Counter Guide

How to Beat Zac

Matchup Guide · Patch 26.22 · 3 Counter Picks

Killing Zac isn't the same thing as killing Zac. You have to do it twice, and the second time is on a clock.

He's a tank whose health bar is negotiable. He pays health to cast things and gets it back off anything he touches, and when the bar finally empties he's still not dead, just four pieces on the floor and a countdown. So the fight against him is never quite the fight you're in. It's the one after, and whether your team is still paying attention when it starts.

Patches 26.20-26.22 Matchup Data

Who Beats Zac: Jungle, Top and Support Counters

Best Picks Into Zac Jungle

Lillia432 games61.8%
Ekko1,019 games · 26.2153.5%
Kayn459 games52.9%
Rammus455 games · 26.2152.5%
Amumu858 games · 26.2150.8%

Picks Zac Jungle Beats

Rengar703 games · 26.2143.4%
Graves420 games44.0%
Zed480 games · 26.2144.4%
Lee Sin786 games45.7%

Every Jungle matchup for Zac →

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Zac. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patches 26.21-26.22, Silver and above, 23,236 Zac games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed. A row marked 26.21 is last patch's number for that matchup, kept until Patch 26.22 has as many games of it.

Best Picks Into Zac Top

Renekton444 games55.2%
Mordekaiser524 games54.2%
Irelia410 games50.5%

Picks Zac Top Beats

Jayce410 games42.9%
Jax486 games43.8%
Malphite689 games45.0%
Teemo524 games45.0%

Every Top matchup for Zac →

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the top lane against Zac. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patches 26.20-26.22, Silver and above, 15,816 Zac games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Best Picks Into Zac Support

Seraphine562 games54.4%
Thresh830 games50.7%
Lulu640 games50.6%
Leona632 games50.6%

Picks Zac Support Beats

Blitzcrank508 games45.7%
Nautilus708 games46.8%
Lux846 games48.3%

Every Support matchup for Zac →

Win rates are for the champion listed, playing support against Zac. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patches 26.20-26.22, Silver and above, 13,152 Zac games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Matchup Snapshot Zac, the Secret Weapon

Where You Meet Him The jungle, and sometimes top

Damage Type Magic, and it isn't the point

Why He Is Frustrating He doesn't die when he dies

Mobility Arrives from off your screen

Biggest Threat Cell Division [Passive]

Hardest Counter Lillia

What a Counter Needs

Grievous Wounds, on somebody, early
An answer to the crowd control rather than to the damage
The discipline to walk over four blobs before leaving

Zac Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He gets a second attempt. Cell Division [Passive] means the kill your team just spent four cooldowns on can undo itself while everybody's walking away.
He arrives from somewhere you weren't looking. The engage crosses walls and comes out of fog, so the first information you get is usually that it's already happening.
He turns a fight into a mess. His job is making sure the fight happens in the shape his team wanted. He's very good at it and he doesn't need gold to be.
He's difficult to punish for being wrong. A bad engage from most tanks is a death. From him it's often just a slightly worse position and a full health bar again soon after.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The whole champion runs on healing. Anti-heal removes his entire method of staying in fights he shouldn't be in.
The blobs are a real, killable window. Four seconds of somebody standing on them ends the game for him, and almost nobody does it because the fight has already moved on.
He pays health to do anything. Early on, an opponent willing to trade with him is trading against a champion who's already spent some of his health bar on the privilege.
Crowd control is his contribution, so removing it removes him. A team that can't be held still is fighting a fairly harmless blob.
The engage commits him completely. He's in the middle of your team with no way of taking that back, and that's a good place for him only if you let it be.

Countering Zac

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Zac comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Buy an early Grievous Wounds. One cheap component, bought by one person on your team, changes this matchup more than any amount of damage does.
Ignore the crowd control. Anything that keeps you moving while he's trying to hold you still has taken away the only thing he was contributing.
Finish the job on the floor. Assign it to somebody out loud. The blobs are worth more than the objective you're about to walk to.
Deny the fog. His engage needs to be a surprise, and a warded wall is a Zac who has to walk in from the front like everyone else.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Zac Matchup

Don't group tightly near unwarded terrain. The engage is only devastating when it catches two or three people, and spacing is free.

Trade with him early rather than late. He's at his most beatable in the first few minutes, when everything he casts costs him health he can't easily get back.

Count him as alive until the blobs are gone. Backing off a fight you actually won, because you assumed a kill you didn't finish, is the single most common way this champion gets value.

Best Zac Counters

Refuse the crowd control, punish the health cost, or take the healing away.

Olaf Cannot Be Held Still

Zac's entire contribution to a teamfight is stopping people from moving, and Olaf has a button that says no to that. What's left of the matchup is a duel against a champion who wasn't built to win duels.

His true damage handles the other half, since a health bar that keeps refilling matters much less when the damage going into it ignores everything he bought.

Lillia Taxes The Health Bar

Every ability Lillia lands burns a percentage of the target's maximum health, and Zac's health bar is both enormous and the thing he pays for his spells with. The bigger he builds it, the more each of her hits takes off.

She also gets faster every time she lands something, and a champion who's already moving when the slingshot comes down is a hard one to pin.

Morgana Cancels The Engage For Somebody Else

Her shield is the cleanest answer in the game to a champion whose plan is to hold your carry still, and it works whether or not she saw the engage coming.

Granted, she doesn't beat him personally, and she doesn't need to. Taking the crowd control off the one target it mattered against is enough.

Next step

Itemizing Against Zac

His damage is magic but it's rarely what kills you, so the buys aim at the healing and at the seconds you spend unable to move:

Executioner's Calling is the most cost-effective purchase anybody on your team can make in this matchup, and it doesn't have to be you. Mercury's Treads is aimed at the part that actually kills people (the time you spend held in place rather than the damage arriving while you're there). Kaenic Rookern suits whoever he keeps choosing to land on, since his output is magic and a spell shield on top of the resist makes the engage embarrassing for him. And the Control Ward is here for a reason that has nothing to do with stats: the engage needs fog, and a wall he can't jump from unseen is a Zac walking at you in the open.