Hello, I'm PH45, and this is my Cho'Gath Guide. My real name is Patrik, but you can call me either way. I am a long time League of Legends player (started back in Season 1). I'm a top lane main, and I mainly play Jax, but Cho'Gath has been my tanky pick of choice whenever Jax hasn't been an option. Check out my YouTube channel where I occasionally post League related videos! Cho'Gath is currently a very strong champion in top lane, thanks to the tank items being really fitting for him and giving him options depending on what he needs. He can sustain through most of the tough matchups and he can even win some of the bruiser matchups due to his natural tankiness and damage output, especially as 6 his Feast is a great threat to the opposing team.

Flash: Best summoner spell in the game. Allows you to get over walls or into range to CC/kill the opponents. Pretty much mandatory on Cho'Gath since you have no dashes/jumps built-in so this helps to close the gaps/escape ganks.

Teleport: Extremely important and great choice for top laners. Most of the time it enables you to teleport to teamfights if you aren't near the fight when it breaks out. It can also help you in tough matchups where you have to back a lot early, but main focus with Teleport is to have map pressure instead of getting back to lane to catch that one wave.

We run Resolve as our main rune tree for Cho'Gath due to good synergy with Cho'Gath's natural tankiness and overall fitting runes.

Grasp of the Undying works well for Cho'Gath. Combined with your Vorpal Spikes your trades will hurt, and at the same time you get extra HP and heal a bit of HP back every time you proc this rune. Over the course of the game the HP from this rune stacks up to a quite nice amount, which will make you harder to deal with.

With the extra HP you get over the progress of the game, you will deal a ton of damage to towers when you proc this rune. Helps you push down objectives if you want to splitpush or overall if you are grouping, helps you take those towers down.

You will build a lot of resistances during game, and this will only increase them, making you more tanky and harder to deal with. Only negative thing is that this rune takes 12 minutes before it does anything, so you aren't really getting anything out of it during early laning, but then again Cho'Gath isn't an early game champion anyways. Other choices are Second Wind in poke lanes or Bone Plating for tougher lanes.

Overgrowth will grant you good amount of extra HP later on, which has good synergy with your Feast. Revitalize is also a fine choice since you'll heal more with your passive Carnivore.

As the secondary tree I usually like to run Precision due to the option of having increased mana sustain and free tenacity.

Gives you mana regen when damaging an enemy champion, which helps a lot since you'll run out of mana quickly if you are constantly engaging in combat while laning. It also restores 15% of your maximum mana on champion takedowns so in a teamfight this can restore a lot of mana for you.

Tenacity is really important on Cho'Gath since you don't have any mobility abilities. This allows you to stick to targets a bit easier and deal with their CC abilities.

• Carnivore (Passive): Whenever Cho'Gath kills an enemy or destroys an enemy structure, he restores some HP and mana based on level. This is your built-in sustain, which allows you to stay in lane for a long time if you are allowed to CS.
  
• Rupture (Q): Cho'Gath causes the target area to rupture after a short delay, knocking up enemies hit, slowing them and dealing magic damage. This ability can close you in for a kill or potentially save you from an all-in so think wisely when using it.
  
• Feral Scream (W) Cho'Gath roars in the target direction, dealing magic damage to enemies and silencing them for a short duration.
  
• Vorpal Spikes (E): After activation, Cho'Gath's next 3 basic attacks withing 6 seconds have bonus range and launch a volley of spikes in a line, dealing magic damage and applying a decaying slow to enemies hit.
  
• Feast (R): Cho'Gath attempts to eat the target enemy, dealing true damage to them. Against non-champions the base damage is increased by 1000.
  
  If Feast kills its target Cho'Gath gains one Feast stack that grants him bonus health, bonus attack range and increased size. Only 6 stacks can be gained from non-epic monsters or minions.
  

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In most cases out of the basic abilities you max Vorpal Spikes first as it gives you a lot of trading power. After that you max Feral Scream and Rupture last due to it mainly just being a CC ability rather than a main damaging ability, taking points on Feast whenever possible. However in some lanes you might have to substitue for Feral Scream max first if you are forced to just poke and not autoattack as much.

Turbo Chemtank Perfect item for Cho'Gath. Gives you HP, armor, magic resist and ability haste, and also an active that allows you to close in to the middle of the teamfight and slow your opponents. Perfect initiation item since Cho'Gath lacks any natural gapclose/movement abilities so this helps with you getting kited out in fights. Mythic passive also gives you more haste so you will have your abilities up sooner.

Frostfire Gauntlet Other natural choice as the Mythic item for Cho'Gath. Gives same stats as Turbo Chemtank but if you don't need the engage power and for example want to peel your carries by slowing the enemies on top of them then this item is a great choice. Your basic attacks will create an area that slows enemies in it, and its mythic passive gives you increased size and 100 HP per legendary item which is quite nice.

Plated Steelcaps Great pickup in melee matchups, that are auto-attack reliant to deal damage. Also helps dealing with ADC's since they rely on autoattack a lot.

Mercury's Treads If opposing team has a lot of CC, might be worth considering since you are quite prone to getting kited, having less CC affect you helps with that a bit.

Spirit Visage Has good synergy with your passive Carnivore, since you'll be healing and shielding even more with it. Also good combination after you have your Gargoyle Stoneplate since it will increase the shield from that item too. Grants also some HP and MR and ability haste so fit's well into our build.

Thornmail Another great item vs autoattack reliant bruisers. Gives you HP and armor, and also gives you antiheal proc vs champions who autoattack you. Great item due to Bramble Vest being a very good early buy on Cho'Gath and overall antiheal is quite important in the current meta.

Warmog's Armor Works well with Cho'Gath. Gives you a lot of HP so your ult damage is increased, gives you a ton of regen once you have at least 3k HP. Sadly it gives no resistances so occasionally this can be not so good item to pickup, but other than that it seems fitting really well for Cho'Gath.

Gargoyle Stoneplate Really strong item for Cho'Gath. It increases your bonus armor and bonus magic resistance by 5% for 6 seconds when a champion deals damage to you. It stacks up to 25%, one stack per champion. The active will give you a shield and increased size for a few seconds which helps you deny damage and burst on you in a teamfight. Other than that the item gives you some armor, magic resist and haste.

Abyssal Mask Abyssal Mask is a bit of a niche item these days, but it can still be a viable option sometimes. Gives you HP and magic resist, and if you immobilize an enemy champion it increases the damage they take by 10% for 4 seconds. If you need magic resist and don't want to opt for Spirit Visage or Force of Nature then this is the next option.

Randuin's omen Great item to buy against autoattack reliant comp. The item gives health, armor and a bit of haste, and on top of that every incoming instance of post-mitigation basic damage is reduced by 5 per 1000 maximum health, and since Cho'Gath gets quite high HP during later stages of the game this item will get a lot of value. On top of that it still has the active that slows enemy champions around you by 99% and also lowers their AD and critical strike damage.

Laning in general as Cho'Gath is mostly just farming creeps but you also have a lot of trading power with your Vorpal Spikes and when your Grasp of the Undying is up. You can do it in different ways, if you hit Rupture, you an follow up with Feral Scream into 1 or 2 Vorpal Spikes procs at least before backing off. If you take a bad trade, no problem, just wait for the wave to come to a safe spot and last hit to sustain back up.

If you are against an all in champion who has a leap/dash make sure to save your Rupture so you can disengage the fight since most of the time you are going to lose early fights if someone gets the jump on you. And if you are chasing that kind of champion down, make sure you can actually land Rupture, so you don't just waste it if they have their leap/dash up.

Once you level your Feast you can start stacking your ult, though generally look if your jungler is top side, so you could potentially score a kill on the enemy laner and perhaps Feast them for the kill. You should also look to save Feast for objectives like Rift Herald, Dragon or Baron since it's a free stack for you and a great way to secure an objective.


Once you get out of lane phase you'll most likely want to stick with your team, clear objectives with your Feast for stacks and engage teamfights. Your job is to just CC the opponents, potentially zone some of them and if you are fed enough oneshot one of the squishies. You can also optionally peel for your carries with your Rupture, Feral Scream and slows from your items and Vorpal Spikes.

When you charge at the opposing team as your teams frontline, the opposing team will waste a lot of resources onto keeping you away/damaging you, leaving your team more safe.

Cho'Gath is a really fun champion when you get ahead, you are extremely tanky and hard to deal with, while still being able to oneshot squishies thanks to your Feasts high damage output. Cho'Gath however suffers from hard lane matchups but his built-in sustain helps with that. Have a great time Feasting your opponents as Cho'Gath! If you enjoyed the guide upvote it and maybe check out my other guide on Jax! Link to the Jax guide And of course if you enjoyed the guide make sure to subscribe on YouTube for League of Legends content! Subscribe Also some of the code used in the making of this guide is from http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/making-a-guide-101506#chapter11 @jhoijhoi - PH45