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Zed Build Guide by GreenReapers

Middle [14.23] The truth lies in darkness|In Depth Zed Guide

Middle [14.23] The truth lies in darkness|In Depth Zed Guide

Updated on November 21, 2024
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League of Legends Build Guide Author GreenReapers Build Guide By GreenReapers 69 1 179,841 Views 13 Comments
69 1 179,841 Views 13 Comments
League of Legends Build Guide Author GreenReapers Zed Build Guide By GreenReapers Updated on November 21, 2024
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Runes: Lane pressure

1 2 3 4 5
Domination
Electrocute
Sudden Impact
Eyeball Collection
Ultimate Hunter

Sorcery
Transcendence
Scorch
Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+10-180 Bonus Health

Spells:

1 2 3 4 5
Passive
LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

LoL Summoner Spell: Teleport

Teleport

Items

just dont

Threats & Synergies

Threats Synergies
Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny
Show All
None Low Ok Strong Ideal
Extreme Threats
Ideal Synergies
Synergies
Ideal Strong Ok Low None
The guide

So YOU want to learn how to DOMINATE your games with Zed?

Or are you just looking for way more information on and around Zed than you'll ever need?

You've come to the right place!








About Me
I go by GreenReapers. I started playing League in mid S7 and started playing Zed around S8 (god i'm old). I peaked at Diamond 3 and am at over 1 Million Mastery Points.
I started writing this guide because I wanted to help others learn a bit about Zed and help newer players.
I will primarily be focusing on Assassin Zed, since thats what I have the most experience with, but will also give information on bruiser Zed, albeit not quite as detailed.
I'll galdly respond to comments and questions, if you have any.
HF and shoot me a message if you need something :D




Pros And Cons
+ High mobility
+ Incredible outplay potential
+ High skill ceiling
+ Good snowball
+ Versatile builds
+ Edgy ninja
+ Better than Shen
- Low damage for an assassin
- Ultimate dependant
- Main burst is easy to dodge
- Has a hard time against experienced players
- Have to do more for the same result
- Hard to master
- High banrate






Abilites

Passive - Contempt for the Weak
Zed's basic attacks against targets below 50% maximum health are empowered to deal 6 / 8 / 10% (lvl: 1/7/17) of the target's maximum health as bonus magic damage.
Against monsters, Contempt for the Weak deals 200% damage, capped at 300.
Contempt for the Weak cannot occur on the same Champion icon champion more than once every 10 seconds.

Q - Razor Shuriken
Cooldown: 6
Cost: 75 / 70 / 65 / 60 / 55

Range: 925

Zed and his Shadows throw their shurikens, each dealing 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+1.0 per bonus attack damage) physical damage to the first enemy they pass through, and 60% damage equal to 48 / 72 / 96 / 120 / 144 (+0.6 per bonus attack damage) physical damage to each additional enemy.

W - Living Shadow
Cooldown: 20 / 19.25 / 18.5 / 17.75 / 17
Cost: 40 / 35 / 30 / 25 / 20

Range: 650

Passive: Zed gains 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50 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.

E - Shadow Slash
Cooldown: 5 / 4.5 / 4 / 3.5 / 3
Cost: 40

Range: 315
Zed and his Shadows slash, dealing 70 / 90 / 110 / 130 / 150 (+0.65 per bonus attack damage) physical damage to nearby enemies.
Each enemy champion hit by Zed's slash reduces Living Shadow's cooldown by 3 seconds.
Enemies hit by a Shadow's slash are slowed by 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% for 1.5 seconds. Enemies hit by multiple slashes take no additional damage but the slow is increased to 50% instead.

R - Death Mark
Cooldown: 120 / 110 / 100
Cost: 0

Range: 625

Zed becomes untargetable and dashes to an enemy champion, marking them. After 3 seconds, the mark triggers, dealing 65% attack damage and repeating 25 / 40 / 55% as physical damage of all damage dealt to the target by Zed while the mark was active.
The dash leaves a Shadow behind for 9 seconds. Zed can recast this ability to switch positions with this Shadow.






Summoner Spells
Which spells do what for me?
Flash ye old faithful. This spell helps you escape dangerous situations aswell as letting you initiate engages, dodge spells and do flash combos!
Overall Flash is an always good to have spell and never has no utility.
I recommend Flash especially into CC heavy team compositions that can easily lock you down, as it helps you dodge critical spells, ensuring you can keep on moving and killing.

Ignite increases your lane pressure and kill potential, helping you to stomp lanes and snowball your lead. Assassins are the best class for this, hence Ignite fitting their playstyle very well. It also helps you against champions like Irelia and Vladimir, who heal a lot or to run down champions with heals strong enough to outpower your low dps like Sylas.

Cleanse is a spell people rarely take, but it's really great into matchups like Lissandra, Zoe and
Lux. Cleanse let's you escape much more easily from Lissandras W Ring of Frost and R Frozen Tomb, aswell as negate the selfpeel of Zoe and Lux, especially when coming out of your R Death Mark. Additionally it can be taken when similar matchups are supported by a high CC-comp, doubling down on it's effect against CC.
Keep in mind that it can be used to negate debuffs like Ignite or Exhaust.

Teleport is necessary against strong poke champs, who can whittle you down easily, while you don't have much kill pressure.
Hwei and Orianna are perfect examples of this, as they have high kill pressure on you and can space/survive your poke with their Shield- and Movement Speed abilities.
Teleport helps you in mid- to late-game on the splitpush, allowing you to rotate to your team incredibly fast.
It's also nice to have if you're very unfamiliar with a matchup, helping you to survive unknown situations.

NOTE that in lower elo you might have more success with Ignite, as mistakes in laning are much more common.
Flash- vs Flashless Setups

Swapping out your Flash for Teleport and taking anoter situational summoner spell has been an ongoing trend for champions like Camille or Katarina and also sometimes sees use on Zed.
Ultimately it's a preference thing, wether you play with our without Flash, but I'll tell you how I go about deciding which to take, as I strongly advocate for the use of flashless setups in the right circumstances.

As already discussed Flash grants you more mobility and the ability to diversify your combos however, Zed is a very mobile champion anyways. Shaving off Flash for Teleport doesn't hurt him as much as immobile champions like most adc's or control mages and can contribute to a winning lane, much more easily with the added utility from another summoner spell aswell the map pressure from Teleport.

When deciding wether to use Flash or not, you'll want to look out for CC in the enemies team composition.
When the enemy doesn't have much of it you can swap out Flash for Teleport, if you want to additionally take Ignite for healing reduction/kill pressure.

Alternatively you can play Teleport and Cleanse if it's a bad early game matchup that requires you to play Teleport against an easy to hit CC like Vex or Lissandra.
I reiterate: this is preference.




Runes
I just have a few Introductional words to say before we get into this chapter:
See this chapter as a framework. Runes can be used in a variety of ways and experimenting can be quite a lot of fun.
Just because I didn't list a particular combination at the beginning of the guide, doesn't mean its bad! If you think you can make it work or the situation calls for it, try it! Though I won't take responsibility if it doesn't work out xD.
In the following I will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the runes and when I find it best to use them. Furthermore I have presets which I think are the best at the very top (the cheatsheet) of the guide.
Keystone Overview
+ High burst
+ Good against squishies and for single target elimination
+ Makes snowballing easier
- Frontloaded damage
- Bad against tankier and/or multiple opponents
- Falls off harder if you don't snowball
+ Gold generation for scaling
+ Decent against squishies aswell as tanks
+ Good lategame value with true damage
- Worse early damage than the other options
- Less early agency
- If it get's procc'd you loose your keystone
+ Good extended trades, aswell as decent burst when stacked
+ Incredible staying power in teamfights against tanks and squishies
+ Enables bruiser Zed
- Frontloaded damage
- Bad against tankier and/or multiple opponents
Forces you to play around Conqueror stacks (neutral)

How to choose your Keystone
When choosing your keystone, you not only have to think about your matchup, but also the enemy team in general.

First, decide for your matchup, which rune you'd want against that champion in particular.
After that look at the team.
When fighting against more tanky/fighter opponents First Strike and Conqueror are better choices.
When fighting against more squishy opponents Electrocute and First Strike are better.

After that you can think about the individual strengths of the runes and choose based on that.

There is a exception to this rule! Running Electrocute into a tanky team can be good when some criteria are met!
1. Your team has enough anti tank damage, so you won't need to worry.
2. The enemy has a squishy, high priority target that you can take out.
3. Your lane permits taking Electrocute.
Rune Details
Electrocute
Electrocute is the standard Assassin Keystone. It gives Zed a better burst and greater kill pressure against squishy targets. Since he can proc it with his standard WEQ poke combo, he can proc it more reliantly from range than other assassins, adding to his poke. Additionally, the burst synergises very well with the %damage stack from Death Mark.
If you need extra healing against a poke or hard matchup Taste of Blood is an all around useful rune. It gives you more sustain for your weak early game, and gives you later on more staying power and survivability, since the heal scales. Sudden Impact is great when you can all-in often with it's high early damage is especially useful for the laning phase. It get's triggered by Zed's W Living Shadow and
R Death Mark. His constant shadow swapping makes getting value from this rune quite easy. You can also take it in poke matchups when you have other means of surviving poke, e.g. Doran's Shield, Absorb Life or Second Wind
Eyeball Collection helps you accelerate your snowball potential, by giving you stacking AD per takedown.
Ultimate Hunter is without a doubt the best 4th slot Domination rune for Zed. He relies heavily on his R Death Mark to burst down his enemies and with the extra ultimate ability haste, he can often use it to force resources like Flash from enemies or trade ults, while maintaining a low cooldown to get them the next time.
First Strike
First Strike is a great middleground between the combat abilities of Conqueror and the burst of Electrocute. Due to the gold it generates it's a great rune for matchups which are either very oppressive early, or against targets who you can't reliably kill before you get some gold. Malphite is a perfect example of the latter, as you cannot kill him early, but what you can do, is poke him for gold with this rune, keeping up even though you'll usually loose cs, until you can kill him! Note that you want to take Sorcery secondary for Scorch in matchups against squishier champions or opponents you might have a chance against at low level and Precision secondary for Cut Down against tankier opponents.
Magical Footwear is a simple rune. The extra Movement Speed isn't all that important, though it is nice to have. The 300 gold it saves are very valuable.
Recently I've warmed up more to Cash Back, as it saves a ton of gold if you get in most games to 3+ items, but I still think if you purely want to play the first few levels and snowball off of that, Magical Footwear allows you to get your first spike faster.
Some matchups like Xerath or Ahri, either hard poke champs or those with a key ability to dodge make early boots a good buy, in which case Cash Back is the superior choice.
Triple Tonic is the only rune in this slot really suitable for Zed. At lvl 3 you get a nice gold boost with Elixir of Avarice. At lvl 6 you get a Elixir of Force, increasing your combat abilities on your lvl 6 powerspike, which increases your kill pressure and allows you to surprise enemies with your burst. Lastly, at lvl 9 you get an Elixir of Skill, which gives you a skill point, simply increasing your damage by a bit, as you'll put it in your E Shadow Slash at this point.
Cosmic Insight is the easier option here, since it simply allows you to use your summoner spells more often, making you either harder to kill or granting you higher kill/map pressure, depending on the summoners you chose.
Jack of all Trades is a suitible replacement, if you plan on going for a 2 item spike, which gives you 5 different stat. Note, that percentage increases count as different stat, so if you go for a squishy killer build like Opportunity into Voltaic Cyclosword, you'll have 5 stacks, granting you 6 AD and 5 ability haste.
However only take Jack of all Trades if you want to go for a 2 item spike. Otherwise Cosmic Insight gives more value, as it starts already activated and gives about the same gold value.
Conqueror
Zed can stack Conqueror rather fast after he gets his R Death Mark with his triple Q Razor Shuriken. Even before that, it is the best rune when going for long trades and allows you to reliably punish very early mistakes by running the enemy down, if they stay too close to your shadow while far away from their turret. Conqueror also scales very well into the lategame, giving you high damage potential when keeping it stacked. Zed usually needs to disengage after using his abilities, but with Conqueror you can stay in combat while being rewarded for keeping it at max stacks.
Additionally it enables bruiser Zed, if you like that playstyle or your team needs you to be a bit more of a fighter.
If you need sustain Absorb Life can give you some and helps you in poke and harder lanes, so long as you get some last hits. You'll usually take this as a rune to prevent damage loss from somewhere else, e.g. starting item or secondary path.
Presence of Mind works rather well on Zed, since his Energy is limited to 200. This rune is especially useful in situations with more than one enemy nearby, as it allows you to have an easier time to get out with the extra Energy and Energy restore burst on kill. It can also help to finish off an enemy when you start to run low on Energy and makes managing it easier.
Some Zed players prefer Triumph over Presence of Mind for more staying power and survivability. This can also be useful against close early fights with an enemy that picked Ignite.
The introduction of Legend: Haste made the Precision tree way more attractive to Zed, since he loves Ability Haste. It even gives 5 more Ability Haste at full stacks than Transcendence, which is just great.
Cut Down is essentially a better scaling Scorch. The early game damage is negligable, but once you get to around level 9 and your first Item it starts do deal really good damage. It increases your late game combo damage by around 100-150 on squishier targets, wich is substantially more, than Scorch's 40 damage and without a cooldown. Additionally, Cut Down's damage increase scales into the percentage damage form your R Death Mark, increasing your damage further.
Last Stand is especially good when going for extended trades against melee champions. The rune only starts to increase your damage once you're below 60% of your maximum health, so taking heavy trades early is an advantage for you. Additionally, Last Stand is able to outdamage Cut Down, as it maxes out at 30% max healt with 11% increased damage and doesn't deactivate on your target dropping low. Perfect to help you win those close, longer melee fights.
Secondary Rune And Shard Options
For your secondaries you've actually got quite a lot of options. Sorcery, Precision and Resolve work best as secondaries in my opinion.
I will keep myself short on the Precision runes which I've already explained prior, but will highlight what makes them specifically good as secondary runes.
Secondary: Precision
precision details
Secondary: Sorcery
Sorcery details
Secondary: Resolve
Resolve details
Rune Shards
Shard details





Builds
This guide chapter will explain your standard itemization, aswell as situational items. Zed is not as heavily reliant on building the correct items, as you'll still find oppotunities to look for assassinations, especially in chaotic teamfights. Choosing the correct items however, can be a tremendous help and will make your success more consistent.
First item options
Opportunity is a great snowballing item. The movement speed on kill is not where this item's strength lies, It is it's passive ability preparation, granting you extra Lethality for 3 seconds after damaging an enemy champion, after being out of combat for 8 seconds. When you are able to effectively play around the passive it easily makes up for being on the lower side of base Lethality as the item stat plus the passive equal to 26 Lethality for 3 seconds after dealing damage to an enemy champion, thus making single target assassination very easy.

Voltaic Cyclosword gives 3 stats Zed wants. Attack Damage, Lethality and Ability Haste, making it a good first item already. The real benefit this item provides comes from it's passive, dealing 100 physical damage and applying a 99% Slow on auto attacking while being fully energized. This slow makes it incredibly easy to hit your combos, while also providing additional burst.
This is best bought first against squishy teams, the less dashs they have, the more of an impact your slow will make, as they can't use something like Distortion or Spirit Rush to dodge your Razor Shuriken. Very good against champions with movementspeed abilites, e.g. Orianna.

Eclipse is a very safe option and needed into most harder matchups against tankier targets. You easily get value from it's passive, damaging the enemy for 6% of their maximum health on hitting them 2 times within 1.5 seconds, aswell as granting you a shield. Playing around the cooldown of it is key when wanting to utilize Eclipse to it's full potential, letting you mitigate damage while dishing out more yourself.
This Item is especially good against champions with high burst potential, such as other assassins, melee champions and tankier targets, however it's currently the lowest Damage option. I only advise going eclipse into non tanky targets if you feel you really need the survivability.
Also this is your goto when playing bruiser Zed.
Situationals and Itemization
Assassin Situationals
Assassin Itemization
Bruiser Situationals
Bruiser Itemization



How to play
General Overview
Zed plays a lot less like traditional Assassins like Qiyana or Talon, in that he has less burst, while his playstyle is more like a control mage.
The best description I've seen yet was in a comment section, unfortunately I don't remember by who:

"Zed is a control mage, and his brand of control is murder."
- some random commenter

You want to play methodically, picking at the enemy and waiting for your opportunity to strike. That's true for laning aswell as teamfighting. When starting out, I encourage you to go for riskier plays. It helps you find your limits and let's you get a sense of what you can and can't do!
When you think you've got a good grasp on that, don't worry about your team pinging you and saying "just go in!", when you feel it won't be worth it. That's a misconception that many players have. Trust your instincts, as following calls like that usually gets you killed! I'm also guilty for falling for this rather often, haha.
Early Game

Level 1-2


The first 2 levels are very similar in most matchups.
When playing against ranged characters, you have to respect their early pressure, as they can wear you down with their autoattacks easily.
Let yourself get pushed, while trying to get as many cs for as little health lost as possible. You can do this by lasthitting with your Q Razor Shuriken and of course walking up and taking the cs with autoattacks.
"But GreenReapers, you just said to respect their autoattacks!?"
Yes, and that's why you walk up, when they need to choose between hitting you and last hitting a minion. So keep their aswell as your minions health in check.
If one of them walks up far enough out of their champions range you can of course take it.

When playing against melees you can look for short trades, but most melee champs will be stronger than you if you overextend. Respect their trading power but don't be afraid to trade and lasthit, unless they completely outmatch you (e.g. an Irelia with her passive Ionian Fervor fully stacked).

Playing around your Keystones for early trades is essential, as they can make or brake a trade, aswell as influence your trading behaiviour. You're much more likely to win a extended trade using Conqueror, but will reliably win more short trades with Electrocute and First Strike.

If you get pushed under tower at level 2 or you're actively fighting a melee champion taking E Shadow Slash second is recommended.
Otherwise, when you can take W Living Shadow at level 2 you should look for heavy trade opportunities, against targets with a weak early game.


Level 3-5


At level 3 you can actually start playing the game a bit! You've got your main combo WEQ unlocked. WEQ is great as it hits exactly 3 times, granting you the ability to proc Electrocute from range.
Generally you can start playing more aggressively around these levels, chunking the enemies with your combos but note, that your W Living Shadow has a rather long cooldown. You will have to play arond it, as your enemies will do so too, actively trading into you after it's down!


Level 6+


With your lvl 6 you have finally unlocked your strongest ability, R Death Mark. It not only creates another Living Shadow to swap to by recasting it, it also let's you blink to your target, becoming untargetable in the process, and put's the Death Mark on them, dealing a flat amount + a %of the damage dealt while was acive on expiring.
This gives you a huge powerspike. You should be looking to kill even more proactively now, as you're starting to reliably be able to punish overextends with a kill and a lvl 6 advantage. Commiting right when you get your level up while your enemy is still lvl 5 can oftentimes lead to an easy kill.
The additional pressure also makes it easier for you to commit to all ins, jungle skirmishes or roams. In some scenarios it's also worth it to commit your R Death Mark to force an enemy out of lane, to free you to move around the map or make them loose a big wave and lane priority.
Trading Patterns and general tips
Mid Game
Your midgame plays like any other Assassin.

If you're ahead you want to actively pressure sidelanes, as the enemy either has to send a relatively strong tank or more than one person to rival you on the sidelane.
Note that picking Conqueror makes your sidelaning stronger due to a longer lane, leading to longer trades.

If you're behind, you want to catch sidewaves when it's safe and try not to overextend, as you'll get picked off rather easily.

In your downtime, when you can't push a sidelane or you notice a teamfight is starting to brew on the map you want to do something called shadowing.
This simply means that you try to stay out of the enemies vision while being close enough to your team to look for assassinations or help out in teamfights.
Even if you don't get anything while shadowing your team, if you've done it in your downtime you have used your time effectively. Look to get back to a sidelane if there isn't a fight thats about to happen, when you can either farm again or if you have to catch a wave thats about to crash into your tower. The latter scenario is a more urgent case than the former, as you'll lose way more expierience and gold.

When objectives are up, you have to decide, wether you should put pressure on a sidelane to force someone to contest you or help your team at the objective fight. I generally recommend helping out your team, but if you don't think you can win the fight anyways, pushing a sidelane will probably get your team more value. Teleport makes cross map pressure easier, as you can pressure a sidelane and instantly travel to the teamfight when your help is needed!

I recommend taking the Krug camp or Gromp while your jungler is busy on the map and you can't do anything else to keep up your cs.
After a certain point your jungler, unless they're a farming jungler, probably won't be able to clear all their camps anyways.
Late Game
Your late game plays very much alike to your mid game. You'll still be on sidelane duty while shadowing your team at given opportunities, however the shadowing plays a much larger part at this stage of the game, as with ever increasing deathtimers, one teamfight can decide the outcome of a whole game.
Before doing something, taking a look at the map and your team can help you make the decision, wether you should group up or push a sidelane.
Catching side waves is s till important, so if you get the opportunity, you should still look to farm them.
Teamfights
I've already touched on the subject of Zed playing more like a control mage, than a typical Assassin.
As such you generally don't want to be the one engaging a fight. If you're fed enough to do so, great, get 'em, but if you aren't you don't want to do that.

If your tank gets a good engage and you can find an opportunity to kill the carry, that's good.
If people that should peel for the carry are kept busy elsewhere that's also a big plus.
And if you can find a carry who's currently being crowd controlled you are sure to hit your combo.

Another scenario that happens quite often is you, throwing your combo into a group of enemies to get damage off, but not being ready to commit. Let your team fight for a few seconds, while you assess the situation from a few feet away and wait for the moment you can safely shut down a key player of their team.

When playing Conqueror you have a lot more freedom to actively go in when playing teamfights, as you aren't quite as vulnerable when staying in combat. Don't be afraid to commit to more but keep in mind, that you're still
Zed and playing a bit more methodical helps you stay on top of the game!
Mid Lane fundementals
Mid lane fundementals are not the center point of this guide, but I will quickly go over them, and explain some of the most important things about them


Wave Control


Wave control is the process of manipulating the minion wave in such a way, that it gets you the most amount of expierience and gold, while giving as little to your opponent.
There are 3 basic concepts:
slow push, fast push and freeze/hold

When slow pushing you aim to push your minion wave slowly towards the enemy tower. You achieve this by stacking a waves, meaning you last hit and kill a minion once in a while, as you're pressuring your opponent away from the wave. This leads to your minions slowly gaining a numbers advantage over those of your opponent.
Slow pushing is generally used to generate lane priority. This means your opponent is now forced to stay under his tower and last hit the minions, otherwise he loses a ton of expierience and gold, while you are free to do something other than concentrate on your lane.
This might be roaming, warding, backing or being the first to move for jungle skirmishes. It can also be used to pressure a tower more easily or setting up a dive.
However, while in the process of slow pushing, you'll be longer farther away from your turret than when using other methods of pushing, resulting in you being vulnerable to ganks. You can use this fact to your advantage by baiting the gank when you're confident you can escape or 2v1.
You can also force an opponent to slow push towards you around you can force your opponents wave to slow push towards you, by pushing your wave under their turret, making it so your wave next wave ends up near their tower, which in turn causes their wave to push. The same effect can be achieved by pushing slower than your opponent when you are both csing.
This in turn forces them to step farther away from their tower, making them vulnerable to ganks aswell as extended engages by you!

When fast pushing, which also called shoving, you want your wave to get as fast as possible under the turret of your enemy, to deny them minions when they are not there or force them to make the choice between sacrificing minions to back and staying in lane.
This is can be used as an alternative to a slow push, when you have had no time to set one up, but still have to move for a fight, as a fast push also creates lane priority, although not one as strong as a slow push.
Another use case is as already said, forcing an opponent to stay in lane. This can be useful for stopping them from spending their gold or when you want to constantly put pressure on them, preventing them from moving themselves.

Holding and freezing a wave are 2 very similar, yet different concepts.
Holding a wave usually takes place right before a freeze.
When you hold a wave you sacrifice your own health by walking into a minion wave, preferably a small one of 3, to prevent them from crashing into your own turret. This leads to a slow push - like scenario on the opponents side, as they'll have to either step forward to pressure you under your turret, preventing the hold, or accept it and try to push the next wave under your tower, if they aren't in a position to pressure you enough. Alternatively they can also back, but will have to sacrifice a lot of minions for that.
Freezing starts if you manage to hold preferably 3 minions in front of your tower, while not letting your opponent push you, nor the minions under your turret. When the next wave comes, by simply last hitting and in the best scenario pressuring your opponent away from the wave, you can hold it outside your tower.
This has multiple effects:
  1. If your enemy wishes to push the wave, they will have to walk far away from their tower, putting them at risk of being all inned by you or ganked by your jungler.
  2. By keeping them away from the wave, if you have enough pressure to do so, you deny them exp and gold, putting them behind.
  3. If you're good at this you can keep it up indefinetly, until your enemy finally manages to pressure you away, or the enemy jungler helps them push the wave.
To quickly explain why you want to optimally have 3 minions: 2 are usually not enough for your wave to keep getting killed over and over before the next enemy wave approaches. The low numbers advantage does not matter at this point, since you'll be last hitting minions, essentially creating a very slight push. An exception to this occurs when one of the two minions is a cannon minion.
At 3, if no other possibility 4, minions you should be able to hold the freeze. In the latter case look to last hit a bit more proactively until the numbers are more optimal.

Roaming


Roaming is at it's core the act of walking around the map to put pressure elsewhere on the enemy team. Sounds rather simple, right?
However, when roaming, be that to gank botlane, help your jungler invade or moving for a skirmish, you will always want to look at your wave state.
This is called roam timing. When you have lane priority you have to possibility to roam without losing too many minions, while getting gold and exp elsewhere and helping your team.
When doing this, you always want to try to get at least a bit more value than your lane opponent. If you don't, but your team gets good value, that's also fine, but be a bit more careful when fighting, considering the gold balance between you and your enemy laner.
Not getting any value from a roam is possibly the worst scenario, especially if you've sacrificed one or two waves to do so.
Yes, if you spot a very good roam, it can be worth it to miss out on waves for it! But it becomes very risky. If it doesn't work out you give your opponent a huge lead!

Warding


Warding is a very useful skill to have. It allows you and your team to gather information on the enemies positions to keep you safe.

Generally speaking this is how wards are used:
  • Wards inside your own jungle or at the river border of your jungle are considered defensive wards. They protect your jungler from getting counterjungled and spot the enemy when they try to wrap around through your jungle to gank a lane. Additionally they provide some vision along the river, while being rather unlikely to be cleared themselves, however they ususally take at least some time to get set up.
  • Wards at your lane brushes in comparison don't take much time to set up, but only protect you from being ganked. There is a exception to this, when going for a ward infront of the enemy turret. This prevents your opponent from leaving lane without you having info on which direction he went. Great when you're freezing the wave or the enemy likes to roam a lot.
  • Wards inside the enemy jungle or at the river border to their jungle are considered agressive wards. These give you a lot of information on the enemies jungler and rotations, but due to the positioning in enemy territory they are more likely to be cleared when possible.

Ward timing is another rather important aspect to your lane. The enemy jungler will have full cleared around 2:30, so placing a ward around that time or having one ready is considered very good.
After that you should aim to place a stealth ward every 90 seconds on the side you think the enemy jungler is most likely to be at that time. Be that because of jungle tracking, having spotted them or simply intuition. Consider, that when following this strategy you always try to keep a ward in reserve, so you can use it as needed, while using your other ward for active vision.
If you feel you need more wards control wards can be a good option, as you always look to place control wards around the map to deny vision.

The ward map below shows you some good warding spots. The map assumes you to be playing from blue side. For the notes to make sense on red side, you have to mentally flip it.
Any of the wards are interchangable with a control ward, however keep in mind that if you decide to place a control ward in the open you should be able to contest it actively. Otherwise it will be cleared rather fast and you gifted your enemy 30 gold.





Combos
The combos are my favourite part about this Champion. The absolute variety you can choose from is insane. And as such, choosing the optimal-, or at least a good combo, for every situation is key to mastering Zed.
This section will go over most of the combos you will use rather often, and some more situational ones. Of course there are more combos and variations than I'm listing here, but after a while of playing with some combos in mind, you will naturally get better at considering different ability usages. Click on the combos to see a video of them!

This video by Mythology zed covers WAY more combos, if you want to check that out!

If you have questions about any combos in particular or think I should add them, please message me!


On the topic of reset and kite combos

If there is demand or I've got more time on my hands for it I will add a chapter concerning these types of combos. Please let me know if you are interested!

I have not included reset combos originally, as they are fairly rare if you aren't building a high ability haste build, however with the recent buffs I think it might make sense to add them.

Kite combos on the other hand do find frequent usage. When I started breaking them down for a subchapter I noticed, they are mostly just Ult combos with delayed swap usage, hence I didn't add them either, but will try to explain shadow positioning in another update.
Basic Combos
WEQ
Your basic combo. Used for trades and to dish out some poke damage to enemies. The E slow makes it easier to hit your Qs.

WQE
Slight variation on WEQ. Trades the E slow for faster damage output. Harder to hit but great when the enemy is CC'd anyways.

WEQW-AA
Standard engage combo. Used to get onto your enemy or trade heavily.

W-AA-EWQ(behind)
Used against melee fighers who you don't want to fight outright or are very dangerous to you.
Ult Combos
WERQ-AA-RWE-AA
Used against immobile targets. Applies the slow first to prevent the enemy from getting away and sets up a instant triple Q. Good when you know flash is down or you can burst easily.
You can also swap to W instantly to dodge an ability aimed at you, cutting the last part from the combo, making it safer. The variation would look like this: WERW-AA-QRE
If you need the slow from Voltaic Cyclosword swapping the first AA with the Q can be nice, but as you are already using it against an immobile target with the E slow applied it's not that neccesary.

RWEQW-AA-R
Used to follow the enemy with W shadow. Oftentimes the combo burst is delayed to catch the enemy off guard.
Dummy that gets ulted is enemy position 1 and enemy position 2 is the other dummy.

WRE-AA-QW
If you know you have enough damage without your W to get a kill against high CC champions, placing your W in a safe spot before going in and swapping to it to avoid cc will allow you to get out without getting yourself killed. The W swap can also be performed before your burst, but landing at least an auto before doing so is preffered due to damage and a potential slow from Voltaic Cyclosword.

WEQ-AA-RE-AA-Q
You'll usually want to use this combo when you are playing against a squishy with a movement ability with high range, like Aurelion Sol's Astral Flight or Zeri's Spark Surge. You'll burst them first with a basic combo and use your R Death Mark to follow their movement ability. After that you keep attacking them to stack your Death Mark with enough damage to finish them. I reccomend using this combo when you have enough damage for your basic combo to be a threat. Otherwise you'll wind up dead most of the time, as you've just used a big part of your burst and the enemy will continue to attack you.
As always, first attacked dummy is position 1 and second is position 2, making it so the target travels from 1 to 2 during your ult animation.
Flash Combos
Important Information on Flash and Q Razor Shuriken

When using flash, keep in mind that your Q Razor Shuriken will always fly into the direction of your mouse at the time of the first button press. This means, flashing will not change the direction, but the angle at which your Q will come out.
Click here for a demonstration.
You can use this to your advantage, by using flash to dodge enemy skillshots, while your Q target will be unaffected, assuming you've hovered your mouse over the enemy character.

Q into flash will always be faster than flash into Q, as you're starting your cast animation earlier, giving your opponent less time to react.


QF
You most basic flash combo. Mostly used to finish off an enemy when you aren't quite in range.

WQWFE-AA
Perfect for catching the enemy offguard. Extends your normal range even further through the use of flash.

WEQWFE-AA
Can be used at various angles to surprise an opponent if they overextend. Especially useful against short range dash users, who think they are now safely outside your range, just to get followed by.
The upper dummy is where the enemy originally stood and the lower dummy is where they moved to with a dash for example, in this scenario.
Quite often you want to wait long enough to get E up again before you swap. Good if you need just that tiny bit of extra damage. Final combo will look like: WEQWFE-AA.

RWFEQW-AA-R
This is actually my favourite combo. It doesn't see a lot of use, but it's my favourite, so it's here.
It directly counters champions like Viktor, who can establish a 'no-no-zone' with an ability, like Viktor's W Gravity Field or, albeit to a lesser extent, Anivia's R Glacial Storm. You do this so you spend as little time as possible in this ability. Used if they can burst you down/you'll get locked down by something else when in there.




Thank you!

I just wanted to quickly say thank you for checking out my guide! :D
Wether you read it all or just parts of it, as long as you've learned something I'm happy. Till' next time!

Special Thanks to

For helping me either directly or indirectly with BBcode

For their insightful guide reviews


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