This is going to be a very quick look on how I play, there's very little point in drawing out why you should or shouldn't play him a certain way so I'm going to keep this short and sweet. There are plenty of other guides that cover basic mechanics so I'm going to stick to the differences. I'm not saying other styles of play aren't viable, everything is dependant on what comp you're playing against, but this is what I've been using and found to be pretty damn good thus far.

I wrote this because I didn't like the other guides that have come out for him, the differences in runes and items are slight but I feel this way of playing is more effective.

I don't think that Ziggs is OP, and I'm fairly certain he won't be seeing any immediate nerf. His spammable damage is fairly high, but his burst is pretty poor and I don't rate his ultimate too highly.

Hope this has been a fairly clear guide, I might add some formatting to make it a bit more user friendly, but bear with the wall of text and thou shalt be informed.

As for myself, my nick is Flamzy, I play on EU West. Long time lurker, I've gotten into LoL quite recently and would quite like to get more into ranked play but I've been 30 for a while and clicked with this champ, so enjoy my first guide!

Update - After playing him in ranked more I'm more confident with this setup, so I've renamed the guide with that in mind and I'll keep this up to date with my experience climbing the ladder with him =)

Ziggs relies heavily on skill shots, I would definitely recommend using all his abilities on smart cast once you're comfortable with the range.

Short Fuse - A nice passive, does some good harassing damage early on, good synergy with a lich bane.

Bouncing Bomb - This is your only true damage ability aside from your ultimate. Bouncing twice before it hits extends its range but requires some very good aim to bounce, less so to hit someone in range. If you don't use its max range, the bounces aren't as long. This allows you to use it on yourself in the brush as something runs towards you to give you a running head start as it'll bounce on the spot. A good scouting ability but pretty mana intensive early on so you won't want to use it to last hit unless you desperately need to, or waste it checking the bushes. They also explode before bouncing if they clip terrain edges so when throwing to scout make sure it didn't go off because of that.

Satchel Charge - Pretty straightforward. If you're being chased it's best to place it ahead of you, run over it and detonate it to knock yourself forwards and your pursuer backwards. Can take you over walls, and whether or not it is a bug, can be used whilst recalling. You cannot detonate it whilst recalling, but it will go off and knock you away, but the recall continues making it fairly useful for uncertain recalls to bounce over a wall mid-way through it.

Hexplosive Minefield - Perhaps not serving its original intention, at least they way I seem to be playing it. Drop it only when an opponent is stationary or you can judge where they are going as it has a long cooldown, and clipping them with 1 mine is a waste of potential damage. Catching them in the centre means they take 3 initially, and 2-3 more to get out of the zone. Like the satchel it gives vision but doesn't last for too long, so no free wards for Ziggs :o

Mega Inferno Bomb - Highly overrated. Does not do spectacular amounts of damage unless you're pretty damn fed. The range is impressive, but anywhere beyond half the distance it is incredibly easy to dodge so don't waste it trying to pick people off. He has incredible aoe potential with this and landing it on a squishy late game can easily turn a fight. I've been using it after some sort of aoe CC initiation but when I can't I initiate with it as it tends to separate teams and takes the focus off you. After all, you've used your ult, you're not much of a threat anymore.... Hehe..

I've played around with builds and have two possible routes, both of which end up at more or less the same place late game. I feel Ziggs has to be fairly tanky late game, but already have that high damage as you get going into mid to late game. Hence the early damage, and later health items but not sacrificing too much AP.

First and foremost is the one shown above, 21/0/9. As Ziggles is incredibly blue dependant in the laning phase the extra duration is a godsend and the mana regen doesn't hurt. I personally dislike good hands, and would rather save 15 seconds on flash than 1 second per recall. I rarely get killed 1 second before I recall, but I can't count the number of times I've been caught with flash almost off CD >.>

For this build you go for late game potential, AP per level and as much magic pen as you can pile on, and getting that rabadons during mid game. This leaves you incredibly squishy, not ideal for a spammy caster but you can rip through the teamfights that should be starting post rabadoodles. The lich bane boosts your damage hugely, depending on the enemy team and your own you may choose to get RoA or the Sceptre before it. By late game you should be pretty tanky and doing good spammy damage. Ignite Flash is the standard mid caster, needs no further explanation I hope.

--

The alternative route is heal instead of ignite, 21/9/0 (Magic res, the early HP), getting both a catalyst and a giants belt after your boots and continuing in whichever fashion suits the game. I've only made good use of this against very bursty teams.

For this I use Mpen marks, Flat Armour seals, Scaling MR glyphs and Spell Vamp quints.

--

A couple explanations:

Why the Doran's Ring to start with? You can take boots and pots, but I feel the mana regen and the extra health are well worth the investment, especially as in most games you won't get to the point where you sell it and lose the gold. In some games it's very viable to build 2-3 of these if you have a good advantage going or just need the health.

Will of the Ancients - Not worth it, the vamp is pretty useless as aoe spells return 1/3 of the damage as health. Potentially can net you decent returns on minion waves but as a late game item this is definitely a nono in my opinion.

Zhonya's Hourglass - Unless there's an angry karthus around, you shouldn't need the active with your Satchel Charge.

Flat AP seems to be a big thing right now, early game advantage being so devastating in such a snowball game. However Ziggs can't dish out the spam early on due to mana limitations so I feel it's best to save the goods for later, even if the difference is only slight.

Back onto the mana limitations, I would not advise buying a Tear of the Goddess or going down the route of too much mp5. Although he is incredibly mana hungry, in any decent game your jungler should be giving you blue every time it's up, and you can't afford to lose damage for spammability when you're likely to be focussed.

And finally, why no last item? Because it's totally game dependant, I can predict some early items but most things you have to play by ear. FoN, GA, Banshees or Rands are all good choices, but depend entirely on the setup and what aura items your team have.

I tend to play fairly aggressively but you must be aware of your mana. It's so easy to spam yourself out of it, obviously you should make use of any opening, but try and account for its true cooldown (The time it takes to regen the mana to use it!). An early Catalyst helps a lot with mana issues but ideally you'll be getting every blue after the first one, depending on your jungler. When you have it, push that lane like a boss, Q + E should be the end of each pack of 3 minions leaving you free to gank or take wraiths/wolves.

Keep your satchel off CD, only use it offensively when you're pretty confident you've got a kill or a gank incoming and you need to control their position. Along with your mines you have formiadable area control similar to Karthus's Wall of Pain or Anivia's "Stupid Wall Thing". The damage from those two abilities aren't their greatest asset, although those mines placed right can do a huge amount of damage. Your ult is best used after you've slowed them or forced them to burn flash. Although I don't rate the damage of your ult too highly, people like to panic flash out of it, and they have plenty of time to regardless of the distance.

The role of the AP carry is to burst down the opposing AP carry or AD Carry as soon as possible. Ziggs doesn't have that amazing burst, but has the kind of constant damage that Ryze has, without the tankyness but with the bonus of constant aoe.

As I said before, I like to initiate with my ult as it takes the focus away from killing the little squishy bomb thing, to killing that thing with the Infinity Edge which lets you sit towards the back of the fight, lobbing those bombs and tossing the LB procs where possible, but you'll probably have to blow those on the tank in your face, can't always have it your way ^_^

The thing Ziggs really brings to a teamfight is his area control. By separating teams with the threat of high damage mines you allow your team to focus what is in front of them rather than their AD carry standing some way back. His ulti is amazing for scattering a team, catching them at chokepoints with it and I guarantee some fool will run the wrong way and get seperated by mines or the satchel, easy kill, 4v5 ftw.

I figure writing everything out isn't really all that helpful, neither are small clips of good gameplay. The best way to understand is to watch a full game, maybe skipping some boring bits of laning. I'm working on using fraps, my computer is completely full (3.5tb used up D=) so I'm ordering another HDD so I can make more since fraps loves that file size. In the meantime I'm posting my ranked games with Ziggles on lol replay.

http://www.leaguereplays.com/ is where you need to go, pick up lol replay, once set up, go to search and type in Flamzy and you should get a list of most of my games. The last two I literally just uploaded were my last 2 ranked games with Ziggs. I'm not at an amazing rating (1350ish) but those two games are good examples and have some nice kills, escapes and a quadra before a triple kill in the latest =)

So far I've had a lot of problems with Brand, to a lesser extent Veigar and other very high damage burst champions, although it'll be a cold day in hell when Veigar is allowed to farm or dominate Ziggs early. With these champions I tend to opt for the defensive build, summoner heal being a huge bonus so long as you remember to pop it before you get ignited.

For those of you who are interested, Ziggs can solo top but I think middle is the place for him, he needs to get into those early teamfights over dragon to make use of his aoe. He cannot jungle, and by that I mean he can obviously clear the jungle, just as any champion can now do, but he's incredibly slow and that awful base movespeed is going to make ganks pretty impossible.

Ziggs seems to counter sustain-ish mids quite well, but I find it's rarely about killing your opponent, but just out-farming them with this guy. Once you hit mid game you can push as well as the top champs but you'll suffer a little early on against a Morgana or Malzahar due to their pushing power, but they're very open to harass from your auto attack.



My first 10 games with the guy, the scores seem to get worse as I go, was experimenting a bit, turns out promote heal is not a fantastic combo >_< Got a delayed penta 5 games in, might put up the replay when I figure out how but if you search ziggs penta on lol replay I'm sure you'll find it.

Helpful ^^? Got something you want to discuss? If only there was a handy comment section for such a thing!

Ps: Props to jhoijhoi for explaining the bb code behind linking champs and items.