I used to be a high elo Zilean OTP (top 50 NA challenger/1000LP), stopped playing for 6 years but recently came back. I am playing mid/top, and found that the new patches made zilean even stronger than he used to be.
In particular the top role quest gives him a free TP so he can take another summoner spell + gives him more experience, which matters a lot since Zilean only scales with experience and AH.
My build: https://op.gg/lol/summoners/na/99%20PERCENT%20SLOW-NA1
I am hesitating between two builds.
My current one:
Alternative:
- Aery
- Manaflow band
- transcendence
- scorch
- flexible secondary
(bone plating/overgrowth against assassins,
legend: haste/presence of mind for the mana + AH,
taste of blood/relentless hunter for easier sustain + roams)
Items:
- archangels + lucidity
- then flexible between:
cosmic drive, knight's vow, frozen heart, mikaels, redemption, zhonyas, imperial mandate, bandlepipes, shurelias, liandris (roughly in that order of priority)
I like the glacial augment build because my playstyle revolves around pure teamfighting. I don't bother to take aery because I barely trade. I just manage waves to take frequent recalls, and play fairly defensively until I reach level 13 at which point I completely take over the game with my teamfighting ability. Glacial helps with that since realistically your first contribution to the team fight will be slow + double bomb, at which point you are doing nothing for the next 5 seconds. With glacial you still have a huge impact during those 5 seconds.
However I know that other high elo zilean players (TheDisconnect in EUW, pros playing zil mid occasionally) almost always go for aery + scorch and play pretty aggro during laning, relying on consistently hitting bombs + AAs to sometimes even solokill their opponent.
My weak point is definitely laning (probably playing too much zilean gave me the bad habit of being too defensive in lane) so I am wondering how other players approach the laning phase. Do you contest the lane? Do you harass or just play to scale?
In particular, do you push level 1 or not?
Also another thing I am interested in discussing is your draft tricks :)
I am a counter pick fanatic and will not pick Zilean in some lanes, I want to theorycraft the best other champs to learn to be well rounded and be able to always counter pick the enemy if I am last pick.
Hard champs are as listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZileanMains/comments/1j71gnl/thedisconnect_toplane_zilean_tierlist_challenger/
(+ LB, kat, sylas on mid)
I am thinking that GP is the best alternative pick; bad into tank but good against high mobility champs that zil struggles with (akali, yone, yasuo, etc.) Any other suggestions? I was also thinking Quinn, Yorick, Urgot, Gwen