Table of Contents

  • Introduction
    • My Socials:
  • Runes
  • Summoner Spells & Skill Sequence
  • Item Builds
  • The Erknaite Build Template
  • Item Breakdown
  • 10 Minute Quick Guide on Zac
  • Thanks for Reading!

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Erknaite's Season 13 Zac Guide

Rank 4 Zac EUW - [Updated 13.5]

Erknaite

March 9th, 2023 ⸱ 8 min read



Quick Zac Jungle Build

Summoner Spells

Starting Items

Best Overall Build

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Introduction

Heyy, I am Erknaite and I peaked 501 LP in Season 12 playing exclusively Zac with 59% winrate back in August.

I have been playing League since Season 8 and I strive to be the best Zac OTP in the world!

Rank 4 Zac EUW

I made this guide due to a lack of updated guides on Season 13 and a big amount of requests from people wanting to learn Zac.

In this guide I will explain runes and item builds. However I won't go in depth with how to play Zac mechanically since he is not that mechanically demanding to begin with.

My Socials:

Twitch - I am striving to be a successful Twitch Streamer and will start on mid December 2022. Be sure to follow, my purpose is to make it educational and entretaining. Twitter - Where I discuss about league, post memes and other stuff. Youtube - This is going to be my channel where I will upload selected gameplay, work in progress currently. Discord - My server where you can ask me any Zac related questions and talk with other members.

Runes

Zac has 2 main keystones in the jungle.



Aftershock
- for a more safe playstyle and tankiness against High Burst damage.
Conqueror
- my personal favourite made for extended fights.

  • Aftershock
  • Conqueror

Aftershock

Aftershock
is recommended against enemy teams that can burst you down very easily as it provides you safety when you engage in providing you bonus
Armor
and
Magic Resist
when immobilizing enemies with
Stretching Strikes
,
Elastic Slingshot
or
Let's Bounce!
.

Cosmic Insight
is required to lower
Flash
and
Radiant Virtue
's cooldown to match
Let's Bounce!

Magical Footwear
is really useful so you don't have to buy boots, save 300G and rush
Sunfire Aegis
as soon as possible.

Enemy Team Example: Top:

Riven
| Jungle:
Ekko
| Mid:
Zed
| ADC:
Caitlyn
| Support:
Nautilus


The only downside of this rune is that it's very useless when the enemy team lacks burst damage and excels more in sustained damage, in that case you should switch to..

Conqueror

Conqueror
is the best rune for Zac when the enemy team is quite tanky and has very little burst damage and excels in sustained damage as it provides you
Adaptive Force
in AP, when hitting abilities, and 8% healing based on your damage dealt.

Enemy Team Example: Top:

Ornn
| Jungle:
Hecarim
| Mid:
Sylas
| ADC:
Jinx
| Support:
Leona


The only downside of this rune is that it you lack the tankiness when engaging but shouldn't be an issue when picked in the right moments.

Summoner Spells & Skill Sequence

Standard

Flash
and
Smite
. Flash is Zac's most important tool to guarantee game winning engages with your
Stretching Strikes
after landing
Elastic Slingshot
.

  • Summs

You should be going every game with W>Q>E in the first 3 levels for your jungle clear and then max E>W>Q for the remaining of the game.

  • Skill Path

Zac

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Item Builds

Zac is a tank champion after all so you are aiming to be as adaptive as possible with your item choices for your builds depending on the game.

  • Standard

Early Core Items

Mosstomper Seedling
provides safety and it's never a bad option. Zac loves its shield and tenacity. It's a good pet vs bursty teams. You don't need to buy
Health Potion
because Zac's clear is healthy enough and it's better to save that tiny bit of gold for your early spikes.

Gustwalker Hatchling
scales with your skill, pathing and your tempo. Its big movement speed buff aids you in invades, engages, disengages, chases, ganks, counterganks and rotations. Due to this, it grants you the ability to choose what fights to take and what fights to not take due to superior movement speed.

Dark Seal
is the best item in the early game for Zac as it provides you free 55 AP when you reach 10 stacks which is fairly easy to do on a Tank like Zac that has very low deaths. You may ask, why is 55 AP that good on him? Zac has one of the highest AP ratios in the game specially on his
Unstable Matter
which has a 4% max HP per 100 AP ratio. You only sell the item when you buy your 6th item.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity
are a must to rush early game because Zac scales exponentially with
Scaling CDR
increasing your clear speed. more CDR = more Abilities = more Blobs = more Abilities = more Blobs ... which increases your damage and sustain significantly.

The rest of

Sunfire Aegis
' components are bought after
Dark Seal
and
Ionian Boots of Lucidity
. The best build order is
Bami's Cinder
>
Chain Vest


1st Item

Sunfire Aegis
is a good all around
Armor
item. It's a very cheap 1st item powerspike and it provides great stats, damage and clear speed but doesn't specialize in anything to counter champions. Avoid building it 1st item if the enemy comp is AP heavy, build
Radiant Virtue
instead and then build situationally.

Mythic

Radiant Virtue
is the best mythic in the game for
Zac
as of this current patch. Its passive provides you A LOT of HP when you cast
Let's Bounce!
and healing for your allies.

Evenshroud
and
Jak'Sho, The Protean
are far too weak after continuous nerfs to them or their builds.

The Erknaite Build Template

I came up with this build template that anyone can use for Zac in their games with the objective of being simple, straightforward and successful. This will already include your Mythic and

Sunfire Aegis
in mind unless the enemy team is AP heavy.

Note: Keep in the mind that there's no specific order in which you should build your items. As a tank you should adapt your builds to the current game state. I won't be counting supports for this.

Don't blindly copy it, I will give a brief explanation of each item below

Legend:

Scaling Bonus Health
- Health Item
Armor
- Armor Item
Magic Resist
- Magic Resist item

2 AD and 2 AP

Magic Resist
+
Scaling Bonus Health
+
Gargoyle Stoneplate


  • Example

3 AD and 1 AP

Anathema's Chains
[AP threat] +
Scaling Bonus Health
+
Gargoyle Stoneplate


  • Example

3 AP and 1 AD



Magic Resist
+
Anathema's Chains
[AD threat] +
Scaling Bonus Health
+
Gargoyle Stoneplate


  • Example

Full AP

2x

Magic Resist
+ 2x
Scaling Bonus Health

  • Example

Full AD

Armor
+ 2x
Scaling Bonus Health


  • Example



Item Breakdown

Armor
Items

Randuin's Omen
:

Very effective vs Crit champions like ADCs and some Melee champions such as

Yasuo
,
Yone
and
Tryndamere
.


Thornmail
:

Very good vs Heavy Healing auto attack based champions and draintank items such as

Divine Sunderer
and
Blade of The Ruined King
.


Frozen Heart
:

Very effective vs High Attack speed champions that don't build Crit such as

Kog'Maw
and
Varus
.


Zhonya's Hourglass
:

You're only ever buying this item vs

Vayne
because there's no way to survive her %Max HP true damage, but why didn't you dodge the game?



Magic Resist
Items

Spirit Visage
:

Arguably one of the best items in the game for Zac as it provides you healing amplification which makes you almost invincible at Lvl 16 when your passive

Cell Division
spikes and your blobs heal for 7% of your Max Health.


Force of Nature
:

Very good vs AP and CC heavy comps as its damage reduction passive stacks faster when you get immobilized. Pairs very well with

Spirit Visage
.


Abyssal Mask
:

Used to be one of my favourite and best Zac items but Season 13 killed it in general due to the addition of Mana on it and a useless passive for Zac along with its cost increasing by 300.

However it's still a very good item on rare cases such as when your own team is AP heavy and the enemy team is also AP heavy so you can actually deal damage and it's very good paired with

Sorcerer's Shoes
.


Banshee's Veil
:

Only buy this item on Zac when you absolutely need it in games against an enemy that has a key CC ability that can always cancel your

Elastic Slingshot
.




Adaptive Force
and
Scaling Bonus Health
Items


Demonic Embrace
:

It's Zac's best AP item in the game, its burn passive is amazing to deal with tankier targets and its bonus HP to AP conversion passive is capable of giving you up to 100-120 AP full build.


Morellonomicon
:

Consider buying this item over

Demonic Embrace
if the enemy team has non-auto attack based heavy healing such as
Soraka
,
Vladimir
and
Aatrox
.


Mejai's Soulstealer
:

Cheapest AP option you can get, although risky, it has a very big reward giving you up to 145 AP at 25 stacks for only 1250 gold (considering you already have

Dark Seal
) .


Cosmic Drive
:

It's the best replacement for

Ionian Boots of Lucidity
if you want to sell them when you're full build as it provides you some of the movement speed lost, ability haste and even more AP.

Anathema's Chains
:

Best item in the game to deal with a single threat as its 30% damage reduction vendetta passive + 650 HP is absolutely insane for just 2500 Gold.

Void Staff
:

Consider this item as replacement for

Demonic Embrace
/
Mejai's Soulstealer
if the enemy team is going to stack a lot of
Magic Resist
against you.



The
Rabadon's Deathcap
of the Tanks

Gargoyle Stoneplate
:

This item is insane on

Zac
as it provides a lot of
Armor
and
Magic Resist
and an additional +5% of those per enemy champion targeting you up to 25%! You can also activate its shield that scales with 90% of your bonus HP.

It's the equivalent of

Rabadon's Deathcap
for Tanks.



10 Minute Quick Guide on Zac

This is the best condensed guide with Tips and Tricks showing gameplay from the best Zac OTP in the world!! The items are outdated in the video but the gameplay is the most important part!

Thanks for Reading!

I hope this guide could help you learning Zac's builds, runes and gameplay (watch the video very important!!!!).

If you have any more questions, contact me on Discord or Twitter, all socials are linked in the beginning of the guide.

Make sure to follow me on Twitch as I will be streaming my journey to Challenger in the beginning of the Season and limit testing during Preseason!!



ZacJungle
AUTHOR
Erknaite
ABOUT

Zac OTP Master 501 LP 59% WR Peak

1 Comments

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1
decatus 3 months ago

I smurfed on peg leg low with this guide guys its really good!

Erknaite
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