Short guide for season 6 Zed by Master player

       Welcome to my LoL guide. I will be explaining Zed in a few words, so that you can receive a glimpse on how he works and how to play him or against him. 

ZED BASICS IN S6

So let’s get going, Zed is an assassin, mostly used on mid lane, but sometimes he is used on top lane as well by one trick ponies or just top lane mains who want to try him out. He is a strong duelist, which excels at deleting enemies before they get time to react.

By the way, Zed is often pick among our fast lol boosters.

PROS PLAYING ZED

• strong laning phase;
• great scaling of abilities;
• energy reliant;
• great splitpusher;
• can carry games alone if he snowballs;
• very fun to play.

CONS PLAYING ZED

• hard to play;
• his ult can get denied completely by a 1300 items;
• hard to teamfight with;
• can be countered pretty easily by some champions with a big range or just a lot of CC: Lissandra/Lulu, etc.

 So, now that we’ve discussed his strong and weak points, let’s move onto the next section, the runes and masteries.

ZED RUNES

 a) The poor man’s rune page: red 9x ad, yellow 9x armor, blue 9x magic resist, quints 3x ad. Decent rune page, but is not efficient. Good to start playing Zed with, but bad when you want to improve with him.

 b) Rune page versus AD champions: red 9x armorpen/ad, yellow 9x armor, blue 9x scaling CDR, quints 3x ad. Best rune page against AD champions, gives you everything you want. Red armor pen or AD is up to you, what you feel playing with more. Quints AD always, regardless of what you face.

c) Rune page against AP champions: red 9x armorpen/ad, yellow 9x hp/lvl, blue 9x MR or 9x scaling CDR, quints 3x ad. Best rune page against AP champions, ensures you are tanky enough by getting a lot of health and magic resist, while also ignoring a lot of their armor to allow you to get easy kills if they’re not careful. 

ZED MASTERIES

You want to get 12/18/0 every game to get the most out of all those bonuses. You need assassin, dangerous game, armor penentration & thunderlord from cunning obligatory every game and increased spell damage, increased damage as melee, some lifesteal and increased damage when you get a kill from ferocity. The rune page I provided is the best rune page out there against pretty much anything, it allows you to get a lot of bonus extra damage at the cost of taking a bit more damage aswell. 

LANING PHASE WHEN YOU ARE PLAYING ZED

Your goal is to push your opponent into the tower most of the time if they have no waveclear and poke him when he goes for last hits with your W+E+Q (E before Q is important to allow you to slow your target, making Q easier to land ). Always invest into a early pink ward and try to think about your build before going back. If you’re having trouble vs mages, get an early hexdrinker, if you’re having trouble versus ad champions, get an early ninja tabi or some lifesteal to regen and just keep waveclearing till you get core items.

ZED IN MIDGAME

You have boots tier 2 by now and a core item and something else ( ex. Boots of Lucidity + Youmuu’s Ghostblade + 1 pickaxe/long sword ). Your goal should be to get towers down as soon as possible to get more map pressence. Try to talk with your team to allow you to split push one side lane while they group on other lanes. Usually, 1 player won’t be enough to stop you, so by split pushing you drag 2 people to your lane which gives your team an advantage or you just kill the 1 person they sent to stop you from spliting. Focus on getting Herald / Drake accordingly aswell to increase your advantage. 

ZED IN LATE GAME

The doom of Zed, where people usually all have Quicksilver Sash or Zhonya’s Hourglass, one way or another to stop your utlimate, don’t be sad though. Your damage now isn’t entirely reliable on ultimate, try to use ultimate to avoid incoming spells while also positioning yourself behind your core target in a team fight. If you’re splitting, try to poke enemy down before using ult if they have QSS or Zhonya. If they’re a tanky, you can usually try to ult and then use your combo coupled with item actives which you have to make a big death mark “pop” which usually kills any tank if you have a good build with armor penetration.

NOTES FOR ZED PLAYERS

• Upgrade boots with an enchantment when you can (alacrity usually being the best );
• Invest into pink wards whenever you can, it can save you or an ally from being caught;
• Don’t overbuy potions, after 10-15min, get 1 potion max per back;
• Upgrade trinket to Scrying orb once you reach level 9 to allow you to scout dark areas;
• Adapt to every game with your build, don’t keep buying same items even if you’re ahead or behind.

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed it and have more questions or want to have your account go up in ranks by a Master of Zed, feel free to order some games or some coaching from me.

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