Starter Items
Humble Beginnings
Option 1
Vampiric Shroud is a source of great sustain, something
Zeus sorely needs. This is an especially good choice in Conquest, where you are more likely to get the last hits on minions needed to activate the passive.
Option 2
Soul Stone is an alternative that can actually work well on
Zeus. Since his early clear finishes with auto attacks, you will usually have the mp5 up between waves, restoring some mana, and boosting your Chain Lightning on the next wave. It does not however have any health regen, so it is much riskier.
Relics
Olympian Artifacts
Level 1
Sanctuary Purification
Sanctuary is my first choice for a level 1 relic. If you are against something like a Fenrir or Ares it can be replaced by Purification, but in 75% of games Sanctuary is the way to go. You can get the other one at level 12 if you decide not to get one of the 3 group buff relics.
Level 12
Sprint
I really like Sprint on
Zeus. It somewhat helps his lack of mobility, and is useful to the rest of your team as well. This is usually my first choice at level 12, however the other 3 choices come up fairly often as well.
Shell
ALTERNATIVE
Frenzy and Shell are the offensive and defensive options for team fight relics. If you don’t need the other personal defense relic, and don’t like Sprint for whatever reason, these are what you should pick from. These are especially good if you pick Ritual Dagger as your flex slot.
SanctuaryPurificationALTERNATIVE
If fights arent going your way, or you're getting CC'd too often, you can pick up the other defensive relic at this level. You wont have as much utility for your team, but you have no utility while dead so that’s not a bad thing.
Core Items
Before we get into the Core Items on
Zeus, I want to briefly explain how I landed on this build and how much it helped. In the beginning of Season 3, I built
Shoes of Focus -> Book of Throth -> Cronos Pendant ->
Rod of Tahuti ->
Obsidian Shard ->
Spear of Desolation
Not a terrible build, but It had a few problems:
- Constantly out of mana until Book
- 3 mp5 items in a row, meaning that stat was quickly wasted
- A Terrible power curve, with low power items broken up by 3000+ price tags.
- No pen until late, but if built earlier it ruins the curve even more.
I tried a bunch of stuff, including item 3 Pythagoream’s Piece for the Lifesteal and CDR. Then players in the SPL started using
Dynasty Plate Helm, and holy **** did that fix
Zeus’s problems. Added the starter item to fix point 1, switched out Cronos Pendant for point 2.
Dynasty Plate Helm fixed the rest nearly on its own. During 3.11 I started messing with
Winged Blade as the flex item instead of Pythagoream’s Piece to give some health and an ‘escape’ and loved it, but a week late Ritual Dagger came out and was a better version (with CDR!), so here we are. The biggest problem now is the lack of CDR.
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Item 1
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Shoes of the Magi Is the first choice of boots on
Zeus. The extra penetration has a noticeable effect on his damage, especially early game where he usually struggles a bit. Switching my build to these noticeably helped my early game. These also let you build
Rod of Tahuti one item earlier, since 25 pen is enough to last until late game.
Notably, using these means you deal ~true damage to most targets at full build (48*.667 – 30 = 2 protections).
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Item 2
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Dynasty Plate Helm is the perfect second item to pick up. Cheap as dirt, power, pen, and even physical protections to deal with those ganks youll be getting means it’s the mid laners new best friend. This will be sold late game for
Spear of Desolation, but that’s a long while from now.
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Item 3 or 6
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Book of Thoth will usually be your 3rd item, coming with a nice power spike; however, if you are in a situation where stacking will be a problem for you, you can delay it until later. Picking it up after
Obsidian Shard is still worth it due to the passive giving a bunch of Power, but you will have mana problems in the mid game delaying this unless you pick a flex slot with mana or mp5 on it (
Chronos' Pendant usually). If you do delay it, just move everything forward one slot (helm -> flex -> rod -> shard -> book).
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Item 5
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Rod of Tahuti, praised be its name. Giving a staggering 224 magical power by itself late game, this is the one item in every single mages build. This is where you really come online, but its expensive enough that it shouldn’t be built to early. 5th item is a good spot, especially when 3 of the previous items were <2000 gold! Feel free to sell Vampiric Shroud while building this to get it a bit earlier, it really makes a difference.
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Item 6
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Now's about the time where the flat 25 pen just isn’t doing it for you any more, so build
Obsidian Shard to cut through tanks protections. Not much to be said here, its cheap, gives a chunk of power, and a bunch of pen. Can be switched with
Rod of Tahuti if needed, but I prefer getting the power online and relying on the 25 pen for a few minutes.
Ritual Dagger
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Item 4, the Flex Slot
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After you finish your
Book of Thoth, you still have some time and gold before you can afford to work on
Rod of Tahuti; however, there isn’t really a 6th specific item that
Zeus needs to do his job. Congratulations! You are playing one of the gods who gets to grab a situational utility item! Of course there will always be a “best” option (in Zeus’s case its
Polynomicon), but here they are all so close that its really up to you.
Ritual Dagger is my new go-to choice for
Zeus’s flex slot, supplating the
Winged Blade and Pythagoream’s Piece I had been using. The Health is nice on a squishy like
Zeus, the MS helps his poor mobility, the CDR is a god send (heh) in a build that didn’t have any, and even the Attack Speed is useful because of
Overcharge. 2 Defensive stats, 2 Offensive stats, and a passive that helps both. All that, plus the bonus relic duration, at a discount price so I can build
Rod of Tahuti faster? Sign me up!
If Ritual Dagger isn’t exciting you, there are plenty of other options more specialized in what they bring
Zeus. Want more power? A bit more defense? Pick your poison below
Ultimate Power!
Boom!
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Option 2
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Polynomicon is the mathematically ‘best choice’ on
Zeus. Spamming abilities, have serviceable basics, and stack power? This will definitely add some oomph to your rotation. The lifesteal on it is a joke however, so don’t count on this to do anything other than damage the enemy. And it only does that if you land the first basic after an ability. If you can do that consistently then this is a great item. Otherwise you’d be better off picking something more consistent. (Console in particular ranged basics are harder to land).
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Option 3
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Pythagorem's Piece is a very undervalued item. People always choose
Bancroft's Talon, even though this gives the same power and more lifesteal before Bancrofts passive, plus CDR! On
Zeus you’ll hopefully be running or kill the enemy before Bancrofts passive kicks in anyway, and you can always use the CDR to shave 10 seconds off your
Lightning Storm.
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Option 4
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The offensive CDR item
Chronos' Pendant takes 2 seconds off your
Detonate Charge, and a full 18 seconds off
Lightning Storm. Every seconds off
Detonate Charge is useful, since it means you have to worry less about it being off cooldown when you need it, and it is more available for poke damage. Remember, the charges last 4 seconds, so you have that long for Detonate to come off CD once you finish applying charges.
Protection of the Gods
Just a Bit Sore
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Option 5
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Winged Blade is a solid defensive item for
Zeus. A bunch of health, some movement speed, CCR, and an excellent passive letting him escape from quite a few situations makes him a happy camper. Its also stupidly cheap so while it doesn’t do anything crazy, it also brings down the cost of your build.
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Option 6
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Breastplate of Valor is a solid defensive option if you want CDR. Same CDR as Chronos’ Pendant, so read that items blurb for the reasonings there. MP5 ~=~ to Mana, So you simply trade the Power for Physical Protection. You’ll already have ~70 Protections at this point with
Dynasty Plate Helm, but you are going to sell that item late game. If there are some assassins / hunters youre particularly worried about this is a good option, Im just not a fan of it.
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Option 7
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Void Stone is a nice mixed option, giving power, pen, and Magical Protections. You should probably plan on this in advance if your going to pick it, since you will over cap penetration on squishys, you should switch your boots to
Shoes of Focus. This is a good option if they have a good mid laner and an
Ao Kuang Jungler,
Bacchus, etc. Basically a bunch of magical damage threats.
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