Zed After Patch 3.7: Still Viable?

Patch 3.7 brought the first major balance changes to Zed. As with any nerf there are many questions about the power of a champion post nerf. After careful examining the patch notes and some games on Zed I'm here to share my thoughts on how Patch 3.7 has affected his performance.

Lets breakdown these nerfs one by one:

Razor Shuriken
Damage dealt to secondary targets reduced to 45/69/93/117/141 (+0.6 bonus AD) from 60/92/124/156/188 (+0.8 bonus AD)

What Riot has done with these nerfs is tone down Zed's waveclear earlier in the game. Before you could walk up to the melee creeps, place your Living Shadow (W) next to the ranged creeps and use Razer Shuriken (Q) and Shadow Slash (E) to one shot the wave. Now, you need a higher amount of AD to instantly clear waves. This nerf also makes it less effective to harass your lane opponent though his creep wave with your Razor Shuriken.

Living Shadow
Vision radius of the Shadow reduced to 700 from 1300

This is a relatively important nerf to Zed. While it might not seem like much, having almost half of the vision range that you used to have is a huge impact. With this nerf, it is much harder to scout later in the game with your shadow. Not a huge nerf but still an important one.

Shadow Slash
Cooldown increased to 4 seconds from 3

This is, in my opinion, the most important nerf to Zed. This nerf is not just to his Shadow Slash, but also a nerf to Death Mark (R). Zed's Death Mark lasts for 4 seconds. In that time, you could land two Shadow Slashes during the duration of Death Mark. After the nerf, you need more Cooldown Reduction to be able to get the same amount of damage as before.

To compensate for this nerf, I would suggest either rushing Brutalizer or buying a Bloodthirster instead of a Blade of the Ruined King. The Brutalizer will give you the cooldown reduction necessary to land more than one Shadow Slash reliably. On the other hand, the Bloodthirster will give your Death Mark more raw damage to make up for the increased cooldown on Shadow Slash.

 

Final Thoughts/Summary:
The nerfs to Zed affect his early game the most. It is harder to push and win trades with the reduced Razor Shuriken damage and the reduced Shadow Slash cooldown.  It is also harder for Zed to snowball out of control or win his lane easily. These nerfs, however, did not crush Zed into the ground. Zed is still a huge threat capable of one-shotting an enemy carry. He is still a completely viable pick for any comp that requires Zeds skill set.