Who are you?

Im marmotank #LAS in league, im a diamond zilean OTP (hopefully master soon) OP.GG


Why Zilean? Why Zilean with this build?

Zilean is my favourite champion, ive always loved supports that dont support by healing/shielding but by buffing/debuffing, and Zilean is perfect for that, its a strange champion and you can tell its a really old one, but its very fun and its incredibly balanced for a riot games character, if you go into its patch history you will see a desert of changes, which means he is really stable and never a pick/ban so im able to spam it every day every hour every minute

This is the build i have found the most effectiveness with in my elo, it maximizes the better traits of zilean (his utility and annoyance of the enemy team) and makes you less reliant on the bad traits of zilean (his damage and ap scalings)

In this chapter i will give you some advice and explain some of my build decisions so you can understand them better, will try to update with questions if i get them

Why max E?

E is, in my opinion, Zilean's best ability, even ahead of his ultimate, to me its his core ability that makes the champion viable, i know maxing Q gives you big dopamine hit when you see the damage, but you must understand YOU ARE NOT THE CARRY you are the CARRY ENABLER and enemy team CARRY DISABLER, your E turns any champion into an engage champion, and any enemy engage champion into a sitting duck that cant reach your backline, the issue with this is zilean is really squishy, so going forward to press E is very dangerous, this is why we build so tanky, so we can allow ourselves this playstyle and be as annoying as possible, remember, at level 5 its an almost permanent 99% slow/speedup, that is crazy strong on so many champions, allied or enemy

Who and when do i ult?

You should have a priority list of who to ult, but it also really depends on the situation, for example, your jungler might be garbage but if reviving him is what you require to secure that baron/soul/objective then you should ult him, i also tend to ult whoever dies first because if you wait too long then maybe your team is already outside of your range and you cant use it, which feels horrible, just try to prioritize carries over other champs

you should also not feel afraid of ulting yourself, often times this annoying playstyle and squishy perception of zilean will cause enemies to focus you because they think they can kill you easily, remember you cant ult while dead and ulting a full hp carry is only going to bait them into diving their backline and potentially dying, I try to save ult for the last available moment so enemies use the maximum ammount of resources available, specially because they fear your ultimate and will play differently because of it (for example a rengar might not inmediately jump your adc if he is near you because he knows it will be in vain)

Zilean Combos

this section will be easy because zilean is an easy champion mechanically speaking, your only combos are ways to double Q your opponent, most of the time what you will do is press E on the enemy and then pressing QWQ to stun them, after stun is finished E them again or E an ally as to make sure they dont escape. In teamfights normally you wont need to stun enemies as much, be more focused on pressing E and W to speedup/slow enemies, using double Q might take your cursor away from your team which could cause you to not be able to ulti a bursted ally, so be mindful of that, your R is way more valuable than your stun

An extra thing is there is a certain threshold where if you have W maxed, and have around 100 Ability Haste you can potentially triple Q an enemy champion, but you need to stand close to them so the bomb reaches quickly enough, they must also have low or no tenacity, its a fun thing to see but realistically you are never meeting all these conditions, so save it for those 50 minute flex queues with friends

Early Game

Zilean's early game is pretty bad, its a kind of scaling support (not in the stat sense, but he scales a lot with levels because his abilities' scalings are powerful) but its not useless either, you wont really find many matchups where you feel like you are stronger than them, try to get level 2 first by using your supp item on the second wave's melee minions, if you do you might chunk them enough to get a sizeable advantage, if they get level 2 first back off because your level 1 is horrible, level 3 is algo a good spike because you get your E, otherwise, try to peel your adc and farm the supp item with your Q, also try to track your jungler and follow them into early objectives like Drake and Void Grubs if possible, level 6 is your big spike and if you arent behind you should ping your adc to fight, to trust your ultimate (they wont anyway but it doesnt hurt to communicate) but its mostly an average support experience, if you know how to play the role you are already 3 steps ahead on learning Zilean

Mid game

Realistically, you should follow your adc so that even if they are behind they can keep farming safely and scale for teamfights, but this soloq, so what you (and I) will be doing is analyzing our team to find a potential carry/win condition, we will try to follow them and support them, try to get picks and easy kills (from intelligently placed wards and your level 9 maxed E) and make them an unkillable demon, in teamfights it will depend on both team comps but your main job is PRESS E AND PRESS R until your fingers bleed

Late Game

Congratulations, you reached zilean's strongest point, sad part is everyone else in the game has, and if you got to this point something bad happened during the game that didnt allow you to win, but dont worry, now you are full power and will just have to repeat the mid game strats from earlier but with even more teamfights