Xerath Build Guide by Zorin1

Introduction

Hi this is my first build. I dunno if people will like it but it's been pretty effective for me and I thought I'd share it so I hope you guys get some use out of it. Xerath is all about his abilities and this build allows you to maximise this with low ability cooldowns which means you can use him to his fullest potential. I build him for maximum damage with very little tank making him quite squishy but if you play him from behind the fights you should make a nice addition to any team fight nuking from afar.

Summoner Spells

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OR

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Exhaust is great to have in the situation where a melee dps you dont want getting close to you actually manages to and you have to fight because it reduces their damage output so greatly and can turn fights around for you in no time. Not to mention it can stuff a lot of people and help with ganks etc so it's a great spell overall.

Flash and Ghost are as you know just great for escaping which is often necessary as Xerath because he's quite often focused in team fights so taking both of these is also something you may want to consider depending on how good you consider yourself at getting out of trouble.

Masteries

Pretty standard 9-0-21 masteries to maximise on spell penetration and general utilities.

Runes

Again standard caster setup Magic pen, Mana Regen and AP. Mana regen because with the low cooldowns you'll want to be spamming the abilities. I'd say feel free to play around with the mana regens here since gives you ok mana regen fairly quickly but personally I like to make sure by having the runes too.

Skill Levelling Sequence

Rank your Q up with priority. By level 3 or 4 have a point in all 3. If you're under pressure early then you may need to pop a point into W LOCUS OF POWER at level 2 just so you can poke or still farm incase you're getting zoned. Otherwise I generally will rank Q at lvl 1 and 3 with a point in E Mage Chains at level 2. I put lvl 4's point into W LOCUS OF POWER and 5 goes into Q Q again ranking R whenever possible of course. By lvl 6 I've 3 points in my Q and it should be knocking out considerable damage, especially once is finished to back it up a bit.

Once you're lvl 6, finish ranking up Q and then I prioritise E Mage Chains and finally W LOCUS OF POWER.

Skill Use Sequence

Standard fight sequence for maximum burst damage is:

Mage ChainsE,R,Q,R,R,LOCUS OF POWERW,Q

Explanation:
In a fight I launch Mage Chains first then proc it with to get the Stun and immediately land on the stunned target and this will have them ****ting themselves usually and you then land the 2 remaining blasts on them too for good measure. Then if they're still alive and running away out of normal range hit them with a LOCUS OF POWER, combo as they run to finish them off in most cases.

Also just to point out when laning and harassing the enemy it's best to do it from just outside their vision range so they don't see the Q coming. You can catch them a lot doing this and bring them quite low before launching a final assault with your Mage ChainsE,R,Q ulti stun nuke combo to finish them off if they don't run home to heal up losing time in lane of course.

Items

EARLY GAME

This allows me some lane staying ability and mana regen to allow me to keep poking.

for Mana regen, Ability Power and Cooldown.

Next, usually for even more cooldown but sometimes depending on the game if they have a lot of CC and an AP heavy team I may go for the .

Then finish the

CORE BUILD:

I go for for health AP and the slow making it easier still to proc that stun after I land my E. Rabadon's to obviously give my damage output a proper kick towards where it needs to be for later stages of the game then.

I would also point out that upgrading the into works really nicely on this guy too but personally I like the 75AP and the 20% CDR of over 60AP and 15% of Deathfire since I'm **** for remembering to activate modules sometimes.

LATE GAME:

I go into Void Staff if they're particularly tanky against my AP or Banshee's for defence and then Void staff. You can think about guardian angel too here if you want some defence against AD champs and of course the second life to come back into a fight. It's really optional and situational at this stage. Generally I'll go more defensive if the game isn't going great and more offensive if it is so from that take your pick based on what the enemy team composition is.

Farming

Farming is pretty straight forward with this dude as 2 blasts of your Q will clear most waves completely. Also if you're getting zoned pretty hard which you shouldn't because you should be able to do the zoning with your LOCUS OF POWER and combo but if you are then you can use your LOCUS OF POWER and combo still to farm at extreme ranges nonetheless.

Summary

So all in all this guy is a very squishy champion that takes a lot of skill and and lot of management of his abilities to get the most out of them. Something to be wary of also is not to keep yourself rooted with LOCUS OF POWER too long as you will find yourself locking yourself down too long and allowing enemies to close on you. I tend to quickly LOCUS OF POWER and and then unlock LOCUS OF POWER so as not to get bogged down by an enemy jungler ready for a gank or whatever.

Generally this dude is all about long range harassment and heavy pokes and he's not designed for up close and personal battles whatsoever so keep yourself on the outskirts of any teamfights and you should do fine. Treat him similarly to using him as artillery and heavy long range damage for maximum effect.