Not only mages or AP assassins, tanky support champions like Leona or Nautilus are also making use of Zhonya’s Hourglass.
There is a theory which everybody playing LoL knows that tanky champions, no matter which role they are in, will always focus on purchasing items providing defensive stats. This will help them to become hard barriers to protect their allies. However, this theory seems to change this season when a lot of pro players in LPL Summer Split 2021 are using Zhonya’s Hourglass for Leona and Nautilus.
First, let’s take a look at the kit of these two champions. Basically, Leona and Nautilus always have the mission of opening team fights thanks to their tons of CC. However, they have a weakness in common that they have nothing to escape or self-protect. So, if they do their mission improperly, they will have no chance to survive.
As a result, they have to find a way to stay alive as long as possible in team fights. And the most effective tool for this is Stopwatch/Zhonya’s Hourglass. These items make the user untargetable as well as invincible in 2.5 seconds – a relatively long period of time in combats. Moreover, you can also avoid mortal skills from the enemies and bring your team a lot of advantages.
You need to remember that Support players rarely have many CS and have full of items before the game ends. As the speed of the matches in LPL is regularly extremely high, using cheap items with immediate impacts is definitely their priority. So, pro Support players have been purchasing Stopwatch/Zhonya from the very first minutes.