@Swordsman Kirby: The point of my thought is that correctly oriented edges is always an advantage (versus both fridrich and petrus), just because it's IMHO much faster to solve the cube without any rotation + using only RUL.
A variation with correctly permuted edges (ZZ-d) as I said in article is incomplete. I've probably made a mistake putting the incomplete method as the first described
There are two variants currently in use:
ZZ-b, where you do phasing, which permutes two opposite LL
edges, therefore leaving you with ~80 cases (+ their inversions and symmetries = ~167).
ZZ-VH, which you do EOLine, finish the F2L as you like (without phasing or anything), and then you do VHLL (COLL + EPLL).
@fanwuq: With all S slice edges flipped I do the former alg you proposed, I just use U instead of D. With 6 misoriented edges it varies. There are nasty cases, but usually I orient 4 edges while placing remaining two on the F/B. Then, in example, with two edges on F I do something like this: R' F R F'.
Move count of ZZ is various: somewhere in 40's for ZZ-b and 50's for ZZ-VH.
Yes, EO-first is not so new idea, it was mentioned at Euro 2004 by Ron.