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Zed discussion

Nahui··2 votes·540 views

Hey there Boards! I'm currently a S2 Zed main (Finished gold 4 last season) and here's what I have to say. If you don't want this story, skip down to the first Zed icon to see if my questions interest you or you think you can answer them.

So I picked up Zed in season 4 and I have mained him since. Since when he was at the bottom of the assassin pool to when all were nerfed and he was complained about. All the way up to now. So, I know how Zed works, however I'm low ELO so my mechanics can be lack luster as well as decision making, so I understand this all plays in but I will highlight those later.

So currently, the problem for me is that even though the S6 changes favor him with the whole Thunderlord's Decree, the increased AD itemization, the incorporation of Armor pen into many items, most notably Maw of Malmortius, the massive buff to Youmuu's Ghostblade, and the new item: Duskblade of Drek'Tharr, I find myself failing more than ever. Plus, with all of the nerfs to AP items, Zed is having a wonderful time mid currently. And I agree. Besides a select few champions (Lux, Kayle, Cho) the laning phase is not an issue.

My issue is currently that too many people have been tuned to fight Zed, and as a champion with massive counterplay, this is becoming problematic. Just the other day I had a game as Zed vs a Lissandra, Fiddlesticks, Xin Zhao, Jinx, and Braum. Lissandra (Already an issue) and Fiddle built Zhonya's, Xin Zhao and Jinx built Mercurial Scimitar, and Braum was Braum. So, in that case, I see nothing I can do. My only option is to wait until something is blown, but that to me is an extreme short coming. Team fights aren't exactly the easiest to wait on. Too often I'd be forced to wait until someone blew something and by then, 2-3/5 of my teammates are dead and I can't ult anyways.

Now, this is one example but this is happening too often. Currently Zed is the bad guy. He's the guy we all love to hate and I notice that when picking Zed, it seems the enemy team always builds their team comp around me, as if I was an inverse Kog'Maw. I'm already facing mid camps, but luckily Zed is designed to deal with that safely, but it's just an example of the mindset that the community currently has vs Zed.

So I've been trying to improve myself rather than blame teammates, although there will be some blame throughout the post but mostly for constructive reasons. So here we go.

The first thing I noticed about myself is that at like 30 minutes, I'll have like 130 CS which is piss poor. So, I've been working on my CS a lot. However, due to the difference in skill of low ELO and pros, I don't think it's actually possible to achieve LCS level CS for one reason. People are dumb at my ELO, me included. They put themselves in poor situations far more. In the LCS, kills aren't handed out left and right. In low ELO, they are so often I'll be giving up CS to go and murder someone. So, although my CS definitely needs work, I truly do believe this is part of the problem. But, I've been working on it. It has been improving and I've noticed and increased amount of gold during same points in the game.

Next, be less aggressive in lane. Too often I can have the upperhand in lane and try and capitalize on it too hard which will get me ganked and then give the other guy the upperhand. This one was easy. This worked hand in hand with CSing as I now focus on creeps more than constantly throwing spells at enemies. No problem.

So after all of this, I notice I definitely have an edge over my lane opponent and have quite a bit of gold which I can see why people complain about Zed's laning phase. This is where I feel good about the game and get really confident that a win is in sight. Then....

Bot lane. Now I could go off on a tangent that would get me permabanned 3x over about my thoughts on bot lane. Bot lane has always been a crutch in my games since I've began playing League, however it seems that in the current meta, the team with the winning bot lane is the team that will win. It seems to me that my bot lane seems to lose much more often than win and here is where my next point of self-improvement and questions come in.

Zed Is bot lane my job to corral? As a mid laner, as Zed, am I supposed to camp bot and constantly roam down there? And when do I do so? Typically I must use my ult to kill my mid laner to even acquire the opening to roam bot, so all I can do is maybe jump in vs an overextended, unwarded bot lane. How do I go about this? Am I supposed to shove the lane to extremes and quickly roam bot before mid takes my tower?

Next issue is when people get enough gold and everyone itemizes vs me. Like in my example above with Braum and all, what happens when everyone applicable has a QSS or Zhonya's? What happens when I really can't ult anyone unless their items are on cooldown? I find that if I wait and pick the "right time" to go in, my team is mostly dead due to picks or just in general it being a 4v5 as I have to bide my time. Do I just throw my shadow on the squishies and Q-E and that's it, rinse and repeat until something is burned?

I really don't see what I can do late game. I understand late game is Zed's weakness, but I can't name a champion that can be fully counterbuilt by anyone and late game is what occurs. Even someone like Pantheon can become tanky and be some meatshield, or Leblanc can burst down squishies because you can't QSS her. But Zed can really just split push but with the mobility currently present and all of the QSS and Zhonya, I find that even when splitting I can be caught up to or they just shove mid hard and I'm forced to recall to add my almost useless aid so that maybe I can kill one person/not be reported.

To me it seems that as Zed you're basically given a win in the laning phase, but as soon as your team gets behind, there's little you can do and you're forced to close the game before everyone is sporting a QSS or Zhonya's.

Any and all input would be helpful, thanks!

4 Comments

Theseepingdragon1 votes

probably dont know zed and the game enough to be able to properly play him. Hell players cant really play him till high diamond. You can do alot to win on zed you are just incapable of using his kit the right way due to lack of game knowledge champion knowledge and mechanics. Watch good high elo zed players like faker,dopa and play him and learn off that.

masterdragon4811 votes

Not going to lie, I stopped reading halfway through, but I'll share my thoughts (mostly because I think I can summarize my thoughts on him much faster, no offense intended).

Overall, I think he is an incredibly poorly designed champion. This makes him impossible to balance in any direction.

If we look at his strengths;

he has an incredibly easy laning phase. Passive makes last hitting a breeze and his Q cool down and relatively low cost (especially considering it is leveled first) makes denying him farm nearly impossible. That low cool down also makes for pretty strong and consistent harass. Using his shadow offensively, while weakening him to a gank, is a very efficient way to lay down a large amount of damage and apply thunderlords. He even has CC in the form of a slow. His lane phase, as a result, is borderline oppressive. He even scales hard into the late game with the passive ad boost. New items (duskblade) have only served to increase his power. His ultimate is a damage avoider, gap closer, assassination, and an escape in a single ability. Its really really powerful.

Of course, as you mentioned, he has a major weakness.

He gets countered by two items. And here we start this paradoxical problem that is created by the very design of his kit. The problem is that if those items aren't built to counter him then he completely dominates. This weakness means he has to have a powerful laning phase to hit item spikes and dominate his opponent before they can complete these items. Of course, another part of the problem is that hourglass is a standard pickup on mages regardless of whether a zed is in the game; I personally think that it is overpowered but I digress. Mecurial is better than it used to be, but isn't the greatest lifesteal item and gives mr against an ad champ; it argueably upsets an adc's build for a large portion of the game.

But the main point is that Zed's design is terrible because he is on a timer for who he can kill; but if he wasn't on that timer he would be beyond broken. Now, there is some counter play that can be done (soraka silence under the target, exhaust to a degree) but because of his massive tell on his all in, it is incredibly powerful in an ideal situation. Full build Zed is sorta like old Xerath was; he will kill any target that he puts his ulti on (unless of course certain items are bought). He really needs a complete kit overhaul, because his ultimate mechanic leaves either very little room for counter play or such hard counterplay that he is useless as a result.

There aren't any good ability interactions with his kit, there aren't any cool abilities, he is just a ball of stats that tries to nuke a target. Same as Talon, same as shaco. Only with Zed, there is nothing unique. He is only popular because of his oppressive laning as a result of an extremely binary kit.

Edit: Okay so maybe it wasn't much faster after all.

Nahui1 votes

Very insightful, definitely.

So, the second half of the post is actually what, to me, mattered the most. I understood just about all that you described about his kit as I have been playing him for the better part of two years now. It's just that now, for the first time, I'm seeing that I'm consistently losing and when I look at why, it's because there is now Mercurials and Zhonyas everywhere, far more than there used to be.

So past the Zed icon, I asked a few questions and that is, should my real objective as Zed be to corral my bot lane and camp them? I wont relist them all, and if you'd like, you can look at them, they're right under the Zed icon. But yeah, I've overall noticed that the team with the winning bot lane tends to win, so should I be focusing and roaming bot as much as possible because investing the power and gold in me seems less important considering I have a timer, however the ADC does not.

masterdragon4811 votes

First of all, I'd like to point out that your performance with zed probably raised your mmr. And how that you are playing against better people, you are seeing the items that counter him come out. So its not so much that there are more mercurials and zhonyas than there used to be; its that you are finally playing at a skill level where people are smart enough to build them. So congrats there (kinda =p).

Let me also just say that I'm going to be doing complete guess work from here on out; I don't really play zed and independent of his design issues, I don't like that type of champion. I like the much slower, attrition type champions that play out a match like a chess game; I'm not big on the flashy lcs plays that assassins (like Zed) are famous for.

That being said, I think bot lane is definitely a possible location to roam to. Zed's ability to poke out an opposing laner is second to none; as im sure you've noticed, so being able to force them back and roam to bot lane shouldn't be the hardest of tasks (you'd really want to save your ulti for the gank). Basically, if you are sitting mid insta farming waves and then waiting for the next wave to come in, you are probably playing the matchup wrong; Zed is an assassin and if he isn't snowballing the game, he really isn't doing his job. You should be able to use his oppressive lane phase to get the advantages you need to capitalize (before any bad-for-you items are picked up).

If bot isn't an option, you may wanna look to the jungle. You could invade the enemy jungle with your jungler, denying camps and the like. Or get objectives like Rift Herald and Dragon which helps your team out regardless.

In a late game teamfight, I would argue that it might be a good idea to just kill whoever doesn't have the ability to negate your damage. In your example you mentioned Braum; I properly built Zed in the late game can RIP through even a braum. And getting him out of the fight, while less optimal than removing the adc/mid laner, is still better than getting nothing for your ultimate. If your team is packing on the cc, its possible that you can wait out an activation of Mercurial/Hourglass and then go into the fight.

At the end of the day though, Zed is sitting at a 50% win rate and if I had to guess, that win rate would be dropping the higher the mmr gets. Because, as I said above, there is a LOT of team counterplay to his ultimate due to his poor design, even before you talk about the defensive items. Good luck!

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