I need help understanding where Zac is.

tl;dr version: Zac is fun. Weird but fun. However his abilities compared to other tanks seems lackluster. I see people saying Zac sucks and I don't want to be the one guy getting blamed for a lose because my champion "isn't good enough" in the game. Does he really suck or is there a lack of clarity on both sides? It's odd that a champ that was so popular and useful is now labeled bad this hard. Sorry for the long post.

Let me start off by saying this is my first time making a topic in this board so I'm not entirely sure if this topic is 100% relevant. I'm no where near pro level and this is just my perspective on him. Just thoughts. Feel free to disagree and help me understand.

I thought the concept of was cool when I started playing again earlier this year. After looking at past S3 games I remembered Zac again and decided to grind ip to pick him up. He's a fun champ definitely and I like the way he teamfights. However I don't understand something. Zac is mostly considered a tank, uses a ton of CC and has a nice passive, but he doesn't seem to do much later on than 'go in teamfight, stick on their carry, hope you did enough'.

Okay not as vague as that might seem but I don't get that curve or level of usefulness like I do . I use Maokai here because they both of similar themes: Q is cone slow, W is %max health, E is utility spell that hinders someone and helps with initiating ganks, ult is teamfight oriented. I don't think anyone here disagrees that current Maokai is a better/stronger version of Zac now and I think it's because Maokai is simpler to play. Once Zac lands on a target he doesn't seem much of a threat. Even with red buff, Zac doesn't seem to do "enough" and he can't really do damage with his low damage W anyway because of its short range. Meanwhile, Maokai stick to targets and deal some damage a little bit longer as well as having the added bonus of rooting after launching. I'm not saying he should go in and put out Les sin level ganks(which is dumb anyway) but I do think he should be able to stick to them more.

Also, why does his W start off at 4% and not 8% like the others? Why does his E have such a long cooldown for what it is despite other engages being less? Should he be played top lane? I legit don't know.

Like I said, I wasn't here playing the game when Zac was being played so I can't gauge how strong he was. I just get comments like "Zac sucks now." "Play a different champion." "Zac is a useless jungler." Even when I'm not playing and someone else is, they are usually getting called out for lacking damage or how bad he missed his engage. A lot more so than other gank-from-range junglers. I'm thinking it's just the way me and the way other players are treating him; like he's supposed to jump in and get kills, instead of jumping in, slowing them down and letting your carry get kills. Maybe he does suck. Maybe he should have higher scaling or base damages. I don't care what anyone plays but to see someone disown a champ someone is playing (and not the other way around interestingly enough) is questionable.

Personally I think is so different that he fails from specializing too much. Like got power creeped in the support role despite being unique in his passive. Unlike Zac however, Taric works wonders in certain and not uncommon situations like against a raw AD team. All the recent champions this year have a dash, a slow and some kind of disengage that has to be worked around as well as their short cooldowns. So maybe it's not the fact that he sucks, he just requires more effort. Effort that's noticeably different from playing other relatively difficult champions(?).

So here I am. Confused on Zac . He's not bad at what he does, but he doesn't seem as good as the other champs in his field, much less so in the current "meta". I'm confused as to why Zac doesn't have that kind of danger that , or even have as the game goes on. Is he only used for utility? Is it bad to pick a champ that lacks sustainable damage and slight tankiness for utility? Compared to other tanks with engages, damage and CC where does he hold up? Is he more useful top lane or should he be kept in the jungle? I won't deny that I'm lacking clarity on this, but I do wonder if he's weaker than he's intended to be.

Thank you for reading this.