The title pretty much says it all. I'm a new player and I have encountered zilean sup a handful of times as an adc and I lose lane every single time. How do I farm against him when his cd time is nonexistent and his clocks do so much damage?
Please don't just say "dodge the clocks" because that really isn't that helpful.
Dodge the.... Ok. Sorry, I had to.
In all seriousness, it depends on your Support. Zilean is one of those supports that can win his lane for his ADC solo if both enemy laners don't cooperate.
You have two general options against Zilean:
Sustain support and just have a boring farm lane. This is especially true once Zilean hits level 6. Even dedicated kill-lanes will have trouble against a Zilean post-6. His bombs do a lot of damage, but not enough to overpower healing/shields from Soraka/Janna/Nami/Sona, etc. Basically you dodge as many of his bombs as you can, but otherwise ignore him and wait for laning phase to end.
A super-aggressive kill-lane. Zilean's CDs are fairly long early game. He can double-bomb ONCE, but then he'll be stuck with auto-attacks for 8-10 seconds. If you can catch him out of position, go for the kill. If you have a Blitzcrank, Leona, etc? Followup if they engage onto him. However, once he hits 6, you aren't going to win all-ins without ganks or being really far ahead.
The biggest thing with Zilean is that you cannot win short trades with him. You either need to play entirely passive with a sustain support, or you need to commit every time you manage to catch him. Can't do half-and-half against him.
In blind pick, you're SoL... but in Draft, try to match up your choice of ADC with your support. If they took Soraka, Alistar, etc? Pick a late-game carry like Tristana/Jinx.
If they went with an engage support, like Leona or Blitz? Take an early-game ADC like Graves or Miss Fortune.
Pretty Much what Thrair Said.
Zilean relies entirely on his double bomb combo to do anything, and as support, he doesn't really have the mana/regen to support that early. So if the zil is bad, he'll be spamming double bombs all the time. This also likely means he's pushing the wave towards you. This means you can get ganks from your jungler.
If the Zil is good, he'll be waiting for you to last hit, then toss a bomb. Try to pair up with a support with spammable heal or shields. Nami/Karma/Morgana/Sona/Soraka/Janna are all good choices. The big giant downside to support zil, is that his passive ends up being useless if the game goes on long enough because he'll be at level 14-15 when everyone else is already level 18. Use this to pick a harder scaling support.
To be able to you mainly have to learn proper positioning in lane. Before this you need to have a solid grounding in trading while csing.
You kill him. He's very squishy and very low damage level 1-2. I can literally chunk half of his health level 1 with one E/Q and 2 autos as Lulu.
If your ADC is smart then he would fight as well. For some reason all my adc who faces against zilean support is scared shitless and always try to avoid fighting him level 1-3.
you have to be aggressive. you can't play passive against zilean. play aggressive before level 6. and even after even more
Pretty much what everyone else said. Either go super passive or really aggressive, and try to dodge what you can. I tend to pick Cait when I ADC. So it's not too hard to be aggressive and bully him out of lane, since that is what she is meant for. Or just set traps in front of him so he has to cross them to get in range.
