I'm not gonna lie, mid lane is lowkey cancer right now, and Zed is very good at farming, taking objectives, and bursting people down. While he may not have the same sustained damage as another assassin like Kha'Zix, he has the mobility to make up for it and the reason we build a lot of cheap easy damage items as well as Scorchclaw Pup.

Ward river near Red while recalling at 45 sec. Buy Red trinket. Start Blue every game. Go gromp, wolves, raptors, red, krugs. Full clear is 3 min so its optimal and gives u gold for dirk and time to gank / setup for scuttle.

Generally go for ganks bot, using First Strike and your combo to burst squishy targets. If a gank comes to you, you should take it as early kills could be great to snowball. Remember you clear very fast, so you won't fall off if no plays present themselves, so remember not to coinflip and lose lanes for your laners.

If you're not committed to maining Zed JG, I would say to pick a tank or an AP champion. If you are, a couple of things you can do to remedy this is 1. get early leads, 2. build the anti-tank build, even if not necessarily applicable, focus objectives and track enemy jungler thoroughly.

Your first item should always be umbral glaive. Glaive is 2300 gold and gives you immense value, according to U.GG, it is 125% gold efficient. With the recent buff to it's lethality, it is generally a good item for damage as well as its passive. When its passive is down, sweep if in an area you feel is warded. You can also upgrade into blue trinket if the enemy support is a support that's less likely to spam wards such as Soraka, Yuumi, Lulu, and other enchanters / scaling supports.

You will always be taking free boots, and your second item will always be Ionian boots of Lucidity. Just like in Zed mid, it is the highest value and insanely broken.

Your third item will almost always be Eclipse. The reason for Eclipse is because it does the most burst early and works great with Scorchclaw Pup and with the damage gained from First Strike. It also scales better than Duskblade imo if the enemy team starts to build armor. Duskblade is optional if you're not against any tanks, but eclipse is also good in the same positions it is in so its just about personal preference.

Your fourth item will 80% of the games be Prowler's Claw, for even more burst and single target access. About 15% of the games you will want Serylda's Grudge here instead, as it is the go-to for when the enemy team has 2+ tanks/bruisers who can be more tough to crack. The rest of the 5%, you will want to build Serpent's Fang, this is if the enemy team has shield champions such as Camille, Karma, Yuumi, etc that actually affect your damage significantly.

Your fifth item depends on your fourth item. If you went Prowler's or Serpent's, this is where you want to build Serylda for more stats and scaling Armor Pen. If you went Serylda's Grudge, this is where you want to build Black Cleaver. Assuming you're vs more tanks, this is the stage of the game where you start to teamfight, and armor reduction starts to gain good value over armor penetration.

Your sixth item entirely depends on the game. Usually Edge of Night is generally agreed to be a good last item on Zed, you can also go The Collector if you feel you're not bursting the squishies enough. If you built Duskblade (vs 0 tanks/bruisers) then you can slot in an Axiom Arc here. You can also go Black Cleaver if you don't already have it here.

Sell Glaive for Axiom Arc, it's the only direct upgrade in terms of haste and could be good for teamfights. Sell Boots for whatever you want, usually Edge of Night or Guardian Angel, assuming you get there.

If it is not possible to contest, Zed has a trick up his sleeve very similar to his student Kayn (more specifically the Shadow Assassin form of Kayn), where you are able to steal objectives better than most junglers. The general jist of the combo is to place a shadow behind the Dragon or Baron pits respectively, hit the blast cone or flash over if needed, E auto (passive auto) smite the objective, and that usually does more damage than most other junglers besides maybe Nunu Q Smite or like mentioned earlier, Kayn.

Unfortunately, Zed Jungle suffers the weakness of not being the best at closing out the game. Typically, if you are able to wait out CC and obliterate the squishies, your team can win a teamfight and you are able to go for Baron or go for pushes. If winning teamfights is not possible, you will want to find picks on mispositioned carries or look for bait plays, and then force an objective to force a 5v4.

Well, the truth is that it's the best single target bursty rune currently that provides gold for snowballing, as well as the Inspiration tree being very good. In my opinion, it is not worth at all to go Conqueror or Electrocute, but it could come up if you are against a team where First Strike is easily turned off (think trap champions such as Shaco, Nidalee, Teemo etc. Remember though, most of these are spotted by Glaive and Red trinket, so think wisely about using a suboptimal rune page.