Hybrid Zilean

When I started playing League of Legends, I purchased one of the bundles because it seemed like the most efficient use of my time and money. As a result, I ended up in ownership of Zilean one of the few support characters in that bundle. I'm actually pretty good with him. He's an odd character with only one damaging ability but some weird utility abilities on top of that. The typical build path for him is to focus on AP to make the Time Bomb deadly. It's a .9x scaling AoE attack (one of the only ones in the game) so focusing on AP and CDR results in some pretty good damage. But you've got huge swaths of time that you're not doing alot in a fight.

Enter the new talent tree. There's an ability deep in the utility tree that grants 3gp (5gp for melee) for each basic attack that hits an opponent champion. And it got me thinking. I started looking around for support characters with decent move and good range. And what do you know, Zilean is the fastest support character (speed of 310) and has the longest range of any champion not named Caitlyn. So why not build a sort of pseudo-hybrid Zilean.

Guinsoo's Rageblade
Hextech Gunblade
Lichbane

The lichbane in particular is a great ability for AP champions with spare cycles to throw basic attacks (it really should be built on all Zilean builds). The fact that it also boosts movement speed really puts a lock on this as a fantastic item.

Items to build after this are somewhat opponent dependent. Probably early, you're going to build a sightstone in the new meta. But later you may want a Mordred's Bloodrazor (against high HP opponents) or a Frozen Mallet (against faster, squishier opponents). Both of those boost your auto-attacks to do really powerful things (4% max health or 30% slow respectively).

This is one of those, "Theory may not meet application" type things. It's also entirely possible that the Hybrid DPS part is so good that going Utility tree for pickpocket and support is less optimal then just building for offense. But it's an interesting idea that creates some really clever game play. Note, the play style for this would be to try to really lean on the opponent carry and zone them out or even force them to recall. You need to be conscious of how heavily you're pushing so you don't leave yourself exposed, however.

When S3 comes out, I'm going to try this (hopefully I'm level 17 by then) but it's an interesting possibility and it "fixes" an issue with Zilean (too many wide open cycles of time to do stuff).

On a side note, this type of play makes Zilean's early game ridiculous. I already get lots of champion kills early by throwing a time bomb, rewinding and throwing another time bomb. A lot of that is inexperience of people. They don't realize that they're sitting there with 15-20% less health than they THINK they've got because my time bomb will go off soon. By pushing for a lichbane early, you create a situation where you can put on significant pressure to an opponent who probably neither expects it nor RESPECTS it. That's potentially very powerful.