Cho'Gath Build Guide by BaLoRi

Hello everyone,

My nickname is BaLoRi, I am an Educational Content-Build Creator that I got 1 goal every single time. To create the MOST POWERFUL builds for each champion, that will give you the FREE ELO that you really want and rank up with your own skills in any DIVISION you want.

I reached as the Top 1 Cho'Gath in the world for 3 different seasons and in this guide you will learn my build what made me reach to the Elo i am right now easily!
With this build you will have around 80% Win ratio at Bronze-Gold Elo, 70% Win Ratio At Platinum Elo and 60-61% At Diamond-Challenger Elo!

Feel free to join me in our youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/lolbalori & https://twitch.tv/balori for more BUILDS and GUIDES and join our Discord server for real time build creation: https://discord.gg/RazhNDW and reach any ELO you want!
Chogath with this build is easy, the only thing you need to do is to FOCUS on your farm, and care for Ganks.


Nothing will stop you, nothing will win against you, the only thing they will ever feel is FEAR from your insane damage!

Pleased with the content? Feel Free to make any donations here

Hope to enjoy your Elo Boost!
Best regards.

With this build Cho'Gath become a really strong late game Assassin/Mage/Tank Champion. You will be able to deal 1200-1400 PURE Damage To any Champion with your Rupture and Around 1000 PURE Damage with your Feral Scream to Any Champion, your Basic attacks plus your Vorpal Spikes will do around 400 PURE Damage with Each hit to Any Champion plus the effect from Liandry's Torment and final your ULTI will do 1300 PURE Damage.

Magic Penetration: Magic penetration is a champion statistic which allows the magic damage done from their abilities, enhanced attacks, etc. to ignore some or all of a target's magic resistance.

Lets have an example for you to understand and compare the damage to the target WITH and WITHOUT Magic Penetration!
Lets say you have a Target with 100 Magic Resist and 3000 HP
Our Full build giving you 39 Flat and 40% Magic Penetration while having 400+AP
No Magic Pen Example:
Lets say that your skill is saying that its doing 1000 total damage, the number that you are reading on the skill is not the actual damage that you will do on the target, the 1000 damage will be reduced by 50% cause of the 100 Magic Resist of the target, so that means your actual damage from that skill will be 500!
With our Full Magic Pen build:
Your skill still doing 1000 total damage, but now cause of your Magic Penetration the target will have REDUCED RESISTANCES, lets see how you are calculating it to realize the actual damage, first you calculating the % magic pen resistances and then the flat number and they you are calculating how much "damage reduction" will do from the remaining magic resistance!
100 Mr - 40%(Percent Magic Pen) = 60 MR - 39 Flat Magic Pen = 21 Remaining Magic Resist of the target, this 21 MR means that the target will reduce only the 18% of the damage from your skills (Instead of 50% that it was with 100 MR)
that means the 1000 damage skill will now do 820 DAMAGE instead of 500 DAMAGE To understand the difference, in order for you to do 820 DAMAGE you needed without having penetration, you need to have 1340+ AP for your skill to have total damage of 1640 and do only 820 DMG to the target cause of the magic resist!

Now, if the target got lower than 60 MAGIC RESIST (common for the ranged champions) cause of your FULL MAGIC PEN you will do to the target BONUS DAMAGE
you heard that right, the target can go BELOW 0 Magic resist and you can actually do BONUS DAMAGE(instead of true damage) to the target, so a target with 60 Magic resist cause of your magic pen will be remain with -3 Magic Resist that means that you will do around 3-4% bonus damage, that means from the 1000 damage skill the target will receive 1030-1040 DAMAGE

So you will have Insane damage but is it just this? No, it isnt. You wont just have Damage to call yourself an Assassin. You will have 5000-6000 HP At level 18, slow effects with each skills-Hits to add up to your ALREADY insane CC! Pure Damage-Stun-Slow-Silence the combination to carry yourself to the Challenger Elo with Ease.

With this build we focus on doing PURE DAMAGE with each skill not only with our ulti.

The ultimate rune page is here,


Arcane Comet The STRONGEST Rune that you can possible play
Effect: Damaging an enemy champion with an ability hurls an Arcane Comet at their current location, dealing 30 − 100 (based on level) (+ 35% bonus AD) (+ 20% AP) magic damage after a brief delay.
Damaging enemy champions with an ability reduces the remaining cooldown.
Single target: 20%
Area of effect / Bouncing Blade Multi-hit : 10% per enemy hit
Damage over time: 5%
That means, that in late game, you will have your arcane comet in less than 3 seconds! Your Q will also have 4.2 seconds CD that will ALWAYS SECURE hitting the Arcane Comet

Nimbus Cloak Extra movement speed bonus after using your Flash or Ignite just perfect for you, cause now you can have bonus movement speed bonus to secure a KILL or your ESCAPE!

Absolute Focus Bonus 30 AP each time you are above 70% (most of the times) a perfect rune to give you the damage that you need from early to late game!

Scorch This might be one of the MOST IMPORTANT runes together with Cheap Shot
after 1 second you will damage your enemies with 15 − 35 (based on level) bonus magic damage, that means, that you will prolong the Liandry's Torment effect by at least 2 more seconds, that means more %HP burn damage and also more time to have the 10% bonus damage while being in combat effect. Also, cause of Arcane Comet, Scorch and slow from your Q or E you will also activate Cheap Shot every single time!

Cheap Shot Another insanely powerful rune, after your CC (and we got many) and with only 4 seconds CD you will do 10 − 45 (based on level) bonus TRUE DAMAGE! Just insane!

Ravenous Hunter 14% Spell vamp, that means heal from each of your skills even your HITS and of course the true damage from your ultimate will give you a pure number for heal, if you do 1000 dmg you will regain 140 hp!!
For the beginners to play with Ravenous Hunter is a MUST, cause you still dont have the experience of good position in teamfights, so you will do mistakes and you need some source of HEAL to make you sustain even longer, of course its still hard to die late game while having 6000HP, but still, its going to help you from early to full late game! After at least 30 games with our Cho'Gath build then swap this rune with
Ultimate Hunter after the new runes changes, together with cloud drakes you can reach CD numbers for your Feast that are as crazy as 20 seconds, so after getting used to our build and be confident enough to position right, swap to this and enjoy!

Here is a video example:

Enjoy your free Elo my friends!

Lets start with the Items and our Items Strategy. I come up with this build after hundreds of different combinations, to create this final build that cant lose vs ANYTHING and ANYONE!

You will always start with Dark Seal and Refillable Potion its the most important item for our Build! Cause you will have an insanely big sustain and damage from the early stages of the game. Plus the AP Stacks from KILLS/ASSIST that you will take.

At your first back you will focus to have 800-1235 Gold, and you will buy 2 more Doran's Ring plus either Boots of Speed or Amplifying Tome to add more Damage.
Lets talk about the 3 rings combination with NUMBERS now, and why its the most powerful way to play it!
The 2 Doran's Ring + 1 Dark Seal start will give you the following stats:
40 AP (Plus 3+AP per kill), 120 HP, 100 MANA, 25 extra healing from pots, mana regen and all that with just 800 gold (plus the Dark Seal from lvl 1) this kind of stats will totally replace the need for extra mana item and will give you DAMAGE + SUSTAIN something you cant find NO MATTER what you buy with this amount of gold (800). This is one of the MOST IMPORTANT things you need to follow to be sure you will totally dominate your lane phase no matter who is your enemy!!
And here is the DETAILED EXPLANATION from our friend awesome:

Time for knowledge to reach you these are the calculations for Doran's Ring

Doran's Ring is 196.56% gold efficient, thats means that its stats cost 800 gold and not 400 that the item cost! Also you will get 160 gold by selling it, so the actually cost of the item is 240 gold for getting 800 gold of stats :)
Imagine that by playing with 3 of them, you got 2400 gold of stats (full item cost :D)

AND THIS IS THE Long answer (With Cho'Gath as example):
This is the detailed explanation by our friend @Awesome for Cho'Gath with the 3 rigs! Enjoy :D

Cho'Gath | Doran's Ring:
Following the true EHP generation of Cho'Gath lvl1 with 0 items and 1x Doran's Ring +60hp.
As well as Cho'Gath lvl5 with 0 items and 2x Doran's Ring +1× Dark Seal
- All Platforms include the equal EHP amount in Armor stats to compare the worth at all areas related to all units addable withstanding stats.
- Ofc cost and ItemTyp.
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EHP:
What's that?
Lets create a fictive lvl1 unit okay:
Health: 574 | ADr: 38 | APr: 32

Now incoming 574 damage would not kill this unit.
But the Healthbar show us the health of the unit?
Well the natural given and increasing stats of that unit, reduces the actual damage down.

So lets say at 730 dmg our unit dies.
This 730, is therefor your true actualy health against this DamageTyp.
This is called EHP.
E ffective H ealth P oints

EHP takes your BasicHealth+ ArmorTyps into account to calculate the units true withstanding number against all DamageTyps. EHP.
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This said, lets go check Cho'Gath
at lvl 1 with 0 items EHP
and Cho lvl1 with 1x Doran's Ring added health stats, +60hp.
- Ready ?
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Cho'Gath EHP calculation lvl1:
0 items
HP: 574 | ADr: 38 | APr: 32
AgainstAD: 793 EHP <~ True Health
AgainstAP: 758 EHP <~ True Health
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Cho'Gath lvl1 +1× Doran's Ring (+60hp):
HP: 634 | ADr: 38 | APr: 32
AgainstAD: 876 EHP <~ True Health
AgainstAP: 837 EHP <~ True Health

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/////EHP Difference//////

AgainstAD: 793 - 876 = +83 EHP not 60!
AgainstAP: 758 - 837 = +79 EHP
not 60!
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Adding 60 raw health on lvl1 Cho'Gath, actualy increases our withstanding vs both DmgTyps not by 60 points but by 83 & 79 .
Wich is 23 & 19 more as stated by items and healthbar.
The healthbar is only showing the BasicHealth of a unit.
Not it's true withstanding point.
A lie.
Only EHP enables to see behind the first wall of numbers to see the truth.
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Let's go, check how much Armor and Mress we would need to add, instead raw health, to generate the equal amount of additonal EHP:

Cho'Gath lvl1:
HP: 574 | ADr: 38 | APr: 32
AgainstAD: +14,5 Armor to gain +83 EHP.
AgainstAP: +13,7 Mress to gain +79 EHP.
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This means, adding on a lvl1 Cho, +60 BasicHealth, is equal adding instead:
+ 14,5 Armor AND +13,7 Mress
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Result 1× Doran's Ring:
+15 AP [Damage]
+1 MpRegen/sec [StatsREgain]
+60 hp [Sustain]
which is equal adding:
(+14,5 Armor & 13,7 Mress)

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Ready for the next turn?
Let's go!

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Level 5 Cho
+2 Doran's Ring +1× Dark Seal calculation.

---

Cho'Gath lvl 5, 0 items
HP: 894 | ADr: 52 | APr: 37
AgainstAD: 1.359 EHP
AgainstAP: 1.225 EHP
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Cho'Gath lvl 5, 2x Doran's Ring (+120hp)
HP: 1.014 | ADr: 52 | APr: 37
AgainstAD: 1.581 EHP
AgainstAP: 1.425 EHP

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/////EHP Difference//////

AgainstAD: 1.359 - 1.581 = +222 EHP not 120!
AgainstAP: 1.225 - 1.425 = +200 EHP not 120!
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Per Item EHP generation:

vsAD: 2 ÷ 222 = +111 EHP , not 83, not 60!
vsAP: 2 ÷ 200 = +100 EHP , not 79, not 60!
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Hold on:
Watch again the numbers:
111 > 83 > 60

You see the UPscaling worth of EHP, the longer used on a unit.
SINCE your units BasicHealth and ArmorTyps increased natural over leveling up (×4), each Doran's Ring starts to generate MORE EHP.
The stats generation is expotential growing.
↗ UPscaling the longer it is used, and therefor increases it's own worth.
//////////

Let's go, check how much Armor and Mress we would need to add, instead +120 raw health, to generate the equal amount of additonal EHP:

Cho'Gath lvl 5:
HP: 1.014 | ADr: 52 | APr: 37
AgainstAD: +24,8 Armor to gain also 222 EHP
AgainstAP: +22,4 Mress to gain also 200 EHP
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Result 2× Doran's Ring 1× Dark Seal:
+45 AP [Damage]
+2 MpRegen/sec [StatsRegain]
+120hp [Sustain]
which is equal adding:
(+24,8 Armor & 22,4 Mress)
+100 Mana
+25% increased potion healing

Bonus1 once:
+5 damage vs Minions [+ Lasthit/KS of farm]
Bonus2 once:
+3 AP per stack.
2 stack per Champkill = +6 AP
Max 10 stacks = +30 AP
_Max additional AP from all 3 items 45 + 30 = +75 AP
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And this all for
2x 400= 800
1x 350= 350

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1.150

??

NO

WHY:

Doran's Ring and Blade are
Temporary_Items .
Tempo items are never bought.
The invested gold are Rent Fees!!
Temporary Items are made to fill empty slots .
[Remember the golden rule since Dota1:
An empty slot is a lost opportunity to add stats/power on a unit!
That's the job of Tempo items.]

SINCE we will 100% sell those items at a given point durring the match, we just currently invest gold.

What are the true costs/rent fee now?

Doran's Ring
800 - 320 = 480 gold truely invested as Rent Fee.
480÷2= 240 gold per Doran's Ring

Rent fee:
At match duration 20min, your first bought Doran's Ring truely cost:
per min 12 gold .

Dark Seal:
350 - 245 = 105 gold truely invested as Rent fee.

At match duration min20, your DS, if bought at lvl1 directly, would cost:
per min 5.25 gold

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Note:
If a player can manage to be
1 Minion ahead of the enemy
Per Doran's Ring or/and DS,
he gains all stats for free.

After clearing all the details related to Doran's Ring/DS, and why
keeping them as long as possible is more then worth by their expotential ↗ UPscaling EHP generation vs both DmgTyps as well as adding all needed stats on:
Damage
StatsREgain
Sustain
Durability

For such a low amount of true invested gold,...
We can by fact tell:
Doran's Items and DarkSeal, are the cheapes and most stats,
providing items for the early game phase and on top UPscaling into midgame.
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I hope this should clear any aspects to your question and related to Doran's Ring.

Note:
At lvl 1 Cho added Doran's Ring generated 83/79 EHP can't be further reduced by ArmorPen then 60.
Raw added health provides an auto blockading vs ArmorPen.
So at max -10 to -25% only possible to reduce the generated EHP. Compared to ArmorTyps stats added, which can be nulled by ArmorPen at certain situations.
So Doran's Items add a Armor pen Blockade to uphold it's own withstanding at minimum +75%.

Why we look at lvl1 and lvl5?
- Those are the keypoints Balori/Players are able to buy those items in general, and see their direct impacting InGame to the unit.
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Cheers


The next time you will go back you will buy Hextech Revolver this will add you INSANE burst damage so early in game together with your 2 Doran's Ring 1 Dark Seal you will have Damage-Unlimited Mana-Health, everything that Cho'Gath Need to dominate any lane vs any match up possible.

Then you will go for Luden's Echo and then you will create the Hextech Protobelt-01 except if you dont have your FLASH EARLY and not enough gold to buy instantly your Luden's Echo then you will go for Hextech Protobelt-01 instead! ALSO REMEMBER and its SUPER IMPORTANT never sell your Doran's Ring or Dark Seal to get "items" the first time you will sell it its to start your 3rd core item that is Liandry's Torment

The Luden's Echo will give you even more burst damage and it will activate the Arcane Comet when you doing Q-W at your target, together with just one Hit that will activate the Hextech Revolver you will do around 1500 Damage without even use your Ulti, the MID LANER and ADC will just die from Q-W, the tanky champions will die after your ulti.
The Hextech Protobelt-01 will give you extra mobility, think of it as your second and STRONGEST Flash, this item will do around 400 Damage with our build, add this to the damage above and you will see the damage to be unreal from this early.

Then you will create, one of the MOST POWERFUL ITEMS for our Full Magic Pen Cho'Gath build Liandry's Torment, it will give you 10% BONUS DAMAGE while in combat at this point you doing PURE Damage to all NO-Tank Champions, and Dealing ability damage applies a damage-over-time effect for 3 seconds that deals a total of 4.5% of target's maximum health bonus magic damage, with each tick of damage occurring every 0.5 seconds. This total damage is increased to 7.5% of target's maximum health against slowed or Stunned units
Cho'Gath is one of the champions that using tons of CC, he got both STUN and SLOW with his Q and SLOW with his E, that means that you will keep this effect activated at 7.5% of target's maximum health together with your already big HP% DMG with your Vorpal Spikes

After that you will buy Void Staff, by doing this you will finish your Full Magic penetration build, you will have 18 flat and 40% Magic Penetration plus 10% DAMAGE Bonus, no matter what the target is all of your skills and item effects will do PURE or even BONUS damage at really squishy targets, the damage output will be INSANE even without our last item!

As final item you can choose from the Following 2:

Warmog's Armor One of the strongest items for sustain, super useful for us! And our best choice, now we have a combination of ULTIMATE DAMAGE and ULTIMATE Sustain!

Rabadon's Deathcap if your enemy team has full Carries and only 1 or No Tank at all.

Morellonomicon if your enemy team has lots of healing effects and your mid laner (or you are the mid laner) dont have it, then buy to help your teammates kill the targets easier, if of course manage to survive from one Q-W-Protobelt combo

So your FULL BUILD will look like this:

Hextech Protobelt-01 Luden's Echo Liandry's Torment Void Staff Warmog's Armor Sorcerer's Shoes plus Elixir of Sorcery

Lets talk about the strategy here. To play with Cho'Gath inst only use his PURE Strength as your weapon, like any other WARS, at league you need to use your HEAD as well to win the game.
So lets talk about what you need to focus.

Creeps: The most important thing is to focus on your farm, you need to farm fast and if you can kill all the creeps without missing even one. This way you will take the lead from your enemy champion, dont be afraid to use your skills for last hits even at the 1 level.

Stay Alive: To not to die at lane and not have any kills is more worth than to be 3-3 or 4-4 with your enemy Lane champion.
Your build focusing to be the strongest at the MID-Late game, doesn't matter if you cant kill now, focus on farm and you will be able to show your true Strength at the right time of the game.

Hide & Seek Strategy: You will always max your Q, even if you can't hit your enemy you will still max this skill. Rapture is the strongest skill of Cho'Gath even stronger than your ulti.
To make it Easier to hit my enemies, i come up with the Rengar style trick, its simple. just hid at the Bushes and make use of the FOG OF WAR, this way your enemy champion wont hear the Q sound or see your Animation Cast, with just this its almost certain that you will hit him and then kill him with your Combo.

Even if you wont kill your enemy, he will start losing focus from this strategy.
They wont be able to go close to cs, and lose EXP-FARM so after doing this a couple of times the game is yours.

Lots of my Subs and followers from YouTube and social asking me "Why are you not playing with teleport TOP?"
and the answer is simple and i will give it to all of you as well.

Im playing always with Flash and Ignite Top, for the following reason, Teleport is a skill for any of players don't have enough confident in theirselves that they can DESTROY the enemy TOP laner.
Its as simple as that, Teleport can be used to Come back after a fast back or go to other lane and "Help" your team.
The reason all playing with Teleport is cause they want to find the "easy" answer behind the top lane "go help others and exp there", i cant judge them really, but if you really want to say yourself that you actually won the TOP Lane then you need to do it SOLO.

Destroy your enemy not only by killing him but also by making him build TOO MUCH MR that he don't need.
All my tanky enemies building full MR Items, cant do anything else cause if they wont they will just die from me over and over again.
But by forcing them doing that the BEST WAY to counter them its to simple change lane, send your ADC TOP with your Support and go BOT 1vs2, after destroying TOP its the time to destroy BOT as well.

Doing something as simple as that you can change the ENTIRE balance of the game. The Full MR Tank top wont stand a chance vs the ADC and SUPPORT and their ADC and SUPPORT wont stand a chance vs the FULL Magic Pen You.
I did this countless of times and always winning the game at the end.

TIP: Lots of you will think "but when my team need me i can teleport there", NO. You dont need to teleport there. You can be there by foot, or if you cant be there continue with the OBJECTIVES, push your lane destroy towers take Dragons with your jungler etc.
Almost every rush TP to help BOT or MID Lane end up by being all DEAD together with you.
Cause when you TP, you suddenly change the entire MAP Phase, you going somewhere where you will be 100% seen and try to either Dodge your skills or Kill you first.
So go by foot, and go from behind them by using the FOR OF WAR.

This is the entire strategy behind what i am always doing.
If you see my videos you will see that im right at what im saying above.