[2.6a] [Challenger] Detailed Zed Guide

• Teamfighting

Teamfighting is pretty simple. You typically want to participate in 5vs5 team fights if you feel like your team is ahead, you have control of dragons or barons, or you believe that the enemy team is lacking coordinations.

In such scenarios, you want to group with your team and try to force a fight as you engage onto the backline (e.g. an adc like Jinx or a mage like Lux ) in order to assassinate them before they manage to dish out too much damage. However, this is quite risky. Getting caught can be the turning tides in a fight.

First and forest, my biggest tip is to take a good position before the fight starts. If a fight is about to start near dragon, you should walk behind the enemy by going through the jungle. This will allow you to instantly engage onto the enemy carries instead of trying to get through the front line such as e.g. Vi or Alistar .

Secondly, Zed is a champion that wants to get in, get a kill, and get out. With that being said, if you feel like you won't be able to get another kill - Get out. It is better to retreat, reload your abilities, and then get back in than it is to try to win a 1v1/2v2+ duel with no abilities.

Finally, make sure you abuse your Death Mark and shadow on your Living Shadow to kite and juke enemy abilities. This will allow you to assassinate multiple targets without getting crowd controlled to death. If you lose a team fight, don't keep forcing them. Try to split push, and group with your team before the next fight starts.

• Pushing

The only time you want to split push as Zed is when you are certain that your team can not win a team fight and when you have teleport. This could include that you or your team have fallen behind, you have lost baron or dragon or you know that your team is lacking coordination.

In such scenarios, you want to split push on the opposite side of the objective with the shortest timer. If baron is spawning soon, go to the other side. If dragon is spawning soon, go to the other side. This makes it difficult for the enemy team. Let me explain why.

First and foremost, when you are split pushing you are creating a threat. If the opposing team do not react by recalling or forcing a fight, they will either lose a lot of gold, experience, and towers due to you. In these cases, usually, a team member recalls while the remaining team fights a 4vs4.

Secondly, as you are pushing with teleport, you are capable of teleporting into an on-going team fight to turn the tides in a 5vs4 battle. The opposing laner can not do so, because they have recalled to stop you. If they haven't, you've lost an objective but won 2 to 3 towers.

Finally, split pushing also puts a lot of stress on your opponents. While they may not do very stupid mistakes, like stopping a baron to recall, they will do more smaller mistakes such as missing one ability or flashing into a wall. This is because they have to think about you at the same time as they have to think about their team and your team.

Contempt For The Weak

• Zed's basic attacks against low health targets deals bonus Magic Damage. This effect can only occur once every few seconds on the same target.

Razor Shuriken  

• Zed and his shadows throw their shurikens. Each shuriken deals damage to every enemy hit. The first target hit recieves 100% damage and all remaining targets recieve 60% damage

Living Shadow  

• Passive: Zed gains energy whenever he and his shadows strike an enemy with the same ability. Energy can only be gained once per cast ability. 
• Active: Zed's shadow dashes forward, remaining in place for a few seconds. Reactivating Living Shadow will cause Zed to switch positions with this shadow.

Shadow Slash

• Zed and his shadows slash, dealing damage to nearby enemies. For each enemy champion hit with Zed's Shadow Slash , cooldown of Living Shadow living shadow is reduced by 2. All enemies hit with zed's shadows are also slowed for a short duration.

Death Mark  

• Zed becomes untargetable and dashes behind an enemy champion, marking them. After 3 seconds the mark triggers, repeating a portion of all the damage Zed dealt to the target while they were marked. Reactivating Death Mark will cause Zed to switch positions with this shadow.

Combo 1: W+E+Q ( Living Shadow + Shadow Slash + Razor Shuriken ) which procs electrocute

• Your bread and butter and used to proc electrocute. Commonly used in early/middle for poke and for shutting down low health targets.
  TIP: If you use your W to the left or right, enemies run the opposite side. 

Combo 2: Flash+Q (Flash + Razor Shuriken )

• Fancy method to last hit a champion if your other spells are on cooldown

Combo 3: Flash+AA+E (Flash+AA+ Shadow Slash )

• Another fancy method to last hit a champion if your other spells are on cooldown

Combo 1: W+R+W+E+Q ( Living Shadow + Death Mark + Living Shadow + Shadow Slash + Razor Shuriken )

• Safe way to delete someone with your ultimate. You cast your W to a side or behind you which you teleport to after using your ultimate. After going back to your W with a second activation, you use your E to slow down the target and Q to land a tripple shuriken for your ultimate to finish them off

Combo 2: W+W+R+E+Q+AA+R ( Living Shadow + Living Shadow + Death Mark + Shadow Slash + Razor Shuriken + AA + Death Mark )

• Used in order to kill a target from a far with the help of your shadows

Combo 3: W+R+E+Q+AA+R ( Living Shadow + Death Mark + Shadow Slash + Razor Shuriken + AA + Death Mark )

• Known as the "tripple shuriken" combo. If you don't land your Qs this combo will not work.

Combo 4: R+Flash+W+Q+W+E+AA+R ( Death Mark + Flash + Living Shadow + Razor Shuriken + Living Shadow + E + AA + Death Mark )

• Combo is used to throw enemy off guard and bait out their abilities. You flash instantly after your ultimate to dodge potential spells. Then you use W on the target and Q them with a tripple Q. Finally you take the W to get close to them and E+AA before using your R to dodge spells for the second time.

Combo 5: W+E+Q+R+W+E  +Q if enough ability haste ( Living Shadow + Shadow Slash + Razor Shuriken + Death Mark + Living Shadow + Shadow Slash  + Razor Shuriken if enough ability haste

• The first three spells are used in order to burst the enemy, which you then follow up with your ultimate in order to finish them off. Remember that you only used your W to place it, meaning you can teleport to it right after you use your ultimate to dodge enemy spells and CC.

Combo 6: Flash+AA+E+W+W+E+AA+R+E+AA+W+Q+W+E (Flash+AA+ Living Shadow + Living Shadow + Shadow Slash +AA+ Death Mark + Shadow Slash +AA+ Living Shadow + Razor Shuriken + Living Shadow + Shadow Slash )

• This is combo is used for taking down multiple low health targets. You engage with a Flash+AA+E and then use your W to reposition yourself to the next target which you also E+AA. If the target is not dead, you use your ultimate on a third target and finish the last target off with your E while focusing the third target with your E+Q which should give you a tripple kill and enough reduction to use your W for the third time.

Levels 1-5 (0-3 Min):

• Easy Matchup (You won lane)
  1. Play safe until level 3. Take as little damage as possible. Farm with Q and W+E
  2. At level 3, poke using the basic combo Living Shadow + Shadow Slash + Razor Shuriken to trigger electrocute.
  3. When enemy has low health, go in for a kill. If you get poked down to low health, recall and repeat
• Hard Matchup (You lost lane)
  1. Play safe until level 3. Take as little damage as possible
  2. If the enemy is pushing into your turret, use your abilities to kill the enemy minions to avoid getting poked to death or dived
  3. Call jungler for help, or recall and start roaming at your power spike

Levels 5-9 (3-6 Min):

• If you are strong, stay in your lane. Two alternatives
  1. Push the lane with your auto attacks and dive the enemy laner
  2. Stay behind the enemy minions and only last hit them. If enemy laner walks up, you punish. If they don't, they miss gold+xp and you win.
• If you are weak (died in roams), roam to other side or play safe

Levels 9-16 (7 Min+):

• Playing from ahead
  1. Force team fights. You are fed and powerful. Tell your team to take dragons, herolds and invade enemy jungle. If they don't listen, roam. Kill your mid laner, go bot lane and get a double kill. Recall, kill your mid laner again and go top lane. If all laners are playing very safe, go into enemy jungle and try to kill the enemy jungler. Worst case scenario is you have to dive a lane. Make sure you don't die so you do not fall behind
• Playing from behind
  1. Avoid team fights. Splitpush. You have fed and you are weak. Go to an empty lane and farm. Don't focus on killing enemy champions. Kill minions, get xp and get back into the game. If you are 0/3, went top and you see a weak ad carry then you can try to kill them. Even if your team is losing team fights near dragon, you can take pressure off them by pushing the opposite lane.
  2. Imagine: Enemy team is taking baron. Your whole team goes to contest. You are farming bot lane near your turret at this time. You decide to splitpush. Your enemy jungler engages before your team has caught up to try to steal the enemy baron. Smite fails, jungler dies. Your team runs back to base. You have taken the second turret. The enemy team push mid to try to end the game. They take two turrets very fast. You have taken the third turret and you are moving in to their nexus. The top laner decides to recall to stop you. You see this and recall out of vision. The enemy team is now fighting a 4vs4 under your nexus. They attack and try to end the game, but take too much damage from the nexus and your team. you end up taking 3 shutdowns and 1 enemy escapes. Your jungler is now alive, and your team is stronger. You push down bot lane - you win the game.

Question: Why should I play Zed?

• Zed is a high-skill mobile assassin which means that you need to play him a lot of games to get the hang of him, but when you do then you will be an unstoppable killing machine. He is arguably one of the most mobile champions that are currently in the game, meaning you can do sick outplays in order to amaze your and the enemy team. He is honestly a lot of fun. Give him a try!

Question: Do I need to know all combinations to play Zed?

• No. Zed is a champion that requires a lot of adaptation and experience. You need to know when you can kill a target and when you can not kill a target. What combo you use to pursue your target doesn't matter as long as you get it done. In higher elo, you will probably need to know a certain amount of combinations to make sure you don't fully burn everything after a fight.

Question: How do you win against zed?

• Stand behind minions to reduce Q damage
• Avoid his W+E+Q combo by keeping distance or dodging it
• Buy [Stasis Enchant] or Guardian Angel to negate the damage from his ultimate