Hello everyone! My name is Perlya and I'm a Diamond 3 Zac OTP. I made this guide for new and older zac players who want to abuse him in the new season. I also made a Youtube Guide for this if you prefer listening instead of reading: https://youtu.be/80WPcmGjaBU

In this guide I'm going through:
- Runes
- Jungle paths - Ability Order
- Weaknesses and strengths
- Tips and tricks
- General jungle tips for season 10

The main keystone is Aftershock, into font of life, conditioning and revitalize. Font of life is good since majority of Zacs abilities have cc which means you will easily mark an enemy so your ally champs hitting that champion gain hp back.

Conditioning is mainly good since you will want to build AP, getting more sustain and magic resist/armor stats in the runes will benefit you.

You can also go bone plating but I would recommend going conditioning for extra stats. Revitalize is way better than overgrowth in my opinion because it makes you heal more from your blobs which means you can survive longer.

For the second tree, there are a lot of different ways you can go. I would recommend going either inspiration, with cosmic insight for the cooldown reduction and magical footwear. Or, domination tree with cheap shot and ravenous hunter for the extra healing. Cheap shot is better than sudden impact. Majority of Zacs abilities are impairing enemies movements and flat true damage is better than 7 lethality and 6 magic penetration for 6 seconds.

For the precision tree, I would recommend going either coup de grace, triumph or tenacity. The reason why I say tenacity is because the rune scales for every minion/champ takedown you do, and the cc reduction is very good so you can survive for longer and pick up your blobs.

When it comes to the extra stats, I always say that it depends on the champions you go up against. but usually you pick cooldown reduction, and for the last two you go armor if enemy team is ad heavy, vice versa with magic resist.

For the jungle path you can go almost anywhere with Zac because of his healthy jungle clear and sustain. You almost always decide where to start in champ select since its very situational with where you start. I never recommend going top buff first, since it will most of the times put your toplaner behind since they tend to miss a few minions.

The easiest camps for Zac to take is AOE camps, such as krugs, raptors and wolves. So the jungle item you will pick is Hunter's Talisman.

With the new meta, focus is going to be on getting botlane ahead in order to secure most drakes, which means you want to gank top early to have ganked it at least once and get early lead top and then focus botside until drake spawns at 5 minutes.

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The first one is very beginner friendly and the safest to go. In this path you go E as your second level up. This is because you will mostly take AOE camps and you get two escapes in case enemy jungler invades.

Blue side: redbuff(with the help of your botside) -> into raptors -> wolves -> blue buff -> gank -> scuttle

After gank you should either go for scuttle or go back into jungle to take gromp.

Red side: blue buff -> wolves -> raptors -> redbuff -> gank -> scuttle

Good things about these paths are that you secure both buffs, get level 3 around 3 minutes, are able to do an early gank, and it is safer against aggressive enemy junglers.

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The next two jungle paths are more advanced since you need to be faster! You level up Q as your second ability.

Red side: raptors → red and krugs → gank top or mid

Blue side: red buff → gromp and blue → gank top or mid

On the blue side you want to take blue and gromp together, and cc red with the help of krugs, hence why you level up Q second, instead of E.

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Pros with these Jungle paths are that you actually get level 3 around 2:30-2:40 seconds. But the cons are that they are risky since you might match enemy jungler and you don't win a lot of 2v2s. You're prone to vertical jungling and it's very situational because if you have weak early laners you will most likely only waste time if you try to do a really early gank because they will only be level 2.

Do keep in mind that camps spawn faster now, small camps spawn 2 minutes after you finish clearing them. You also don’t get catchup EXP anymore if you fall behind in levels, which makes decision making and not wasting time crucial.

Zac is weak early game. Zac is not able to contest objectives early or 1v1 other junglers except some tanks. Even if this a weakness, there is a way to play around it.

For example: You dont contest the scuttle enemy jungler will go for, you go to the other one! It is that simple. Focus on getting level 3 or 4 as soon as possible and never gank before you hit level 3.

If you do get bullied in the jungle early with enemy jungler invading you, you need to buy wards as soon as possible because lets be real, you cant rely on your teammates in soloQ. Vertical jungling is also an option since enemy jungler will be so focused on tracking you and taking your jungle camps, you can easily take his raptors or other AOE camps fast.

Since ganking is really easy with Zac you can also tax your laners exp or gold after a gank if you struggle farming your own jungle. This is also why you take E second instead of Q if enemy jungle decides to invade you level 2.

Now when we have gone through Zacs weaknesses it is now time to convince you why Zac is one of the most underrated jungle champions:

- He has one of the best CC kits of all champions, 3 out of 4 abilities are pure CC and on top of that he scales well with AP making him a raid boss if ahead.
- He can easily peel for anyone on the team
- Can gank from almost everywhere, people wont expect you
- Very tanky but still deals a lot of damage
- Got 2 lives
- Is very cute

With Zac you don't always have to use E to engage only, if enemy team has champions like janna, poppy, veigar or gragas, sometimes there is no point engaging because you will get denied right away. Therefore you have to wait for a pick, someone overextends or them to engage on you. Then you can either jump on whoever focuses your backline or engage on their backline.

There are also alot of different combos and bugs for Zac!
1. Drag gromp and blue to finish them at the same time.
2. Zac's Q can connect with honeyfruit scuttle, wards etc
3. Running man - Ctrl + E then E right after (from a bush) and your enemies wont see you coming! You can't see running man yourself btw.
4. You can Q flash and then connect your Q.
4. Q -> e -> connect with q
5. R flash insec with Zac
6. On champions like Sivir or malzahar, you smite them first mid-air to remove shield, anyone with banshees this works aswell!
7. You can jump over baron/drake to steal baron.

I go through all of these more specifically in my Youtube Guide.

In season 10, I recommend always ganking top first to put map pressure! (or mid if top is too pushed in) This is because you want to babysit bot and mid around 5 minutes when drake spawns.

- Herald spawns now at 8 minutes, but can be spawned after 6 minutes if taken early.
- Every camp except buffs spawn after 2 minutes
- Drake spawns at 5 minutes
- The camp that gives most gold is gromp, exp wise its krugs/gromp
- No catchup XP for jungle items if you are behind in levels.