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Strategy is highly subjective and may become outdated without any notice. Because of this, the League of Legends Wiki has decided to retire strategy pages and would recommend using other platforms (such as YouTube) to find guides. For more information visit this thread.
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Recommended Items[]
Tips[]
- Playing As
Zilean
- You can combine the use of Time Bomb and Rewind to place two Time Bombs on a target quickly. Placing the second bomb will detonate the first and stun all nearby enemies.
- Time Warp is an effective way to enable allies to finish off enemies, or escape from a losing battle.
- Chronoshift is a powerful deterrent to attacking your carries, but casting Chronoshift too early in a fight can cause the enemy to switch targets too soon, making it less effective.
- Playing Against Zilean
- If you're able to match Zilean's speed, it can sometimes be beneficial to wait until his ultimate has faded before landing the killing blow.
- Zilean is fragile if a team focuses on him, but otherwise he's very difficult to kill. Commit to killing him as a team.
Tricks[]
- Ability Usage
- Placing Time Bomb on allied initiators such as Malphite, Hecarim, and Amumu as they are about to initiate on multiple enemies is a good way to help rack up burst damage. Using Time Bombs on champions with invisibility (Such as Evelynn, Shaco, Rengar, Kha'Zix, Talon, Wukong, and Twitch) can lead to a heavy unexpected nuke to the enemy team.
- After triggering an enemy Zac's Cell Division, place one bomb on one bloblet and another bomb on a different bloblet. As the timer ticks down, the bombs will get crawl closer together and more likely finish him off. However, if you quickly double bomb one bloblet before the rest get close, only one bloblet will be killed, and Zac will revive.
- Placing a Time Bomb on an ally as they teleport ( Shen, Pantheon, Nocturne, etc.) may help you get an assist.
- Placing a Time Bomb on an enemy as they teleport may also get you a kill as they will most likely be teleporting to a fight.
- Placing a
- You can combine the use of Time Bomb and Rewind to place two Time Bombs on a target quickly. As this causes the first bomb to instantly explode, this is Zilean main damage combo. If the first bomb is enough to kill the target, both bombs will explode. 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 can be a good way to damage enemy champions standing near the target before they have a chance to shield themselves from damage.
- Time Bombs grant vision to allies. They can be used to scout unchecked bushes or over walls.
- Lobbing bombs into bushes can surprise foes for an attack.
- Using bombs on your own or enemy minions, is a good way of zoning your opponent. If the enemy champion is melee, they have to either wait 3 seconds for the bomb to explode, or be damaged by the bomb if they choose to farm that minion.
- When sieging an enemy turret, have your allied champions clear the enemy minion wave. Place a bomb on the 2nd and 3rd melee minion in your ally minion column. They will carry the bombs forwards for you, possibly harassing a careless opponent under their tower.
- When Zilean has enough AP to kill melee minions with a Q > W > Q combo, he can insta-clear all 6 by walking ahead of his minions to the enemy minion line, then lead the melee minions towards the caster minions. Q > W > Q combo on a caster minion will clear the entire wave. This strategy can also be used to create a harder to dodge stun that still deals full damage, as it is harder to leave the blast radius of the bomb on the relatively immobile caster minion than it is to dodge one or both bombs.
- If the enemy has some sort of shield that can mitigate your bomb damage, use Time Bomb on a low health minion they are about to kill (smartcast helps). This transforms Time Bomb from a nuke with a 3-second windup to an instantaneous AoE damage nuke (without the use of Rewind).
- If you have Syndra as an ally, you can place a Time Bomb on a minion she grabbed with her Force of Will. When she throws it the minion will explode, dealing heavy AOE damage due to the combined forces of Force of Will and Time Bomb. This is basically a long range AoE skillshot, which is very helpful at sieging and poking.
- Placing Time Bomb on a minion and then having an ally use a knockback ability on the minion (such as Headbutt or Buster Shot) into an enemy champion can deal long-range damage or finish of fleeing enemies.
- Placing a Time Bomb on certain uncontrollable pets will cause them to follow their masters around. This is great placement for a no-escape harass or instant kill at low health. This works most effectively on Elise because she has little control over her Spiderlings, and on Malzahar who cannot control his Voidlings without a cooldown in his favor and an enemy in range.
- Consider enemy champions shield durations or damage reductions when casting time bomb. For example, when Irelia casts Defiant Dance, she takes reduced damage for up to 1.5 seconds. Therefore, a single bomb placed on her during Defiant Dance will detonate 3 seconds later, with no damage reduction from Defiant Dance. Also, waiting for Defiant Dance to wear off before casting a second bomb will make her take full damage from the combo. This example is not as relevant after Irelia's nerf in patch 9.3, as Defiant Dance only reduces physical damage.
- Another example is Safeguard, which shields Lee Sin and an ally champion for a few seconds. If Zilean casts Time Bomb on Lee Sin directly, he can Safeguard one second before the bomb goes off to mitigate the damage. The safest way to damage him with two bombs is to quickly double bomb a minion that is in the vicinity, assuming that one bomb is sufficient to kill the minion. This would result in the AoE damage to be that of two bombs, since placing one bomb over another detonates the first and since the target dies, the second immediately detonates. However, this is very difficult to pull off and requires you to have high AP.
- This same technique can be used to harass them under their own tower without taking tower hits as well.
- Use Time Warp to get back to lane faster.
- Time Warp is an effective way to enable allies/yourself to finish off enemies, engage enemies, or escape from a losing battle. By using Rewind, Zilean can slow or boost an enemy or ally twice allowing an easy kill or escape.
- Placing Time Warp on an initiator such as Singed, Hecarim, Jarvan IV, Udyr, Rammus, Sejuani, and Volibear, while chasing an enemy champion running away, or out of position can allow the rest of your team to catch up and outnumber them once they are in range to apply their CC.
- Rewind is Zilean's only ability that is insta-cast. Casting another ability then Rewind in a quick sequence may end up the Rewind being cast earlier, hence the ability input next unaffected by Rewind as expected.
- Use Chronoshift 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 Chronoshift till the last second to bait enemies into committing to kill you or die.
- Typically it is better to save Chronoshift for an AD carry or tanky DPS, don't use it to save a support unless you can tell the teamfight is almost over and no one else needs it. If the enemy team focuses you, use Chronoshift on yourself of course. If you save it you might die and not be able to use it at all. The benefit is the damage and CC you have absorbed only to come back to life.
- It can be difficult to cast Chronoshift on the ally teammate you want during a team fight due to champions being on top of each other, visual effects of spells, and losing your mouse cursor. Casting the spell on your allies portrait in the upper left corner of the screen will avoid this problem. If Zilean is out of range, he will walk towards them until he is in range and then automatically cast the spell.
- You can bait low enemies to your tower by saving your
- In teamfights, Zilean can safely Time Warp the allied ADC to help them kite back and forth, and Chronoshift the allied ADC as a type of peel by remaining behind the allied ADC or to the side of them. Also, Zilean can slow anyone trying to get to the allied ADC as well, however it only works on one opposing champion, so with multiple opposing champions rushing your allied ADC it may be more effective to speed your allied ADC instead.
- Zilean's greatest potential is unleashed around mid to late game, where the cooldown of his abilities will be ridiculously low, thanks to Rewind.
- Zilean is viable as a support, trading your early game damage spike for utility.
- Zilean can actually cast more than 2 Time Bombs in a single combo, thus allowing for multiple stuns. This is done by having a fairly low cooldown on Rewind (ideally less than 6 seconds, practically you should have rank 5 on it and a decent amount of Cooldown reduction). Cast the first Time Bomb on the target, then immediately Rewind. You then wait as longs as possible to cast it again. This way, Rewind will have enough time to refresh, allowing you to chain one more bomb and thus one more stun.
- Runes Usage
- Sorcery
- Summon Aery allows Zilean to shield his allies when casting Time Warp on them and when Chronoshift revives them.
- Celerity boosts the effectiveness of Time Warp when casted on yourself.
- Gathering Storm benefits both Time Bomb and Chronoshift greatly, as both abilities have high AP scalings.
- Domination
- Cheap Shot can be proc'ed easily with Zilean after a single Time Bomb stun or Time Warp.
- Resolve
- Font of Life allows allies to heal off of enemies stunned/slowed by Time Bomb and Time Warp, respectively.
- Revitalize can boost the healing of Chronoshift. Additionally, the rune will always grant the 15% bonus heal given the nature of Chronoshift.
- Item Usage
- Building ability power is recommended, due to the high AP ratios on the damage from Time Bomb and the revive from Chronoshift.
- Since all of Zilean's abilities are spammable but mana-heavy, you might find yourself quickly running out of mana in the early stages of the game. To aid this, purchase Tear of the Goddess for decent mana regeneration and for early harassment, which can be later upgraded into an Archangel's Staff. For support builds, this leaves more room for other items, as this is essentialy the only offensive item a support Zilean would need.
- Luden's Echo can be a decent item on him, with all its stats being very useful on him while also adding extra damage, either in lane or during teamfights.
- Cooldown reduction is doubly effective on Zilean, since in addition to decreasing the cooldowns of his abilities it decreases the cooldown of Rewind allowing it to be used more often to decrease the cooldowns on your abilities even further.
- A second choice for all the above stats is the aforementioned Athene's Unholy Grail. In combination with Summon Aery's shield, you will be able to heal them for a small amount. Despite its stats being all useful on Zilean, it may not be the best item, given the fact that you might be using warp on any ally, even tanky ones, while this item is best on ones with not too much health.
- Void Staff will greatly increase your burst damage.
- When playing as a support, Spellthief's Edge is the best item as it makes your Time Bomb hurt more and gives you a decent amount of ability power for Chronoshift to revive with more health.
- On the other hand Spellthief's Edge can be risky, because if your bomb accidentally kills an enemy minion, you lose gold generation and stack generation, which may cause a drop in gold from the item, in addition to taking gold from your ADC.
- On the other hand
- Countering
- Zilean's 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. Champions with the ability to silence also have an upper hand on Zilean due to his low defense stats
- When caught by Time Bomb, 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 Time Bomb on you so you won't unintentionally damage them.
- Remember to stay away from your allies when he uses his
- Ideally you should attempt to take Zilean down quickly with enough burst power to prevent him from making use of Chronoshift. If this proves impossible, consider that you may need to focus on which of Zilean's allies you can kill the fastest over which one is dealing the most damage.
- Zilean's mobility with Time Warp makes it difficult to finish him off without a well-orchestrated ambush, for he can easily bait and win a fight with Chronoshift. However, his low natural defenses make him a good target for assassins.
- Time Warp is one of the strongest movement speed reduction abilities in the game. Boots of Swiftness reduces its effectiveness.
- Zilean cannot usually afford to increase his ability power by late game and his utility is less dependent on his item build. Attempting to kill Zilean during the laning phase should be a very low priority compared to farming minions.
- Chronoshift is less useful versus teams with high sustained damage combined with crowd control like Kassadin and Jax.
- Zilean is heavily susceptible to silence effects. If you have enough silence in team, you can try to silence Zilean when he is about to cast Chronoshift on one of his allies or kill him before he can use it on himself.
- Building a Hexdrinker or Zhonya's Hourglass could save you if you get bombed twice and are running away. The shield from Hexdrinker will activate before the 2nd bomb detonates. Activate Zhonya's Hourglass when the bomb counts down to 1.
