Zhongli is a Geo Polearm user and retired archon of Liyue. He lost his job and was put out of business when Corrosion came and hit him (2.2). Then the anti-shield shadowy husks came (2.5), and by that point it was like beating up a dead body.
Zhongli retired for good as he was hardly qualified to be Liyue's archon. In fact Zhongli's design makes him resemble the archon of USA capitalism a lot more. Zhongli's demon name is Morax (摩拉克斯), and his Chinese voice actor is Peng Bo (彭博). He is said to have created Mora (摩拉), a universal currency used around Teyvat. This alone gives enough evidence of Morax's connection to finance and in particular American finance, which is also global finance because of USD hegemony.
So calling him archon of Liyue is a huge scam and is akin to saying USA capitalists are the true rulers of Liyue. But who knows, maybe this is what was intended.
Some other fun facts: Zhongli Mo (钟离昩) is the name of a general who served Xiang Yu and lost to Liu Bang (founder of the Han dynasty). Zhongli Quan (锺离权) is also the name of a Han dynasty daoist. Zhongli Quan's master was Wang Cheng (王誠) also known as Wang Xuanfu (王玄甫).
The true archons of Liyue are the developers who came up with the design for the game. It is more appropriate for credit to go to them rather than a couple of pixels on a screen.
Press: creates a pillar that can resonate with other Geo constructs. The resonance does 0 poise damage.
Hold: creates a shield that scales off Zhongli's max HP and reduces all RES of enemies by 20%
With A1, shield can fortify.
With the new enemies such as Rifthounds (introduced Version 2.2) and Corrosion effects, Zhongli's shield basically loses its defensive value. It would only be used for RES shred. At C6 it can be used for (a small amount of) healing. But other than that it would be useless.
Petrifies enemies
Increases all damage based on max HP
4 piece Tenacity is considered his BiS. That said, some people complain about the 4 piece not always proccing.
Some alternatives are:
Zhongli is best used as a support. He has two main builds:
Substats: CRIT, HP, ATK, ER
Unlike Albedo, Itto, and other DEF scaling Geo characters, Zhongli usually wants HP rather than DEF and does not benefit that much from more DEF.
As a shield bot, there are not really any teams where Zhongli particularly shines or stands out. However, there are some DPS units who benefit greatly from his shield:
Note many teams such as Morgana, Hu Tao-Thoma-Xingqiu-Kazuha, Childe-Xiangling do not need Zhongli at all. The -20% RES shred he provides is powercrept by Viridescent Venerer (Anemo swirl units) and Superconduct. Even Geo units already benefit from the Geo shred from Geo resonance.
As a shield unit, though his shield has high scaling, many other teams usually prefer a different shielder such as Diona or Thoma. Many of these other teams need more offense rather than defense and can already take advantage of an Anemo unit for VV shred and CC, rendering Zhongli as unnecessary.
That said, there is one DPS unit for which Zhongli is more or less irreplaceable (cannot find a better option): that is for Xiao teams. For Xiao specifically, he can use Diona for the shield and healing, but the Anemo RES shred provided by Zhongli is usually more valuable. Plus, Xiao gets by with other healers such as Bennett, Jean, and even TTDS Barbara.
Note Xiao will still do high DPS even without Zhongli, but Zhongli's shield can amplify Xiao's damage to the next level, whereas other DPS units can just use VV shred or Superconduct and not use Zhongli.
Moreover, C6 Zhongli is basically made to counter Xiao's health drain. As of Version 2.3, Zhongli is as close as one gets to a perfect Xiao support. It also makes sense story-wise.
Expanding on this note: at C0, Pyro/Hydro/Cryo/Electro all can get -40% RES from VV anemo swirl. Physical can get -40% RES from Superconduct. Even Geo can get -20% RES from Geo Resonance. But the only way to reduce Anemo RES is Zhongli, and that is by -20%. It is true that Anemo Traveler C6 reduces RES by -20% on the burst, but that is technically not C0. Even though it is F2P, tying the shred to the Anemo Traveler's burst makes it less convenient than VV, Superconduct, or Zhongli's shield. This is why Xiao arguably needs Zhongli the most, more than Hu Tao, Ganyu, Eula, Itto, etc. In compensation for this, Xiao's scalings and DMG Bonus are much higher than these other units.
Above C0, for Anemo RES specifically, Zhongli gets powercrept by Jean and Venti.
The resonance damage from the stele does not really become significant unless there are 3 or more geo constructs. For example, when using the Geo Traveler's Q (creates 4 ridges) with Zhongli's E, there can be up to 5 aoe pulses. The resonance scaling is around 57.6% at level 10 E, so 5 times that gives 288% total. It is not much, but it can be non trivial.
Spamming Zhongli's burst on cd becomes more feasible in mono-geo teams since Zhongli has ER issues. But when there are multiple geo characters generating energy, then it becomes easier to use his burst more frequently. At level 10, his burst has scaling 899.72%. Zhongli at level 90 with 4p tenacity and a geo dmg goblet gets \(28.8+46.6 = 75.4\) geo dmg bonus (the 4p tenacity is more a support set that makes Zhongli tankier; to build more offense, going for things like 2p archaic, 2 noblesse will increase his dmg bonus; but when there are so many better dps options in the game, why bother). Zhongli's burst has a 12s cd and has an mv of $$x_q = 899.72(1.754)/12 = 131.5090733333$$ It's not much but it can be non trivial. Note even if there is one big hit, because of the cooldown on the burst, the dps is spread over time and is actually lower than what one might think/exaggerate. Zhongli's main role is to be a pure support. Even the dps from his burst is not high compared to others, but it can provide petrification. Even then, not everything can be petrified.
We could consider Zhongli's passive that increases the damage of his burst based on 33% of his HP. This kind of damage increase is similar to Yun Jin's buff. We assume Zhongli has 2000 atk (generous) and 30k HP (very achievable). With Bennett, say Zhongli's atk becomes 3000. Now 33% of 30k hp is around 10k. So the base damage becomes $$(3000*8.9972+10000) = 3000(8.9972+3.33) = 3000(12.3272)$$ With this passive the damage is increased by $$12.3272/8.9972 = 1.3701151469$$ (comparing to using Bennett without considering the passive), making the dps $$1.370x_q = 180.1825733242$$ It is still not much. No wonder shorty grandpa Zhongli faked his death and retired. Tartaglia's laughing at how short this weak archon is.