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Ziggs Build Guide by

BLOW EVERYTHING UP! Ziggs the tower destroyer

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Ziggs Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (6) More Ziggs Guides

Runes:

Domination

Dark Harvest

Cheap Shot

Ghost Poro

Ravenous Hunter

Sorcery

Manaflow Band

Scorch

Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health

Spells:

Flash

Teleport

Items

Starter Item

First Back (ordered by priority)

Core for ahead

Core for behind

Secondary items

Final Example Build 1

Example Build 2

Ability Order

Ziggs Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Rumble

Extreme

He has really good following speed and high damage. He can spam poke as fast as or even faster than you, so he can bully you right out of lane.

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Champion Build Guide

Hello, I am PhoenixianSlayer, and this is my guide to Ziggs Top. I recently obtained Ziggs and enjoyed his playstyle. His high range AOE spells and tower disintegrating potential make him a great pick to carry games.

I will preface this guide with two things:

First, this is pretty off-meta and probably isn't preferred if your team has no tanks. Ziggs is really good and can carry hard, but if you need to team fight, Ziggs is not the type to start it. He thrives in the stand-offishness before a team fight where he can poke enemies from very far away. By mid game, his damage is really high and can hold his own in 1v1 and kill in teamfights, but he isn't looking to start a teamfight or be the focus of it. He wants to be as far back as possible while being able to hit everyone with all of his abilities. As a result, you need someone who will do the engaging ( and are nice picks). If you don't have any engage/damage absorbers(which is often the case in low-elo ranked), then do not use this strat.

Second, this is not something you want to try in a match against a friend. This strategy is designed to target the general meta of a lane then chose a champ that embodies the exact opposite of that and then abuse the opponent silly. What do I mean by that? Top is full of Bruisers and Tanks -- MELEE Bruisers and Tanks. They have to get close to their minions to cs and have little ranged hard CC. Therefore, the opposite of that is an Artillery Mage. Ziggs is an Artillery mage with 2 escape tools: An airborne that can throw you and your lane opponent in oppsite directions with a tiny bit of damage; and a field of mines that slows and damages an opponent on contact. Therefore, this can make it really hard for the opponent to get any real damage or a jungler to perform a successful gank. Even if you recall, since you will generally be winning so hard, you will be able to return to lane before the opponent can get to tower. Usually when I finish destroying my opponent's tower, my tower, at maximum, has lost only one plate. This type of matchup can be rather tilting. This is for competitive games, not friendly playing.

With that said, this is a pretty good strategy and having a Ziggs on your team in general increases your likelihood for winning.

Just to head off complaints that there are no Synergies, I will explain why there are none. For Top and Mid, generally, the synergies are used to tell you what Jungles are the most helpful when ganking. For this strategy, however, for the majority of your laning, you don't want ganks. Ganks generally consist of the jungle rushing in and attacking the opponent with the aid of the laner in an attempt to kill them. This sounds good, but generally, Ziggs does not want that early. His damage is low early. Ziggs want to poke the opponent to the point where he can go all out and kill them. Ganks speed up the timetable for this process. Ziggs cannot help that much since he has no hard CC, so there are 4 results that usually happen: they escape usually taking little damage; the jungler dies, usually dying to diving or just an early game champ like ; You die because they get up in your face due to underwhelming jungler assistance; or you both die. Basically, ganking usually backfires, and its better to let Top be isolated until you have or You could say Karthus Jungle is the exception, but you want the kills. So, it's better just to have no jungler intervention at all.

Has a really high range
All spells are AOE
Has 2 forms of escape: A slow and a displacement
Its super easy to get stacks
Can easily get 1 or 2 plates off one wave of minions .....early game
Can destroy towers in 2-5 secs during late game

.....

Is a sitting duck without
Take a lot of poking to get kills until
Invisible characters make it a lot harder to lane since .....they get past your usual spell range quickly and then .....burst you down in seconds
Your main spell is really hard to land .....since it can only explode when it is touching the ground

is a great champion overall. He has strong laning with lots of AOE spells, 3 out of the 4 are relatively easy to land. The most powerful non-ultimate spell, however, is super difficult to land. is also able to kill easily mid and especially late game, from a controlled distance. If the enemy can get close, things get a bit dicey. Late game, it's not so worrisome since one can deal 600+ damage. They can still kill you, but you can probably blow them up first.

Passive: Short Fuse

empowers your next auto every 12 seconds. This skill wouldn't be that good if not for the fact that using a spell decreases the cooldown time by 4-6 seconds. So past at level 12 or beyond, if you auto with a then use two abilities right after, it will be up on your next auto. This also scales with half of your AP and deals double damage on towers. Mid to late game, this can chunk towers for 800+ damage.

First: Bounding Bomb

is a skill shot with high base damage. Its AOE on hit. It has a base range of 850. It can bounce twice in proportion to the initial range. So if you throw it far, it will bounce far, but if you throw it really close, it will barely move. It can only detonate on the bounce, so it will not detonate if it goes over enemy minions. It makes it easy to cs low minions, but its hard to hit an enemy champ. It can easily bounce past your original target, so try and target clumps, or just hope that the enemy is in range of the explosion on the second bounce.

Second: Satchel Charge

is an AOE bomb that launches a target away from the center of the blast. Therfore, you can use it to dissengage by planting it at your feet and then moving slightly away from your opponent and detonating. This will throw both of you away putting a lot of distance between you and your opponent. This skill can also destroy towers below a certain threshold. and make it easy to demolish towers and get tons of plate gold.

Third: Hexplosive Minefield

covers a patch of ground with little bombs that deal a bit of damage and slow whoever steps on them. Use this to put distance between you and someone else since they either get slowed going through it or have to go around it.

Ultimate: MEGA INFERNO BOMB

launches a bomb at a target location that lands shortly after. The bomb has two areas, the center, and the outer area. Enemies in the center take triple the damage the people in the outer area take.

Primary Runes: Domination

Row 1: Dark Harvest

is the best rune for this strategy. The idea of taking Top is to get super-fed by countering the current meta. is the best rune to take advantage of said strategy. This rune gives you extra damage when first hitting an opponent that is below 50% health. In addition, hitting an opponent gives you a soul stack that increases the damage next time by 5. Participating in a takedown (getting a kill or assist) reset the cooldown of this rune.

Row 2: Cheap Shot

works really well on . Hit your opponent with then hit him with something else for some extra true damage. The other runes are either impossible to activate or unhelpful.

Row 3: Ghost Poro

is the best rune. doesn't give much benefit because it relies on you killing wards which requires you to have which means you have no wards which you need to watch out for ganks. You may get wards for killing an enemy ward, but enemies will just take it out quickly since its not invisible. just gives AP for killing stuff (wards give 1 stack and enemy champs give 2 stacks). 1 stack = 1 AP or 0.6 AD stacking up to 20. At max stacks, you get an additional 10 AP or 6 AD. The rune is not bad in and of itself, however, you get less utility out of it and it comes into play later. Makes a ghost poro spawn when a ward expires (if the ward is cleared, no ghost poro). This guy gives vision for 60 secs, but if an enemy entered the ring around it, it leaves. The poro gives a danger ping when it leaves. You also get 2 AP or 1.2 AD for every poro that spawn maxing out at 10 poros. At max poros, you get an additional 10 adaptive force (in this case AP). At max stacks, all three runes give the same amount of AP, but the only one to give the most vision advantage is .

Row 4: Ravenous/Ultimate Hunter

The rune that is most beneficial is . It heals you while you are in lane. The other good rune is . Its helps you keep your ult up. However, since your ult is usually your finishing move, it will generally be up unless you just used it to waveclear in defense of a tower, or just fought and used it). Both are good, but take the one that you prefer more.

Secondary Runes: Sorcery

Row 1: Manaflow Band

is a must for this champ. The rate at which you are using your spells causes you to burn through your mana quickly. This spell helps you to spam your spells. It also helps during mid game since you can regen faster while moving, so you don't need to recall everytime you run out of mana. This rune is necessary for .

Row 2: Scorch/Transcendence

adds so much damage to your pokes. It is deceptively small on paper, but it adds up really quickly over time. is also a good option. It will help since you don't have 40% CDR till about full build. is your initial burst of CDR and then you stop getting it mid build. So the CDR will be useful for a while.

Flash

decreases the character's flaws by adding another escape to his kit. Don't use unless you really need to. Early game, this should be for escapes and maybe a kill, if you know you won't be ganked. Mid to late, you can be a little more lose with this and forward for kills more.

Teleport

is one of those spells that any Top laner should have. However, this is escpecially useful on since you can use it to teleport to a big wave and take a tower or two. is your way of wearing away at the opponent's defenses until they have none left.

Corrupting Potion

is good as a starter item since it regens health and mana. It makes whatever pokes the opponent did dissapear. It also adds magic burn damage to any attacks you do to a champion while you are regening, so it adds a nice bit of damage to your pokes. You burn through mana quickly, so you need the regen early on.

Dark Seal

extends your so its a good first back item. It also gains stacks that translate to AP when you kill someone. 1 stack = 3 AP. 2 stacks for a kill and 1 stack for an assist. You lose 4 stacks on death. Max number of stacks is 10.

Lost Chapter

should be your next item. It regens 20% of your mana when you level up. You also get CDR and AP, so it makes you a lot more dangerous.

Luden's Echo

allows you to one shot Caster minions (with the passive) and poke easier. It doesn't matter if they dodge a with since the passive launches four little bolts out from a skillshot when it hits an enemy. The enemy will take some damage as long as he is in the general vicinity of the skillshot. Therefore, it also makes it easier to get souls or apply burn damage. However, you have to charge it up to get the passive. All you have to do is run around or use abilities. It charges super quick.

Oblivion Orb

gives you enough a nice amount of magic penetration, AP and health. If you need Grievous Wounds, then go full , but otherwise stop here.

Sorcerer's Shoes

works in combo with to get enough magic penetration to deal near true damage (assuming no one build magic resist).

Mejai's Soulstealer

is the upgrade for . You lose the potion extension but gain speed for having 10 or more stacks. The ratios grow on everything. 1 stack = 5 AP, 4 stacks for a kill, 2 stacks for an assist, 10 stacks when you die, and max of 25 stacks. If you can keep your stacks, its better than a , but if you are careless, it can cost you 50 AP. Only buy this if you are really ahead.

Lich Bane

empowers your autos when you use an ability. This coupled with chunks towers for a ton. This is a late build item when things are going good, but if everyone is losing hard, then you will want this earlier to liquidate towers. ONLY RUSH THIS IF THE GAME IS GOING REALLY BAD

Nashor's Tooth

adds 15% of your AP to your autos. Helps with taking tower even faster. You should only be looking to get this item if your team is really losing badly (AKA if you rushed your ).

That's about it. I wish you well with your exploding endeavors.

"Don't worry, I got this."