Nami's ultimate can come in very handy for initiating on enemies who are far away.
Using Ebb and Flow during an engagement with enemy champions will help sway the battle in your favor.
Aqua Prison has a long cooldown, make sure to use it at the right moment.
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 provided here emphasize some important Nami versus Zed counter stats that may help you grasp the differences and similarities between the pair. As an example, Nami’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Zed’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Nami may be more central to her team's team fighting potential than Zed. This observation is in large part fueled by the differences in assists.
Nami normally has a significantly smaller longest killing spree than her matchup does. Commonly, she takes less damage than Zed. This often reflects different amounts of tankyness, yet it can also show that the champion with increased HP has less agility and thus is not able to escape additional harm when engaged or poked.
Both LoL champs are great. Both champs have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Nami usually fairs equally well when playing against Zed, with a 50.1% win rate. As a result, Nami makes an ok counter for Zed.
While Nami does have a higher winrate compared to Zed, when on opposite teams, Nami also has a lower level of difficulty that makes her a less challenging champ to learn. You should be careful when picking Nami into Zed.
Additionally, Nami has a lot of utility and CC, a similar amount to Zed. This often makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when trying to counter champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Nami vs Zed matchups, Nami is the better champion with a similar win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during late stage team fights.
Nami is a decent counter to Zed. You will do well by focussing your play on increasing your CS and destroying objectives. If you can do that, you should hold your own as Nami against Zed.
If you would like to truly master Nami in order to counter Zed during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to learn a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you mind the build and stats presented above, you should grow your win rate by a lot and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Nami typically gets a lot less CS compared to Zed. Champs who typically don't get many minion kills usualy don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as support champions. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually have to have a lot of items to be effective. In either case, try to exceed the values shown on this page to do well.
The best items to use in your Nami versus Zed build consist of Shurelya's Battlesong, Imperial Mandate, and Staff of Flowing Water. When Nami incorporated at least these three pieces in her build, she performed much better when fighting Zed than with many other commonly used counter builds. In fact, Nami had an average winrate of 50.1% battling Zed with these items in her kit.
To have the highest likelihood of coming out on top against Zed as Nami, you should take the Summon Aery, Manaflow Band, Transcendence, Scorch, Bone Plating, and Revitalize runes from the Sorcery and Resolve rune sets. Of all the rune builds players chose for Nami vs Zed matchups, this mix of runes resulted in the highest win rate. Moreover, these runes provided a 50.1% winrate overall.
If you need to get Nami versus Zed tips and matchup stats and build suggestions for a a distinct skill level, feel free to choose one from the selection menu provided above. By default, the stats and strategies given are computed using every match played with these champions.