The state of assassins in League of Legends‘ meta has become a hot topic of discussion within the community lately, and it’s now focusing on Zed, who many believe is overpowered.
In a Reddit thread from Oct. 2, a user claimed the Master of Shadows was the main problem in the game, rather than assassins in general. “Zed’s super safety, scaling, and skill ceiling means his pick rate is much higher than any other assassin who actually has to lane like an assassin and not like a Mage,” the author wrote.
Zed is one of the most-banned champions in ranked at the time of writing, from 30.6 percent on average in Master to 36.5 percent in the Bronze tier, according to U.GG. Only the newly-released Briar has a higher ban rate than the assassin.
“Zed’s state reflects the overall frustration towards the class. It’s not healthy and good that they need to go to bruiser items at all. But none of them creates as much issue as Zed and through him, the entire class is hated,” the author explained in the thread.
They refer to previous popular threads that sparked heated debates in the community over the last week. It started on Sept. 29 with a thread detailing how strong Zed could become with a Haste build, to which lead gameplay designer Phroxzon reacted on Oct. 2.
He explained Riot Games’ thought process behind balancing assassins, but didn’t mention Zed’s state specifically. Players have been begging for the developer to nerf the assassin or balance him out so he finds more power in the early game, but gets less snowball potential.
In the meantime, a change is going to hit Zed as part of Patch 13.20, which is planned to be released on Oct. 12. The cooldown of his W ability will be increased from 20-14 to 20-17 seconds.
The ability was considered too easy to spam with a Haste build, which makes it welcomed by the community. It still might not be enough to curb his strength in the meta though, based on player complaints. Adjustments are still subject to changes before the patch hits live servers.
Published: Oct 3, 2023 04:26 am