Hello you beautiful people, my name is FwuffyMilk and currently I am a Diamond 4 support main. I peaked diamond in season 5 but quit until near the end of season 8 and ready to kick some *** in season 9.

I love playing mage supports and feel like they are the superior choice in the current meta. If you want to ask me any questions or see how I play Xerath check me out on Twitch.

Pros

+ Massive damage + Very long range + Can roam with ult + Has CC with Shocking Orb + Spamming Dance is fun

Xerath is a very strong champion who can make life hell for your enemies. The range on his abilities are the longest of pretty much any champion in the game. His damage is very nutty especially if you are ahead, and you can generally get an easy pick before a fight breaks out with your Arcanopulse --> Rite of the Arcane. Positioning is very important on Xerath so make sure to stay way behind your allies and spam your abilities into the enemy team.

Cons

- Squishy - Assassins are the bane of your existence - Low damage if you fall behind early

SUMMONER SPELLS - BARRIER: Barrier helps you stay alive if an assassin or enemy champion jump on you. It also doesn't get effected by grievous wounds like heal does so it is strong vs ignite. Generally you want to take barrier but exhaust isn't bad either to help you and your ADC. EXHAUST: Exhaust is a pretty weak summoner spell ever since they took out the attack speed reduction that it used to have. I still would take it if the enemy has a Rengar or Zed. FLASH: Flash.. taken by pretty much every champion in the game. It helps you secure kills, escape ganks, make montage plays by dodging that CC ability the enemy is throwing at you, and much more. Always take it!

R U N E S

SORCERY Keystone: Arcane Comet // Arcane Comet is your best choice of Keystone in the sorcery tree for the simple fact that it deals extra damage when you poke an enemy champion. When you hit your spell a small comet flies at them hitting them for damage. If your comet is on CD then hitting opponents will take it off CD faster. This rune also helps you confirm if you hit an opponent in fog of war.

SORCERY Second Line: Manaflow Band // Take this rune for the second line in the sorcery tree. Every time you hit an opponent with a spell you gain 25 maximum mana up to 250 mana total. After you finish stacking the extra mana it will restore 1% of your missing mana per 5 seconds which is super useful since you will be casting a lot of spells. Xerath is a very mana hungry champion because your abilities use a lot of mana but with this rune and your Mana Surge passive combined it should help keep your mana healthy.

SORCERY Third Line: Transcendence // Transcendence is the best choice for the third line. It gives you 10% CDR at level 10 which is crucial for you as a support. More CDR means more damage and poke. Also the great thing about this rune is that once you cap on CDR through items it will take the extra CDR and turn it into AP!

SORCERY Third Line: Absolute Focus // Absolute Focus gives you bonus AP whenever you are over 70% hp. This powers up all your abilities and can be a great help especially during laning phase. Sadly this rune received a nerf in patch 9.2 and I personally feel it is not as useful anymore.

SORCERY Last Line: Scorch // Scorch is very good rune for the laning phase. When you hit an enemy with a spell you burn them for some extra damage. The damage it does isn't super high but still can make a difference in a early fight. Personally I feel like this rune falls off mid - late game which is where Xerath shines so I would opt to take Gathering Storm more times then not.

SORCERY Last Line: Gathering Storm // Gathering Storm is a great scaling rune. You get more AP for every 10 minutes that passes in game. The bonus you get for a long game is HUGE, for a 40 minute game you get 80 AP. My issue with this rune is that until the 10 minute mark it essentially is useless while Scorch will be useful instantly. Still Xerath will make great use of the extra AP so I would still take this most of the time.

INSPIRATION Secondary Runes: Biscuit Delivery // This is a great rune for Xerath for the simple fact that it gives you a permanent mana increase every time you consume a biscuit. It also heals for 15% of your missing hp and mana making it very useful in lane to keep you healthy.

INSPIRATION Secondary Runes: Cosmic Insight // This rune increases the cap on your CDR to 45% and also gives your 5% CDR right off the bat. It also gives you 5% summoner spell CDR allowing you to use Flash and Exhaust more. More abilities and more summoner spells what's not to like?

PASSIVE ABILITY

MANA SURGE size (Passive): This passive is self explanatory, when your Mana Surge is up if you auto a minion or a champion you will restore some of your mana. The mana you get back for hitting a champion is much higher but comes with risk so it is up to you to decide what you want to use your passive on.

Q

ARCANOPULSE (Q): Your main poking ability on Xerath and one that does a lot of damage. When you hold your Q you charge it making the range that it hits longer. When you release your Q you will fire a massive energy beam at the opponents. During your charge your movement speed is reduced by a lot so you want to be far enough back that your opponent can't hit you while you charge up real quick, but be close enough so that you can still hit them with your ability. A bar appears while your charging and if you allow it to reach the end he will stop charging the ability and not fire it either, but you will receive 50% of the mana spent back.

W

EYE OF DESTRUCTION (W): What a cool name for a skill. Eye of Destruction forms a circle on the target location that explodes and does quite a bit of damage. Anyone in the middle of the circle will be slowed very heavily. You usually max this second on Xerath

E

SHOCKING ORB (E): This skill is essentially your only form of CC as Xerath. You throw a small blue orb towards the enemy stunning them if it connects. The amount of time they are stunned depends on how far the orb traveled. If the champion is in your face it doesn't stun for long at all especially if they have tenacity but can still give you more time to kite them or explode them.

R

RITE OF THE ARCANE (R): This skill is what makes Xerath such a nightmare in and out of lane, it also what separates the good Xerath from the bad. When you press R you root yourself in place and you see a birds eye view of the area. Every time you press R you will fire an arcane barrage at location you picked. This skill can be quite hard to hit but is so satisfying if you get good at it. The range is immense allowing you to not even have to walk all the way to another lane to gank them. You also can kill enemies who thought they got away safely. Usually you want to use this when a target is low and trying to escape effectively finishing them off but later in the game when you do immense damage you can also start a fight by taking huge amounts of HP off their carries before a fight even starts. At level 1 you get 3 hits, level 2 you get 4 hits, and finally at max level you get 5 hits. If you decide to not use any attacks and stop your ultimate, 50% of the cooldown gets refunded.

Eye of the Watchers

This is a must have as support. Wards are a very crucial thing in the game and can save your team from feeding their *** off. Remember the point of wards is to get vision on your enemies so where you place your wards is important. I suggest watching this video from bunnyfufu he gives a very good explanation of where to put wards in laning phase.

This is one of Xerath's core items. It gives AP, CDR, and a large chunk of mana all very solid stats for you. The passive is really what makes this item so strong. When you hit an enemy with a skill it will hit them and up to 4 enemies/minions around them for an extra 100+10% ap damage. This item plus your Arcane Comet will make each ability you hit do way more damage.

Luden's Echo

Morellonomicon

This item gives you a large chunk of AP, HP to help you survive if someone does get on you, and Magic Pen which combined with Sorcerer's Shoes will make you do true damage or almost true damage to enemy carries. Also the passive is very helpful versus sustain champs like Soraka and Aatrox making their sustain 40% less effective.

This item gives you insane amounts of Ability Power. Once you finish this item your damage will skyrocket by a large amount. There is nothing else much to say about this item except more PEW PEW.

Rabadon's Deathcap

Void Staff

Are those tanks stacking Magic Resist making you do low damage to them? Fear not void staff is here to solve that issue. This item ignores 40% of their MR when you hit them with magic damage effectively making their tanky stats not as useful versus you. Now those tanks will also be scared to get hit by your abilities :)

This item is very useful against assassins like Zed and Rengar. Zhonya's make you invulnerable to damage for 2.5 seconds which will negate those assassins attempts at killing you and make you less of a target for them. It also gives you armor making you able to withstand more hits from AD champions.

Zhonya's Hourglass

Mejai's Soulstealer

The snowball item to rule them all. Everytime you kill an enemy champion you get 4 stacks on this item and 2 stacks if you get an assist. Each stack is worth 5 AP and maxes out at 25 stacks effectively giving you 145 AP if you are at max stacks. Also at 10 stacks you will get a movement speed bonus helping you in many ways. The downside of this item is that if you die you will lose 10 stacks instantly. This is why you only get this item when your are snowballing hard and if you feel like you can position yourself safely from getting killed. When you combine this item with Rabadon's Deathcap you will have ludicrous amounts of AP making your attacks delete enemies with just one rotation of your spells.