Hey everyone I'm Sakos and this is my very first serious guide on mobafire. I've written two more guides but none had success so I decided to get serious now with this one. Please note that my english may not be perfect because it's not my native language. I hope you enjoy my guide about one of my favorite champions in the league, Xin Zhao.

Xin Zhao is a melee AD offtank who excels at taking down squishies and causing disruption in teamfights thanks to his cc and burst damage. Although many prefer to play him as a jungler, I've had a lot of success with him in the top lane, both in normal games and in rankeds. The main reason why I like him is because he has everything: Built in armor pen, autoattack reset and buff, knockup, knockback, AS buff, dash, aoe slow, ad nuke, armor and mres buff AND a passive that gives HP every 3rd attack. The dash makes him a solid pick vs any ranged hero because only caitlyn can outrange it and you hardly ever see her in top lane. The sustain also makes it so that he can go 2v1 and sometimes even get away with a kill or two. However, since Xin's damage is mostly autoattack based, champions like teemo or jax and maybe malphite can give him a hard time.

PROS:
+ Good laning phase
+ Has everything
+ Tons of burst
+ Aoe disruption skill
+ Easy to learn
CONS:
- Lacks an escape
- If he falls behind hes screwed
- Can be ganked early
- Vulnerable to hard cc

I like to start longsword pots because I feel like boots arent viable after the nerf anymore. If I'm snowballing early, I usually go fot a brutalizer, if lane's even I get a phage. Warden's mail is your best friend against fiora/trynd/other AA based hero and randuins is also nice. Hexdrinker is an option vs rumble/akali/ap hero but dont upgrade to maw till after trinity. And speaking of trinity, this item is just amazing on xin. An item that does everything on a hero that does everything: Another slow, hp, mana, dmg, as, crit, movespeed, ap (yes, his W and E scale with ap) and the sheen proc. Black cleaver is also a great option because of the armor shred and hp. Then I get a GA but lets not forget the mercurial scimitar, great replacement for GA if agaijst heavy cc and mercs were not enough. Rageblade is also a honorable mention because a small amount of ap is pretty decent on xin for his W and E. Btw sorry for the wall of text but this is my style :P

AD marks and quints help xin lasthit and harass early on. Since he has his passive, which can be kept up indefinetely, he can afford not to get arpen runes. Armor, mres, self explanatory. Survivability is a must on all bruisers. Make sure you swap armor for scaling and mres for flat when against rumble/akali/ap heroes. As for the masteries, I prefer 9/21/0 because relentless is simply plain op and because every bruiser benefits greatly from the defense tree. 21/9/0 is also a viable option though I don't recommend it.

In addition to being a great top laner, xin can always go jungling because his clear times are pretty good and his ganks are just amazing. He kind of reminds me of lee sin, not that mobile but with significantly more damage. Note that this is still a top lane guide so I won't be focusing on jungle xin at all, but if you came here and read all this far searching for info on jungle xin then I'm sorry but you won't find it here :( But don't get disappointed cause there are a lot more guides for xin as a jungler, a lot of them being in depth so keep calm and move on...

And this concludes my guide for Xin Zhao, I hope you enjoyed it. It is still missing a LOT of things. Keep in mind that I will keep updating this guide with new stuff when I have the time. Now you can go ahead and start a game, pick xin, and WIN NAO!