Hi, I'm Swagilicious and this is my Zed guide!
This is my first attempt at creating a guide. However, the reasoning for why im creating this guide is for own personal gains as I seek to get a better understanding of Zed and his matchups through writing it down and putting it into perspective.
Despite this, I still hope there is some new Zed player out there who can implement some of this information into their gameplay obviously. I'm going to continuously be adding new info and stuff to the guide as I go through the season and new patches surfaces, so feel free to stick around and join me on this neverending journey of learning Zed. After watching a lot of the korean Zed OTP, Zed99, I've decided to implement some of what I've learned into this guide.


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	Flash is the best summoner spell in the game, about every champion takes it and Zed is no exception. Its offensive and defensive usecases are crucial to Zed's kit. It can be used as an extra gap closer, an escaping or dodging tool or a means for outplaying your opponent.
	Ignite is equally important to Zed's kit as it offers crucial kill pressure in lane. Zed thrives off snowballing, and the kill potential it offers helps with this.

Domination Tree

	Electrocute is arguably the best keystone on Zed. It adds vital burst, and procs very easy with Zed.
	Taste of Blood offers decent sustain in lane. Optionally you can pick Sudden Impact in its place, which procs with both Living Shadow (Only when you actually swap places with the shadow) and Death Mark, and offers a timely boost of 7 Lethality.
	While Eyeball Collection is easier to stack, the vision control Zombie Ward offers, especially with Umbral Glaive, is too good to ignore.
	Ultimate Hunter is very befitting Zed, as it offers coldown reduction on his ultimate, his prime ability. Ravenous Hunter and Relentless Hunter are also viable on Zed, just not equally lucrative IMO.

Sorcery Tree

	Transcendence: Despite Zed often capping his CDR with the items he buys, overcapping with transcendence gives you bonus AD. Besides, it will only get you at 40% CDR faster.
	Scorch: As Zed, you should frequently be poking your opponent with your abilities, which is where this rune will offer extra bonus damage and furthermore help the laning phase. Swap with Nullifying Orb against hard hitting mages for a safer laning phase.

Precision Tree

	Presence of Mind: Allows us to raise the maximum energy cap from 200 to 250 with 5 takedowns, this allows the usage of a couple more abilities before running empty. Triumph is also pretty viable, often decisive on whether on you live or die after a dive or being ignited. The 20g bonus is also nice.
	Coup de Grace: Making your job, assassinating, a lot easier with the bonus damage it gives against low HP opponents.

Inspiration Tree

Magical Footwear: Gives free boots with extra movements speed, which is always pretty convenient on assassins, as it further increases their mobility (which is their strong suit) and lets you put that 300g into offensive items instead. The boots are very advantageous in games where you have potential for snowballing and/or you know you'll be roaming a lot. Since kills and assists reduces the time of where you receive the boots and the bonus movement speed the boots offers obivously makes your roaming capabilities better by a slight margin.

Cosmic Insight: The 5% extra CDR this adds to the maximum cap of 40% is pretty convient on Zed, as this is something Zed often cap when he has about 3-4 items, and Zed loves CDR. It also offers 5% CDR on your summoner spells, so that your Flash and Ignite are up more frequent allowing for more frequent plays. And furthermore, it also adds 5% CDR to your item actives such as Youmuu's Ghostblade, which again comes in handy especially with the roaming/snowballing style you play with this runetree.

Starting Items

	Long Sword: Allows us to buy 3 Health Potion as well, giving us more sustain in the earlier levels where Zed is weak. It also allows us to get our core items faster.
	Doran's Shield: Combined with 1 Health Potion, offers us a safer early laning phase with increased sustain, normally bought against tougher matchups.
	Doran's Blade: Combined with 1 Health Potion as well, offers more sustain and health, and synergizes well with the Conqueror rune setup.

Boots Options

	Mercury's Treads: Most common boots choice on Zed. Offers Magic Resist and Tenacity, buy against teams with ap midlaner or/and lots of cc.
	Ninja Tabi: Offers primarily armor and some basic attack reduction. Buy against heavy AD comps or in cases where you struggle with an AD opponenet. Great pick against Yasuo.
	Ionian Boots of Lucidity: Offers 10% CDR + 10% CDR on your summoner spells, so that your Flash and Ignite are up more frequent allowing for more frequent plays.
	Mobility Boots: Offers great roaming potential. Nonetheless, it is rarely the best choice of boots.

Core Items

	Youmuu's Ghostblade: Offers all the crucial stats for Zed, in addition it offers a pivotal active ability which increases movement speed and permits you to get closer to your opponents, or for defensive usecases, further way. Get this as first item if you're planning on roaming.
	Duskblade of Draktharr: Greatly increases damage output with its stats and passive ability. Get this as first item if you really want to demolish your lane opponent.
	Black Cleaver: Offers all the stats you could want on Zed, AD, Armor Reduction, CDR and HP for survivability. Is traditionally the 3rd item you buy as Zed.

Optional and situational items

	Guardian Angel: Doesn't offer the best stats, however the passive it offers is superb for Zed as an offensive squishy assassin whom often has to position himself in scenarios leading to his death in order to take out the enemy carry.
	Edge of Night: Good when playing vs squishy teams. Also viable vs champions that are forced to use their main abilities in order to get rid of the shield, for example Twisted Fate.
	Umbral Glaive: Good early-mid game item as it offers decent stats + vision control for an affordable price, however it does fall off lategame compared to Duskblade of Draktharr.
	Lord Dominik's Regards: The downside of Lethality is that armor renders it useless, hence why you build this item when the enemy team is stacking armor.
	Mortal Reminder: Builds from Executioner's Calling which you'll want to build against comps and champs with a lot of healing, like Vladimir and Fiora. In addition this also offers Armor Penetration, which always comes in handy.
	Maw of Malmortius: Good item against heavy AP comps or when building from Hexdrinker when facing strong AP midlaners like Syndra or Fizz.
	Mercurial Scimitar: Normally you only upgrade to this from an Quicksilver Sash as your last item, as its very expensive and provides somewhat lacking stats. Build against champs with heavy cc like Malzahar, Skarner or Lissandra. Not worth it solely against Warwick anymore now, granted you are able to dodge his ultimate Infinite Duress.
	Death's Dance: Indeed a viable item on Zed. Offers a decent amount of AD, CDR, Omnivamp and some decent defensive stats + passive which can be benefitting against champs with high burst.
	Ravenous Hydra: Good when in need of more damage output, since it offers nice flat stats + an active which deals damage.
	Blade of the Ruined King: Really not an ideal item on Zed like it once used to be, however its a decent pick when facing several tanks.

Tips that will seperate you from the casual Zed player

• A lot of your fights is determined by how you utilize your R Death Mark. The untargetable state it offers can be crucial in dodging your opponents key ability.
• Your Q Razor Shuriken deals decreased damage after hitting an enemy, hence why you want to position yourself so you have a clear projectile path to your target when throwing Qs.
• Hitting the same target as your Shadows restores energy.
• Hitting enemies with your Shadow's E Shadow Slash slows them and allows for easier success of hitting your Q Razor Shuriken.
• Furthermore, hitting enemies with your own E Shadow Slash decreases the coldown of your W Living Shadow by 2 seconds with each champion hit.
• Keeping track of your energy is important to see whether you have enough energy for your next move, it is recommended that you turn on "Show Spell Costs" in the settings as it allows you to see how much energy each of your abilities costs.