Zac The Secret Weapon Theorycraft: Which Build Works For You?

 

Zac - The Secret Weapon

Zac, the newest addition to League of Legends arriving on the 29th March 2013 as the 112th Champion succeeding Quinn and Valor - Demacia's Wings. This Champion allows the player to be incredibly mobile and gives the whole team a lot of ganking and team fight potential due to the amount of crowd control Zac owns. Here I’ll recommend how to build Zac as a Top laner, Mid laner and Jungler and explain why the items work well with him and his team.

 

Jungle

Note: These items can be built in any order.

Starting with Boots you can be flexible with whichever boots you choose to take into the Jungle. In my opinion, the best boots to pick would be either the Ninja Tabi or Mercury Treads since your main priority as the jungler is to survive the hits of the enemies, enemy turret and to initiate team fights. As the jungler you’re the main wall that separates your damage dealers from the enemy and act as their shield, this way the you need as much armor and magic resist you can possible gain.

The second item of choice to build is the Locket of the Solari. This item is perfect for jungle Zac as a first complete item as his skills all cost a percentage of his health. Having the 35 armor, 300 health and health regeneration will help you to be extra tanky, survive longer in fights and cast your skills more often with the 10% cooldown reduction. If things do get messy in a team fight you can activate the Locket of the Solari’s active to create a shield around all your allies and it absorbs 50 (+10 per level) damage allowing you and your team that extra survivability.

At this point you're heading too mid game and one defensive item should be built on jungle Zac and now you have a choice to either build an offensive item that will give Zac’s skills a little more burst or carry on building health to become an even bigger brick wall to split your team from the enemy.

A suitable offensive item would be the Spirit of the Spectral Wraith. This item is built via the Spirit Stone so you’re ensured that extra damage to monsters on the item. As well as this, you gain 50 ability power and another 10% cooldown reduction on top of the cooldown reduction you obtained from the Locket of the Solari. This will bring Zacs ultimate’s cooldown down to 1 minute and along side the ability power you gain 20% spell vamp which will make you punish the enemy much more when ganking a lane.

The second item of choice, if you don’t feel like the Spirit of the Spectral Wraith is necessary would be the Spirit of the Ancient Golem. This item is also built from the Spirit Stone so along with the extra damage to monsters you get 500 health, 14 health regeneration and 7 mana regeneration. On Zac, mana regeneration isn’t needed since Zac’s skill don’t consume mana but all the other stats are helpful and will help Zac become a bigger pest.

As well as this, you get the 10% cooldown reduction that you would originally get from the Spirit of the Spectral Wraith meaning you’ll only be missing out on the 50 ability power but in return you get the 500 health instead. This item also obtains a tenacity passive, this will reduce all the stuns, silences, slows, taunts, fears and blinds by 35%. Not only will you be putting down a lot of crowd control onto the enemy but you will also be reducing what the enemy are doing in return.

At this point you should be in mid game and you’ll be needing to build more health and armor on Zac. This is the correct time to build Aegis of the Legion into Runic Bulwark. The Runic Bulwark will not only help you but your teammates too, it gives you 20 armor, 300 health and 30 magic resist and provides an aura that gives 10 armor, 25 magic resist and 10 health regen along with another aura that boosts the stats of minions. Pairing your Runic Bulwark with your supports Aegis of the Legion / Runic Bulwark this will give your teammates a huge advantage in team fights by adding an addition 20 armor, 50 magic resist and 20 health regeneration at max onto their current stats.

The next item is Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre, it’s not a common item to see on junglers but this works really well with Zac’s Stretching Strike and ganking potential. The 500 health you gain from this item allows you to become more of a brick wall for your team and you will become harder for your enemies to get through. Once their initiator has leaped onto you the 35% slow from Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre and the crowd control Zac holds will make it incredibly hard to get away. The 80 ability power will then push Zacs ability power passed 100 and will make you a threat to the enemy team by not only being the tankiest on the team but also one of the main damage dealers as well.

The last item to build for Zac is the Sunfire Cape. This a nice addition to complete the build as it gives you 450 health, 45 armor and 50 magic damage per second from the passive. With this item you become the brick wall you need to be and can still hurt the opponent a lot. After completing this item you would have gained a total of 2050 health and 125 armor making you incredibly hard to get through.

 

Other items that can be built on Jungle Zac:

- Randuin's Omen

- Spirit Visage

- Thornmail

- Warmogs

 

 

Top and Mid Lane

In the Mid and Top Lane it's beneficial to buy boots that will help you survive longer in game and potentially win your lane. This makes all three of these boots great pick ups. If your enemy is carrying very heavy AD the Ninja Tabi's are a great pick due to having the ability to minimize the damage that they're dealing. If they're bursting you down too quickly then Mercury Treads are a great pick giving you extra magic resistance and if you are winning your lane or your enemy has build magic resistance the Sorcerer's boots are your best bet, being able to deal more damage to your opponents and potentially being able to clear your lane quicker.

The second item to build would be the Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre. This item benefits everything Zac would need as a top or mid laner. You receive the 80 ability power and 500 health, which will allow you to survive in lane against your opponent and being ganked. The passive also helps Zac since the 35% slow stacks with his Stretching Strike allowing you to combine Stretching Strike with Elastic Slingshot to get in range of your opposing lane partner and shred their health down before they can react to it.

Now the Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre is complete you can now pair it with Liandry’s Torment. Liandry’s Torment and Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre are made for each other and with the slow from Zac’s Stretching Strike as well as the slow gained from Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre you will activate Liandry’s Torments passive and will burn the opponents health allowing you to get much more damage onto them than you naturally would. This item will also grant you 50 ability power, 300 health and 15 magic penetration which will enhance the damage you deal and make you harder to kill.

The fourth item to complete is the Sunfire Cape, this item makes Zac tankier and a much harder AP champion to kill during the mid to late game. This item will boost you by 450 health and 45 armor as well as holding a passive that deals 40 magic damage per second to nearby enemies (including monsters). This item will give you much more survivability in team fights as well as letting you burst down enemies much quicker than they can in return giving your whole team an advantage over the enemy. This item will also help you lay a bit more damage with its passive too enemies and monsters.

The next items are optional since Zac has rather high base damage it’s good to either build the Void Staff and grant yourself another 70 ability power and gain 35% magic penetration from the passive which will put the advantage onto your side since percentage magic penetration is used against the enemies that have a lot of armor. For instance, if the enemy has 200 armor and you’re carrying an item with 40% magic penetration this will shred 80 magic resistance off your tanky opponent when if you were carrying 40 flat magic penetration this will only reduce the opponents armor by 40 taking them down to 160 armor instead of the 120 armor we could shred them down too with the percentage magic penetration. This item will now allow you to become an even bigger threat to not only the squishier targets but the tankier targets as well. On top of this, with the health you have already obtained as well as the newly gained ability power you will still be considerably hard to shut down. 

The other choice of item would be the Spirit Visage this item is perfect if you want to focus more on defensive items. This item will give you 20% cooldown reduction, 200 health and 50 magic resistance, if the enemy team is carrying heavy ability power this item will help you out survive long and help your team survive too. Along with the stats this item increases healing, regeneration and drain effects by 20% this will help your health regenerate quicker and when you cast a spell and lose a percentage of your health the spirit visage will increase how much health the blob will be return to allowing you to heal yourself much quicker in lane or team fights. 

To complete this build the last item you can build is Warmogs. This is a good item for late game when everyone is at 5 complete items or completed the whole build. The 1000 health it gives as well as regenerating 1% of your maximum health every 5 seconds will make you incredibly hard to shut down. Being the AP carry you’re the first person that the enemies go too to kill and if it takes them too long all their skills will be on cooldown and they will have nothing left for the rest of your team and then you can easily win the team fight. There are other options you can build instead of Warmogs, it’s your choice what you build here go with what you feel comfortable with.

 

Other items that can be built on Zac as a Top or Mid laner:

- Locket of the Solari

- Rabadon's Deathcap

- Randuin's Omen

- Runic Bulwark

- Thornmail

Now you have completed your build for Jungle, Top and Mid Zac!

 

Thanks for Reading!

Bemmie.