About Myself

Hey everybody, my name is Tomas and I recently finished Season 4 in Bronze 2. I know, its bad, but I want to show you that even I as a pretty bad Player can do well on this Champion and may even help you out a bit. I reached level 30 at the end of Season 3 and was searching for a Champion I really liked during the whole Season 4. Finally I bought Xerath and inmediately fell in love with his amazing poke-damage. To be honest, I havent played him enough to write a really good Guide, but I just wanted to do one, not expecting anyone to read it, so here I am.
(also if you have any suggestions; feel free to tell me :))(sorry for my english, I am from Germany :))

Simply the best Spell in the Game and really good on Xerath

I really like Heal, as it helps you a lot while getting ganked, especially because he has no escape.

This works similar to Heal in a defensive way, but can also be used in an offensive way, i.e. to secure a kill.

Even though it seems quite bad on Xerath, if you hit your stun and get out your combo it can easily secure you the kill in lane.

Might help you in a lane against an assasin like Zed, but I still prefer Heal.

Pros - strong Poke - huge range - a lot of damage - decent at every time of the game (early;mid;late) - good waveclear - pretty safe laning

Cons - no escape - gets engaged on really hard - needs to hit skillshots

I really dont know anything about runes, so I am still using the rune-page a friend showed me a couples months ago:
AP Quints, Magic Penetration Marks, flat Armor Seals, Scaling Magic resist Glyphs.

x3

x9

x9

x9

I prefer 21/0/9 but I guess 21/9/0 works too.

Best item to start with

After Patch 4.20 and the huge nerf to Athenes, this is the way to go as your first item.

I get these even before I finish my Morellonomicon sometimes, just because they provide you with so much early game Damage

This is pretty much self explanatory. Tons of Ability Power.

Together with the Deathcap this Items provides you a huge Power-Spike and allows you to chunk your enemies really hard.

A lot of people get this Item way earlier just because of its active. IMO Xerath has such a huge range, that you should never even get into a situation where you need it. If you play against an AD-Champion in your lane you should get this item a lot earlier.

or

Defensive item depending on the enemy team

This works pretty well on Xerath as you rarely die. Despite I prefer the Core build.

I do not recommend this anymore, as it got nerfed in Patch 4.20. Morellonomicon is the way to go now.

You can get this instead of the defensive items in the Core build. The passive is just to strong to not consider it.

Gameplay

Early

At the early Levels you actually just try to harass your opponent with your skills (and aouto-attacks to use your passive) as hard as you can, trying to get him low on health to deny him farm or even force him back. Around Level 4 or 5 he should be pretty low on health, but if you somehow couldnt poke him enough and he is still at nearly full health you need to be carteful as he probably can engage on you, or the enemy jungler will gank you, as you are a pretty easy target.

Mid

After your first back you should have at least a Chalice to be able to spam your spells (you dont get blue buff in low elo). By this time you should already be able to clear the minion waves pretty fast and start roaming to help out your other lanes. As your ultimate has this long range you dont even need to get on the lane. Just shoot them from river and your team might be able to pick up a kill, without you even appearing on their mini map.

Late

By now you should already have some kills. If you played it right you probably didnt even die yet. After getting Deathcap and Voidstaff you start to deal real damage. While sieging with your team you can poke their carries from a safe distance and chunk them down pretty hard. You will automaticaly deal a lot of Damage in Teamfights, if you can hit your skillshots.

Vision

Vision is really important for Xerath, as it prevents you from dying from ganks and helps you to set up your skillshots. I usually buy one or two wards whenever I go back to base. Simply place them on one side of the river and try to stay on that side.

Combos

The usual combo is to hit your E -> Q,W -> R,R,R. Xerath is not an assasin, so dont expect to one-shot people very often. You need to aim for the carries, these are normally the most squishie ones. Due to your insane range you can sometimes kill them without even taking Damage and/or hiting your whole combo.


Ganks

Even though you try to get enough vision to prevent the enemy jungler from ganking you, it dosent always work. Try to hit your stun when he engages on you, while dodging abilities. Remeber that your W slows if you hit the enemy.