Zed vs Pantheon Counter Pick

Aegis Assault makes Pantheon invulnerable to damage from the front while he strikes repeatedly with his spear, and an assassin whose damage arrives as one burst from one direction has an obvious problem with that. Zed sits at 42.6% over 108 games on patch 16.13.1; a sample that thin deserves caution, though the mechanical reason for the result is plain enough.

• Pantheon’s 40 base armour and 124.2 at level 18 are unusually high for a champion who also carries 64 base attack damage, and Zed’s damage is entirely physical.
• Shield Vault dashes to a target and stuns it, interrupting the exact moment Zed needs to reposition through Living Shadow.
• Mortal Will empowers a spell every few casts or attacks, so his damage arrives in predictable spikes that are worth waiting out.
• Attack range is 175 against 125, handing Pantheon the first hit in any exchange that begins at contact.

Two things still belong to Zed. Pantheon’s 28 magic resist is his softest column, and Contempt for the Weak adds magic damage to attacks on low-health targets. Death Mark also grants untargetability through the dash, which can be aimed to land behind the shield rather than into it. Health scaling favours Pantheon at 2,503 to 2,337, so a short window beats a duel, and difficulty ratings of 4 against 7 mean Zed pays more for the same error.