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Hello and welcome to my Xin Zhao guide, in this guide I will tell you how I play. When I play him I mostly jungle, mainly because I feel that he can't use his full potential on top lane, his ganks are always strong even before level 6, but once he hits level 6 his ganks will be extremely lethal. Xin Zhao is one of those champions who doesn't really need damage items to do damage, he relies more on his CC and base damage to kill an enemy while sustaining himself, he can easily go 1 v 2 or 2 v 3 with only a slight lead before the fight. Lets get on with the guide // SPECIAL THANKS: Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.

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Pros + Really tanky without too much items. + Good amount of sustain. + Good initiator. + Good base damage. + Low cooldowns, even lower with Q. + Can dive ADC and knock away the other team.

Cons - A bit mana hungry early game. - Weak if counter jungled a lot early. - Can "Save" enemies with ultimate.

Inspirational Music

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Explanation: I take 9/21/0 in my masteries to help me with early jungling and late game tankyness, you don't really need that much in Offense as Xin Zhao, you can practically go 0/30/0, but the extra Attack speed and armor penetration doesn't hurt.

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• Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: Take these for a huge boost in attack damage which will help your early jungling and ganks.
  
• Greater Mark of Attack Damage: These have the same reason as the quints, can be changed out for Greater mark of Armor Penetration.
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: Pretty simple explanation, mages don't do that much damage early, these are better than Greater Glyph of Magic Resist by level 11.
  
• Greater Seal of Armor: These are for your early game, your armor is too low without these to jungle effectively.

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Smite: Smite is a must for all junglers, even though you can jungle without it you won't be able to secure buffs/baron or dragon

Flash: A good choice for Xin Zhao, making it so you can pull of "flash"y moves, it is a great offensive and defensive spell, take it or leave it.

Exhaust: Exhaust is a really good summoner spell for Xin Zhao, along with your passive Challenge the armor reduction is huge. The attack speed reduction is really good as well

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• CHALLENGE: This is your passive ability, it reduces the armor the target that you attack, if you use Crescent Sweep among other who doesn't have the mark they will get knocked back.
  
• THREE TALON STRIKE (Q): Your Q spell, your three next basic attacks does extra damage and the third will knock up the target into the air, the damage will get procced on towers as well, the three strikes also reduces the CD of all other spells by 1 second each.
  
• BATTLE CRY (W): Your W ability, it gives you passively health back every third hit, when activated boosts your attack speed a huge amount. The heal works on all structures.
  
• AUDACIOUS CHARGE (E): Your E ability, it is a single target dash who also will slow all units around the target for a percentage amount, has fairly low CD, use it as much as possible.
  
• CRESCENT SWEEP (R): Knocks back all enemy units within range, except the one with who is Challengeed, they also take percentage based damage, you get bonus armor and magic resistance per champion hit.

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The reason I max Audacious Charge over Three Talon Strike is that it is more useful for you during ganks, it will have a really low CD, a huge slow and a good amount of burst damage, Three Talon Strike deals more damage on paper, but when it comes to the real thing Audacious Charge is always better to max first.

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Well, items on Xin Zhao is really, really dependent on the situation, you will often have to adapt your build every game to your opposition, sometimes you want more armor than magic resist, other times you want to balance them, sometimes you wont be needing it at all so you can go full damage instead. As I said earlier, it depends on the situation, if you already have a tank you don't have to go as tanky as if you already had an offtank where you can go tankier instead of more damage.

Here I have included a few builds that I usually run, these work great depending on the situation


This one is more for when you are up against a balanced team and you have another offtank in your team, that is why I postpone getting damage until the sixth item, usually you wont have time to get it.

This one is more focused on Mr, which makes it better against Dual AP comps or Heavy AP damage teams.

This is one here is focused on Armor, making it more useful against teams with a lot of physical damage.

If you are the one who have to be the tank, this is usually the build I'd go, it gives you a somewhat mixed amount of resistances while getting around 3k HP.

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Xin Zhao is really good when it comes to teamfights, he can jump in on the enemy ADC and then push away everyone from him, or you can go defensively and peel anyone trying to kill your ADC, if you are fed enough you can even try and kill their tanks and then go for their ADC or APC, this as well as items is really depending on the situation.

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This is where you and your team should Sight Ward.
Yellow: Vital to protect the jungler on your team
Blue: For protection depending on which lane you're on
Red: To guard Dragon and Baron
Orange: In order to Counter-Jungle

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Conclusion: Xin Zhao is a mobile fighter/tank who excels at killing squishy targets while taking low amounts of damage. // SPECIAL THANKS: Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.