Don't get me wrong, it's a nice idea and all, but was the objective of changing the passive of 
not to make sure it wasn't useless at level 18? It still seems to have the old problem that once your team is level 18 it becomes non-functional; I know his old passive was fairly bad but changing it to this just feels like it was just for show to me.
that was not the objective. the objective was to make is passive FEEL meaningful.
Here's a possible solution: At level 18, Zilean gains the extra experience as "Mana in a Bottle". You can activate the passive the same way as the original passive, except it gives mana instead of experience depending on whether you/target is level 18 or not. Zilean gains as much mana as he gives. Same cooldown.
An extra solution to ZIlean's mana problems. Tear works great, but even then sometimes....
But I agree with the others too, the primary objective of the passive rework was to make it feel meaningful
Not only did they actually make ZIlean's passive WORSE (you can share XP with one person once very two minutes and only if it levels them up, as opposed to early grouping giving XP to all of your teammates passively). But it is also extremely buggy. When your ally who you are giving the XP to is at the max range and walking out of your passive as you are trying to give them XP it just glitches and needs to be redone.
Additionally forcing Zilean to have to CHANNEL experience to his allies is dumb. It only works out of combat so its virtually useless, and if you start it and then the person you just used ur passive on (NOW AN ACTIVE RIOT) gets a kill you don't get an assist. Thanks Rito! We needed a fake buff to make it look like you were going to fix us
[{quoted}](name=Breaking Bard,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=0e5cdWuT,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-10-29T14:49:25.937+0000)
I know his old passive was fairly bad but changing it to this just feels like it was just for show to me.
Trust me it wasn't. If you remember the last years world championship, Zilean was one of the staple picks because the passive affected the amount of experience his teammates recieved, which proved to be very strong in the then popular jungle buddying. It also suffered from lack of clarity. His new passive is easier to balance and it's influence on game is clearly visible. It also feels thematically cool to me.
I dont know why Riot stuck to having Zilean's passive increase EXP gain.
Ya know, it's just a quick fix so it FEELS more useful now
On an unrelated topic, Syndra doesnt have a passive till level 9...
I think his old passive is fine. It's like a Draven passive. Super helpful in the early game (Some would say unfair) and then useless in the late game where you should be fine.
I mean, aren't gold passives all useless once you hit full build?
While it was meant to make the passive more involved, it's just another mundane click every 2 minutes. Zilean has about 60-70 experience stored for getting to lvl 2 faster and that equals to 2 minions (very similar to before) , then you wait another 2 minutes to give maybe 100 or so experience.
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1st. A thread should automaticaly be in chronological view ;)
2nd. I believe the entire idea is to reinforce the identity of who is and his identity to the team and his opponents. He brings his teammates into the future via his "bottled time/xp". Basically making some or all of his team in a "further point" in the game via levels.
Now with that in mind he cant make them stronger than they would be at the end of the game obviously, lvl cap 18 and all, but it's the teams responsibility to actually END the game while they have the end game stats and your opponents don't. Once everyone is at level 18, the other team essentially "caught up in time/xp" meaning your team wasted the potential lead.
His ult actually fits this identity quite well too. Whether you send one teammate skyrocketing "into the future" or evenly distribute your chrono'love, you are about being a step ahead of the opponent. Leveling the players that need to be strong and saving the ones that are vital to overcoming a deficit or particularly strong enemy comp. Or just making sure your 
or PaPa 
keep on slashin/smashin.
TLDR; The new passive sets identity as THE early game victory support, you beat your enemys in xp, farm up to 6, smash face as a team while you're still ahead in XP and hopefully not behind in gold.
Atleast now it don't feel useless until everyone in zilean team reach level 18 which in my games takes a lot of time
I'd rather have this than the old passive. That being said, it feels extremely clunky. Trying to use it is annoying as hell because half of the time when I can use it in the early game, my laner just kills a minion or 2 as I'm channeling or as I'm about to click them to begin the channel and they level up. The only time it honestly does feel like I'm doing something is mid to late game. But eveh then I want to facepalm because I'll see the exp I gave em was like 35 or lower, when I have like 400+ exp to give. And then it goes on that annoying cooldown. I wish once your teammates are level 18 that they'd just hide the increasing number passive all together. It reminds me of how frustrating it is to use it during the game and that there's really no point in seeing the "time in a bottle" exp continue to rise when there's absolutely nothing I can do with it.
What people fail to realize Zilean is a type of champion that attempts to get the game over with before everyone on your team & their team reached level 18. People complain so much about how it's useless at level 18, but here is a fun thing you should do; take objectives over kills. Instead of being a 20/0/0 adc killing everyone hoping for a surrender at 20 why not instead lane push a turret I'm sure you'd get 1 or 2 and while their team is sending people up there your team can push another objective. Why are you able to do this? Because the Zilean passive put you in the lead in levels. Take advantage of early game, shut them down before the game even starts. Zilean is a type of champ that does this.
Because not everyone will hit level 18 in a game. It typically takes until like 35+ minutes for non solo lanes to hit 18 and quite a few games aren't going to go so far past that to make it obsolete (maybe a few minutes).
why is everyone acting as if zilean is a support only champ... buff to mid zilean where you level faster in mid (meaning getting to the breakpoints where you store more exp per sec faster) while giving levels to the jungler or top lane to push them to level powerspikes or just because you want to use the passive to get exp yourself, just imagine going top and making that garen be a level above the enemy top, or gnar have 6 while the enemy top is 5 or get that ww/noct/<insert lvl 6 ganker here> to lvl 6 faster? i wouldnt say it's useless and if you say you never find 2 seconds to channel exp to someone while sieging turret or walking back and forth doing nothing waiting for enemy minions... well thats bad, sure it has bugs right now but they ought to get fixed... hopefully lol.
