I'm Adamonias, I have 700K mastery on my main Xerath account as well as 3 other Xerath only accounts. I'm not a challenger player or even in the top 10% of players but I have played ALOT of Xerath and want to share my insight.

For people who have not played this champion or other artillery mages before here are some fundamentals to understand coming into games on Xerath.

Firstly; Xerath is one of a minority of champions on the game with ONLY skillshots in his kit, which means it is entirely possible to miss EVERYTHING in a fight; especially into high mobility champions with a good gap close, and if you miss ALL your damage in a team fight especially late-game you can actually LOSE the game for your team, unlike an ADC who can (if fed enough) just stand still and turret mode auto if there's a big frontline and peel. Now you might think that this means the most important skill is LANDING your ablities but this is actually a fallacy. Like most things in life, this simple concept has a lot of depth. I myself come from a FPS background origionally; allways playing high skillcap glass cannons; McRee(Cassidy now) in overwatch for example, and used to tilt off the face of the earth when i missed a series of shots that could've prevented my death. It wasn't until a good friend of mine pointed out an obvious flaw with this logic. The problem wasnt the fact that I couldnt his a 360 flick headshot onto a blinking tracer who apeared infront of me, the problem was that I put myself into positions where thats what i was requireing myself to do to survive. Xerath is the penultimate example of this; if you are putting yourself into positions where you HAVE to pixel perfect land everything to survive, then you're fundamentally missplaying this champion. Xerath is a game of patience and control; especially once you start versing people with half decent movement and skill.

Seccondly; The idea of trading is relelvent for alot of champions; obviously alot in toplane and even so in botlane; for Xerath (and a number of mages mid) the idea of trading abilites is a bit of a fallacy. In 90% of situations if you are trading abilities for abilities you are losing; Xerath requires you to take unfair/one sided trades. He is built around the idea of you hitting them when they CAN'T hit you back, and this is the reason he is such a safe champion; where other mages still have to walk into that assassins effective range; xerath can farm very well while never even being able to be traded on.

Thirdly; Xerath plays very similarly in almost every matchup. ie; poke and use your rangea advantage; however the skill in this champions laning phase is identifying the threats and playing around them, to see how much you can push that line of wringing out every minor advantage.

Fourthly; unlike alot of midlaners; Xerath can almost never sidelane. Cathing crashing waves is obviously fine; but if you're pushed up to their T2 tower and theres ANY sort of assassin or high mobility bruiser in the game you're trolling. Once your team wants to come mid you have 2 options; xeraths seige is some of the best in the game, so seiging and poking them under tower is highly impactful. Otherwise Xerah at 1 or 2 items can easily out waveclear their botlane; so sitting and just not letting mid waves crash while the other team looks angrily at you mid is totally viable if it can give your toplaner or bot lane split push time to take towers.

Ludens is the go-to Xerath mythic for 3 reasons. 1: Easier Waveclear with the passive often cleaning up a few straggler minions, as well 2: More Upfront Burst with your poke. 3: Magic Pen. Which means with Sorc boots and shadow flame you'll be doing near true damage to people who have not built MR

Liandry's is not as good as Ludens UNLESS the enemy team has 3 or more tanks generally. Its % burn is just not as valuable usually.

Ludens is the go-to Xerath mythic for 3 reasons. 1: Easier Waveclear with the passive often cleaning up a few straggler minions, as well 2: More Upfront Burst with your poke. 3: Magic Pen. Which means with Sorc boots and shadow flame you'll be doing near true damage to people who have not built MR

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