Zeus! Who's YOUR Daddy?

Hey everyone!

This is my second guide, check out my first on Medusa
A little bit about myself, I'm a pretty casual player, in that I mainly play Joust and Arena. Saying that, my build order doesn't take into account starter items. Just purchase your starter and continue to follow the build order from there

Now, how I like to play Zeus! Is a little on the aggressive side, just because he is currently very powerful and the best way to take advantage of his power is by, well, using it.

Pros!

VERY POWERFUL!
Great wave clear with his 2
Amazing team fight potential
Very versatile
and well, he gets laid quite often

CONS :(

Squishy
devastated by CC
No movement ability anymore
and all of that Child Support he has to pay (don't worry, it won't effect you during a game)

My build is pretty quick to get into, by the third item you should start poking a lot more.

*disclaimer* I play joust and usually don't use starter items, change your build to suit this if you choose to use a starter item


First off! I like to build into Warlocks Sash, and pick up tier 2 of that with a health potion. I do this because I like to get into my build asap and Warlock's Sash is very important. I like to pick up the added health because it kind of helps with how squishy Zeus is, it isn't much but it helps give you a little bit of time to run. Not to mention it gels really well with Ethereal Staff later on.


Secondly I like to pick up my boots. Everyone needs boots, I pick up Shoes of the Magi just for the added damage. Zeus has decent cooldown times without a cd reduction. Although seeing as my build doesn't have any CD reduction items you can switch it up and add Shoes of Focus instead which helps you out with getting your 3 back quicker.

THIS IS WHERE ZEUS TAKES OFF!!!!!

Sorry for the annoying headline, but you really need to understand that ZEUS TAKES OFF. Once you pick up Spear of the Magus you will turn your enemies into dust. Now, the reasoning behind this pick is because Zeus is all about chaining hits, he hits you with his basics and he hits you with CHAIN lightning. You will always get an enemy to max stacks quick and leave them open for a ton of damage. What you want to do to max out the potential of this item is to try and hit people twice with basics before you open you open with your 2 (more on combos later), not completely needed but it will boost your damage a little bit. Some people like to use Obsidian Shard, but don't I REPEAT DO NOT! I like to keep my builds open to change depending on the match, but Obsidian Shard is not nearly as useful to Zeus.



Next, I like to pick up Demonic Grip for 1 simple reason. Attack Speed. The magic power makes this a nice pick up, but dat attack speed. Zeus is pretty reliant on auto attacks due to his passive (more on that later). Now I'm not saying Zeus is based all on basics, but you need to keep your stacks up by hitting with your basics. When you open up you should get each god to at least 2 stacks, most of the time you'll max them out at 3. You want to keep those stacks on as long as possible because as soon as a god gets away from you, you need to unleash your 3 and snipe the infidels.


Then to finish I pick up Rod of Tahuti and Ethereal Staff. Rod is a no brainer, so just buy it. Ethereal Staff is a nice pickup because at this time you will have Warlocks Sash maxed out and all of that added Health is straight up turned into POWER! This is extremely useful because you not only have a lot of health to survive ganks, you get power from it. Now, sometimes I'll swap out Ethereal for Chrono's Pendant or Bancroft's Talon, but I tend to avoid Talon because of my extra health pool. Chrono's Pendant is nice due to the Cooldown reduction but I don't always feel like I need it.


As a change up, if you don't like that build you can swap out Warlocks Sash for Book of Thoth, in doing so pick up Bancroft's Talon as apposed to Ethereal Staff because you won't have the extra health to ruin Bancroft's passive.

Skill list

Passive - When you hit an enemy god, they stack charges (seen circling each god, they disappear after a few seconds) for each stack, Zeus deals more basic attack damage and it scales per charge. To take advantage of this passive, you want some attack speed which is why I picked up , basically you want to make sure you get stacks on the enemy ASAP and start to hit them with basics.

Ability 1 - Line shot that hits the first target and bounces around dealing lots of AOE damage, and applying a charge per hit. You need to be careful that if there is nothing for the bolt to bounce of off (no gods/minions or shield up) it won't bounce and you'll lose out on a ton of damage.

Ability 2 - AOE target shot that throws your shield, damaging anyone inside the area and staying at the target location for 5 seconds. While the shield is up you can auto attack or chain lightning in order to cause "static" damage. What this does is offer you bonus damage on top of your attack damage.

Ability 3 - Your snipe. This is what makes Zeus such a bad ***. This is where the charges come into play (aside from dealing extra basic attack damage). You do what the name implies and detonate your charges. What this does is deal damage to every god who has a charge based on how many charges they have. You want to save this for when gods have 3 charges and are within insta-kill range or for when a god is running away (there is no range on this ability). So many times people will rage because they feel they just escaped death only to realize they have 3 charges on them with 15% health and out of nowhere a bolt of lighting comes to take them away. Simple to learn, but makes Zeus such a strong god. If you prioritize your 1 with lvling you want to make this your second priority for the burst damage but again, I prefer lvling priority to be 4, 2, 1, 3.

ULT - Death in a circle. With Zeus's update comes a better ult. It wasn't changed much but now it comes out instantly and you can use it on the move for easy ganks. This really helps Zeus control games, use this ability to either force enemies into rough spots or to deal massive damage to a stunned god who can't get away. What you want to do is open with this in order to catch enemies off guard and get them stacks as soon as possible and follow that up with your 2 and a 1 and right away they should start to melt. If you have an Odin on your team this move is evil.

This is basically how you want to use your skills

The first combo, is your bread and butter. Once you get good at landing this combo, you'll be dealing massive amounts of damage

What you want to do is throw your out near whoever you're trying to kill or poke and instantly throw your on it. What this is going to do is 2 things, deal bonus damage due to your 2's static damage and in cases where you are in 1v1 gives you something to bounce your chain lightning off of in order to get the most out of your abilities. With this combo you will almost instantly max someones charges which will increase your base damage on them and also give you max burst with your Detonate whenever you choose to use it.


This next combo, is your ultimate kill combo, use it whenever you get can mutiple enemies stacked up, whenever your support is able to CC them in order to get max damage and whenever you need your burst to survive. Something not many people realize is that despite Zeus's squishyness, you can almost 100% burst an enemy god.

What you want to do is wait for a golden opportunity, be that stacked gods, CC'd gods or gods who you have superior positioning on. What you do is pop up your , you want to place is either directly on top of them, or place it in the way you think they will run away. Your goal here is to place it so they spend as much time as possible in your ult. Then after you ult you want to hit them with an basic attack to make sure you get max stacks on them and give you time to see which way they're going to move so that the follow up will always land. After you have max stacks and know where they are running, throw your and instantly follow it with your in order to get the max bounces, max static damage and max damage period. Then depending on the situation you want to use your Detonate and finish them off!

Zeus is a great teammate and provides a lot of power and utility. He offers great AOE damage which allows him to stretch his power onto mutiple enemies making teams less likely to stack in order to avoid Zeus's abilities which in turn helps your Jungle pick off squishies and not have to worry as much about relation. He offers great zoning ability due to his 2 and 4 sitting in a zone for a few seconds and they deal insane damage.

He works great with Odin's Spear circle, I shouldn't need to explain why, if you don't know just play with an Odin and when he ults, throw your ult and 2 inside the circle and watch people melt like a witch in a bathtub.

He pairs well with just about team because he doesn't require a whole lot of help to land his abilities. As long as your teammates can group enemies up and keep them tight you will lead in damage and kills almost every time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this guide. I hope you all get a nice feeling on how to use ZEUS THE GOD OF GODS! Let me know what you think!