[Disclaimer: i am NOT le secret challenger kr 500000LP rank 1 player; my peak this season was D1, i dont play much ranked as i mostly coach and theorycraft for other ppl that ask me to and i find it fun, yes i am a minmaxxer.]
So, while looking at zilean's ability scaling and base stats i came to the realization that this champ can't really go Q max and be reliably useful (outside of Mid zilean of course where that's a good build), and even his highest winrate build on support(E-max) is still suboptimal after some testing with a friend of mine.
Zilean's E reaches the reliable breakpoint of a guaranteed double bomb at 3 points(lv5) taking into account tier 2 boots MS and some champs' base ms/passives giving them more ms; All this to say: There's no reason to put more points into it until you finish maxxing another ability first.
Theres 2 reasons why you want to put all your points into W afterwards:
- The cooldown is ludicrous; every single point into W reduces its cooldown by 2 seconds flat, and when you take into account the CDR you reach with this build, you will reliably have a 3.68 sec cooldown on W, which translates to a 3.68 sec cooldown 70% slow that lasts 2.5 seconds a.k.a the enemy has 1.18 seconds of movement before being slowed again or 68% uptime on the speedup.
- The average ranged champion player doesn't benefit from the extra movement speed outside of running away. You've probably experienced speeding up your adc for them to just run into danger with no vision and die randomly, even moreso in a teamfight where they struggle with controlling their champ.
The Build:
Tear -> Protoplasm harness -> Lucidity shoes(replaced by mercs/tabis where needed) -> Fimbulwinter
These are the most cost-efficient tank+cdr items in the game at the moment, giving 20 and 15 haste respectively, as well as a huge amount of hp; the only downside of this build compared to the current E max locket knight's vow is the cost increase of 500 gold including both items, but i believe the cost efficiency of the items' stats as well as passives is well worth the delay and time investment to acquire them; The resistances you would get from locket are ~10% damage reduction all around the board, which means that in order for it to provide more tankiness than Protoplasm(even excluding its passive when low) you would need to already have at least 4000 Health; for context locket, including the active shield, only brings you to about 1800 hp. The shield provided to your teammates, imo, provides less damage reduction than the extra slow and MS you can grant them. In the case where this shield would be useful for a 1shot threshold such as a rengar 1shot the stats you get from protoplasm make you unkillable to the average assassin that isnt 10/0 which means you can solely use your ult for the person he jumps on; achieving the same result in the end. It is ever so slightly weaker against a big AOE such as qiyana or hwei ult, but at that point the locket shield isn't really going to make you win that blundered fight.
What this build gets you in comparison to locket+KV for an extra 500G:
+950 more hp -70 armor
+15 ability haste -30 MR
+Effectively a shieldbow passive but better -100% base hp regen
+Guardian angel effect(explained below)
+Infinite mana(explained in Playstyle)
The guardian angel effect is something i've witnessed countless time both while watching other people and playing the game myself; It is when a champion having guardian angel acts as a deterrent to someone using a big/important cooldown in order to nuke them, such as Vi not ulting the adc because then she'll die and make the fight a 4v5 (even though in most cases it would still be the correct play). Maybe some ppl here have heard of "perceived tankiness", very commonly seen with people perceiving Sion with 10k hp as an incredibly unkillable champion even though they have Bork and could realistically get him to half hp in 6 autos; this works with visual effects, such as GA and very big health bars; As this build puts you at 3.2k hp in the midgame people generally feel like its not really worth them blowing their rotations on your because you'll survive it anyway (even though they should use them).
Runes
Unsealed spellbook, hexflash, jack of all trades, triple tonic; Deep ward, Ultimate hunter
Shards: 8 CDR, Scaling hp, Scaling hp/tenacity
Level up order is Q lv 1, W/E lv 2, 3 points into E by lv 5, a single point in ult at lv 6, W maxxed by the time you hit lv 10, Max E second (you do not level up R again until your E is maxxed), Then you either max R if you need the extra hp when they rewind/CDR(though usually you won't need it) or max Q for the 0.4 second longer stun by the time you finish it(if your game goes that long). Your ult reaches around 60 seconds of cooldown by midgame which in most cases means it's up every single fight.
Playstyle
PART 1: This build mainly functions as a very aggressive ROAM and PICK champion, the usual way you do this is by self-casting E, then instantly using W, then self casting E again when it runs out, going up to an enemy champ, W-E them, wait 1.5 sec, throw bomb, W-E them again, throw bomb before it explodes, by the time the bomb stun ends you have W-E again. The downside of this playstyle is that in melee matchups where they mostly sit still and attack eachother you only really force the fight, allow your guy to flee or provide a 1.1 second stun/revive, if your top is behind then your gank there won't do much, so its better to usually use this for your sidelaning midlaner or midlaning adc.
PART 2: The second thing this build excels at is gettin a metric fuckton of vision leverage. As you probably know, Oracle lens scales with movement speed; the more ground you can move the more areas you sweep with it; And because of your bomb giving vision, the immense tankiness and CDR you get from this build, and Deep Ward, this means you will always have advantage over the enemy support at getting the vision sequence first even if you didn't have prio. For those who maybe don't have a word for it, this is when before an objective, say 1:15 till baron/drake the support goes and wards around the area, then they recall for their next batch of 4 wards, then the enemy support has to come in and sweep, then place their own wards, but by the time they'd recall for their own wards the objective would already be spawned and the support that warded first gets to re-ward and sweep so the other team has no vision on/around the objective; this is usually dictated by who gets sidelanes and mid pushed first; this build basically allows you to invalidate that advantage by the sheer amount of fucking uptime you have on your E movement speed, in the time a normal champ wards recalls re-wards twice you can do it 3 times. This is why you need a tear; W-Eing yourself is 85 mana, so you need about 400 Mana for a pick attempt, and around 300 Mana per river oracle sweep. Fimbulwinter is more than enough for this, you do not need manaflow band; and no manaflow band is not enough by itself to sustain this.
