Early Game: Levels 1–6
Start positioned near your front line but do not face-check the first brush. In Mayhem, the poke comes out fast and hurts more. Use the brush to break line of sight. Your job is to create a zone where the enemy cannot freely walk up to poke your ranged teammates.
Focus on collecting your passive blobs immediately after using abilities. In Mayhem, the sustain from picking up chunks is significant. If you take a bad trade, step back, let your health regeneration work, and re-engage only when you have a full health bar. Do not force fights at half health; Zac excels at sustained trading, not burst survival.
Use Snowball to close the gap for your Elastic Slingshot (E) setup. Land the Snowball mark, wait for the enemy to burn their dash or flash, then channel your E from max range. If they respect your engage and back off, use the Snowball simply to force them off the wave. Push the first wave hard to get an early level 2, then look for a flank angle on the second wave.
If you get ahead early, invade their side brush and set up a permanent threat zone. If you fall behind, give up the brush and play tight with your tower. Your next move is hitting level 3 to unlock your full combo, which gives you the displacement needed to set up kills for your team.
Mid Game: Levels 7–11
Now you have points in your Elastic Slingshot and likely your first major augment. Your position shifts from a passive brush camper to an active playmaker. Look for angles where you can charge E from fog of war. In Mayhem, the cooldowns are low enough that you should be looking for an engage every few seconds.
Your trading rhythm changes from "all-in or nothing" to "constant disruption." Land your Unstable Matter (W) center on champions to shred their magic resistance, then follow with a Q to pull them out of position. If you land a Q on a squishy target, immediately snap them back into your team. Do not hold your ultimate for a perfect five-man knockup; in this mode, using it to guarantee a single pick is often better than waiting for a crowd control chain that might never happen.
Snowball becomes your primary tool for starting fights and your safety net for escaping them. Engage with Snowball, pop your ultimate, and if the fight turns sour, look for a nearby enemy minion to Snowball to safety. Push with your team when your E is up, then stall or siege when it is on cooldown. Your presence alone forces the enemy to respect the engage threat.
If you are ahead, force objectives and dive towers. Your passive, Cell Division, makes you incredibly difficult to kill under a tower, as you can often revive after the tower aggro switches. If you are behind, play for disengage. Use your ultimate to push enemies away from your carries rather than pulling them in. Your next move is securing your level 11 power spike, which significantly lowers your cooldowns and increases your revive safety.
Late Game: Levels 12+
At this stage, death timers are long and one mistake ends the game. Position yourself on the flanks. Do not stand next to your ADC. You are the distraction. Force the enemy backline to look at you. If they turn to deal with you, your team fights a 4v3 or 4v2 on the front line. If they ignore you, you land a game-winning E.
Your poke rhythm is almost non-existent; you are purely an all-in initiator. Look for the enemy carry stepping up to clear the wave. Use Snowball to close the initial gap, then E to guarantee the knockup. Follow with R to keep them locked down. Augments that add crowd control, size, or survivability should be fully online now. Use them to become an unkillable disruption engine.
Push when your team has numbers or when the enemy used their key cooldowns. Stall when the enemy has a waveclear advantage. Do not force a dive into heavy crowd control like Morgana or Veigar without your team backing you up.
If you are ahead, group as five and siege the inhibitor towers. Force a fight in the enemy jungle where they have no towers to hide behind. If you are behind, wait for the enemy to make an overextension. Your passive allows you to act as a bait mechanism; sometimes the best engage is simply walking at the enemy, letting them "kill" you, and having your team collapse on your revive blobs. Your next move is ending the game before the enemy carries reach their full build, where your tankiness might fall off against true damage or percent health shred.
