First Zilean guide without tear... and I like it :)

Ótimo guia, parabéns :D
Muito bem escrito e explicado! Achei muito bacana a parte de trabalho em equipe :)

@Joxuu
Thanks for visiting the guide, man. Lvl 2 skill is a personal preference. You can start double bombing at lvl 2, but then you better get a kill, because you will most likely run out of mana at level 3. I rather harass until lvl 4, as I explained in the laning phase section of the guide.

@DKitten

Exactly. Thanks for visiting the guide. As support, you're squishy, mana hungry, your bombs are - let's say - "not OP" and your ult doesn't recover much health. Too many problems to solve with a support budget.

@deadicated

Thanks for you vote. is expensive and takes too long to mature - you build health, mana and sustain with very little AP. You become beefy, but you don't do much damage. Zilean should stay behind his tanks, looking for openings to place bombs and supporting his team, therefore never in a direct fight. Think about it, what can you do when you start a fight with another champion? Double bomb and auto attack. The second bomb damage would hit only after 4 seconds, enough time to get killed by many other champions. I wouldn't recommend going in a teamfight with plans to ult youself for the same reason.

is cheap, gives you health, AP and magic penetration. With it, you'll get the needed health to survive mid game together with more damage to your bombs. You can skip it and get a and then a if you're snowballing, but, with the trend of having assassins at mid lane, I find it really hard to snowball as Zilean.

Nice look and feel and generally good build.
I do think you however undermine Rod of Ages, zilean is one of the few AP mids I would recommend it on ever since archangels was not stackable. Remember if you don't have enough hp then spending your Ulti on yourself is not as efficient.
Also what do you do with Haunting Guise which is classified as essential by you?

Been so long since I used him, Oh how I missed stacking archangels :P
1.8k damage bombs ftw

Yeah, Zilean's actually a better mid than support, since his bombs deal TOD with 90% AP scaling. He also is able to build Athene's Unholy Grail as a mid, or get blue buff, which you tend to not get as a support.

Get W at level 2 in stead of E: Double bombs hurts like hell.

I like it.

@Firehusary

Thank you for your contribution. I once thought like you think now. Support Zilean is VERY situational. He is too weak to stand poke from the ADC, especially if the ADC is someone like Graves or Draven. Moreover, without AP, his bombs do so little damage that they are most likely to be ignored. For instance, Draven's axes hurt as much as Time Bomb, yet they cost no mana. On top of that, he is extremely mana hungry, and a philosopher's stone won't do much for him.

Many other supports are better than Zilean on keeping their ADC alive. With all said, Zilean does much better for the team when playing mid. I also stressed the importance of team composition; it is important to have some other potential carry, such as Diana jungle, or Gragas top, just in case the game drags for too long.

What you said here shows that you don't know all that much about the game. Mids can carry just as hard as ADCs and the importance of mid carries can matter just as much as the ADC.

Zilean mid is done in the competitive scene for his safe laning phase followed by the extremely annoying utility he provides late game. Allow me to give an example from a recent MOBAFire EUW inhouse game.

Zilean mid, Karthus top and everything else is as you see it. That Karthus top was so annoying to lane against...





What this combo did was stop the Karthus from dying multiple times and when he did die, he would just Revive/ Teleport back into fights.

LOL

Overall, I can't imagine mid Zilean. Two "supports" for team wouldn't be a good composition. Even if Zielan may be build on AP, he is better at bot, because life of ADC is worth more than AP.