Why Zac?

Some Jungle players might struggle to find a new champion to main after others have been nerfed multiple times. To name a few; Nidalee, Rek'Sai, Gragas. Zac will provide for what you're missing, he's the champion you've been waiting for. Zac provides great initiation, damage and peel for his team. His versatility is what allows him to strive in solo queue, truly the perfect jungler to climb ranks with. Jungle efficiency is very important to determine if a champion is a strong jungler. Things to take into consideration:

• Sustain
• Clear Speed
• Power Spikes
• Ganks

Zac is no outlier, he's able to perform very well against other junglers, which is why he's such a valuable champion to learn. However, before you decide if Zac is the champion for you, we must discuss his strengths & weaknesses.

Strengths:

• Insanely tanky
• Ability to engage from fog of war
• High damage due to Unstable Matter dealing % health based damage
• Self-sustain is very strong due to his passive
• His kit involves 2 knockbacks and a potent slow

Weaknesses:

• Relies on team for follow up damage
• Abilities are extremely choreographed
• Immobile after Elastic Slingshot is used

Abilities & Summoner Spells

Both of these summoner spells are required to play Zac in the Jungle. Flash is the best summoner spell in the game, it allows us to reposition, set up ganks and ultimately it provides mobility. Smite is non-negotiable, having smite allows us to buy the jungle items and it's extremely important to get them as it gives us increased experience.

Passive: Cell Division
Any time Zac hits at least one enemy with an ability he will erupt a chunk of his body. These chunks give him 4% of his maximum health. It also reduces the cooldown of Unstable Matter by 1 second for every chunk he picks up. After Zac takes lethal damage he splits into 4 blobs, these blobs slowly move back together to revive Zac. If the blobs are all destroyed Zac will die.

Q: Stretching Strike
Zac extends his arms in front of him, all enemies hit will receive a 2 second slow.

Tips: This ability should be used after Elastic Slingshot to provide the best possibility to hit it. Remember that you're able to hit multiple enemies.

W: Unstable Matter
Zac's body erupts, dealing % of your enemy's maximum health.

Tips: While farming your jungle make sure to pick up your blobs! Your clear speed is incredibly fast when Unstable Matter's cooldown is constantly going down due to you picking up blobs!

E: Elastic Slingshot
Zac channels his jump, the longer the channel the farther the jump. When you leap on an enemy you knock them up for 1 second.

Tips: This is Zac's most important ability, so we want to utilize it wisely. Most of the time, aiming behind the enemy will allow you to hit them much easier as that's where they're likely to run. Abuse the massive range, stand outside of the enemy's vision to surprise them!

R: Let's Bounce!
Zac bounces 4 times and gains movement speed over the duration. The first jump will knockback any enemy hit while also producing a slow. Any subsequent bounces hit will only provide a slow.

Tips: Before you use your ultimate ability, quickly decide if you're going to aim for the enemy's backline or peel for your carries. This decision can be the reason you win a fight or lose it.

What to max first?

For the first 2 levels we're going to be putting a point into W then Q respectively. After that we're going to max R-E-W-Q. Maxing our jump early will make our ganks much better. The distance is increased along with a reduced cooldown, allowing us to be much more mobile.

Items & Build Path

A typical Zac tank build will generally look like this. However, these 6 items will not exclusively be what you'll want to have every game. If the enemy has more AP damage, pick up more magic resist. If they're primarily AD champions purchasing more armor will suffice!

Core Items:

Stalkers Blade: Cinderhulk/Runic Echoes, both are good items, but we can only have one. Runic Echoes provides us with more damage. which enables us to annihilate the enemy carries very easily. Cinderhulk gives us great early game tank stats, this allows us to dive into the backline without getting blown up instantly.

Lucidity Boots: These boots give us early game cooldown reduction. Allowing us to create more early game pressure with Elastic Slingshot, better clear speed with Unstable Matter, and your ultimate won't take forever to get back.

Randiun's Omen: An extremely strong armor item which give us health and a strong active. It gives a potent slow which enables us to hit our other abilities, making it much easier to hit our important skillshots.

Spirit Visage: Providing health, magic resist, cooldown reduction and a very valuable passive. Spirit Visage's passive increases the effectiveness of our healing, quite the perfect item to pick up.

Guardian Angel: One of my favorite items, Guardian Angel provides us with a sufficient amount of magic resist and armor but the reason we pick this item up is due to its insane passive. It acts as another revival, for 4 seconds after we take lethal damage we're able to come back into the fight. It allows us to dive deep without dying instantly, a great item to impact all fights.

Thornmail: A hefty amount of armor and a great passive. Thornmail reflects physical damage back to the attackers. As Zac stacks a large amount of health items, Thornmail works insanely well with your large health pool. You'll do even more damage while taking less.

Zac often prioritizes building health as he does % health damage. By building mostly defensive items, we're able to deal tons of damage while being fairly safe.

Items - Honorable Mentions

Zac also benefits from these items depending on certain compositions.

Warmog's Armor: This item is not always the best choice as it only provides flat health and a bit of cooldown reduction. However, it's a strong item when you're able to snowball early. With 800 Health and a very strong passive which provides health regeneration, you'll deal a significant amount of % health damage due to the large amount of health gained from this item.

Dead Man's Plate: An overall great item, it provides health, armor and a strong passive. The passive generates movement speed over time, once you reach its climax your next attack deals bonus damage. Like most of Zac's items, health is a stat we always want to get. It's a great item if you're against multiple AD champions.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter: A spectacular damage item which provides health, ability power and another great passive effect. Rylai's passive grants you an incredible amount of extra slows, allowing us to chain abilities together.

Liandry's Torment: Another damage item Zac benefits from immensely. It provides Health and Ability power, with yet another great passive ability. Liandry's provides a flat 15 magic penetration and a damage over time bonus to all your abilities. The DoT deals 3% of their max health over 3 seconds, it works very well with Zac's kit as he already does a % of your enemy's max health.

Abyssal Scepter: A decent damage item, which is not often bought due to it not having any health. However, the stats it does have are pretty good, you benefit from the ability power, magic resist and cooldown reduction quite well. The passive reduces the magic resist of any champions that are surrounded by you. You're able to utilize the passive great due to you always being in range, effectively doing more damage.

Sunfire Cape: Only bought when you decide to go Runic Echoes. This passive doesn't stack with Cinderhulk so make sure to not buy Sunfire Cape when you go Cinderhulk. A decent item if you go Runic Echoes, it provides a bit more AoE damage, health and armor.

Mercury Treads: These boots provide magic resist and tenacity. They reduce the duration of most crowd control effects, stuns, slows, silences, fears, ect. Usually bought when an enemy composition has too much crowd control, they'll help you from being stun-locked.

Ninja Tabi: These boots are very situational. They provide armor and will help you from getting blown up from multiple ADCs. Only pick these up if you're against a team composition that has over 3-4 attack damage champions.

Zz'Rot Portal: This provides armor, magic resist and a passive. Often purchased late into the game to provide wave pressure from across the map. Placing Zz'Rot in a lane will spawn voidlings, they build up a strong minion wave on your side; allowing you to make more plays throughout the map. The lack of health makes buying this item a bit off-putting.

Banshee's Veil: A magic resist item which also provides health and a passive. Banshee's passive provides you crowd control immunity until you're hit by a spell. This allows us to effectively get into the enemy's backline without being interrupted.

Trinkets

Start off with a Warding Totem. It will allow you to safely secure your early game buffs. Without the wards, you might face an unknown enemy sneaking into your jungle. When you finish your first jungle clear get Sweeping Lens. It's an amazing trinket that lets you clear your enemy's vision. Once you hit level 9, you're able to pick up Oracle Alteration, it's strictly better than Sweeping Lens as it allows you to walk around while clearing vision.

Runes

Your playstyle often demands different runes. The set of runes that I've chosen here allows us to have an incredibly strong late game. Scaling Health & Armor Seals, followed up with Scaling Cooldown Glyphs let us scale very well into the later stages of the game. Flat Attack Speed Marks with Flat Ability Power Quintessence will allow us to clear our jungle early on with ease. If you're struggling with your early game I suggest flat Armor Seals, this will make your first few clears much healthier.

Masteries

As Zac, we really want to get Strength of the Ages as it allows us to get more health by clearing our jungle camps. The extra health really makes a difference; by mid game you're usually stacked up with an additional 300 health. Without a doubt this is the best Keystone we're able to choose. Picking up 12 points in the Ferocity tree gets us a decent amount of early game damage, much better than getting 12 points in the Cunning tree.

Words of Advice

Counter Ganking

Zac is one of the best junglers at countering ganks due to his ability to surprise the enemy from very far away. Abuse your range on Elastic Slingshot, it really is a game changer. Setting up vision and jumping from the fog of war doesn't give the enemy much time to react.

If you're expecting the enemy jungler to gank a certain lane, it's a good idea to follow up to make sure your laner won't die. Even if you're seen, the pressure you applied will make their jungler react. Zac relies on hitting his abilities in small skirmishes, missing an Elastic Slingshot can put you in awful situation. However, being able to successfully hit your abilities will allow you to easily win fights.

Warding

Warding as a jungler is one of the most important roles you have. Making sure lanes are aware of when they're about to get ganked will either ensure their survivability or lead to their inevitable death. Warding the enemy's jungle will give you access to see them before they come to gank. Knowing where the jungler is at all times lets you to predict their moves, ultimately giving you all the power. In the current meta, junglers often get help from their supports to gain strong vision control. Controlling key areas of the map will allow you to always be aware of what's happening on the map. Keeping vision control on Baron and Dragon is ultimately one of the biggest responsibilities you have.

Peeling Vs. Diving

This is definitely the hardest part of Zac's playstyle. It's all decision making. Knowing when to protect your squishy carries or when to dive for their carries. These decisions will win you the game or lose them. Some team compositions will require you to protect a hypercarry, usually these champions lack self-peel, like Jinx and Kog'maw. Your job as Zac will be to defend them at all costs, make sure you're knocking away anyone who attempts to get close to your carries. If you're comfortable that your team doesn't require you to peel, go ahead and dive deep into the enemy carries. Knocking them into your team to blow them up quickly, Zac does this very well. Provided you're able to play your part well, Zac will suit you very well.

Frequent Questions

What do I do as a jungler when all lanes are losing?

Everyone struggles with this issue, even the best of players. Decide what lane will benefit your team the most. Focus them, continue to gank for them, set up plays, ward their flanks. Setting at least one lane ahead can be the deciding factor in a game. Thankfully, as Zac, his ability to counter-gank is very strong. Being able to knockback the enemy will allow you to pick off easy kills in situations which may look grim.

Should I prioritize farm or focus on ganking?

It depends on the game, sometimes lanes aren't gankable due to always being shoved under tower or the lack of CC. On the other hand, sometimes your enemy lanes are overextended, asking to be ganked. Having strong map pressure will win you the game regardless of what you do. Make the best decisions for your team and you'll get another victory.

Is it better to give kills to your lanes or take them for yourself early game?

Taking kills as a Jungler sometimes results in getting flamed, but disregard what they're saying. The jungler holds great responsibility in the game, it allows those who have the best decision making to win the easiest. Having gold early game will allow you to make more plays to snowball the game into a clear victory. Believe in your ability to carry, you can trust yourself. Understand what you're capable of doing and enjoy carrying yourself to the highest of ranks.

 Closing

Zac's strength as a jungler hasn't gone unnoticed. While other popular junglers like Rek'Sai, Gragas and Nidalee have gotten multiple nerfs, Zac has remained untouched. Quickly pick up Zac as your new main Jungler, you'll notice how strong he is and your elo will rise remarkably. Zac will take time to master, but after you understand the mechanics and decision making you're going to notice how strong he is in the current meta.

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