Try placing Cannon Barrage on the path of escape to cut off fleeing enemies.
Parrrley applies On Hit effects like Frozen Mallet or Black Cleaver.
Paying attention to low-health enemies on the map can land you a surprise kill with Cannon Barrage.
Zilean is fragile if a team focuses on him, but otherwise he's very difficult to kill. Commit to killing him as a team.
If you're able to match Zilean's speed, it can sometimes be beneficial to wait until his ultimate has faded before landing the killing blow.
The stat comparisons shown here show several significant Gangplank against Zilean matchup stats that can help us figure out the differences and similarities between the two. As an example, Gangplank’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Zilean’s KDA ratio of NaN, indicating that Gangplank may be more central to his team's team fighting capability than Zilean. This observation is in large part a result of the difference in kills.
Gangplank typically has a much larger longest kill spree than his opponent does. Typically, he receives more damage than Zilean. This often reflects differing health capacities; however, it can also indicate that the champion with more health has less agility and thus is unable to escape additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both LoL champs are great champions. Both have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Gangplank usually wins when facing off against Zilean, with a 51.4% win rate. Thus, Gangplank makes a good counter for Zilean.
While Gangplank does have a higher win rate than Zilean, when facing one another, Gangplank also has a much greater difficulty level that makes him a more difficult champion to learn. You should be careful when picking Gangplank into Zileanas his relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Gangplank also has almost no amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Zilean. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when trying to counter champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Gangplank vs Zilean matchups, Gangplank is the better champ with a higher win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during late stage team fights.
Gangplank is a decent counter for Zilean. Focus your play on maximizing your gold income and taking out objectives. If you do that, you should hold your own as Gangplank against Zilean.
To learn all of the intricacies of Gangplank to counter Zilean during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to learn a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you listen to the build and tips presented here, you will increase your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Gangplank usually gets much more CS as Zilean. Champs who on average don't earn much CS usualy don't have to have much CS to be effective, such as supports. They are capable of scaling well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually have to have several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to do better than the values reported on this page to do well.
The best items to prioritize in your Gangplank versus Zilean build consist of Bloodthirster, Essence Reaver, and The Collector. When Gangplank bought at least these three pieces in his build, he performed a lot better countering Zilean than with many other common item sets. In fact, Gangplank had an average win rate of 51.4% when countering Zilean with these items in his kit.
To have the highest probability of defeating Zilean as Gangplank, Gangplank players should take the First Strike, Magical Footwear, Biscuit Delivery, Cosmic Insight, Bone Plating, and Overgrowth runes from the Inspiration and Resolve rune sets. Out of all the runes we have analyed for Gangplank vs Zilean face-offs, this set of runes resulted in the best win rate. Moreover, these runes averaged a 51.4% win rate overall.
By default, tips, stats, and builds on how to beat Zilean as Gangplank are given for all ranked divisions combined. If you would like to filter the statistics and builds to a particular player tier, you should use the selection menu located earlier in the counter matchup guide.