Should You Main Zed? Tier D
Zed is tier D for maining. Only 26 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 979,273 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Zed scores 2.15 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 2.15 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 3 Challenger · 23 Grandmaster · 242 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 979,273 games played worldwide · 10.63% pick rate · 18.85% ban rate
Ban rate warning. Zed is banned in 18.85% of games. Even where the density number is strong, you will not get to play it in roughly one game in 5.
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
Zed, similar situation. You'd rather pick, I mean, if you like playing Zed, you'd rather pick like Qiyana or something, right? Zed has been nerfed quite a bit.
Play rate is around 3%. And, yeah, only three challenger zeds and 23 Oh, no, no, no. Zed, I was looking at the wrong thing.
Zed is three challengers and 23 grand masters. 18 19% ban and 11% pick rate. So basically almost 30% pick ban.
He's a little bit too popular. You'd rather look at these less populated assassins, Qiyana, Talon. You know, even even consider something like Ambessa.
If you were to play play a main, of course, if you like Zad, then for sure play him.
How this was measured
Two numbers, one division. First, how many players are currently in Challenger or Grandmaster maining this champion in Korea, Europe West and North America, from onetricks.gg. Second, how many ranked games the entire playerbase plays of this champion worldwide across every rank, from op.gg. The result is high elo mains per 100,000 games played, then reduced by the champion's ban rate, because a champion you cannot pick is a champion you cannot main.
This is not a win rate list and it is not a patch strength list. It measures availability-adjusted high-elo main density: how much Challenger and Grandmaster main representation a champion has relative to how often it is played. It is not the probability that maining this champion will get you to high elo. The score counts Challenger and Grandmaster mains only, drawn from a tracked pool that starts at Master; it does not include the Chinese server, and it counts accounts rather than people, so one dedicated player with several high elo accounts shows up more than once. Patch 16.15. The full plain English explanation, including everything this list cannot tell you, is on the main list page.
Popularity is not the signal. What matters here is how densely high elo mains appear relative to how often the champion is played.