Counter Guide

How to Beat Zilean

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Zilean doesn't save anybody. He makes you kill them twice, and most teams only ever budgeted for once.

He's a support built around a single refusal. Everything else in his kit is small: a slow, a speed boost, a stun that needs two casts and a lot of patience. The thing that makes him a problem is that he can decline the outcome of a fight after it's already happened, and that changes how every engage against his team has to be planned. The refusal is on a very long timer, though (and it's extremely visible), and he's about as fragile as champions get while it's happening. Almost every version of beating him comes down to spending the effort on him rather than on the person he's protecting.

Matchup Snapshot Zilean, the Chronokeeper

Where You Meet Him Bot lane and mid lane

Damage Type Magic, in one delayed lump

Why He Is Frustrating The kill you earned did not count

Mobility None, only a speed boost

Biggest Threat Chronoshift [R]

Hardest Counter Sona

What a Counter Needs

Enough damage to finish a target a second time
A way to reach the back of a fight
Crowd control that lands on Zilean himself

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Zilean on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Zilean

Sona559 games53.3%
Janna594 games52.2%
Zyra600 games52.0%
Nami1,210 games51.6%
Morgana1,175 games51.1%

Picks Zilean Beats

Swain590 games44.2%
Xerath595 games45.7%
Braum633 games46.1%
Vel'Koz536 games46.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, playing support against Zilean. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 30,328 Zilean games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Zilean Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He undoes a won fight. Chronoshift [R] means the correct play, executed correctly, can still produce nothing, and a team that didn't plan for it usually loses the fight afterward.
The speed decides who arrives. It sounds minor, and it isn't. A team that gets to a fight first with everybody together is a team that has already won most of it.
His stun doesn't require him to be close. Time Bomb [Q] is thrown, and the setup for it can happen from a distance where nobody is going to punish him for it.
He makes a fragile carry playable. The champion he chooses can take positions that would be indefensible otherwise (and that changes what the enemy team is even able to threaten).

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The revive is on a very long cooldown. There's roughly one of them per fight, and the fight taken while it's unavailable is a completely different fight.
It's loud. The cast is obvious, the target is obvious, and a team that reacts by switching to a different target has made him spend it for nothing.
He's extremely fragile. No escape, no shield for himself, and not much health. Anybody who reaches him removes him, and removing him removes the reason the fight was hard.
The stun needs two casts and a delay. Granted, it can be set up from a distance, but it isn't a reliable answer to somebody arriving on top of him (exactly the situation his kit puts him in most often).
He doesn't create pressure. He can't force a fight, take an objective faster or punish a lane that plays safely. The game he's best at is a slow one.

Countering Zilean

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

Aim at him. The carry with a revive is a hard target and the support holding it is a soft one standing a few steps behind.
Fight when the revive is down. It's a long cooldown, and it's trackable. One fight taken in that window is worth more than three taken outside it.
Have a second wave of damage ready. If it does go off, the target comes back with nothing. The team that already knew that finishes the job; the team that didn't walks away.
Bring crowd control that lands on the caster. He needs a moment to make the decision. Taking that moment away is cheaper than taking the health bar it protects.

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

Playing a Bad Zilean Matchup

Fight where he can't follow. He's slow, he has no escape, and a fight that starts on the far side of a wall is a fight where the revive was never going to be relevant.

Don't walk away when the target comes back. That's the moment most teams lose the fight, because a revived carry has almost nothing left and a retreating team has given it all back.

Watch for the second bomb rather than the first. The stun only exists when two of them land, and the trade that goes wrong against him is almost always the one that stood still for the follow up.

Best Zilean Counters

Reach him, out damage the second attempt, or start the fight somewhere the decision can't be made.

Morgana Roots Him Out Of It

Dark Binding [Q] reaches 1300 units and roots the first enemy it hits. A support with no dash and no blink has very little to do about it besides stand behind a minion.

Black Shield [E] covers the other half. It absorbs magic damage and makes the target immune to crowd control while it holds, and Time Bomb [Q] is all magic damage, so the double-bomb stun doesn't land on whoever's wearing it.

Fiddlesticks Takes The Decision Away

A fear removes the moment he needs to make his choice, and there is nothing in the kit that shortens it or plays through it.

The arrival matters as much. He appears in the back of a fight from somewhere nobody was watching (precisely the part of the map a support with no mobility is standing in).

Samira Kills Them Twice

Her damage arrives as one continuous burst rather than in pieces, which is the shape of damage that finishes a target who came back with nothing left.

She's also happy to be where he's standing, and a fight that reaches the back line is a fight where his own health bar becomes the problem.

Itemizing Against Zilean

Nothing here is aimed at his damage, because his damage isn't the reason the fight is hard:

Mercury's Treads is the general answer (the stun is his only real contribution to a fight going his way), and shortening it removes the setup his team was relying on. Quicksilver Sash is the more decisive version for whoever his team keeps aiming at, because cleansing the stun turns the engage they planned into five people standing in the open. Kaenic Rookern covers his damage. That damage is real, but it's slow and arrives in one delayed lump that a magic shield absorbs neatly. A Control Ward is on the list because the speed he hands out is what lets his team arrive first, and knowing they're on the way is most of the counterplay to it.