Wait a second..... You play League?!? As a long time follower (and zilean main) im really surprised. Zilean is different, but stronger than he looks and satisfying as hell. Good luck on the full time youtube gig btw!
Agree. I play other underrated MOBAs like HotS... And I can assure you that LoL foments this "1v5" behaviour or mentality. League players have to change their way of thinking, in all honesty.
sion crashing to the enemy team like a train , the enemy carry being slowed and stunned to death you are so fuckin fast you can literly taunt the enemy
i fervently hope zilean always stays unpopular, so that riot won't touch him and people won't ban him. if you build him in an unconventional way, he becomes insanely OP
Zilean definitely feels like a champion that needs an update,at least visually.Zilean just looks like a crazy old man who was crucified to a clock.Gameplay wise I still enjoy him despite his simplicity.
I appreciate the video and I now really understand why I love Zilean so much. I am an older man myself and I really don't want to be the spotlight of my team. I let you kids do your thing. I am here to make the best out of time.
I’d say its more like “anime rival character syndrome”. Most main characters usually accept the help of their friends while rival type characters are usually lone wolves. But yeah I’d love a video on this lol.
Zilean is that one guy I go to when the entire team inevitably picks 4 ad champions and you have to blow someone up with magic damage while still supporting.
But that doesn't mean that Zilean is op or good or something. You still have to ask yourself "can someone do zileans job better?" And the answer is usually yes. Area damage? So many mages do that better. His Ult is very good, imo it's the only thing he does best because he's the only one who can do it. But resurrection is not that ground breaking anyway. Because if it is then he should have a higher play rate. If he is good then he would be played more, there is a reason why he's not played that much.
@@Samuel-dl2so a free GA on a fed lee sin or yas is ground breaking. not the tool, it how you use it, and no other support grants a second chance. everyone else is help me do this or that, zil ulti is 5v6 or 5v7 if you play right. im just going to assume that you are m7 1mill pts + and not question the logic.
Well, yes and no, Zilean is extremely powerfull in the right hands. Zilean can burst a target to oblivion, with offtank ap items in a support, he is not an enchanter, he is more like a utility brand. You can really change and solo carry pretty easy at level 13 too 16, and have a really good lane after lvl 3, and dive at lvl 6. He is not flashy, that is true, but a 1.5 aoe 800 ap bomb at lvl 13 is pretty much game changing, but yes, is not popular, becaused is not a mommy who protect the carrie, or a murderer who can 1 v 3, he is a 2 v 2 champion, who needs a lot of experiencie, tactics and good sense of carrie. I feel people dont play him because he is too dificult as an enchanter, and can't melt like a traditional mage with dps, he is a tactician and a player maker support. Good video, nice editing and yeah, a lot of what you say is true in the eyes of the normal player.
The only reason I hardly ever play Zilean is that his autoattack animation takes more time than the length of an average game of league to hit a minion. If he had faster and smoother animations I would certainly play him more often. I get the strategy and patience theme of the champion, but I would expect a minion to be dead after 2 seconds I autoattacked it. I mean, probably it's dead but not by your autoattack.. (Please Riot Morgana-rework him, please)
Zilean Main Here: Overall this seems like a pretty fair video, though there are two points which I'd contest. Firstly, Zilean, like most champs, can be extremely skill expressive. Secondly, I think you aren't accounting for the cc from Zileans double q combo. I've turned around team fights with a RQQ combo.
For me Zilean was indeed that pocket pick for the longest time. Eventually when statistics were showed after season ended, I realized that I had ~90% wr with him. That's how my go to pick was born. Lots of tank support enemies were caught off guard when I used Q on a cannon minion as they were going for the Relic Shield stack. I also noted that in my elo (High plat - Low dia) tank supports are kinda useless (This is arguable, but when I as Rell had 300+ armor and enemy Jhin still almost oneshotted me I rest my case) bringing another high burst of damage with AoE stun + 30 sec cd on Chronoshift really made a difference in teamfights. The instance you stated where Chronoshift may not make much of a difference, due to that 3 sec window that can turn the tides of a teamfight, I found that I use it early on my most fed glass cannon in the backlines if enemy has Assassins. The fact that one of the enemies' high damage dealers is occupied on the backline means he is getting easily targeted by the rest of the team and if the teamfight goes on for a longer period of time, you may use your ult a second time. As you said, Zilean needs a team to perform well and above all a good encager to absorb two bombs at the start. Great video :)
i really don’t understand your percentage like you’re basically saying there’s a huge difference between a bad yuumi and a good yuumi but not so much between a bad and a good zilean ? really ?
"ZIlean has no play making potencial" This is so wrong it's painful. He literally has the bestt CC potencial in the game if you hit double qs consistently. And with 2 items you can throw double qs every 4-5 seconds. It's insanely good. Plus his buff of speed or slow is literally made for playmaking, and his ult can win the game by itself.
I'd argue he is extremely power in a master mind's hands, his ap ratios are 90% which is a lot in this meta, and he is heavily anti assassin due to his entire kit (thank god, this meta needs a Zilean), the one thing I mostly can say that utterly ruins him, to the point he is at a disadvantage, is when the enemy has a Dash/Blink to the likes of Lucian/Ezreal, unless your Zilean is a god among men. To think of it, he can arguably out do even adcs in the adc role if he builds adc, his mediocre on hit damage can be made up, for the fact he has: A free ga, slow/speed (up to 99%, not affected by AP ratios), a free stun (dependent on the skill of the Zilean, pretty decent late game base damage). If you add all of this up, if he builds the exact items, as an adc, ideally, he'll be better if he utilizes his kits in a duel, to shutdown and bully the enemy into submission. Against kog'maw? Great! Stun, slow, run circles around him, stun again, pew pew pew, and ga yourself if need be. Of course, I do not advise people to do this, his ap is just god tier. I feel like there is a few ways to play Zilean, you can play him on a macro scale, or on the stereotypical league skill. You can kill an entire team, this is true, easily, 1v5, however, you can also support your team and better their advantages, by speeding up the hecarim, slowing down an enemy hecarim, stunning the mf using her ult, etc... And, with your r, you can guarantee the Jhin has 2-3 lives, depending on if they have ga. Essentially, my argument is, because of his kit, if played with a one trick who has the intent to carry, at a higher elo than average, he could very easily carry his games, if he utilizes it do so. I have done this many times in fact, and I'm not a high elo. I do agree though that Zilean doesn't have a high play rate, due to it not being designed for the player base that league has, it takes too much macro (even if trying to carry), positioning, etc... And, if you mess up, inevitably, you have a higher chance of dying than, say, a Ryze. This is because you have 1 ability that does damage, using that ability twice (via w), you can stun. Your speed, which is negated if they stun/slow you, is 99%. Your best bet is to slow them, or if they can't slow, speed yourself up. You do have a back up free r, but, at that point, you'd have to be near a tower or explosion plant, or team members. And, most players like to see things instantly that looks 'cool', like a yas r, an akali r, a yone r, unlike Zilean who's whole gameplay is to analyze the situation and conform your team to an advantageous position, that or he can be a mindless dummy that stuns other mindless dummies and win off that alone. However, I do believe him not being played too often, is a good thing. Because of Zilean's great kit, but low play rate, he has virtually been unnoticed by both the league player base and riot balance teams, which is great for the Zilean players. Whenever I play with a friend for the first time as Zilean, they freak out, because they've never heard of a champion who literally gives free exp (changing the pace of the game, favorable towards Vayne and Kayl), let alone his stun being an entire team wide, and his r healing back a Sion to full health, and his e making any Hecarim easily win fights, and slowing down their assassins if they get caught out. This is good news for Zilean, as that means many players, especially in low elo, cannot counter him accurately, and that league will not nerf him into oblivion. (This became very disorganized above, sorry for writing this so disorganized) I also realize I am saying exactly what every other Zilean is saying, but louder, so sorry for that too. If you do want to play, or anything, I'm always down to play with people. ( Otto von Austria is my main account ) I do also agree he is dependent on synergy, but I'd like to mention, he can make any duo bot work, so long as they have communication, communication is super crucial with Zileans.
@@arcadeyous I'd honestly say, you probably have an easier chance at comprehending what I said, if you read other comments, mine was really lazy and I wasn't at my best writing days when I wrote this. Most Zilean mains probably understand what I meant, especially on the carry part, because quite a lot of people underestimate his carry potential. I have seen myself quite often carry an entire team, because he can stun and kill an entire team, with two lives as well.
It's a shame he is so unpopular, I mean especially when he combos really well with other unpopular champions like Kayle who can really benefit from his passive.
another reason zilean doesn't see much play is due to the toxicity of teammates, this is kinda 2 reasons but theyre related. Zil's ult is finnicky at times, and in a fight where your teammates are bunched up on each other there's going to be times where the wrong person gets ulted, or god forbid you click a pixel off and you ult yourself, on other champions missing a ult is a few question mark pings and maybe someone pinging that you're alive, but whenever an ADC or midlaner feels like theyve been jipped theyll immediately spend the next 20-40 minutes making sure to make the game hell for you, and since your Zilean you cant really just ignore them or youre probably going to lose the game since like you mentioned Zils an enabler of plays. Now that already a bad thing to happen during the teamfight phase but theyre a specific scenario that seems to happen way too often to us Zilean support mains and thats the adc thinking we are both an omniscient god and stupid scum, and by that i mean that they seem to think that our ult can be applied halfway across the map just by pressing r or something like that, theyll dive 2 enemies under tower whyll your warding drag, die, then flame you for for the rest of the game, or theyll decide to do other stupid crap like back in the open 2 seconds after seeing a shaco go invis, or face check a bush they know has a 80 percent chance of having 4 enemies inside and knowing you just saved thier ass like 3 seconds ago. And the worst part is that sometimes its not even just lol players being toxic, some of them legitimately have no clue what zilean does, for an example of this, my nephew was in a a league club at his school and had been playing adc for about 3-4 years, asked me what my favorite character was, and when i said Zil he legitimately had no idea who i was talking about even after showing him the picture, and ive had around 4 sperate situations where my adc would actually ask me what zilean does lol. its maddening tbh.
So many times my ADC is 4 kills up before 15min, all I need them to do is get aggressive of anyone to continue the snowball, and they won't because they have no idea the power of zil. I'll be speeding them up over and over wanting them to just ran at the Landers but they just stand around the minions Aaing. So frustrating.
Ngl, the organization of thought in this video is pretty wack. One issue is claiming Zilean is one of the most consistent supports early in the video, then stating he can't be played consistently (pocket picks only). Another is noting that Zilean is a master tactician and macro character that can force his will upon the game through his teammates, then again going back on what you said by saying he gives up all autonomy by having to use his teammates as a go-between. Other topics you brought up that simply ignore other truths about how LoL works include how dashes are better than mov. speed or that his ult isn't as good as players may think because "1. If losing and Zil ults, fight is still lost" or "2. If winning fight and Zil ults, there's no point." Let's start with the dashes subject. In previous seasons, and up till present day, dashes are crazy. Flash is still bread and butter on the *vast* majority of champs. Now let's talk about what's changed. You mentioned it yourself: characters that AA and use mov. speed (bruisers) are getting really popular. You *must* ask why. The answer is all the new items in the game that grant increased movement (Chemtank, Stridebreaker, Staff of Flow. Water, Ludens, Night harvester, Cosmic drive, et. come to mind). These coupled with older items/runes (like Deadman's, predator, Appro. Velocity) have resulted in some severe changes in who is/isn't played. More to the point: there's so much mov. speed in the game now, in some cases it doesn't matter if a played uses a flash/dash: they're still dead because their opponent can catch up too easily. With this in mind, think of Zilean's E. Being able to take a friendly bruiser that needs to catch up to do damage and giving them a *99%* mov. speed increase is GROSS. Not only that, decreasing an enemy bruiser's mov. speed by *99%* is GROSS. If you still don't see it, think about making a hecarim or udyr (THE most popular junglers in the game right now) come to a *complete standstill* for 5 whole seconds (2 E's). That's power. I'd also toss in how the game is more about fights now and catching players out than ever before, and E makes this really easy *specifically* because the % slow/speed is so high. Second would be the ult topic. This one has less details. Simply put, it actually works out to be the exact opposite of what you described. "1. If losing and Zil ults, fight is still lost" is pretty rear now. There's plenty of scenarios where even if a player is completely caught out and the enemy team blows them up, because Zil ulted them and the friendly team catches up the fight, then result is a won teamfight. It's like creating a 6th man who absorbs all the enemy team's skills and damage out of thin air. When the real fight breaks out, then you have a 5v5 with many of the enemy team's abilities on CD which gives the W. "2. If winning fight and Zil ults, there's no point" is just ignoring macro ideas. Even if your team is a winning a fight, that doesn't meant the win is *absolute* (ex: winning a 5v5, but only 1 character from your team lives (a pyrrhic victory)). Not only with more people alive at the end of a fight can Zil's team get more objectives, but *saving a teammate with Zil ult denies the gold that would have been gained from killing that champion.* And if you still discount that idea, *consider bounties* Special note: I appreciate the video you made, but you need to be more decisive with your ideas; you essentially sit on the fence about Zilean for 14 minutes rather than explicitly showcase what's unappealing about him. If that wasn't enough, on the points that you *do* state an exact argument, there are glaring counterpoints like the ones I listed out above. As a viewer, if No One Plays Zilean, I want to know why, unambiguously, and I want those points to be iron clad.
I think you can make amazing combos with Zilean like speeding up galio for taunt or speeding a malphite for an ult if you then place a double bomb on your teammate it will stun all those he just cc'd it's very influential in the fight
I saw him as one of the least "popular" champion when sorted by popularity. I took one look at his abilities, thought it was pretty interesting and chose to unlock him. My first game i went against bots to kind of get the feel. And then my first game against real people, got 10 kills, 10 deaths and 28 assist. The rank was S. He's such a good support in terms of being a combat supporter. I mean that he greatly supports aggressive champions
"Movement speed never matter with a champion with a dash" Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a 99% slowed Lucian/Graves/Ezreal trying to dash/blink into safety. Slowing an enemy ADC is a death sentence in team fights.
i play Zilean. For me it is one of the best support characters - i'm very comfortable with him - very balanced character as the video says - I have a 70% win rate with him.The trick is that you lane partner needs to know how to play along with Zilean as well. If your partner plays careless, then it's game over.
2 years ago i found LOL, before that i played only chicken invaders🤣 so when it came to unlocking a new champ, the splash art was my main guide. I was the perfect noob and looking at Zilean splash I saw god 😂😂😂 unlocked him to later see that i have a big clock with a little human attached to it. I was disappointed, but now I grew to love this midget and his clock. Zilean rules, don't change my mind 😅🤣⏳
The only thing I want to see as an update is A: make is E give a small shield so he can benefit from more of the utility items or B: give his E the slow/speed up a grounding mechanic like his bombs the second E grounds the target.
@The Witherling you would think that but over 70% of champs have a dash or a jump or flash plus a flash Sumner spell which the E’s slow doesn’t stop or reduce the range of those spells.
Give his Q a single target heal when you put a bomb on an ally so you can either sacrifice damage to heal your adc this will make his early game more fun, by doing so his Q base damage need to be increased and his stun radius less .
As a Zilean main since season 1 still hate the change on the Ult not scaling any longer with the w. Also i was a big fan of the much saver "q and run" playstyle with the old q ( maybe because point and click was easyer to hit but more because you have to stand still for the new q) also the old e gave 55% ms or slow and the points in it longered the time up to 6 seconds. This of ALL champs needs to be reverted. Riot just did him bad by giving all champs dashes... kinda nerfing him indirectly with that and also killing his movement option e-> run ->q-> dodge-> run-> e .. etc he was playin like a teemo but with abilities insteadd of aa´s. Also i would glaadly give back the cc on the q if it would fly just a notch faster because you can jsut run out of it with 3+ boots with close to every champ
I love Zilean. My favourite champion, and one of my mains. I'll happily take Zilean mid, top, support, and even bot! Haven't tried jungle, probably wouldn't try it.
I had a zil get really toxic and afk cuz I didn’t go in when he ulted me, I didn’t say anything mean I just said my b idk what ur champ does and then he afk
I think you couldn't be more correct. I play a lot of Zilean and one thing I like is that I can consistently do my job well regardless of whether we win or lose but also if you think about that it means it is hard to male a noticeable impact on the match. I see it very much in who I pick I will casually play zilean but if I get annoyed I will go directly to playing thresh because he makes my actions feel very valuable., with thresh if I hit a good hook it makes all the difference. Also i think part of being someone who could consider Zilean one of my mains means I'm willing to relinquish my control on the match and just do a good job without being frustrated but some people - in ranked especially - struggle to understand that i could literally be using all of my shit to the best of my ability (without comms) and i just cant do anything of super significance. To address your point about his ultimate the problem with making the time that it takes for the ally to respawn shorter is that it wouldn't always be a good thing. examples: u a squishy zilean gets in a ganked but ur jungler counter ganks, u revive yourself , but if the time to respawn is short they just kill u again. A personal example is i will be getting attacked and go under tower, they dive me, i self revive, if the time was shorter i would simply die again, i need the tower to hit them. So as you'll realize after more examples is the shorter the revive time the less effective self reviving becomes but the more effective reviving a teammate becomes. Early game as zilean you really need to keep pace and stay alive, also towers are deadly and late game there are more teamfights and towers make less of an impact. Hence my proposed solution is that as you level up your ultimate the time the ally takes to revive is reduced, additionally making him a little less squishy might be nice.
Imo his abilities are near one dimensional and boring. Almost all the fun in zilean is put on his q. His w is just a button, his e is point and click, his r is point and click. So it feels like zilean has like 1 ability you think about. Other champions have point and click but those abilities have more depth or the champion does themselves. Malzahar e focuses his minions, lulus polymorph has to be timed, etc. But THREE of zileans abilities are extremely easy to use, thats almost his entire kit. Not to mention his passive is just an afterthought too often. I have never played against a zilean and thought "that zilean xp lead is losing us the game" "wow got outplayed by that zilean w" "damn he used that ult to so well" "oof that speedup really caught me by surprise". no. Any zilean can operate his w e r abilities at near full potential out the box. You know zilean is going to ult, its just a matter of waiting. Its his bombs that separate good zileans. So when someone picks up zilean theyre thinking about only his q and then maybe a quick decision or two on who to ult and who to slow. Im not saying zilean himself has no depth, I just think nearly all of it is strapped to his bombs. I quite like his bombs and think its a cool ability.
Senna lux pyke and morgana are one of the most popular picks, becouse they can carry alone. Zilean cannot carry alone, he needs to have at least one person who will cary the game. And league is a "team game" where everyone expects you to hard carry every game while they are super underperforming. Thats why zilean and champs for team play are not popular
As a zilean main. I think there are two points that weren't too good. 1) movement speed is crucial. The 99% slow he has is absolutely crippling. Even when someone has a dash. 2) his damage output is insanely high and the 1.5 second stun gives him such huge potential.
I recall that there was this bronze game where I met this duo marksman botlane. I harassed them and killed them (with my team's adc) so much that when I matched up with them the next game they outright banned zilean.
Vars: what keepe Zilian's ult balanced - is that it is not an instant revive. Riot a year later: so we got an insta revive for the support, but for her w. not ult. seems balanced to me!
Uhm... actually: Zilean's passive isn't the only thing that has changed about him. In the past double bombing only set off the first bomb. These days double bombing stuns. Other than that awesome vid.
I honestly don't get why so many League players don't like the strategist type of champions/gameplay. League being a moba already makes it very strategy based, as those types of games are basically RTS and RPG combined. So if you're all about mechanics and outplays and 1vs1s and whatnot, then wouldn't you have more fun in a fighting game that is ACTUALLY supposed to be played by these kinds of people? I guess these kinds of people play League, because Riot realized that the majority of the gamers are like this, so if they want to be successful, then they gotta appeal to those people. So they did everything in their power to reward reactive plays (while keeping champs with reactive kits meta), while not rewarding proactive plays as much (and also keeping those champs in an ok spot AT BEST).
I am with you on that one. I really really do like Zilean's strategic kit where strategy and matters a lot. It's just sad that Riot is appealing those a demographic who have aroused from the "flashy" champs. However, I am happy he's not in the radar for picks and bans because the way the meta is now? He's broken as fuck in the right hands. As a Zilean player who climbed from the bottom depths of Iron IV hell out to Gold I. I prefer him to be that way. He just shuts down soooo many champions it's absurd.
I like the idea of supporting my teammates in a unique way. And I much prefer playing games with my friends to playing with strangers. So Zilean does look interesting.
I'll always remember the groaning and the flaming I've received when I picked Zilean when we played "All for one". It was a slaughter, all the bombs stun if doubled up, even if you didn't cast the first or second one. The Garen team suffered, a lot. Everyone had a blast, nobody said sorry about the flaming and groaning. Funny fact, even some Zileans will try to run instead of dying when ulted.
Actually Zilean actually had a pretty radical rework that completely changed the experience of laning against him. His Time Bomb used to be a point and click and was absolutely obnoxious because of it.
Zilean is a very good support, however E-Girls hates old men so they won't pick him, a lot of male supports goes full engage supports (Pyke, Leona, Nautilus, ...) and that's why he is not played. (Ulti not being useful because if a teammate dies then he was caught), most of the time, a Viego(any engage champ) would engage kill someone but the whole enemy team would burst him down so if you ulti him and revive him => it is a 4 v 5 / enemy at least would've used 2 ultimate's / mentally breaking the enemy making all their effort going in vain (slowing with E) imagine having a Nasus slow but fully stacked for 3 seconds, most toplane fighters struggle reaching your adc with a 99% slow on them, Imagine how useless you can make a singed in teamfights with Zilean (speeding with E) all toplaner's wet dream is a Zilean support (Jax, Irelia, Aatrox, Darius, Renekton, Garen, ....) Imagine a rammus with a zilean E running towards you. (Q) you need to hit those stuns because you'ed be useless, and it is hard! in my opinion this is the real reason why players fear playing him
He’s my fav champ, but you make good points about he can be limiting. But as an older player with crap mechanics and not the best reflexes anymore, he’s perfect. If they did a rework would love to see his W changes so that it would allow you to cast any of you other spells, including your ultimate, twice in a row.
I really don't want a Zilean Rework. His abilities are great. He's not OP, never saw a ban of Zilean, his fun and a bit complex. And I don't want his design changed, actually I don't think I even want him to get q higher quality base skin. I feel like he is so we'll as he is, that a single change could ruin everything. He is simply *Timeless*
Zilean is fun in aram, but I can't imagine playing him in the laning phase, the bomb is unlikely to land unless you time it when they are in an animation, but zilean e is just so fun to use. I think Zilean should be paired with a teamfighting support to help makes his job easier and help exert pressure while the revive is ongoing, probably Karma because the aoe shield can keep the team safe when Zilean uses all his single target abilities to peel
I think he's perfectly fine, but I'm biased. You never said truer words when you said he was team reliant. I was playing with my friend who was new for only the second time, and I ulted her because she had a sliver of health and was gonna die to Lux's ult. She ended up moving out of the way and getting killed immediately after. 😑
Zilean main here, currently somewhere around 800 hours on the champ. I'm no expert, but I have a few thoughts. You make mostly good points here, but I think you're selling Zilean's range of effectiveness short. Just because his abilities are unconventional doesn't mean they're not versatile. His bombs may seem like a simple cc+damage combo, but they can be used for a lot more- zoning out enemies who are trying to chase, starting baron/dragon steals by stunning any enemies within melee range of it through the wall, even vision, which I find especially useful at lvl 1 while checking for invades. People assume Zilean turns teamfights into 6v5s, but that's not REALLY what he does. It's more like he turns even trades in his team's favor. You'll find more effective use of his ultimate in situations where only 2-3 people from each team are involved, especially because his kit is so good at locking down fleeing enemies while you wait for the revive to go through. Did you know that at rank 5, his E is a 99% slow? Yeah, seriously. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten into a skirmish with some random people in bot lane with my adc, killed one of them, had my adc killed, then, when the other one tried to flee, plopped a NINETY-NINE PERCENT SLOW on them, and while they painfully tried to dash or slog away, my ADC came back and slaughtered them. Last thing- It's very true what you say about the personality of League players. I picked up Zilean pretty early on in my career after trying out a lot of enchanter supports, and the thing that I think has drawn me to him over the years IS his ability to make plays on his own. I get picks on enemy junglers, top laners, you name it on this stupid old man usually once or twice a game, assuming it doesn't end at 20. But, I guess those are fringe cases. What I can tell you is that it happens a lot more than when I play something like Soraka, (even my patented murderfuck soraka build don't @me) which gives him the option to take care of things himself if he needs to, while still being a support through and through. We supports are a strange breed, but there's something magical about making the difference on a macro level that I just can't get playing an assassin.
Simply, the " Time " theme was wasted on him being a support mage whatever, could have been someone like Faceless Void from Dota 2, which has a really nice theme and identity and really popular too! Zilean is just so whatever that no one plays lol
Loves Zilean. So unique with interesting moves. Time Bomb is awesome to harass early game and perfect to setup ambush or stop an enemy from running away. My only grippe is with his passive. I don't see how it fits the character and it's rarely usefull, unless you have perfect communication with your allies
Meh, I guess the main usage of it is to give XP to the fed members of your team to keep their snow ball going and keep them ahead of enemy, or you can give it to champions that scale of levels. I can definitely see someone like Kayle loving zilean passive.
Zilean definitely needs visual update, along with voicelines. Old man with blue bears and hair, T-posing and flying around with a cucoo clock (who even thought it is fine?) and all of that made mostly of squares just screams 'I'm from the times long forgotten and for good reasons'. When it comes to abilities - they are mostly fine, although a bit more flashyness wouldn't hurt to make him look more appealing, but this comes with a visual update. But I would definitely entirely change what his Q does. The effect (dmg + dmg and stun if you hit the same target) is very fine, but it doesn't make any sense that a freakin chronomancer throws mechanical time bombs out of nowhere like a Kobe. If they would make him to look like in Legends of Runeterra - big yes, that's how he should be like
Im not a zilean main but he is one of my most played i personally feel like a 1 vs 9 bomber jet. Pressing e on my self throwing double bombs and runnung again. On the other side he just feels crazy with juggernauts since their only weaknesses are being immobile and low range. I had so much fun speeding up Darius playing with a high spellhaste build this season. It was basically a permanent Speed up stun chain making my darius run all over them.
@@VarsVerum As someone who this season has been building around AH on him, you can get your W rewind to sub 3 seconds which is shorter than the Q bomb timer and nearly full up time for E speed ups should you be able to keep up with who you speed up haha. It's pretty wild and I love doing the same thing with Juggs, you don't know fear until the fed Nasus, Voli, or Darius just ran at you at Mach 5 haha.
Zillean haven't had _ANY_ balance changes to his abilities since season *_5_* when he had his abilities reworked. And his wr in plat+ is close to 52% (albeit pick rate sits comfortably at ~2-3% Grandpa is a sleeper pick, that's for sure. But i think there are a lot of people who would prefer him to stay that way. (me included, he's so fun to play)
Many zileans dread a rework for lack of a better term riot has gone very corporate with champion design making it so every kit hits the same niche with different flavors I dont think they could ever feel confident enough to make something like zilean again without a pretty face for skins and a carry based playstyle for fanbase zilean is a niche for players that understand you cant be the hero every game so sit back and make everyone else look good whether they notice it or not
Zilean also has some quarks from him being so old/his base design. I'd argue he has the weakest level 1 in the game (even compared to yuumi). Also his Q/R are exclusive, meaning you cant cast your ult in the middle of using a Q I think this interaction came from a bug fix where you used to be able to animation cancel his q to throw out another bomb nearly instantly.
I'm a P1 Zilean one trick and agree with the majority of this video despite it being 2 years old now lol. To main Zilean you have to come be ok with the fact that you will never have the spotlight. If you don't like helping others carry the game or you aren't happy getting 0 recognition for the work you put in to getting someone a kill, Zilean isn't for you. He is best used as a hyper carry enabler. He's hard to catch, he's hard to get away from, and his kit is perfect for team fighting come mid-late game. Get through his pretty bad early game and laugh your way to the +LP bank.
Zilean suffers from the same problem all champs who have revives suffer from, timing, location and teammate awareness. In coordinated play his usefulness climbs much higher since his ult can be used more aggressively as a deterrent when placed on the adc for example. People will be less inclined to take the killshot if they know that will just revive.I fully agree his solo queue potential is much lower for that same reason. His potential is also higher in Aram in my opinion because even keeping one ally alive is sometimes enough to stall the enemy team from capturing a turret. That is however highly contingent on how well that ally is doing and who they are.
I play zilean all the time, I just try to stun and slow and revive my adc, and most of the time we just snowball the botlane and the jungle doesnt need to gank and focus on other lanes. If used correctly and efficiently, it can predict the game as early as 10 mins. Imagine, not needing the jg and mid but their bot asks for help all the time and not succeeding? That’s like bonus exp and gold and pushing for the mid and jg and less exp and gold for the enemy team by tilting their ganks.
While I have been playing lately support has been growing on me at an increasing rate. Between S+ games on thresh and lulu and my understanding of support macro I have felt like I can truly carry some games through sheer tactics. So when you say zilean is the “master tactitian who wants to plot out his moves”, I am hooked on the sound of it.
While I like playing Zilean every once in a while, nothing triggers me as much as his passive. Why is there no indicator that tells me how much xp I will grant? Because at the moment it feels so punishing and sad if you are running around with like 300+ xp simply because the last few times you gave 30 xp max. All the frustration and anger I have in these moments. Just today I reached 700 xp playing him in mid. All that potential tempo you could have, gone for 2 or 3 min I think until you can try again. A easy solution would be to make the cd dependent on the percentage of xp granted in comparison to your saved up xp. At least it wouldnt feel as bad, giving away miniscule amounts that way.
i've mained zilean since 2013-14 my earliest 100 ranked games were zilean only with 75% winrate. let me tell you, you can definitely carry with zilean. if you guys remember pre-rework zilean, he was even more overpowered than he is now, i could literally solo carry myself to plat alone. what many players dont understand about zilean is his survivability. just with ult, flash and speed up, you have the ability to get out of ANY situation any time. you can also help out your team as well, but you can build the damage as well. he's an extremely versatile champion because he can simultaneously be a mage, tank and a support with an utility. the only reason people refused to play him in the past was because it has obnoxiously mana hungry spells so it sucks early, but you can solve this problem simply by getting mana regen items like grail for example, idk if it's still in the game but it was the bomb. plus get the max CDR and mid-late game you are always golden no matter what happens. if you're skilled you can win early as well, the reason pre-rework zilean was insanely op was because he had an auto lock ranged damage spell in lane so you could poke over and over risk free while managing mana, you could eventually kill anyone like that with ignite. now it's a skillshot but they added stun and lowered damage however this stun is very strong and not that hard to hit so he's still very strong, though not as OP in lane as he was it was also very fun to play and the most fun i've had playing league was maining zilean. unkillable annoying mage that giga supports the adc and gets kills himself while zooming around the entire map extremely fast has always been my kinda playstyle. the problem i had with other supports was that if you picked janna your team sucked, or if your adc sucked, you were screwed because you cant do anything yourself. well, with zilean you could do anything you wanted, revive yourself, get your own kills and in general be a pain in the ass for enemy team. with janna, enemy team gets fed, then some dumbfuck khazix or some other champ jumps on you and you are dead, you dont have damage you can't do anything
