Played as Zed a few times, and he is a pretty fun assassin done well without the need of hard cc. But he still needs some work in his kit.
Passive- Change to something that synergies with the rest of his abilities.
Every 16 seconds zeds next attack or ability that hits an enemy champion spawns a shadow behind them. The cool down for this ability is reduced by 1 second for every ability and attack zed lands on enemy champions. It is also reduced by 0.5 seconds for every ability his shadow lands. Reason for this change is his current passive is random and doesn't really fit with his other abilities, also it is weak compared to other champions abilities.
Q- This is a nice ranged farm/harass, that is quick reliable and doesn't have a huge decay.
W- Currently the cool-down is very high early game, so it has incentive to max first if you want safe long range harass/farm at the cost of vital damage, also aside from placing a shadow it doesn't do as much as i hoped. And the dash is unnecessary it could just be a placement ability with a dash animation.
Places a shadow at target location for 4/4.5/5/5.5/6 seconds.
(All shadows last for this duration)
CD 20/17.5/16/15.5/14
E-Currently i like this ability a lot, but the lack of slow on the original and the non stacking damage seems unnecessary.
Enemies hit by Zeds Shadow Slash receive 50% of the slow.
Enemies hit by multiple shadow slashes receive 25% of the damage and 50% of the slow they would normally receive after the first. This change is to give him more reward for leading his prey into a pit of shadows, and allow him to catch/run from enemies when his shadows are not available.
R- So far i only use this ability as a dodge since it makes me untargetable. It really needs work since its damage is low and calculates their armor/res twice. You cant even rely on it as much of an escape tool since the shadow only lasts 3 seconds.
Zed marks a target champion and places a shadow that follows them for its life span.
Zed can activate the ability again while this shadow is active to teleport to its location.
After 4/5/6 seconds the mark vanishes dealing true damage equal to 40/45/50% of the damage zed dealt to them while they were marked. If the marked champion has lower health than the damage stored in the mark it vanishes dealing its damage(killing them). This change will actually give his ultimate an ultimate feel, and it allows him to stick to his target for only as long as he needs to. The reason its true damage is because armor/res has already been calculated when zed first deals damage to his target.
These changes will give them that army of shadow turrets image and make him even more fun to play with different strategies.
I'm not completely opposed to an indicator that the target will die. I'll discuss it with Samizul.
Some miscellaneous thoughts on the marker:
Pro-
The cool thing about Zed's ult is that you can disengage once your target is "already dead". Disengaging and completely missing the kill is probably a bigger hit to your feeling of success as an assassin than missing a Darius ult (which I didn't actually design to only be used for the reset, but players can't reset shooting for anyway!).
Zed's ult does a highly variable amount of damage. An indicator could help counter-play against it, since players might be less likely to burn a flash trying to escape when they are already dead.
Con--
Consider as a counterpoint Karthus ult: The uncertainty created around whether his ult will kill its target(s) is a major source of tension and, for me, excitement. I think this ability would be much flatter with an indicator. Ignite has this same tension.
Just like Darius ult, I suspect people will become much better at gauging their ult's damage in the weeks and months after Zed's release. Right now, when you've played the champion perhaps 1-3 times and quite possibly have non-functional tooltips, of course the ult will seem unwieldy.
When another red (xypherous I think) discussed adding indicators to other execution style ults like lee sin r or garen r, it seemed to me that the only thing stopping them was the fact that these ults did variable damage, whereas cho ult was a flat true damage amount (I cant remember their argument for why darius doesn't have it, but i imagine it had to do with the ult dealing variable amounts of damage based on hemorrhage stacks). But on principle it seemed like they were not averse to adding an indicator to every big nuke ult where applicable; it was just the calculations that were the limiting factor. Is that not the case? To be honest, I like the fact that you also consider tension when making these champions, and I'm sure there'd be quite the community outrage about the perceived dumbing down of the game if this happened for every ult.
Calculations can be problematic but we could probably work around them with some behind the scenes math (to account for armor/flat dmg reduction/%damage reduction, etc.). This might just be a point on which I end up disagreeing with Xypherous.
What Zed needs
Passive- Change to something that synergies with the rest of his abilities.
Every 16 seconds zeds next attack or ability that hits an enemy champion spawns a shadow behind them. The cool down for this ability is reduced by 1 second for every ability and attack zed lands on enemy champions. It is also reduced by 0.5 seconds for every ability his shadow lands.
Reason for this change is his current passive is random and doesn't really fit with his other abilities, also it is weak compared to other champions abilities.
Q- This is a nice ranged farm/harass, that is quick reliable and doesn't have a huge decay.
W- Currently the cool-down is very high early game, so it has incentive to max first if you want safe long range harass/farm at the cost of vital damage, also aside from placing a shadow it doesn't do as much as i hoped. And the dash is unnecessary it could just be a placement ability with a dash animation.
Places a shadow at target location for 4/4.5/5/5.5/6 seconds.
(All shadows last for this duration)
CD 20/17.5/16/15.5/14
E-Currently i like this ability a lot, but the lack of slow on the original and the non stacking damage seems unnecessary.
Enemies hit by Zeds Shadow Slash receive 50% of the slow.
Enemies hit by multiple shadow slashes receive 25% of the damage and 50% of the slow they would normally receive after the first.
This change is to give him more reward for leading his prey into a pit of shadows, and allow him to catch/run from enemies when his shadows are not available.
R- So far i only use this ability as a dodge since it makes me untargetable. It really needs work since its damage is low and calculates their armor/res twice. You cant even rely on it as much of an escape tool since the shadow only lasts 3 seconds.
Zed marks a target champion and places a shadow that follows them for its life span.
Zed can activate the ability again while this shadow is active to teleport to its location.
After 4/5/6 seconds the mark vanishes dealing true damage equal to 40/45/50% of the damage zed dealt to them while they were marked. If the marked champion has lower health than the damage stored in the mark it vanishes dealing its damage(killing them).
This change will actually give his ultimate an ultimate feel, and it allows him to stick to his target for only as long as he needs to. The reason its true damage is because armor/res has already been calculated when zed first deals damage to his target.
These changes will give them that army of shadow turrets image and make him even more fun to play with different strategies.
Some miscellaneous thoughts on the marker:
Pro-
The cool thing about Zed's ult is that you can disengage once your target is "already dead". Disengaging and completely missing the kill is probably a bigger hit to your feeling of success as an assassin than missing a Darius ult (which I didn't actually design to only be used for the reset, but players can't reset shooting for anyway!).
Zed's ult does a highly variable amount of damage. An indicator could help counter-play against it, since players might be less likely to burn a flash trying to escape when they are already dead.
Con--
Consider as a counterpoint Karthus ult: The uncertainty created around whether his ult will kill its target(s) is a major source of tension and, for me, excitement. I think this ability would be much flatter with an indicator. Ignite has this same tension.
Just like Darius ult, I suspect people will become much better at gauging their ult's damage in the weeks and months after Zed's release. Right now, when you've played the champion perhaps 1-3 times and quite possibly have non-functional tooltips, of course the ult will seem unwieldy.
Calculations can be problematic but we could probably work around them with some behind the scenes math (to account for armor/flat dmg reduction/%damage reduction, etc.). This might just be a point on which I end up disagreeing with Xypherous.