Hi, I'm Nym Nonomura author of the homonymous book series named Master Nonomura. At the time of writing Mind Games Win Games (How Jedi mind games helps you win games), How to loose LP like a pro (Keep your smurf low and not get banned) and Get me Out! Support Edition are the only ones available in english on any Amazon store.


I wrote this guide to help out Support players that have to fill mid lane. I think that Zilean is a very safe option in the mid and also top lane, provided that you can play him dosing your mana pool wisely. I started playing League of Legends on season 3 wow! I'm a boomer now I guess, initially I was achieving very poor results (gold and below) until I learned some basics concepts beyond game mechanic. After a brief period, I grasped fundamental ideas and my ranking promptly advanced. I wrote many guides and are currently working on a Blueprint for new players, to help them always pick the best option to climb in every lane.

I have at least three good reasons to pick Zilean mid or top. This pick is not for everyone, if you like to take a lot of kills and "shine" this is no for you. If you think is a longer time-span (pun intended!)and broader view as an utility mid laner, this is the right pick to climb the ladder consistenlty:

• Bully: The average new player will never take [Zilean] mid seriously or perceive him as a threat. Truth is you are not a burst champion, and pretty much everyone in the game is stronger than you (no, not Yuumi) in a 1v1. However what will surprise the most is your bully behavior, you will be able to push your opponent out of the lane, force him to more frequent recalls and eventually win your lane.
  
  
• Funny: You will gap most mid laners, very soon you will have a reliable way of clearing the wave and you will be more efficent than many mid laners. The fun part is indeed reading the comments of people raging or cursing, or shaming your opponent mid laner for losing the lane to a support. This is because they are ignorant as well and do not understand your mechanic. The fun will end for them during team fights.
  
  
• Utility: Your kit is formidable and it is boosting with steroids your whole team. You will do poor total damage but after the laning phase your utility will outsihine most supports, try to stick to your carry or help someone who can bloom with a little help, generally the top laner is a good choice.

With Zilean you will be able to wear three hats: mid, top and support with little to no modification to your kit. Put into account, that often you will not beat your lane opponent and you will struggle or be unable to bully him out, but more likely the other way. Sion with Demolish is a good example. This is like a permitted exploit right now, since all he has to do is push the wave and take away one or even two tower tiles, no matter how much damage you do to him, he will survive until demolish is ready and just chop your tower. Should you kill him, his passive will allow him to finish the job.

You will find more details and "how to" about Sion mid, in my latest guide, along with many other champions. For this guide lets focus on Zilean who back then, didn't fit into the mid laner guide. This is because despite his simple kit, it is not the best pick for really newbies. Zilean remains a valid, niche pick, aimed at a more experienced audience.

To beat Sion mid lane with Demolish the trick is to clear minion wave faster than him!

The early game for Zilean refers to the first 4 levels, in some cases you will be able to start bullying your opponent at level 2, in other cases (the most) you want to focus on farm and only then (level 3+) surprise your enemy with double Q burst, always remember to sew as many auto attacks as you can while staying safe. A few well placed double Q and you will se your enemy flee the lane, this is the perfect time for a 4 minutes recall. Shop what you can afford and Teleport back, by when your teleport will be available again, it will be upgraded so you are not wasting anything by using it at 4 minutes. Many mid laners carry ignite, so you will have a consistend cs lead or in the worst case, you will even the cs disparity. Depending by the match you can become progressively more oppressive or you will have to stay safe and survive.

Your priorities:

1. Take all the farm that you can.
   
   
2. Bully the enemy and try to push him out of the lane or force a recall.
   
   
3. Don't get killed, will ruin your Teleport lead forever.

You can also roam and help your jungler, I'd not risk ganking top or bottom, unless you can do this using your teleport. however only do it if your tower is safe, and your teleporting into the lane will provide your team with a kill or kill + dragon etc.. Remember that your cooldowns are to be considered like a cost, so evaluate if the cost is worth the price. This applies also to your Chronoshift, in some cases you will need make a choice and decide who to save, or let someone die because you foresee a fight for a more important objective happening soon. You will get this with experience.

At this point of the game, you will find yourself in three possible scenarios:

1. You have taken enemy tower tower wile holding your with 4+ tiles still on.
   
   
2. You need to put some effert to keep your tower from being taken down.
   
   
3. You have lost your tower, this is very unlikely, unless you have people inting.

Your main focus is now to take some risks and roam, help your team whenever you can, keep an eye on your tower and mind the use of your Teleport in case you need to save it. The longer you keep the mid tower, and the slower is the enemy advance to your Nexus. if the enemy team is smart they will coordinate to gank you and take your tower way before the laning pashe is over. The premise, however, is someone in your team is feeding his lane opponent or in general not doing his job.

You should have your core items completed and be relatively safe to roam without comapany. If you get ganked and you know you will not make it, do not waste your Chronoshift on you, the cooldown using this build is pretty quick but you may want to preserve it or maybe give it to some teammate who can use it in a more efficient way.

In a team fight, you will need to carefully mind who is better to save and speed boost. In some cases leaving a team mate behind will save more important components, players with bounties on or whose death might impact your strategy or objectives taking. A very trivial situation is during Dragon/Baron fight, you may prefer to preserve the Jungler if he still has the smite, also consider wether it is better to speed-up your allies or slow down the enemies, not all cases are the same.

The contribution of Zilean remains consistent throughout the whole game, you will neve shine for damage but will be a valid help for your team. But why would you want a second support in the mid lane? How can a second support make the difference? Because if you are skilled you will out-do your support in terms of assists and overall utility / tower taking. If you are climbing from Iron league, please do yourself a favor and dodge games where your support is Yuumi or Milio there is no way a player in iron league can use these champions up to a point to make them viable or barely useful. In this case, when I cannot dodge I just bring mid another ADC to copensate.

At this stage of the game, your task is to assist objective taking and your team carries, quite likely top lane and sometimes the ADC. I challenge you to play Zilean in the mid lane and see if you out-perform most of your official team supports. This doesn't come free out of the box, you will need a little more practice than with other mid laners and supports alike, we sill see this in detail in the following sections.

The provided build is actually the most consistent in terms of damage and poke, however like described earlier in the Runes section, you may want to experiement, the main choise is between Arcane Comet and Summon Aery so let's see those two in details and how your play style should adapt accordingly:

The most efficient rune right now, this rune activates when you land a skill, in this case only with Time Bomb you can land a single Q between a double Q early in the game, to reduce the rune cooldown. The rune is nearly impossible to dodge and the damage is consistent, when in doubt pick this rune.

In matchups where you have a melee mid laner, you may want to try this. Please do so in normal games. If you pick this, remember to also pick Attack Speed and never run toward your Aery, the return time is constant, the further you are and the faster the Aery will be. This rune will also help you against Malzahar as it will pop his shield on rune empowered auto-attacks.

Is the Summon Aery rune worth the damage loss of Arcane Comet I'd say try it yourself, in most cases you want to stick to Arcane Comet but situationally, for example against Malzahar switching rune will make your laning phase more simple. Remember that you will lose some damage, but your damage is never a win factor, you will barely do more damage than a support in any case. Sometimes the strategy plays a bigger role than raw damage.

The kit is really simple and consistent with the kit of most supports, like Bard you will have only one damaging skill, and like him, your Q has a conditiona CC effect. His kit is aimed toward utility and a well placed Chronoshift may change the outcome of a team fight. Let's see in details all of Zilean skills:

Since you will be pplaying mid lane, you will have a lot less chances to use this on an ally during laning phase, try asking your jungler to pass-by to colled extra XP and help him level up faster.

This skill alone is not so good, the delayed damage in general has a window to be negated or prevented, for example popping a shield. What makes this great is the possibility to repeat it.

This is a steroid to reduce all your basic skills cooldown, allowing you the iconic Q W Q combo to achieve a mass cc during team fights. It also allow your to speed-up two of your allies. Ideally: Q E W Q E to optimize this.

Another steroid useful to catch up running enemies or to escape from a chase. The speed boost is very strong and will benefit pretty much every ally, some allies will appriciate this more than others.

Another equally iconic skill for Zilean it acts like a timed and portable Guardian Angel and will save one team member from death, given that you cast it in time and not too soon. Bait the enemy into using his ultimate.

An important mechanic is how easily you can mess-up your combo or skills sequence, let's say that you just used Time Warp and you want to place a double Time Bomb with the usual Q W Q combo. If you do this too fast, however, your Rewind will only refresh the Time Warp preventing yout from landing your second Time Bomb why is that so?

Your Time Bomb has a casting time, you will need for the Global Cooldown to finish before casting Rewind to refresh it. So if you just casted Time Warp be mindful of this behavior and time your Time Bomb and Rewind accordingly.

This section is more sensible to changes over time, as Riot might update items, however we can make a couple considerations on the actuall Core items we saw earlier:

The interesting part is the passive, since your combo is a mass cc who hopefully will stun and hit multiple targets, you will boost your damage by quite a lot, this is the main interaction for this item.

Extra pocke targetting enemies near your main target, this was designed with Q W Q combo in mind. You will land extra spalsh damage with this item, helping you with the lack of natural damage.

We could write pages about every secondary items (but rather not) for Riot next patch kick in and change everything, I then prefer focusing on the Core items and keep this section updated as the game changes, keeping this build viable.

The choice of Zilean is not for everyone, and picking him mid requires a step-up in personal skills. Do not pretend from yourself to unlock Zilean and be proficient with him out of the box, not even if you play him as a support. There are champions that you can play literally rolling your face on the keyboard and still do good (hi Hwei) and Zilean is definitely not one of them. Please take your time to practice.

The value you bring to the table is utility and to make a difference your skill must be higher than an effortless damage-dealer champion. if you used to play Zilean as support, give him a chance in the mid lane, or even in the top lane if you are confident with his kit. I'd hazard saying he is viable in the jungle as well, and his Time Warp will make ganking a blaze, allowing you to cast a double Time Bomb and mass cc the enemy duo in bottom lane.

My advice is to no hold back and experiment in normal games. see if Zilean works for you and how well you can do, if you notice you are adding value to the team in the form of utility, then you are on the right path. Some matchups are not ideal for Zilean, in general against champions silencing or otherwise disabling him in a way, to prevent the use of Chronoshift for example a Garen all-in might kill you before you are able to cast again.