Zed is fine the way he is, with the escape from his W. Sure it's tricky to use it properly, but it can and has been done.

I've played every champ except Ahri and Varus and I've got to say that out of the box Zed is the most difficult to play, at least for me. But I'm picking him up a bit. Overall though I'm leaning towards agreeing with the original poster that he is a bit too squishy. His damage is not really overwhelming like leblanc or diana. Other champs like wukong and Jayce seem to do just as much damage yet are twice as tough and have better escape methods and utility. Yeah he can use his W to escape, but chances are it will be on CD when you REALLY need it to make an escape, since he also depends on it for damage during a fight.

Dont get me wrong I reallllly like zed and think his overall concept is awesome, but they need to give him more survivability. One suggestion is instead of giving him more HP make it so enemies see his shadow as a clone. That would add a little confusion and reduce his probability of taking damage. I mean Wukong has this skill, PLUS he goes stealthed, AND he is considerably more tanky then Zed. Maybe to soften this idea so its NOT OP is to make the clone untargetable. I dunno just an idea. But Zed really needs SOMETHING. His W is just to weak an escape, especially when compared to other champs.

No Ive been playing a couple years and own all the champs except for 6.

Zed is a tricky character to master. I think he is ok but not as a top laner. The cd on his W can be reduced by utilizing his other skills but Q can be difficult to land with both on a single target so your better off maxing his E first. There was another post that talked about this extensively that I'm too lazy to look for and link to but you can find it in the forums. Another thing I see is a lot of ppl use his W with his ult like that increases the dmg from Death mark. Save your W as an escape since his Ult gives him a clone already and you don't get anything really from hitting them with a 3rd Q or E. I think he just takes some time to get used to but he's not really viable top. I can't comment on jungle though cuz I don't really care for jungling myself...

Zed is supposed to be an assassin. granted I've only played a few games with him. But I've done at least one jungle and at least one top. And more than once I've been in situations where a gank is coming for me in top lane. I've got no ward. and I got away completely unscathed thanks to my w. The CD may be 20 seconds at rank one. But it also lowers for EVERY thing hit by e. on 3 second cd. So you lower is by 6 seconds the first time you use e while you have clone out. Clone lasts 4 seconds. So you can E again while its still out. thats 12 seconds. now your w has an 8 second CD. Thats nothing. I've never had my w on CD when someone came to gank. As for him being Squishy. He can dart around the map so easily that it doesn't matter you shouldn't ever be hit by a skill shot in a team fight. The only times you die is when their entire team shoots everything at you. Which keeps happening to me... Its annoying. But how many champs DON'T die after 5 people shoot everything at you completely ignoring the rest of your team. Name me one champion that doesn't die immediately after getting blitz grabbed and jumped on by 5 people...