'League of Legends' Update Will Buff Zed's Early Game at the Cost of a Passive

Riot Games’ currently has plans to buff one League of Legends’ most recognizable assassins by [...]

Riot Games' currently has plans to buff one League of Legends' most recognizable assassins by upping Zed's stats while also taking away the passive from his ultimate.

League of Legends game designer Riot Captain shared a changelist on Reddit to preview the plans for Zed that would see three different areas buffed at the cost of that Death Mark passive. Zed's attack speed, Razor Shuriken, and Living Shadow abilities will all be better in Patch 9.4 assuming the update rolls out as planned with these changes included, but Zed players would no longer be able to get bonus attack damage by slaying an opponent with the Death Mark ultimate.

The Rioter explained the reasoning behind the change in the tweet and said the goal is to give Zed both early-game pressure and late-game split-pushing potential.

"Removing trap optimization around R – understanding right now is that it is almost always wrong for Zed to prioritize R on an otherwise sub-optimal target just for more Passive AD," the Rioter said. "Looking to take that power and give him more pressure in early lane, where he currently loses most matchups. Bumping up late game split pushing as this is something Zed players call out specifically as a want and a late game win strategy. Estimating +1%. Ban rate for Majority players is limiter here."

What this essentially means is that Zed will be stronger during lane and can split-push his way around the map later. The base damage of the champion's Razor Shuriken takes a hit during the last two levels of the ability, but the attack damage ratio has been increased to allow it to do more damage than before assuming Zed has stacked enough attack damage as one would expect. Zed players will also notice that they'll be able to recast Living Shadow at greater distances to return to their shadow from the same distance that they can currently cast their abilities.

Zed's passive on his ultimate was originally added several seasons ago, so its removal may take some getting used to for players who expect to gain that passive attack damage. The ability's passive was implemented back in Patch 6.22, the same update which some will recall updated many different assassins including Talon, Kha'Zix, Zed, and others.

The changes listed above are currently planned to release in Patch 9.4 but could be changed before they're pushed to live servers.

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