Hello everyone this is my first build guide on MOBAFire, and i thought i would start with something simple, well relatively at least. this is the general build I use while playing Xerath, and i beleive that its very good not only in terms of being able to deal a fair amount of damage to anyone on the enemy team you want to, but also being extremely hard to kill (at least by AD enemies) because of the hilarious amount of armor you get for a mage.

i get these runes just as a basic for all mages, lots of Spell Penetration and Magic resist for mid-lane action.

the masteries i generally use go 9/0/21. these masteries are really the only ones to get while playing mages who tend to do a lot of casting (A.K.A Ryze, Veigar, etc.) because you are able to get a decent amount of extra damage off of them while at the same time having enough utility to stay in lane until you need to retreat.

Rabadon's and Rod of Ages are pretty much essential to any good mage build, with a few exceptions, as well as Rylai's because of the increased health and Crowd Control it gives you. feel free to replace any of these you feel unnecessary, but please dont get rid of sorcerer's shoes, except for maybe on dominion where movement speed is absolutely necessary, really almost the only other choice would be Boots of Lucidity but the extra cooldown reduction is almost completely unnecessary because of his abilities low cooldowns at higher ranks.

with xerath you pretty much want to max out his Arcanopulse as soon as possible because its the one ability that has the most range and the most damage that you will use on a regular basis. after that i get a rank in mage chains and leave it there. his next ability you want to max, besies his ultimate, is his W Locus of Mana. not only does it reduce the cooldown, but it also increases the speed bonus when coming out of it AND the PERCENTAGE spell pen it gives you. if you max this second and follow my build, only the tank will have enough Magic Resistance in order to withstand your almost constant barrage of Arcanopulses.

i choose these two spells as they give the most manuverability of their kind. you can use both to either run away, or to keep your target in range (which wont be very hard cause his range is crazy especially in lane) but the main focus is to keep yourelf alive because xerath doesnt even have to get close in order to nuke the enemy team.

really with this play style you just want to be able to constantly beat the enemy team with arcanopule, its easiest done when far away but dont hesitate to gank by leading with mage chains and even more consistent damage from your ult, if you can try and insert an arcanopulse between each blast from arcane barrage and your damage output will be insane.

you want to be able to beat at them with Arcanopulse, but dont hesitate when you jungler or tank jumps in, xerath will always surprise you with his damage output when combined with ult.

he is one of the easiest laners i have ever seen due to his ability to be able to damage ALL of the minions at once. you only have to throw one out whenever a minion gets low however so dont go and spam his Q ability early on you WILL run out of mana. just one Q every now and then is fine, even better if you can manage to hit your opponent with it especially after lvl 3 when you get Locus of Mana.