Counter Guide

How to Beat Zac

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 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.

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 Shyvana

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

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Zac on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Zac

Shyvana1,093 games55.8%
Ekko642 games53.6%
Bel'Veth436 games53.2%
Lillia832 games52.6%
Cho'Gath987 games52.6%

Picks Zac Beats

Nidalee402 games45.3%
Sejuani436 games47.2%
Rengar427 games47.5%
Rammus442 games47.7%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Zac. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 32,257 Zac games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

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.

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.