Pros + Low Cooldown AOE-Stun + A revive for your carry + Strong waveclear + Good damage + Quite tanky for a mage + Strong single-target CC + Fast movement speed + High Skillcap

Introduction zilean has a huge amount of neverending stuns. If your team is not to dump they will have a lot of time to kill enemys in teamfights. On top you can revive one teammember ... thats usefull too. Your primary job is stunning! your 2nd job is reviving the game carry of your team. Dealing dmg is just a nice side effect - but with this build you have nice dmg vs squishy champs. And its not just your stun. Zilean has a slow-spell to! A 90% slow with low cooldown that can't be evaded ... on max. level you can pretty much immobilize a single enemy the hole time if you like it :D

But You need skill to land your stun. And you need skill to use your ulti in the right moment on the right champs ... and you need skill to place your slow/speed on the fitting ally or enemy. It needs time to learn all this - but if you learned it you have a AOE-stun that stuns enemys 60% of the fighttime To be usefull in teamfights and stun the enemys a lot you need to be not to squishy. So this build stacks Health! We add armor and magic-resist into the rune page, so we dont need to buy armor-items. But there are great items that have HP and Ability Power combined! With all the HP you will be quite tanky, assasins wont be able to burst you.

Cons - Weak early game - Weak vs champs with high mobility - Just 1 spell to deal dmg - Neither heal nor shield - Difficult to master

For runes you take Greater Mark of Armor, Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist, Greater Seal of Scaling Health and 2 Greater Quintessence of Scaling Cooldown Reduction + Greater Quintessence of Gold. You can also put Flat runes, but scaling Runes allready pay out after Lvl 6, so after 5-10 minutes game time. You dont need to put the Gold-rune, but some extra gold is nice to have.

Why you need so much defence?
Well, you are squishy ... and you wont build any Armor or MR item. There are many Assasins around, just made to kill you. Your stun and your revive are useless if you are bursted down in milliseconds. Also putting some AP in the runes (maybe around 20 AP with full AP-runes) is not realy helpfull ... as soons as you have your first items 20 AP is like nothing. The armor, HP and MR will support you the hole game, making your Health given from the Items a lot more worthy.

With this runes nothing will burst you, so you have time to put stuns and revives. Even if its just a second auto-attack the assasin need to take you down - thats time enough to stun him and put revive on you. If they towerdive you will stun them and revive - while they take huge dmg from the tower. The same in teamfights - you tank the ultimates and revive - your team has time to kill them.

In general its easy.
1) supporters want an gold items and place many wards
2) you need 30% cooldown reduction to stun a lot (+15% from runes and masteries = 45%)
3) You need some mana (zilean is addicted to mana)
4) You want HP to get tanky
5) Ability power is great too!

Refillable Potion
Zilean has no heal nor lifesteal. Allmost any champ on bottom-lane has some poke ability ... you need something to refill your health. Not just 2 cookies for the first 5 minutes. You wont be able to heal the hole laning phase. You will waste a lot of cash or time if you buy cookies or homecall each time you take damage. This pot solves all your problems. Trade on your lane and feel good when you see the enemys wasting gold for cookies, while you just refill your potion again and again for free :3

Frost Queen's Claim
Each supporter needs a gold item! This one is made for you. Its important that you try to use the gold-on-hit-effect. Bomb+Autohit and allready a few gold earned. Sure dont risk to much - find the right moment to poke enemys. The enemy adc must lasthit minions - thats a good change to give him a hit. Or the enemy support is meele - if he hits a minion you can hit him back and put bombs on him.
It also has Cooldown-reduction (very important!) and AP (nice to have).
And on top the active (Icy ghost) can slow the enemys - making it easy to double-bomb him. If you run away you can use the active to slow your chaser. And if you chase you can slow your victim. But its not just for fights - if you wanne ward an unsave area you can check first with the Icy ghosts if noone is hiding in the bushes.

Sightstone Ruby Sightstone
Vision is very important! Without vision the best carry will fail - being ganged or traped. So many kills can be avoided by seeing the enemy coming. And even better - if you see them coming you can start counter-ganging.
There is no need to hold the wards to long in your inventory - they will refill each time you go back to the shop - so put them as soon as you reach unwarded area.
Also the sightstone has a great Health Buff. You need health, you dont wanne be squishy.
The Ruby Sightstone and Fronst Queen are both awesome items giving you a lot of stats you need.

They are worth blocking 2 itemslots! Dont combine them to one item, you will lose a lot of HP, a strong active skill and some AP. Each time you get killed when moving into unwarded area or each time the enemy is running away with 10 HP you will damn yourself for not having the Icy-Ghost Active and Ruby Sightstone.

Boots
Your speed-skill is great, but not perfect. You need a little bit extra speed from this boots. For many enemys its ok to keep the boots without an upgrade until midgame. If the enemy is strong you can still upgrade them.
Mercury's Treads Ninja Tabi Sorcerer's Shoes
Thanks to your rune-pages you dont need the Cooldown-reduction boots. So you can build Anti-magic boots if you get into a lot of stuns. Or get Ninja Tabis if you are hit by a lot of normal damage. At patch 6.24 armor penetration is replaced by lethality. What you need to know about lethality: Its a lot stronger lategame compared to armor penetration, so ninja Tabis and the extra Armor they grant might be usefull sometimes. If you dont have any problems surviving you can get Sorcerers Shoes for a great Damage Boost.

Morellonomicon
This item is awesome on Zilean! It has all you need and is the reason why this build is way stronger compared to full-tank zilean (with frozen hearth and command banner). This pink book gives you 20% cooldown reduction. Also the extra mana and mana-refill-passiv will solve your mana-problems. On top you get a lot of AP. Befor you get this item your mana-management is realy difficult ... and as soon as you have it you are able to hit a few skill-combos and still be able to cast your ultimate.

Liandry's Torment
There are many AP-items around. The point on this items is it will grant you a big Health bonus! As soon as you have it together with the Ruby Sightstone you are somehow tanky compared to other mages. You get cooldown reduction and Mana from your other items, there is just nothing more you need then AP and HP - and these item will give it to you.

Rabadon's Deathcap
A lot of AP for you. This is good if you have a lot of cash and fight vs squishy champs. If you are the strongest player in your team this item will help you to deal the damage needed. If you are weak or new to zilean better get a more supporting item and not just a lot of AP.

Void Staff
Void Staff is cheap and still strong. If you are not fed but still ok with surviving this item is a nice one. It has AP, what is nice. But the huge damage-increase is caused by the percentage magic-penetration. This is a lot of extra damage vs tanky enemys. In case your adc is weak and you need to deal a lot of damage to tanky enemys you need this item. But also squishy champs will get a huge problem as soon as you have the Void Staff. The effect is even stronger combined with Sorcerer's Shoes and Liandry's Torment.



Luden's Tempest
Thats a good item, too! Good damage output and 10% movement speed, what will save your life if you evade spells. If your build is complete and you have a lot of gold you can sell your boots and get this item instead. The 10% movement boost is equal to upgraded boots. The AP and passive effect is nice to have - in most cases its more usefull then the effects on upgraded boots.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter
Nerfed in patch 6.24, but still a good item. It has HP and AP for you, the slow effect is nice if you hit a double-bomb into teamfights. Nevertheless, compared to Deathcap or Void Staff you deal significantly lower damage.

Oracle Lens
Farsight Alteration
Buy one of these at Lvl 9. Take what you need more. If your team is lazy on putting wards, you might want the permanent wards. If the enemy team is putting million wards and noone of your team has ward-detection you take the Oracle Alteration.

Chronoshift
Your ultimate. Sure you skill this one on Lvl 6, 11 and 16.

Time Bomb
Max this one first. If you wanne kite you need damage. If the enemy goes all in you must deal dmg to kill them first. Also the cooldown reduces per level, so you can stun more frequently.

Rewind
2nd skill you max up to Skill-Lvl 4. On Lvl 4 rewind has allmost the same cooldown than the bomb, so you can double bomb all the time. Level 5 has allmost no more benefite, so skill it on Lvl 18.

Time Warp
Max this one last. The speed boost is nice, but less important compared to your double-bombs.

Time in a Bottle (Passive)
Your passive skill.
Dont worrie about this one to much - if an allied champion is highlighted you can klick him to increase his and your XP a little bit. If you dont use it the XP is accumulate, so its not lost. Some people talk about tactics and tricks to increase the XP in the right moment to have some advantages ... but the amount of XP you give is realy very small. The only usefull idea might be to safe it to increase your adc's Level from 5 to 6 as soon as possible, to allow him the use of his ultimate earlier.

Time Bomb (Q)
Here it is, your overmighty AOE-low-cooldown-stunning skill. Easy to use, but hard to master. 2 bombs on the same target and it is stuned. it needs a lot of time to learn how to place the bombs, to expect the enemy movements correct or just to hit the keys fast enough.

Keep in mind: It is easy to stun slow targets. Minions next to a champ can be bombed to stun him (AOE-stun). Tanks can be stuned, because most of them dont have evade-skills. Exhausted enemys can be stunned easy. You can use your slow-spell and bomb them afterwards, also easy made stuns.

You are the time mage. You decide who moves how fast. You can slow a lot ... or speed and run away very fast. you can block ways with double-bombs making it impossible for enemys to chase you.

But its importent you keep in mind what skills the enemys have. Do they have flash ready? Then they can evade your stun 1 time. Do they have evade-skills like ezreal or Vayne? Then they can evade again your stun. So in teamfights attack a target that cant evade, is out of flash or just has a slow reaction time. You can use the double bomb to force the enemy to set his evade skills on cd. Or you can wait until he wastes it and bomb him afterwards.

Rewind (W)
This will just reduce the cooldowns of your Q and E. On Skill-Lvl 4 the cooldown will be similar to the bomb-cooldown, so you can double-bomb all the time. Befor Skill-Lvl 4 the bombs-cooldown will reset faster then the rewind cooldown. So if you wanne double bomb (in teamfights and gangs you wanne allways double-bomb) you need to wait with throwing bombs until rewind resets too.

Time Warp (E)
Use it to slow enemys, making it easy to stun them. Use it to put wards all over the map with high speed or to rotate the lanes. Use it to run away if you are ganged or to catch up to enemys in case you wanne gang them.

Chronoshift (R, Ultimate)
Use your ulti as late as possible. If you put it to early the enemy will just wait a few seconds and kill your teammate as soon as the effect ends.
Most effective on assasins or the adc - a tank will revive with low health and most likely go down again.
This spell is not only for your adc because you are his supporter. Its made for the teammember that carrys the game. If your adc is noob and just feeding use it on mid or the jungler - or even yourself.

Zilean is a great hero to learn aiming skills and he forces you to keep the overview in teamfights. If you take the time to learn him in a few hundred games, you will be of awesome use for your team.