Zilean/Strategy

Skill usage

 * Placing on allied initiators such as  and  as they are about to initiate on multiple enemies is a good way to help rack up burst damage. Using  on, ,  can lead to a heavy unexpected nuke to the enemy team, thanks to these three characters' ability to stealth.
 * Placing a on an enemy 's pet  will cause it to follow him when he runs away. This is great placment for a no-escape insta kill at low HP.
 * Placing a on an ally as they teleport (,,  etc.) may help you get an assist.
 * Placing a on an enemy as they teleport may also get you a kill as they will most likely be teleporting to a fight.
 * You can combine the use of and  to place two  on a target quickly. As this causes the first bomb to instantly explode, this is  main damage combo. This can be very effective for farming and pushing. This combo costs a lot of mana, so you may not want to use it for harassing.
 * This strategy has an effect on an enemy bombs because planting your own bombs on debuffed allies will detonate the enemy bombs.
 * With minor cooldown reduction and, you can keep higher ranks of on yourself permanently barring mana costs. Use this to quickly get to teamfights to help, or lanes to defend/push.
 * Repeated usage of can help to drastically reduce the cooldown of  at the cost of mana.
 * Using and  can become a reliable farming strategy with higher ranks invested in them. Place one on a caster minion, then quickly place another. The bomb should have done enough damage to leave the caster minion at low health. Land an auto attack on it to set the bomb off sooner.
 * Use to get back to lane faster.
 * is an effective way to enable allies/yourself to finish off enemies, or escape from a losing battle. By using, can slow or boost an enemy or ally twice allowing an easy kill or escape.
 * Use strategically for maximum effect. It can prolong the life span of yourself or a team member.
 * You can bait low enemies to your tower by saving your till the last second to bait enemies into committing to kill you or die.

Build usage

 * Building ability power is recommended, due to the high AP ratios on the damage from and the revive from.
 * Since all of 's abilities are very mana-heavy, you might find yourself quickly running out of mana in the early stages of the game. To aid this, purchase for decent mana regeneration and for early harassment, which can be later upgraded into an . This is especially useful if one is also building other items providing mana like  or . For support builds, this leaves more room for other items, as this is essentialy the only offensive item a support  would need.
 * Another option is to grab an early . It's upgrade, provides a lot of ability power and cooldown reduction, among other stats which are very useful on.
 * By purchasing and using his ultimate, he can be a great time consumer to the opposing team, which allows the ally team to know how to approach an ambush while you are reviving.
 * Though, keep in mind that 's passive will always proc after 's active, and generally will ressurect you with a much lower amount of health than your ultimate.
 * Cooldown reduction is doubly effective on, since in addition to decreasing the cooldowns of his abilities it decreases the cooldown of allowing it to be used more often to decrease the cooldowns on your abilities even further. You can use  every 28 seconds with maximum cooldown reduction and continual activation of.
 * A cooldown reduction of 9% allows to be continually active.
 * provides ability power, mana regeneration, and cooldown reduction, all of which are very useful to Zilean.
 * A second choice for all the above stats is the afromentioned . It's passive component restores 12% of your maximum mana on kill or assist, and the item itself provides more ability power and mana regeneration than, as well as a decent amount of magic resistance, but less cooldown reduction and no Grievous Wound debuff. Although it may give better stats the gold price is also higher (by 600g).

Countering

 * early harassment power can be mitigated by sending a tanky or healing champion to lane against him. You are more likely to win a battle of attrition due to his high early mana costs.
 * When caught by, you can force him to push the lane by intentionally damaging your minions with the explosion.
 * Remember to stay away from your allies when he uses his on you so you won't intentionally damage your allies.
 * Ideally you should attempt to take down quickly with enough burst power to prevent him from making use of . If this proves impossible, consider that you may need to focus on which of  allies you can kill the fastest over which one is dealing the most damage.
 * mobility with makes it difficult to finish him off without a well orchestrated ambush, but he has low natural defenses. He makes a good target for assassins.
 * is one of the strongest and longest lasting movement speed reduction abilities in the game. The duration reduction from is noticable at all levels.
 * cannot usually afford to increase his ability damage in the late game and his utility is less dependent on his item build. Attempting to kill during the laning phase should be a very low priority compared to farming minions.