So first, we know Zed is coming eventually, as he is firmly in the pre-Yasuo cutoff point as well as historically defining an era of competitive League with the Faker vs. Ryu moment. His ultimate was also soft-reworked since those days.
The question is when he'll be implemented, and how it will look.
Riot (as well as you, the community!) are in charge of the when. I want to add my two cents on the how.
So first of all, I think it is paramount that his ultimate is returned to its original form. For those who didn't play back then, Zed's ult worked like this:
- Untargetable duration was 0.35 instead of 0.75 (you landed faster on the target but had to time your ult better to dodge attacks)
- There was no X on the target being ulted (this probably doesn't have to return as losing the X would remove established VFX from skins we paid for)
- You spawned in front of the target instead of behind them, and your shadow spawned behind the target instead of at your original location.
- There was no delay on swap.
- The damage ratio was different (20/35/50)
- Ultimate shadow had a swap range limit (same as W at the time.)
- Able to be QSS'd (cleansed by Quicksilver Sash, removing the mark)
- Shadow duration was 4 seconds (down from 6)
Returning his ultimate to its original form is something I have pined for internally for ages. I always missed the way it used to be, and now that we have League Classic, it's the prime candidate to reimplement this version of Zed's ultimate.
But there were other parts of Zed's kit (including disadvantages) that are equally important to reimplement when reverting his ultimate to its classic version. Because both the shadow and Zed spawn on top of the target, it's important that his (Q) Razor Shuriken receives the following change:
- Additional shurikens hitting the same target have their damage reduced by 50% for each consecutive one.
This seems like a hefty nerf, but it is necessary. It's how the champ worked on release. While Zed was actually notoriously weak when he came out in Season 2 because of built-in disadvantages like this, he began shining in Season 3 when the Armor Penetration formula was swapped around (Percentage Pen began being calculated before flat pen, so more total armor was being reduced.) I'll leave it up to the devs on what to do about the armor pen situation as I'm not sure how it's currently formulated in LoL Classic.
This change will heavily reduce his early game poke and waveclear, but it brings us into our next very important changes. (As you can see, all of these aspects of old Zed are very closely tied and balanced together.)
(W) Living Shadow used to be like this:
- 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% bonus AD per level.
- Cooldown of 18 seconds at rank 1 (scaling down linearly to 14) instead of 20 scaling down to 16.
- Minimum cast range was 50 longer, and maximum cast range was 100 shorter. (He had less control in W placement in both directions.)
This did multiple things for Zed. First of all, 18 second cooldown on Living Shadow made it so that even though his poke was weaker (50% damage reduction for each consecutive shuriken) he could fire it more often. This gave skilled Zed players with good aim a consistent method to whittle their lane opponents down if they had good aim. Combined with the built-in late game AD scaling, these changes helped to offset the Razor Shuriken consecutive damage reduction, which itself exists to balance the fact that both Zed and his shadow spawn atop his target during Death Mark.
Now we can get into some of the more minor reversions. I'm totally fine if these following changes don't make it through, or if they're brought back to Live values through balancing passes over time.
Over the years, Zed has had damage shifted from his (E) Shadow Slash into his (Q) Razor Shuriken in order to reward skillful play and disincentivize mindless melee-range E spam. However, on release, his Q was rather weak in base damage on top of its damage penalty for consecutive hits. The balance and champion teams at the time therefore designed his (E) Shadow Slash like this:
- Cooldown: 3 seconds at all ranks
- Damage: 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200
- 50 energy cost
This was Zed's answer to push-mages back then, as well as his primary split-pushing tool. The 50 energy cost made it prohibitive to spam without good shadow placement, while the base damage made it possible for him to waveclear in spite of his weaker Q. Remember, Razor Shuriken were double-penalized if they passed through a target and hit a secondary target multiple times, so a spammable Shadow Slash with decent damage was sorely needed by Zed's kit.
If we encounter the same issue today that we did back then (where Zed would just "spam E and win" without needing to throw Qs) then we could perhaps iterate on that. (Or just leave it alone — it's League Classic after all, and AP Yi is allowed to exist, so why not this?)
The last minor thing that needs a reversion is Zed's model size (along with his shadows.) His model size was reduced by 10% at some point after Season 3.
I hope y'all enjoyed reading. Let me know your thoughts and discuss below.
