User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Zilean, the Chronokeeper/@comment-3974211-20130817222855/@comment-1330314-20130817231243

Thanks for the feedback! Responding:

The interaction with Temporal Fold and Time Warp is pretty much that you can cast it twice on different targets or location. Temporal Fold's area is a little smallish when with your team, so laying two of them in separate areas allows you to lay a lot more pressure in teamfights. The bonuses from two bubbles don't stack, though. Casting Time Warp twice on the same enemy will only refresh the effect and not increase the slow/damage, so Borrowed Time basically lets you either speed up yourself or an ally at the same time, or wait for three seconds before laying another slow.

The problem with the current version of Time Bomb is that it's far too damaging and safe a poke. It may be Zil's only source of damage, but that's also the issue: since he can't deal damage otherwise, all his offensive power is pushed into his Q, which gives him one good instance of single-target burst and then nothing. It also actually is compensated: Zil can now double-bomb at level 1, giving him huge early game power.

Overall, his single-target damage is increased (680 ) and his AoE isn't that badly nerfed if he lays his bombs on different targets, as he should. I feel his Time Bomb was meant to be laid on multiple targets at a time (including allies and himself), but in the end it's so much more efficient and easy to just spam double bombs on one target that the AoE portion is frequently ignored.

The reason I made Time Warp's CDR exclusive to basic abilities is actually specifically to prevent abuse cases: if it could affect ultimates as well, everyone on Zil's team would delay ulting right until Zilean bubbled them for the 20% cooldown reduction, and over time this could give allies a huge advantage. 20% CDR is actually quite good even on basic abilities with the lowest cooldowns, especially on casters.

Adding damage to Time Warp felt more necessary than inspired, I agree, but he badly needs another source of damage. The other issue I wanted to cover is that a 55% movespeed boost trumps a 55% slow so hard that it's almost always better to speed oneself up than slow another down.

I considered giving Temporal Fold offensive capabilities, and even now I'm not ruling out the possibility, especially since it'd fit with the League of Legends lore (i.e. the time freeze bubble in Kalamanda). However, I also want to preserve Time Warp's versatility, and haven't yet found a way to do so.

Regarding his mana costs, I actually reduced the rank 5 cost to his Time Bomb, and his W and E cost at the very most a. Zil has one of the largest mana pools in the game, and coupled with the reduced spammyness in his kit shouldn't suffer. Essentially, the only nerf here is to his early Q, which he needs (and even then, his double-bomb combo actually costs less mana in my version than on live Zil)

Regarding his cooldowns, them being too long is not actually true: I gave Time Warp a decreasing cooldown, and Temporal Fold's flat 20 second cooldown is standard for powerful buff abilities. With this kit he benefits far, far more from building cooldown reduction, which his current ability set is locking him out of (one of the reasons he's not that good a support). He gets free CDR from his W, and if he maxes out cooldown reduction it'll give him 60% CDR for 5 seconds, giving him far better presence overall than with his current QEWQE spam. I also added scaling cooldown removal to his ultimate, meaning he'll cast it a little less often when playing as a mage (which should compensate for the massive heal) but more often when playing as a support.

The other advantage to Borrowed Time I see, apart from making him less spammy, is that it'd give Zilean players the feeling that double-casting is an important decision, not just a free cooldown reset. Instead of blowing his load and Rewinding, Zilean could have the opportunity to choose between massive multi-target damage (Time Bomb), huge teamfighting presence (Temporal Fold) or powerful single-target chasing/juking (Time Warp). With the removal of Rewind and his global passive, it means his abilities get to be more powerful, which I did mainly with his W.