This is a guide for people who are struggeling in bronze, silver or even gold. That want a quick elo boost playing Xin Zhao. While this guide also might apply to higher elo. This guide is meant for those people, keep that in mind while reading this guide.

that's with the song "I'll make a man out of you". Playing this song will guarantee you succes in every gank our counterjungle attempt. Kick those ***es :-)

So let's get down to business, how do you actually play this champion.

How to start off

Xin Zhao early game is a beast! Therefore i recommend always invading the blue buff of the enemy. Invading is a great thing, because when you tell your team to invade, you'll mostlikely find only 3 or 4 people guarding the buff. Which leads to a 4v5 advatages for your team which will most likely resolve in getting a first blood + a buff. If you doubt the invading capabilities of your teammembers you can always invade their red buff, red buff will most likely be free to take, maybe the top laner or the adc and support if your on the other side might be guarding it, but still, these wil be a very easy fight for your team and a free buff.

How to invade

As said before it's very good for both you and your team to invade the enemy jungler, not only might it resolve in a first blood for your team, but you'll also shut down the jungler, which will make it easier for your lanes to get a kill. Sadly enough many times i see people invading the wrong way.

If you would invade going the way through the jungle, showed with a red arrow, it's very likely someone of the opposing team will spot you. This lowers the chances of a succesfull gank greatly, because they can anticipate on your gank. For example they could countergank, or their top laner could come to help. So never, ever use the red way, ever! Follow the green arrow, go sit in the bush at mid and say to your team to go at 1:40, this way, your top laner will have enough time to get back to his lane, without losing to much creeps, and the opposing team will not have time to react, with for example a counterinvade.

You picked up blue buff, what's next ...

After you got blue buff, it's important to kill the little lizzards also, this way you can time the blue buff and steal it again when it will come up around the 7 minute mark. From now on it should be your job to steal every single buff of your oppent, this will shut down some junglers so much, that they will have a tremendous slow clearing speed and really bad ganks. Also because you have blue buff, you can give your own blue to your mid lane, so he can constantly harras the opposing mid laner and get more creeps because he can use abilities to farm.

Ganking

After you have gotten all your opposing buffs and your own buffs and you have timed them all, it's time for a gank. Remember it's essential to be level 3 to gank, you can't gank any earlier, because you won't have all of your spells. Most likely you want to gank top lane, especially if it's pushed. To gank top you look at the inventory of the opposing top laner to see wether or not he had bought a ward, if not you can just go through river and gank via tri-bush or via river, is he pushed really hard. You want to walk up to the enemy, when you get near him, activate both your q and w. This way you can get your three talon strike. In most situations they'll try to flash, you can quickly respond to this with your e, which will even cause a slow. If your own top laner has any form of decnt cc or a nice damage output this will most likely be a kill.

Taking kills

It's important to note that Xin Zhao is an early game champion therefore, you don't want to pick up an kills after 15 minutes, after that you want to donate all the kills to your team. Before it can be good to pick up some kills, to get even more aggresive early game. But be aware of the fact that building to many damage items upon Xin Zhao will cause him to be less effective late game. Therefore you only want one damage item, most likely Black Cleaver.

After the first gank

After you had a succesfull gank top, you want to help your tup laner to push the lane into the tower of the opposing top laner, this way he will lose lots of gold and exp, this way your toplaner can recall and buy some more itmes, to play more aggresive top lane.

After you have gotten a kill, you want to head over to mid, just go through the nemy jungler and go from behind the opposing mid player. Because mid players are most likely very squishy, it's really easy o pick up a kill, if they don't have any escape.

You are set

So after those two ganks, the buffs should be about to respawn, so you can steal them again. Let your laners know so they can push their lanes and help you taking them. Also if botlane gets a kill, they can push the lane and take dragon together with you.

The only thing you have to do is support your team, after level 20 you won't be abel to do that much, unless you are super fed, so just build really tanky and soak up the damage. Offcourse, when a teamfight occurs, always jump in the middel of their team, preferably on the carry and ult them away, this will give you a big armor and magic resist bonus and will also allow your team to pick up the enemies one by one, while you are tanking damage for them.

Offcourse don't forget to play "I'll make a man out of you" on outreplay, this is really crucial, because without it, you'll lack the courage to counterjungle or do the plays your team needs.


Thumbs up, if you'd liked this guide, i'll try to add a lot of stuff like how to play against ceratin champions. Also leave a comment to let me know how i can improve. Have a great day :-)

1/9/2013 - Original version got released