I think I might start favoring ziggs over brand again. The mana changes to athene's REALLY seems to have helped him. I have played him 4-5 times now with the new athene's and he feels way better than he used too... If I had to compare the two:
Brand experiences 3 power spikes:
- Sorc shoes + haunting guise for mid game
- finishing Rylai's
- finishing both rylai's and liandries
After that he sort of scales boringly and I don't notice WTF I DO MORE DAMAGE with each item purchase.
Ziggs has 1 huge power spike:
- Athene's + Needlessly large rod
At this point in the game ziggs scales through the roof. Each new item just adds so much more damage to his kit and you really notice in team fights when you hit a cluster of 4 people with a Q and all of there health bars drop by 1/5.
I think brand is much stronger early and mid game than ziggs and brand can snow ball completely out of control during these parts of the games. Ziggs on the other hand needs games to go into late game with good farm and or money from kills/towers so he can hit the big items. If he gets there his wave clear and team fight presences are greater than brands.
Ziggs also has strong zone control for taking objectives and very strong tower pushing abilities.
I think brands biggest check mark over ziggs is hes very inexpensive item wise. If you get your liandries and rylai's you will always be a problem for the enemy team. These items make him scale with the opponents tanks because brand will be doing a lot of precent health damage from his passive and liandries. Squishies will die the entire game (unless they purchase defensive items) by a full rotation of his spells.
I think ziggs is a better pick than brand right now but not by much. I think team comp wise they both sort of fit into the same kinds of team comps although I think brand is better at brawly team comps than ziggs is. Brand can also create picks since most people do not respect the range of his w + q stun combo. I have caught people dozens of times when they reach out a little to far.
Anyways the are both fun champions with tons of outplay potential with the way there kits are designed. Some of the funnest moments is getting ganked 2v1 with these champions. The both have ways to get out of these situations with possible kills. Ziggs is safer but brand has higher double kill potential.