SmashGizmo on 3.03 Zed Changes and Reminder about Champ Price Reductions

Zed 3.03 Changes
SmashGizmo, an associate QA analyst for Riot, has been talking about the recent Zed and Xin Zhao changes that came in patch 3.03.

He started off by specifically addressing the Zed changes, saying:

"In high level play, we were seeing Zeds max Q last. He would start by maxing E and then max W second for the CD, energy returns and bonus AD. The problem with the old level up incentive is that you were looking at 35 damage/rank in Q vs. 35 damage/rank in E. It's no surprise here that players were choosing the skill on half the CD, with the slow utility, and lower energy cost, especially considering that it isn't a skill shot while the alternative is.

The total amount of damage on Zed's kit is very finely tuned, so in order to put any extra damage anywhere, we need to remove it from elsewhere, so in order to make Q more appealing, we also needed to hit E to keep his burst curve in line with other characters. The end result of this change still leaves E as Zed's highest DPS skill, while hopefully making Q a viable alternative for poke and straight-up burst."

He then elaborated:

"Directionally, these changes are introducing more counterplay to Zed's optimal damage. As it was before this change, Zed's best way to output damage was always in maxing E, which is essentially impossible to dodge (instant PBAoE on a character with 2 gap closers). By changing the relationship between Q damage and E damage to favor Q, we're aiming at making the decision between Q and E a trade-off rather than a no-brainer and making the decision to go for your highest burst one that revolves around skilshots which inherently have more counterplay.

I understand current Zed players being worried about how this changes the characters, but during his developement, the best feelings we got on the character were the highs from landing totally badass double/triple shurikens during ult and then doing the whole, cool-guys-don't-look-at-explosions routine. When we were seeing how the character was being played on Live (essentially ignoring the fact that he even has a Q), we felt that a lot of the nuance of the character was lost in what we released. I'll be monitoring Zed closely to see what these changes do to his play rate and win rate, but I'm very confident that these changes are at least pushing him in a healthier direction."

He also mentions 

"'I've considered flattening Zed's Q to a 60 cost across all ranks, but wasn't confident in making that change this patch (specifically for the case of low level lane harass)."

Reminder on Champion Pricing Reductions
Here is Hippalus with a brief reminder on the champion reduction schedule now that another champion has been released.

"The Leona price reduction was a bit late but it is done. 

The Quinn skin bundle will stay up through Tuesday, and Quinn will be reduced to 6300 IP next Friday afternoon. 

Wukong is the next champion to be reduced to 4800 IP / 880 RP. That will happen simultaneously with the next champion release."

He also followed up with:

"Also keep in mind that because these champions price reductions are announced it advance, there are no refunds granted for buying them hours or days before the reduction. 

We will do another announcement like this one after the Wukong reduction:

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/c...ction-schedule"