Slight Zilean buffs

CrazedPorcupine·Sep 21, 2013·5 votes·623 views

Zilean right now is sitting in a fairly poor spot right now, and this is due to several factors.

Zilean has only 1 ability that does damage which he can combo with itself
Zilean is fairly Item dependent, keeping him from supporting viably in the 0cs support meta
Zilean is very squishy.
Zilean's passive does not help when his entire team is level 18

Zilean does have a lot of things that make him shine. Zilean's lvl 18 utility is very strong, a revive and a possible permaslow, Plus a low cooldown large burst combo. However, there are some massive problems to these things, their mana costs when combined with the spammy nature of rewind.

There are 3 buffs/changes I propose to zilean to make him a bit better without changing his kit too much

Increase Zilean's base mana and mana/level from 260 +60/level to 300 + 70/lvl (increases his mana at level 18 from 1340 (which is abysmal considering his mana costs) to 1560 which is only a 220 mana increase)
make rewind cost no mana and not charge tear.
increase his HP/lvl from 71 to 80 (which increases his total health at level 18 without items from 1652 to 1820 (only a 162 health increase)

Overall, those 3 changes would make Zilean much better. Zilean really needs items to buy mana and mana regen items, and as a support he just can't get those items he needs, at at mid, he's too squishy to survive the assassin/mobility meta. Late game he's much more mobile, but he uses too much mana to be viable without items in a long teamfight. Also, By changing the rewind to not cost mana and not charge tear, You have zilean still capable of charging tear fast by his nature of double casting abilities.

6 Comments

CS3NarutoiSep 22, 20132 votes

I think Zilean actually has some more inherent problems that just the 4 listed above.

First off, if you've ever faced a Zilean in lane, you'll come to know what real poke feels like. His Q has a 700 range, does pretty high damage, and you can't dodge it. If you don't have any sustain or damage mitigation, it will force zone and eventually force you out of lane.
That being said though, this spell also has a drawback for Zilean besides the mana costs. It pushes his lane a lot since it does AOE damage. This makes Zilean more prone to ganks because he doesn't have and blinks or dashes for escape. This spell is also kinda what makes Zilean not that good of a support. Your enemy can just move to their low health minions, and then make your bomb steal your ADC's cs, and also push the lane. And did I forget the mana cost?

Now about his W, I think a huge part of his issues are actually tied to this spell.
This spell reduces the cooldown of all his spells. It gives him a Q every 3.6 seconds, double perma E, and a 28 second ult. Because it makes the cooldowns of his spells so low, it also drastically stole power from those spells as well.
Why does his spells cost so much mana? Why is he so item dependent? Why does his E only give a speed boost and not any other effects and is on a 20 sec cooldown? Why is Zilean so squishy and his ult has a base cooldown of 180 seconds?
This spell itself gives Zilean a lot of power, but at the same time took those power from Zilean's other areas. So I think in order to put Zilean in a better state, his W will need to be fixed and its power more spread apart to his other aspects.

Thanks for reading my column of text. ;)
By the way, care to read my rework for Zilean? http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=39521595#post39521595 (The reworks are ordered from most drastic to the least amount of changes.)

CrazedPorcupineSep 23, 20131 votes

The problem is, if you rework Zilean, you end up taking away some of the things that makes zilean, Zilean. Your reworks keep Zilean Zilean, but remove his charm and capabilities. And right now, pushing lanes hard is good, because of the early diving meta. Also, buy having a large minion wave at tower, it's easier to take those early towers which the current meta is focused on. The biggest problem is that Zilean is WAY too squishy to actually survive in lane in the current meta. The easiest way to put Zilean back on the board without a rework is increasing his stas like I listed above.

Like you Said Rewind is one of the core problems of Zilean, the main problem is that rewind makes him too spammy and he doesn't have the stats to sustain that spam. That's really his only issue. His double bomb combo costs 350 mana right now. That's 1/4 his maximum mana at level 18 with no items. That's More than ANY other ability in the game past ultimates. Removing the Cost of rewind and giving him increased mana actually increase his power without changing any numbers on his abilities.

His E, is able to be put on allies, this is what keeps it from doing too much more than the speed/haste, I mean, look at old Karma's W. It did too much for being able to be put on both allies and enemies and was incredibly weak because of it. Zilean's E is actually incredibly powerful as the longest lasting CC in the game with the most potent slow for that duration. Combined with it's perma-applied status, it makes it one of the most powerful Single target CC's in the game.

His Ult is also in a good place, since building Zilean AP can easily make his ult revive value go up to over 3.5k with it's base heal and 2.0 AP scaling. This makes him a potent mid laner, IF he can survive but his mana costs and mana pool don't support him in that role.

CS3NarutoiSep 23, 2013

Gonna try this from a different perspective, as in keeping his kit intact while tweaking some areas.

Early game, he has a strong poke, so his squishiness encourages your opponent to try to reach and burst him down before they get poked to death. However currently there are many bursty champions who have a gapcloser. This means Zilean is actually easily killed if they managed to all in on him. And due to his mana costs, Zilean will have a hard time doing significant enough damage to push them out of lane.
Then there is the mid-late game. Zilean will have a perma speed boost, and a revive. I think this kinda trades mobility for defense, with the revive just in case you get caught.
So for the health issue, I think Zilean should have a Base Health buff to help him a bit early on, while keeping his squishiness relatively the same late game because I think he should be using his mobility to survive.

About the mana costs, I think it's similar to his change of pace from early game squishiness to late game mobility king. Early game Zilean can't really spam his spells that much without going OOM. However in late game, Zilean should have mana items like Archangel's, so I don't think his late game mana is that much of a problem. I think just either buffing his early base mana/regen or only removing/tweaking the mana cost of Rewind will suffice.
By the way, what do you think about the mana cost of his level 1 E (80 mana)? I think it could be reduced as well to something like 55/60/65/70/75 because it really dips his mana when he uses that in lane early on.

So in conclusion, I agree with your point on his squishiness and mana issues. I think that only buffing his early game HP and Mana should help him quite a bit, while late game Zilean is already pretty strong if using his mobility to his advantage.

Edit:
Now from a support perspective, I think Zilean does need a slight rework because support Zilean doesn't really offer that much early on besides from his E and a poke that can steal cs. I think something needs to be done to help his early game as a support role and to transition him more smoothly into his late game super peeler state.
So yeah, tweaking his stats will help Zilean as a solo laner, but however if wanting to help make support Zilean more viable, I think there needs to be some sort of rework.

Sorry again for another wall of text, but I kinda seem to like long detailed posts. =P

CrazedPorcupineSep 24, 20131 votes

I personally feel like zil should be in the solo lane simply because of how much better he does with items. He should be a more Utility based AP champ like Orianna, Lux, Morganna and Karma. Your ideas for his changes for his E are also good since they help his early game out and help reduce his mana costs which are absolutely extreme for how small his base mana pool is.

JackAquaSep 22, 20131 votes

But wouldn't that make tear stacking a lot harder ?

CrazedPorcupineSep 22, 20131 votes

Tear stacking on Zilean is already incredibly fast due to double casting. The change on Rewind wouldn't change Zilean's tear charge rate at all since tear can only charge twice in 8 seconds. The only time this would slow Zilean's charge rate would be outside of battle when pressing only W to reduce the cooldown of zilean's Ult.