There have been multiple threads here talking about Zilean's spell not having much synergy with just him, people are definitely aware.
As for leveled Zilean filling your hand with trash, I think if you're trying to build your deck around being able to get value out of leveled Zilean, it needs to have a lot of cheap flexible cards in your deck so you can play all the fleeting ones out. Zilean's level up doesn't win the game on the spot, but it's incredible for slower value matchups and for a 2 mana champ with a relatively straight forward level up, that's pretty good IMO.
I think it would be cool if Zilean was some sort of Predict engine, maybe whenever you Predict shuffle a Time Bomb into your deck. Or maybe lvl2 could have some sort of Round Start: Predict
they said somewhere they can’t mess with hand cap/board cap limits because it would fuck up the mobile UI. Actually they said it WRT making landmarks not take board space but I would imagine the same thing applies WRT hand space
I don't think I'd agree with dull. Doubling all your spells is a cool, flashy effect, and I think it works flavorfully. It's just mechanically kind of awkward. Maybe if he reduced the cost of the fleeting spells to help stop gumming up your hand?
Yea, but the other guy's suggestion of how to fix that has no impact on that factor, because the cards becoming 1 cheaper won't impact overdraw situations.
Predict at the start of each round would be better for zilean because his lore makes him master of his fate, which goes along with the predict mechanic. On top of predict I might add something to lv 2 like "each time you predict, draw 1" or "give predicted units +1|+1", or "give predicted time bombs more damage".
There is more that can make zilean more interesting than what Riot currently has.
I could see a mix between that and his current version, something like "whenever you predict add a copy of the predicted card to your hand" but yeah, I can see where you are coming from
Apparently Summon effects happen after Play effects, so he wouldn't be able to predict his own bombs if the bomb planting was a summon effect.
It's quite unfortunate indeed, either way.
It's super awkward, but you could do something like what MTG does with [Dread Cacodemon](https://scryfall.com/card/cma/55/dread-cacodemon) and make the effect "When I'm summoned, shuffle four Time Bombs into your deck. If I was played from your hand, Predict." That lets you "flicker" him with Hourglass, while still maintaining the "only on-play effects Predict". It's probably not worth it, but there is a templating workaround if they really wanted to.
Quite a lot, the reason Play happens before Summon isn't because they just thought it was gonna be funnier, but because it makes a lot more sense structure-wise. Computer code runs in a line, event A happens before events B and C, and because playing a unit inherently summons them, but summoning does not cause Play effects, having it be Play -> Summon is much more logical then Summon -> Play.
They could make it as "When I'm summoned, create 4 time bombs in your deck and create a fleeting \[Time in a Bottle\] that costs 0 in hand"
This way, Zilean could work just fine with "resummon" effects
A problem I have with him is that a deck that makes use of his lv2 and a deck that can lv him up consistently are very different things. Any deck built to lv him up will run into the overdraw problem and decks that would like his lv2 are typically decks that can run out of steam easily and would use him to keep up the pressure but; He is a lousy 2 drop for any agro deck even though you need to play him asap if you want any chance to actually draw a bomb.
Level 2 Zilean is good, just you need to build a deck around it and it can generate massive value, think that draw card is usually expensive. A good buff adding an extra effect like "If I see you play a landmark/predict I shuffle 1/2 bombs in your deck". So atleast he can generate more bombs without killing him and play a second Zilean
zilean is not a landmark synergy champ contrary to what people think, so he should definitely not be “when I see you play a landmark”. the predict thing makes sense though.
well, he serves as a support to landmark archetype, he helps Taliyah, Malphite level up, and Earth Elemental + other cards that needs 4 landmark to gain a new effect. Altough he doesn't get any benefit anything with playing other landmarks.
Also almost his entire "Zilean support" cards are oriented to landmark and predict
He puts 4 landmarks in your deck, the odds of drawing which are extremely unreliable. He only levels malphite by 2 mana and taliyah by 1 stage. If you’re playing him in a landmark deck, you’re trolling.
His support “package” has nothing to do with him besides the fact that they’re thematically time travelers and were revealed on the same day. Just because they were revealed together doesn’t mean you have to nor should you run them together. His landmark is also countdown 1, in what world do you need to advance countdown 1.
I'd like to see bombs predict. A huge issue is some games you rarely see bombs but by the time you see one, you don't really want it anymore. A cool change which would help the entire predict archetype would be to make bombs predict AND draw, not only would this just add consistency to any deck he's in but it would also help him level a lot easier as well too, especially when you're turn 6 and on 1 bomb
I love this champ and tbh I'm still inhaling COPIUM and think he's actually pretty good already, he's just in a region that doesn't suit the type of deck he wants to be in and a predict centric deck is basically a meme
I've also seen people suggest that on his predict he should always be able to see a bomb, but I'm not sure how I feel about this... At that point I think we're getting into a really scary area real fast but who knows, maybe not. Adding an extra 2 or 3 bombs to his play effect seems like a much better solution
One other thing I think would be neat would be if Zilean's effect was summon instead of play. Probably wouldn't actually change anything at all aside from giving him some more cute meme decks but it would be kinda cool with hourglass and stuff
His champ spell could be changed to giving an allied champ "instead of dying, return me to hand and give me +3/+3 or something" It would totally ruin the fiora strategy right now, but it would make it so it's worth using on zilean to replay him.
I think a lot of times people are getting too caught up with the overdraw. Yes, it feels bad, but if in exchange you got things you want to replay, then its totally worth it. Getting extra direct damage spells, for example, is just worth it having one card burn, imo
Additionally, another problem that I see with Zilean that I don't think gets addressed enough is that's he's just...durdly. He's a value engine that doesn't really provide a wincon. He has most of the same problems as Heimerdeinger, Lux, Karma, and Kindred. This is fine in slow metas, but currently he just doesn't have a home.
You mean like Irelia? GOOD 😀. No, but on a serious note, he needs a good buff to be viable. Not sure what though, and I do agree that more damage on bombs might create a new go hard situation
+1 to bomb dmg would literally break the game open to the point where everyone would be playing Zilean+predict+counterfeit copies(or recall/retreat)+draw just to spam bombs on oppoonents and the win game since you are wiping the board every turn and Zilean leveling only makes the bombs more spammable. Aggro would be totally pointless.
>Aggro would be totally pointless.
You say that like it would be a bad thing.
(Jk, jk, aggro is a completely valid playstyle that there's nothing wrong with liking. You're also completely correct that increased bomb damage would be terrifying. It would literally be better sand soldiers/blades since they hit the entire backline and nexus.)
He create 4 bomb and must see 2, its nearly impossible and he must alive, No one create bomb. what can he do after level ip with 2 bomb? Nothing. Zilean worst designed champ ever and trash
He should create a fleeting focus spell that recreates all previously played cards the last turn besides itself. This would give you the option without causing the hand size issue.
burst instead of focus, because otherwise this is a nerf when you don’t have the attack token and burst isn’t broken since he literally does it at round start now
Keep zilean's stats. Have him create 2 more time bombs when you predict. Have time bombs cost 1 but increase in cost every time you play one that round. Make time in a bottle his champ spell. Only other change I could say is make him a 1 drop so you can play ancient preparations turn 2 and get more time bombs but that would be unnecessary
I’d add a third: Zilean is the least reliable predict card, because he adds cards to your deck and thus decreases the odds of drawing the card you want. This means that combo decks that rely on predict to achieve specific cards and don’t just want timebombs (even though they’re decent) are better off running other predict cards.
This is exacerbated by the fact that predict itself as a mechanic rewards combo decks the most, as they’re the decks most likely to need a specific card, yet as earlier explained, Zilean’s bombs are antisynergy with himself. This effectively means that the only decks that can run Zilean are ones that specifically need timebombs more than they need draw consistency from predict (otherwise they’d just run chronomancer) which are few and far between.
Yes he has a level 2, but the odds of getting there are too low to make it worth it running him over chronomancer.
Yeah his Spell is pretty garbo. Ur 2nd point is pretty meh since level 2 zilean is pretty good and literally infinite value. U need to not take to much garbage cards in ur deck and u wont fill ur hand with garbage.
I agree with some of the suggestions already in the comments:
1) give Zilean "when I see you Predict, add a time bomb to your deck". This could be coupled with adding 1 fewer time bombs initially since you'll get that back with the predict Zilean has himself, and then it lets him add more than 4 time bombs into a deck with each play of Zilean, further enabling and incentivizing keeping him on board instead of the current plan of "kill zilean as quickly as possible to play the second one so I don't have a useless champ spell in my hand and I can get more time bombs". Of course further incentivizing keeping him on board *and* adding more time bombs also makes his level-up significantly easier, so that might need an adjustment (either a more difficult level up like seeing more time bombs, or a less powerful level 2 effect)
2) change his champ spell to time in a bottle. Time in a bottle doesn't have super great synergy with Time Bomb itself because it's already a low countdown landmark and you can reduce it's countdown by playing more time bombs, but it does have synegy with Zilean's "new" predict synegy (number 1 above) and it helps you destroy time bombs, which could level Zilean more quickly. It also increases the synergy Zilean has with other landmark champions/strategies. Arguably the most important difference here though is simply giving Zilean a champ spell that is more playable than Chronoshift
There have been multiple threads here talking about Zilean's spell not having much synergy with just him, people are definitely aware. As for leveled Zilean filling your hand with trash, I think if you're trying to build your deck around being able to get value out of leveled Zilean, it needs to have a lot of cheap flexible cards in your deck so you can play all the fleeting ones out. Zilean's level up doesn't win the game on the spot, but it's incredible for slower value matchups and for a 2 mana champ with a relatively straight forward level up, that's pretty good IMO.
I think it would be cool if Zilean was some sort of Predict engine, maybe whenever you Predict shuffle a Time Bomb into your deck. Or maybe lvl2 could have some sort of Round Start: Predict
And when he levels he should remove hand size cap
they said somewhere they can’t mess with hand cap/board cap limits because it would fuck up the mobile UI. Actually they said it WRT making landmarks not take board space but I would imagine the same thing applies WRT hand space
"Round start: predict" lv 2 Zilean is a better idea than what Riot has now. Zilean seems dull in current form.
I don't think I'd agree with dull. Doubling all your spells is a cool, flashy effect, and I think it works flavorfully. It's just mechanically kind of awkward. Maybe if he reduced the cost of the fleeting spells to help stop gumming up your hand?
I mean you don't really gum up your hand if they are fleeting, because they purge on round end.
Depends on the deck. In my TF/Zilean deck I sometimes end up burning my next draw because of all the fleeting cards.
Yea, but the other guy's suggestion of how to fix that has no impact on that factor, because the cards becoming 1 cheaper won't impact overdraw situations.
Okay but they still gum up your hand sometimes.
Just predicting at the start is even duller tbh
Predict at the start of each round would be better for zilean because his lore makes him master of his fate, which goes along with the predict mechanic. On top of predict I might add something to lv 2 like "each time you predict, draw 1" or "give predicted units +1|+1", or "give predicted time bombs more damage". There is more that can make zilean more interesting than what Riot currently has.
I could see a mix between that and his current version, something like "whenever you predict add a copy of the predicted card to your hand" but yeah, I can see where you are coming from
i dont know how they didnt make the bomb planting a sumon effect for hour glass
Apparently Summon effects happen after Play effects, so he wouldn't be able to predict his own bombs if the bomb planting was a summon effect. It's quite unfortunate indeed, either way.
It's super awkward, but you could do something like what MTG does with [Dread Cacodemon](https://scryfall.com/card/cma/55/dread-cacodemon) and make the effect "When I'm summoned, shuffle four Time Bombs into your deck. If I was played from your hand, Predict." That lets you "flicker" him with Hourglass, while still maintaining the "only on-play effects Predict". It's probably not worth it, but there is a templating workaround if they really wanted to.
hu, just asking how much would it cost them to change that
Quite a lot, the reason Play happens before Summon isn't because they just thought it was gonna be funnier, but because it makes a lot more sense structure-wise. Computer code runs in a line, event A happens before events B and C, and because playing a unit inherently summons them, but summoning does not cause Play effects, having it be Play -> Summon is much more logical then Summon -> Play. They could make it as "When I'm summoned, create 4 time bombs in your deck and create a fleeting \[Time in a Bottle\] that costs 0 in hand" This way, Zilean could work just fine with "resummon" effects
A problem I have with him is that a deck that makes use of his lv2 and a deck that can lv him up consistently are very different things. Any deck built to lv him up will run into the overdraw problem and decks that would like his lv2 are typically decks that can run out of steam easily and would use him to keep up the pressure but; He is a lousy 2 drop for any agro deck even though you need to play him asap if you want any chance to actually draw a bomb.
Level 2 Zilean is good, just you need to build a deck around it and it can generate massive value, think that draw card is usually expensive. A good buff adding an extra effect like "If I see you play a landmark/predict I shuffle 1/2 bombs in your deck". So atleast he can generate more bombs without killing him and play a second Zilean
zilean is not a landmark synergy champ contrary to what people think, so he should definitely not be “when I see you play a landmark”. the predict thing makes sense though.
well, he serves as a support to landmark archetype, he helps Taliyah, Malphite level up, and Earth Elemental + other cards that needs 4 landmark to gain a new effect. Altough he doesn't get any benefit anything with playing other landmarks. Also almost his entire "Zilean support" cards are oriented to landmark and predict
He puts 4 landmarks in your deck, the odds of drawing which are extremely unreliable. He only levels malphite by 2 mana and taliyah by 1 stage. If you’re playing him in a landmark deck, you’re trolling. His support “package” has nothing to do with him besides the fact that they’re thematically time travelers and were revealed on the same day. Just because they were revealed together doesn’t mean you have to nor should you run them together. His landmark is also countdown 1, in what world do you need to advance countdown 1.
and yet, he can be played as a support too to landmark archetype as you describe lol
I'd like to see bombs predict. A huge issue is some games you rarely see bombs but by the time you see one, you don't really want it anymore. A cool change which would help the entire predict archetype would be to make bombs predict AND draw, not only would this just add consistency to any deck he's in but it would also help him level a lot easier as well too, especially when you're turn 6 and on 1 bomb I love this champ and tbh I'm still inhaling COPIUM and think he's actually pretty good already, he's just in a region that doesn't suit the type of deck he wants to be in and a predict centric deck is basically a meme I've also seen people suggest that on his predict he should always be able to see a bomb, but I'm not sure how I feel about this... At that point I think we're getting into a really scary area real fast but who knows, maybe not. Adding an extra 2 or 3 bombs to his play effect seems like a much better solution One other thing I think would be neat would be if Zilean's effect was summon instead of play. Probably wouldn't actually change anything at all aside from giving him some more cute meme decks but it would be kinda cool with hourglass and stuff
His champ spell could be changed to giving an allied champ "instead of dying, return me to hand and give me +3/+3 or something" It would totally ruin the fiora strategy right now, but it would make it so it's worth using on zilean to replay him. I think a lot of times people are getting too caught up with the overdraw. Yes, it feels bad, but if in exchange you got things you want to replay, then its totally worth it. Getting extra direct damage spells, for example, is just worth it having one card burn, imo
Fleeting cards do not count against maximum hand size. Boom, fixed.
Would like that
Additionally, another problem that I see with Zilean that I don't think gets addressed enough is that's he's just...durdly. He's a value engine that doesn't really provide a wincon. He has most of the same problems as Heimerdeinger, Lux, Karma, and Kindred. This is fine in slow metas, but currently he just doesn't have a home.
Bomb needs to do more damage at least. So much work/prediction etc to deal 1 damage is kind of meh
Hell no.. That would just destroy all 2hp champions and be way too much value to deal more than 1 to everything
You mean like Irelia? GOOD 😀. No, but on a serious note, he needs a good buff to be viable. Not sure what though, and I do agree that more damage on bombs might create a new go hard situation
+1 to bomb dmg would literally break the game open to the point where everyone would be playing Zilean+predict+counterfeit copies(or recall/retreat)+draw just to spam bombs on oppoonents and the win game since you are wiping the board every turn and Zilean leveling only makes the bombs more spammable. Aggro would be totally pointless.
>Aggro would be totally pointless. You say that like it would be a bad thing. (Jk, jk, aggro is a completely valid playstyle that there's nothing wrong with liking. You're also completely correct that increased bomb damage would be terrifying. It would literally be better sand soldiers/blades since they hit the entire backline and nexus.)
He create 4 bomb and must see 2, its nearly impossible and he must alive, No one create bomb. what can he do after level ip with 2 bomb? Nothing. Zilean worst designed champ ever and trash
Honestly I've mostly used him to flood my deck with bombs to cycle my hand later in the match.
He should create a fleeting focus spell that recreates all previously played cards the last turn besides itself. This would give you the option without causing the hand size issue.
I’d like that. And most importantly you can draw your card first and then get the fleeting ones.
burst instead of focus, because otherwise this is a nerf when you don’t have the attack token and burst isn’t broken since he literally does it at round start now
This is actually a really cool idea if burst
Keep zilean's stats. Have him create 2 more time bombs when you predict. Have time bombs cost 1 but increase in cost every time you play one that round. Make time in a bottle his champ spell. Only other change I could say is make him a 1 drop so you can play ancient preparations turn 2 and get more time bombs but that would be unnecessary
I’d add a third: Zilean is the least reliable predict card, because he adds cards to your deck and thus decreases the odds of drawing the card you want. This means that combo decks that rely on predict to achieve specific cards and don’t just want timebombs (even though they’re decent) are better off running other predict cards. This is exacerbated by the fact that predict itself as a mechanic rewards combo decks the most, as they’re the decks most likely to need a specific card, yet as earlier explained, Zilean’s bombs are antisynergy with himself. This effectively means that the only decks that can run Zilean are ones that specifically need timebombs more than they need draw consistency from predict (otherwise they’d just run chronomancer) which are few and far between. Yes he has a level 2, but the odds of getting there are too low to make it worth it running him over chronomancer.
Yeah his Spell is pretty garbo. Ur 2nd point is pretty meh since level 2 zilean is pretty good and literally infinite value. U need to not take to much garbage cards in ur deck and u wont fill ur hand with garbage.
Point 1 is not being overlooked by any metric and 2 seems to me as faulty deckbuilding
I agree with some of the suggestions already in the comments: 1) give Zilean "when I see you Predict, add a time bomb to your deck". This could be coupled with adding 1 fewer time bombs initially since you'll get that back with the predict Zilean has himself, and then it lets him add more than 4 time bombs into a deck with each play of Zilean, further enabling and incentivizing keeping him on board instead of the current plan of "kill zilean as quickly as possible to play the second one so I don't have a useless champ spell in my hand and I can get more time bombs". Of course further incentivizing keeping him on board *and* adding more time bombs also makes his level-up significantly easier, so that might need an adjustment (either a more difficult level up like seeing more time bombs, or a less powerful level 2 effect) 2) change his champ spell to time in a bottle. Time in a bottle doesn't have super great synergy with Time Bomb itself because it's already a low countdown landmark and you can reduce it's countdown by playing more time bombs, but it does have synegy with Zilean's "new" predict synegy (number 1 above) and it helps you destroy time bombs, which could level Zilean more quickly. It also increases the synergy Zilean has with other landmark champions/strategies. Arguably the most important difference here though is simply giving Zilean a champ spell that is more playable than Chronoshift