Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: These give us a tiny bit of bonus AD at the beginning of the game. Good for overall damage, last hitting, etc. Although last hitting is easy with Contempt for the Weak, you can still accidentally mess it up. So these runes shall hopefully compensate for small things like that.
Greater Mark of Armor Penetration: These are probably the only runes that are absolutely mandatory and will never change on Zed. His base damages are fairly good in the beginning of the game. That means with armor pent, we shall be hitting like a truck in lane. Usually you can opt out your seals, glyphs, and quints for other things. Never opt out these Armor Pent marks. Ever.
Greater Seal of Armor and Greater Seal of Health: Lately, armor runes have fallen out of favor and people are either running flat health, or health per level. I am in the process of stocking up on new runes, so I only run five health seals, but when I get the chance I shall be swapping them out for full flat health seals. Keep reading in order to see other rune choices for seals, when you should use which seals, etc.
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: These are just standard against enemy AP mids. You cannot go wrong with them.
Other Rune Choices
Quintessences: For Quints, you can instead also run Armor Penetration. The reasoning for this is you do not need flat ad to last hit in lane because of Contempt for the Weak and your base damages are really good, so armor penetration works very well on Zed. You can either run full Armor Pent Quints or run Two Armor Pent Quints and one AD Quint.
Marks: For Marks, you can run Flat AD marks if you do not have Armor Penetration, but you better Grind IP like there is no tomorrow so you can replace them with armor penetration marks ASAP. Get on the grind boi.
Seals: Seals are the runes that give you the most variety. You can run either full flat armor, full flat health, or full health per level. You want to run armor when you are laning against an AD and or the enemy team has no AP. Then Health per level and Flat health is preference. Flat health if you think you need the early survivability or per level if you think you will do really good in the laning phase and just want to be less squishy when late game comes around.
Glyphs: For Glyphs there are three main choices. Magic resist, Magic Resist per level, and Cooldown Reduction. Flat Mr for laning against AP where you think you will get harassed a lot, Scaling MR for a team where you are not laning against ap but they have an ap jungler or top laner. Or you just think you wont take too much damage in the laning phase and you would rather have the mr scale into late game, and then CDR can just be mixed into the page somewhere if you want lower cooldowns.

Hello, my name is Alexwolf, here I will be sharing with you my Zed guide. My goal for this guide is to make it a one-stop shop for all your needs regarding Zed. I want people to be able to learn and pick up on Zed with this guide, as well as hopefully even reach out to more veteran Zed players and teach them a new thing or two they did not know. Zed is in my opinion, one of the strongest assassins at the moment, and with the resurgence of assassins, I want to help you guys get all the coverage you need on the top champions for this role at the moment. Any feedback and just discussions in generalwould be greatly appreciated.

So without further ado, lets get right into this guide. Prepare to be versed, in the art of the shadows!.

Zed Is one of my go-to champions in solo queue that I feel safe picking for the most part no matter what. He uses energy, so early in the game, Zed does not have to worry about running out of his resource to use abilities. His kit is very diversified. Razor Shuriken provides ranged harass and Shadow Slash is good for AoE. He has a lot of mobility and extra usefulness with Living Shadow. He can instantly shadow swap in order to cover a distance, he can use the shadow to extend the range of Razor Shuriken, and you can use Living Shadow and Shadow Slash to deal damage and slow. His passive is an execute, which makes last hitting extremely easy as well as assassinating low health targets. Finally, Zed has a high skill floor. Not-so easy to use, but hard to master. With Living Shadow Zed basically becomes a champion who is as good as the player who is controlling him. Can be awful in the hands of inexperienced or bad players, but can be a complete monster and beast in the hands of people who are very good with his mechanics. Basically, he is as good as you are. The sky is the limit! And cool downs. Cool downs are your second limit.

Zed does have his drawbacks, however one must learn to play around them in order to truly master the shadows. He is melee, so be careful not to get caught into bad situations, baited, kited, etc. In extended fights, you can run out of energy and be rather useless. So be careful with that and manage your energy wisely. Don't go in if you see you wont have anymore energy to cast more spells. And his ultimate, Death Mark, is countered by active items that remove debuffs or put you in stasis such as Zhonya's Hourglass and Quicksilver Sash. Even some champion abilities like Frozen Tomb. You will have to work around it and use your shadows/spells to finish enemies off instead. Do not get discouraged from playing Zed because of these items. It is honestly the only thing keeping this monster of a c

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21 OFFENSE 9 DEFENSE
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// These are in my opinion, the best masteries for Zed. He is an assassin and wants to be doing as much damage as possible. We do that by specing 21 points into offense. Because of Contempt for the Weak and lifesteal items/health potions, we shall not be putting points into Butcher or Feast. They are not needed and instead, we can put those two points into Warlord for some extra armor pentetration, which is a lovely stat on Zed. We take CDR over Attack Speed, and on champions where you shall be auto attacking and be using your spells evenly in rotations, Spell Weaving and Blade Weaving are more beneficial then putting the points into something else. We put our last 9 points in the defense tree and primarily, masteries that will help our early game a bit. Enchanted Armor would be a waste since we will not be building Zed tanky. Instead, go for the regen, AA blocks, and Veteran Scars / Juggernaut

Q: Are these the best masteries for Zed?
// In short, yes. You want to be doing as much damage as possible. So you need 21 or more points into the offensive tree, although I would not recommend putting over 21 or 22 points, because we still need some defenses for our early game. If you want to play Zed properly and maximize your damage, run at least 21 in offense.