Xin Zhao Build Guide by Calselus

Introduction

Xin Zhao is a tanky assassin dude. Also he's an initiator. What do I mean? Well pretty much what I just wrote. Doesn't make sense? Well it's true. He's a tanky assassin who initiates pretty well. Basically your job is to go in, hit as many people as you can with your ult, knock them off target and force them to regroup and get back in while you're actually fighting. Basically Xin Zhao gives your team a lot of initiative. While you're all killing a target their team has to spend a few precious seconds recuperating and getting back in the fight. Also, once you hit a lot of people with your ult you might notice a certain amount of GOD MODE has been inserted in to you. Also it's recommended to say something about the opposing team being nooblords despite you playing one of the easiest champions.

Pros / Cons

Pros +Strong Initiator. +Ulti That Traps Champions. +Strong Ganks.

Cons -Does Not Deal As Much Damage As Other Bruisers. -Ultimate Can Either Harm Your Team Or Help Your Team.

Runes

Runes
Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage 3	Greater Mark of Lethality 6	Greater Mark of Attack Damage 3	Greater Seal of Armor 9	Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist 9

Masteries

Masteries

1/5

3/1

4/1

1/1

4/1

3/1

1/5

2/1

1/1

1/5

1/5

3/1

3/1

1/1

1/

Items

Item Sequence
					The Black Cleaver 3000	Trinity Force 3733	Warmog's Armor 2850
Runic Bulwark 2950	Randuin's Omen 2900

or

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Skill Sequence

• Challenge :Anyway his passive is named CHALLENGE. On any auto attack or his gap closer (his E, Audacious charge) Xin Zhao will apply a 15% armor shred on to the enemy. Fairly basic stuff. Also it keeps enemies from being knocked back by your ult. Fairly basic stuff. I'll explain why that's important later. Basically you don't even have to remember this ability exists.
  
  
• Three Talon Strike : Use this to take down turrets fast, trade with melee champions often. One thing that most people always do wrong in top lane is not punishing people when they last hit. If you see a minion of yours is low near you wait for your opponent to come close to last hit it pop your q and hit him 1-2 times. Your opponent will not look to trade you as he was focusing on last hitting and you can simply walk away with free damage if they do try and engage they will take alot of minion aggro towards themselves and you can knock them up and spam laugh.
  
  
  
• Battle Cry : Generally speaking you want to take this at level 3, because at level 2 you will want to force an engage as Xin's level 2 does crazy damage. So once you force that trade you can sustain yourself back up with this passive. Also remember that if you are looking to back use this to push the creep waves to opponent turret and/or take down opponent turret. Also a little side note if you use ignite you actually get a +4 heal added to your w which is nice, just something to bear in mind. DO NOT SPAM THIS WHEN TRADING. Take this at level 4 or level 3 if you took some serious damage and feel like you can sustain yourself back up against a non sustain champ to re-engage a level or 2 later.
  
  
  
  
• Audacious Charge : Audacious Charge is a great gap closer, initiator and slow. And Your E outranges or have the same range as most autoattackers in the game (only exceptions are lvl 18 Tristana , Caitlyn and Annie ). Generally max this first and remember that it affects nearby enemies with a 225 radius this means that sometimes when catching an opponent you can actually E a creep nearby them and slow them like that :). 60 mana isnt anything to scough at so be careful with your mana. Going OOM in top lane sucks.
  
  
  
• Crescent Sweep : This skill knocks back any nerby champions except for the one you have attacked or charged ( applies the passive ). Now you have a great oppertunity to assassinate your focused target in teamfights as you will be knocking every other enemy champion away. Or another thing to do is to get into the middle of the team and knock back squishies into your own team and seperate them from the tanks/supports that can protect them. This ability works wonders in team fight positioning and engaging, always use it smartly do not just blow this for the damage. One more thing this skill helps escape from ganks in lane enemy jungelr comes in press R knock them away (make sure not to apply the R onto the opponent or they wont be knocked away). Another neat trick is when you have your jungler come in for a gank you can knock your enemy closer towards your turret to help secure a kill. Also this ultimate is an amazing amazing disengage. Your team caught in a bad position for a team fight? No worries press R knock them back and walk away.

Ability Sequence
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18

Spells

Spoiler: Click to view

1. Ignite = Early and easy first blood potential (around level 2)

Why is this so on xin xhao? Easy, xin xhao has one of the highest burst at level 2 of all champions. Passive = -15% armor, e = magic damage, q = physical damage, ignite = true damage. All that combined grants penetration and amazing mixed damage meaning early game especially almost every champion wont be able to deal with xin xhao early kit. But can't the opponent just disengage? YES AND NO. Mostly no if you do it right. You need to remember another thing. Xin xhao has 2 forms of cc at level 2!!! A slow and a knockup so if after this cc your opponent flashes you can burn your flash too.

2. Ignite reduces healing.

This shouldnt go unnoticed and I cant stress how important it is for people not to just try and burn this on adc or apc when there might be better targets. Opponent has vladimir, mundo, volibear, swain? FOCUS IGNITE ON HEALERS it will do wonders to reduce their sustain and have them killed early.

Spoiler: Click to view

So this spell takes less explanation because its rare to see a champion without it currently. However its extremely important on xin xhao for a number of reasons. Firstly your top lane so you will get ganked alot and outside of knockback with ult xin xhao's escapes are very very weak. Also xin xhao is a great intiator you can flash + e to close the gap on a squishy target.

Also what makes flash so strong on xin xhao is the ability to flash into the middle of the enemy team then ult a target to knock back squishes into your team obviously this depends on everyones positioning sometimes you may want to use ult on squishy and burst him yourself but why is this not a risky play? Because if you hit say 4 people you gain 60 armor 60 mr and you just gained positional advantage for your team.

Spoiler: Click to view

You're probably wondering why I spent so long talking about why ignite is so strong on xin xhao and now recommend something in its place. Because league of legends is a game where there is thousands if not millions of different strategies due to the combination of different rune pages, masteries, spells, team comps, lane matchups etc.

So let me as well as I can explain why teleport is good on xin xhao and when you should get teleport.

1. Why on xin xhao?

As i explained xin xhao at level 2 = 2 forms of strong cc. Very few champions benefit from this. And as explained his level 2 damage is really high and bursts squishies. Generally especially during laning phase you will 90% of the time teleport to bottom lane to a ward in a brush then engage on their ADC who will 99% of the time die if your support/ADC land even just a few autoattacks. By makign a early play like this you can potentially snowball your lane as well as bottom lane.

2. When is teleport a good idea?

When opponent ADC and Support arent extremel good at disengaging. E.g. if opponent lane is alistar and ezreal you never want to get teleport. But if your opponnt lane is caitlyn + soraka THEN TELEPORT WILL OWN.

Using the same logic if your bottom lane is good at engaging i.e you have a taric/leona then get teleport but if you have say a sona then teleport wouldnt be a smart idea since you wont get anythign off pre-6.

Synergies

I'm just going to explain all of these at once. Champion that excel at killing a single target via a line nuke, or massive burst, or etc do extremely well with Xin Zhao since they get the time to pull off their job. Akali gets 2-3 seconds of their team regrouping to go on a target and kill them. Ahri gets a clear shot right at a slowed and possibly knocked up target to land her charm. Same with Fizz. Xin Zhao doesn't really work with people like Fiddlesticks or Galio for fairly obvious reasons. However, he just works really well with those more single target focused kill comps. Other champions can work great here too. What's more, after an AoE is done and their team is lower it's advantageous for Xin Zhao to knock em all around so you can keep them from retaliating and score even more momentum for the kill.

Counters

Darius: like most melee champions without insane harass Darius kinda beats on Xin Zhao. Don't worry though. Use your W to sustain up a bit, wait for the jungler to gank, and bash on him. It's just you really can't beat him solo. One thing to do after level 6 is to initiate on him hard using your ult right away and drop his HP down. Since Darius has no sustain he'll have to B or probably die the next time you go on him. Advatange: Xin Zhao. Other than that just watch out, try not to die, and don't be stupid. Xin Zhao has a low HP pool so it's easy to be caught in ults that kill you, or die to early harass. It's really not THAT bad though, just kinda-bad.

Irelia: She's kinda like a better version of Xin Zhao. Soooo yeah. You're like 90% strength of everything she does, so it's easy for you to get out done in 90% of what you do. I'd recommend trying to just wait for team fights. She'll be probably just as good as you, but at least she won't be BETTER in team fights. Note: She's better in 1v1. Try to in lane get an early advantage somehow, and use that 175 auto attack poke to try and keep her down.

Jax: KING OF AUTO ATTACK SLAYERS. Yeah just... don't fight Jax. In the laning phase you can use your 175 range to love tap him a bunch but never push your luck. You will die. You will die hard. Just don't do it man, just wait for the jungler bait his counterattack then knock him up and slow him and try not to die. Not dying is super important.

Warding The Map

• Yellow: Vital to protect the jungler on your team.
• Blue: For protection depending on which lane you're on.
• Red: To guard Dragon and Baron
• Orange: In order to Counter-Jungle.