Use Shroud of Darkness in tandem with Paranoia's dash. Your opponents may panic and waste a critical disable on your spell shield.
Using Paranoia at a critical moment is well worth it even if you cannot use the dash.
Duskbringer isn't only an offensive ability. It can be used to close distance out of combat or escape from certain death.
Zed's Shadow Slash can only slow you if his shadow hits you with it.
Zed receives bonus effect from Attack Damage items he purchases, so Armor is super effective against him.
After Zed uses his Living Shadow, he is at his most vulnerable as his damage, slow, and mobility are both dependent upon it.
The stats shown on this page feature several vital Nocturne versus Zed matchup statistics that can help you figure out the differences and similarities between the pair. As an example, Nocturne’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Zed’s ratio of NaN, demonstrating that Nocturne may be more central to his team's team fighting capacity than Zed..
Nocturne usually has a similar longest kill spree as his foe does. On average, he takes more damage than Zed. This commonly reflects differing health capacities, yet it can also hint that the champion with increased HP has less mobility and thus is not able to escape additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both LoL champions are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Nocturne usually wins when taking on Zed, with a 53.9% win rate. As a result, Nocturne makes a great counter for Zed.
While Nocturne does have a higher winrate than Zed, when they face off with one another, Nocturne also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less challenging champ to learn and master. You don't need to be too worried when picking Nocturne into Zed.
Furthermore, Nocturne has only a small amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Zed. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Nocturne vs Zed matchups, Nocturne is the better champion with a noticably higher win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allied champions during team fights.
Nocturne is a great counter to Zed. Make sure you focus your tactics on increasing your gold income and destroying objectives. If you are able to do that, you should hold your own as Nocturne against Zed.
If you would like to truly master Nocturne to counter Zed during both the early game and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to pick up a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you listen to the build and stats shown above, you should increase your win rate by a lot and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Nocturne on average gets a lot less CS compared to Zed. Champions who typically don't get much CS usualy don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as sup champs. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically have to have several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the numbers shown here to do well.
The best items to prioritize in your Nocturne versus Zed build include Maw of Malmortius, Eclipse, and Axiom Arc. When Nocturne bought at least these three pieces in his build, he did much better vs Zed than with many other typical item sets. In fact, Nocturne had an average win rate of 53.9% battling Zed with this build.
To have the highest probability of annihilating Zed as Nocturne, you should equip the Lethal Tempo, Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, Coup de Grace, Cosmic Insight, and Magical Footwear runes from the Precision and Inspiration rune sets. Of all the rune builds that we analyzed for Nocturne vs Zed matchups, this combination of runes resulted in the greatest win rate. In fact, these runes gave a 53.9% win rate overall.
By default, tips, stats, and builds on how to beat Zed as Nocturne are presented for all skill levels combined. If you would like to scope the statistics and builds to a specific rank, you may use the selection menu located at the top of this page.