage: 100% Bonus AD + 20 / 35 / 50% of damage dealt

Ultimate Change Overview:

  • Range and cooldown unchanged.
  • Zed can now only swap places with his ultimate shadow once the target he had marked dies. Zed's mobility and instant escape should not come as easily as it does now, since it removes all the risk from his risk and reward play style. Now, Zed can only return once his target has been killed, giving his victim a better chance to counterplay Zed's ultimate. This idea was taken from a fellow summoner on the Boards.. I thought it was a really good idea so I decided to this post and add his change.
  • The scaling of this ability has also been changed from Total AD to Bonus AD. This will make it so Zed really requires to pour out all his damage on the marked target in order to successfully kill him and return to the safety of when he ulted originally.

And there it is. Feel free to let me know what you thought. Cheers!

21 Comments

BirdmanBaggins7/5/2015, 1:57:48 AM2 votes

One note on the ultimate: I like where you're going with it, but how about this: Zed can ult back once the mark goes off, so that he doesn't have to rely on the fact that the target must die. The reliance on the death of the target is a very hard nerf, so this is at least a compromise. It still does what you want it to do: it limits Zed's ability to just pop back to safety, but it does give him the chance to do so. Requiring the death of the target is a little bit much IMO.

Cuz19722/19/2015, 6:25:37 PM2 votes

I'm curious for who are you trying to gut Zed for? He's below 50% winrate in all ranks and he's not doing anything all that impressive in any of the pro regions.

ModThe Djinn2/19/2015, 6:32:19 PM1 votes

First things first: I don't know if Zed needs a nerf or not. I'm going to address your suggestions assuming that he does: I don't play much Zed, nor have I played against him in months.

Anyway...

You nerfed everything about him in one fell swoop. Probably an overreaction. He's strong, but nerfing all four parts of a champion's kit is ill-advised at best.

Your best changes, in my mind, were the change in target penetration for his Q, and splitting the energy cost on his W. The former keeps his harass in line, while the latter interacts well with the former (it's less cost-intensive to lay out a shadow for just harass), while also giving a nice adjustment for his incredible mobility and ensuring that Zed has to watch his energy if he wants to be able to safely retreat.

The ult shadow-switch mechanic is interesting, and could work...but it's non-intuitive for both the Zed player and his opponent (as you'd have to indicate which shadow he can't blink to, and when he suddenly is allowed to). Functional, but perhaps lacking in clarity. If you make that change, however, don't nerf the damage the ability does: the loss of immediate mobility will be sufficient to keep that in check, I feel.

With just those three adjustments he's down a few notches, but it's much much gentler than the hefty nerfs you were giving him.

Scary Door2/19/2015, 7:11:22 PM1 votes

With a gutting like that, you definitely have a future with the Riot balance team. I wouldn't be surprised if you were the one that wrote the Kassadin nerf on the PBE right now.

Here's a few quick tips for those of you wannabe game-balance types out there:

  1. When you decide to tune (nerf/buff) a mechanic, it's always a good idea to make sure said mechanic actually needs retuning (nerf/buff). In the case of the OP, Zed has a sub 50% win rate and, quite frankly, is one of few assassins with at least some degree of counterplay. If you want to 'nerf' his waveclear a bit, that's fine, but your proposal doesn't just do that, it shaves off a huge portion of his damage. What kind of an assassin would Zed be if half of his damage (which is pretty much what you're eliminating when you add up the total changes here) were suddenly to disappear? Zed would suddenly be relegated to Azir territory (37% win rate).

  2. If you nerf a mechanic, maybe consider compensating by offering some type of offset (buff) elsewhere. After DFG was removed from the game, many champions suffered greatly, this was then compounded by a few champions (Mordekeiser and Veigar specifically) seeing their damage further toned down on the PBE. (As I understand it they have reverted some of the Mordekeiser damage nerfs for now but we'll see). Not only was their no compensation given to those champions, they were further nerfed, thus not highlighting their strengths but rather giving them even more weaknesses. Your proposed change does the same thing.

  3. Context. What does your balance change actually achieve? If you just hate Zed then just say so and then we can look at your changes from that context, but if you're trying to give a legitimate suggestion, what do your changes actually accomplish? I read your reasoning but realistically your numbers make Zed an assassin that hits more like a tank, but will die like a level 1 carry.

Bottom line, leave balance to the professionals---and since I don't see any around, I guess we'll just have to settle for the Riot balance team.

ForgiveColour2/19/2015, 9:11:03 PM1 votes

saw the ratio change to lower his poke in lane, then i decided that you don't know how this game work because you think nerfing ratio will stop his poke in early game, so i lolking you and find that you that a silver with negative win rate. Therefore nice troll thread

umbraˉ7/5/2015, 3:03:18 AM1 votes

Zed is terrible right now lmfao

Garekk7/5/2015, 3:52:02 AM1 votes

This thread is the poster child why Riot should never listen to balance suggestions from their own forums.

Weow, the 5 months necro. Well done.

Stonington2/19/2015, 6:27:23 PM1 votes

What about Karma's dominance? Karma is a much bigger lane bully than Zed.