XERATH Guide - by dignitas/Shiphtur
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Xerath |
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Shiphtur explains everything about how he plays Xerath and |
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Special thanks to Jason 'Hunterkiller00' Mulcahy and |
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Related links: |
INTRODUCTION
Xerath has long been a popular choice in the middle lane due to the versatility he provides his teams. With a strong laning phase that allows him to bully out other Mages with an almost limitless font of mana provided by his passive, Mana Surge, very strong lane clear with his area-of-effect spells, and the ability to assist his teammates across the map with Rite of the Arcane, Xerath is able to contribute to every aspect of his team’s game. This guide made by Danny "Shiphtur” Le hopes to show you Xerath’s overall strength and how you can bolster your team with him.
Why You Should Play Xerath – If certain characters have singular strengths, Xerath’s strength is his ability to meld into any team composition or face any matchup. His long range and area-of-effect damage with Arcanopulse [Q], Eye of Destruction [W] and Arcane Barrage [R] allow him to quickly clear enemy minions and this high damage combined with the mana renewal provided by Mana Surge allows him to bully out almost any enemy mid-laner. His high damage as well as the lock-down provided by Shocking Orb [E], encourages Junglers to gank for you, and his zoning potential makes him a strong teamfighting champion. His late game is almost impossible to deal with and once he gets ahead in lane he's able to completely control his lane opponent.
Why You Shouldn’t Play Xerath – For a character with so many strengths, he has a fairly fatal weakness in his lack of mobility. As such, Xerath is weak to teams with lots of hard engage and being locked down with substantial crowd control effects. Characters with hard CC such as Annie or characters with characters that can quickly close the distance can make Xerath’s day incredibly difficult.
RUNES
For your reds, you’re going to go with the standard nine Greater Marks of Magic Penetration, standard for AP mid-laners. Your yellows are going to be nine Greater Seals of Scaling Health. These will give you adequate defenses against both AD and AP mids and make you harder to burst down in the late game.
For your blues, you should take five Greater Glyphs of Scaling Ability Power and four Greater Glyphs of Scaling Cooldown Reduction. The reason for the four Cooldown Reduction glyphs is so that you can efficiently get to the 40% cap of Cooldown Reduction with a damage-centric build. At level 18, the four will provide 6.68% cooldown reduction, which with the 3.75% from 3 points in the Sorcery mastery, 10% from the Crest of Insight, and the 20% from the Morellonomicon, will get you to the 40% hard cap while not needing you to invest in a second Cooldown Reduction item.
For your Quintessences, you’re going to pick up three Greater Quintessences of Ability Power, standard for AP mid-laners.
MASTERIES
For masteries, you go a standard 21/0/9 set up, with a focus on magic damage in the offensive tree. You only put three points in Sorcery since the last point would be wasted with our rune setup, and you avoid the Blade Weaving/Spell Weaving tree since autoattacks are not a standard part of your offensive rotation.
SUMMONER SPELLS - Flash & Heal
Flash is picked for obvious reasons – as an immobile Mage that has limited escape capabilities, Flash provides you with the means to escape from the enemy’s attempts to engage on you. You have a few options for your second Summoner Spell, but I suggest Heal or Barrier. As you are immobile, you need one of these two survivability spells to endure the initial burst. Barrier is an acceptable pick against Assassins who won’t let you use Heal effectively (such as LeBlanc or Zed), but I prefer Heal even against them.
SKILL ORDER
Normally, you’re going to want to focus on maxing your Q first. It is your primary poking and farming tool and maxing it first allows you to continuously throw it out towards your enemy. After maxing Q, you want to go into W – it supplements Q’s damage as well as allows you to zone your enemy away from the minion wave. Finally, E is left as a value point, as it’s primary job is to provide you with a stun and its cooldown isn’t substantially shortened by leveling it up early.
This skill order isn’t rigid though. Put a point into E at level three if you expect your Jungler to come and help you,. You can use the stun to follow up on your Jungler’s initation and unload on them. This damage will often result in the enemy at best losing both of their Summoner’s and possibly get you first blood in the mid-lane.
This isn’t the only case in which you want to change your skill order. When facing Yasuo, you want to start with E. Yasuo will start with Sweeping Blade, and E will allow you to interrupt his attempts to go through the minion wave to harass you with it. After starting with E, go Q into W. W is too much damage and provides you with enough threat that you don’t want to skip it in favor of a second level in Q.
Skill Mastery
Mana Surge [Passive]
Xerath’s next basic attack against a non-structure unit will restore 30/33/36/42/48/54/63/72/81/90/102/ 114/126/138/150/165/180/195 mana. This is doubled when the basic attack is against a champion. This passive has a 12 second cooldown.
Mana Surge is what provides Xerath with the ability to sit in lane for protracted period of time and allows him to purchase a much more aggressive item build. All that you need to do to avoid running out of mana is to auto-attack someone whenever the passive is active, and that’s the major pitfall people run into with this passive. Don’t get pigeon-holed into only attacking champions with the passive – whenever it is up, if you can safely auto a champion, do so. If you can’t, auto a minion instead. You don’t want to engage in unfavorable trades in order to regain mana. A bad trade is a bad trade, the mana regained doesn’t compensate for you losing your position in lane.
Arcanopulse [Q]
Xerath starts channeling for 3 seconds. Xerath can move while channeling, but cannot attack or cast his other abilities. Over the first 1.5 seconds of the channel, Arcanopulse's range will gradually increase while his movement speed is slowed by up to 50%. After the 3 seconds, Arcanopulse will cancel and half the mana cost is refunded. After releasing the channel, Xerath fires a beam of energy that deals (80/120/160/200/240 [+75% AP]) damage to all enemies hit.
The primary source of Xerath's laning pressure, Q is his main source of pushing power and poke damage. When thrown, it has no travel time, doing instant damage in the direction it is cast after a short casting animation. The beam is not blocked by abilities that intercept projectiles (Yasuo's Wind Wall and Braum's Unbreakable) and has an incredibly high AP ratio which makes it an excellent asset for sieging down enemy turrets.
Using Q in lane early invariably shoves the lane. With a Fiendish Codex, four ranks in Q will let you kill caster minions in one auto attack and once you get a Needlessly Large Rod it should clean up the back line instantly. Once you get blue buff or Morello's you'll be able to constantly throw it into the wave and it lets you farm from your side of river. Use Q to harass and push the wave, and when your wave hits their turret, back off rather than try for additional harassment under their turret unless they're low enough that a follow-up ultimate should kill them.
Eye of Destruction [W]
Xerath calls down a pillar of arcane energy that strikes the target location after a 0.5 second delay. dealing (60/90/120/150/180 [+60% AP]) and slowing enemies in the area by 10% for 2.5 seconds. Enemies directly hit by the center of the pillar take (90/135/180/225/270 [+90% AP]) damage and are slowed by (60/65/70/75/80)% instead. This slow decays down to 10% over the duration of the slow.
While his W isn't as much of a source of poke damage as your Q, a direct hit with it offers a great deal of burst damage. When you connect with E or your Jungler locks down the enemy mid-laner with hard CC, W offers the most damage and allows you to line up your next Q due to its crippling slow. Outside of its damage, W slows down incoming characters, letting you retreat while throwing out some harassment for free. Once you get Rylai's, W can reliably hit the enemy and chained together with the slow from your Q will allow you to kite the enemy backwards almost indefinitely.
Xerath's W provides vision upon impact, so when going through the Jungle to roam (or counter-roam) throw it into brushes to avoid getting intercepted. If you're going down the river, throw it into the island brush to see if it's pinked - if it is, you can clean it up on the way back to lane.
Shocking Orb [E]
Xerath throws an orb of energy forward in a line that detonates on striking an enemy, dealing (80/110/140/170/200 [+45% AP]) and stunning them for between 0.75 and 1.75 seconds. The stun increases as the orb travels farther.
Shocking Orb [E] is Xerath's only form of hard crowd control, but it's a fairly significant stun. However, the slow projectile speed and long range mean that you're going to seldom hit in lane. The threat of a 2 second stun will force the enemy behind their own minion wave to proactively avoid the Orb. It also provides you a comfortable amount of lock-down when it comes to ganks. Allowing your Jungler to initiate and following up with your E should allow you to get off the rest of your spells and kill (or force a Flash) from your target.
Xerath's E's range also makes it a prime tool for setting up picks over walls and through brushes. Warding aggressively with your Support will allow you to make these sort of plays when the enemy is predicted to challenge a major objective.
Rite of the Arcane/Arcane Barrage [R]
Xerath anchors himself to his location for up to 10 seconds. While anchored, Xerath gains the ability to cast Arcane Barrage up to three times, but is unable to cast his other abilities.
When Xerath casts Arcane Barrage, he fires a blast of arcane energy that strike the earth after 0.6 seconds, dealing (190/245/300 [+43% AP]) magic damage to those within the impace. These shots have (3200/4400/5600) range, and opponents take full damage from repeated hits. Rite of the Arcane can be cancelled early and will end automatically once Arcane Barrage has been cast 3 times. If Rite of the Arcane ends without using a single shot of Arcane Barrage, the cooldown is reduced by 50%. Crowd control effects that would interrupt Xerath will interrupt the spell and put it on cooldown.
His R offers a significant amount of damage right off the bat and allows Xerath to melt down almost any target post-six. What's really significant about it is that, unlike other abilities that have multiple iterances, each shot does full damage to the target. Once you build up a nice amount of Ability Power, R becomes a way to quickly burst down squishy enemy targets and it gives you massive kill potential in lane. In the late game, R threatens so much damage that you can just activate it and force the enemy team off of objectives.
ITEMS
Your initial item buy is the standard Doran’s Ring/Health Potion/Warding Totem buy, except against Kassadin, where you instead start with a Crystalline Flask. From there you want to farm up until you’ve built up more than one thousand gold. Once you’ve built up the gold, you purchase a Fiendish Codex, a Sight Ward, a Vision Ward, and spend the rest of the lot on Health Potions.
The first major item you want to purchase is either a Morellonomicon or an Athene’s Unholy Grail. Currently, you usually want to go into a Morello’s. Mana Surge often gives you enough free mana that the passive of Athene’s isn’t necessary. You only really want to go Athene’s when you are at risk of being hit by the magic damage of both members in a double AP composition.
From there, you want to build into a heavy damage focused build. Your first item after your Morello’s and your Sorcerer’s Shoes is really dependent on your opponent. It’s usually a choice between Rabadon’s Deathcap and Void Staff, and it comes down to your opponent’s Magic Resistance. If your opponents have already invested into it and has around 67 MR, Void Staff is the equivalent of a Deathcap for 1000 less gold.
The other early option is Zhonya’s Hourglass, which is built first situationally, when the enemy has characters with hard or unavoidable engages, such as Zed or Vi. Against Zed, you can build an Armguard early, but against other AD Mids you should be fine building it after your core. If the enemy doesn’t have a hard engage, you can hold off until after your Void and Rabadon’s for your Zhonya’s.
Your boot enchantment will vary based on the status of the game. If you are pushed into your own territory and are dealing with a siege scenario, obviously Homeguard is your first choice. However, during an even game, Alacrity provides you with needed movement speed to mitigate Xerath’s inherent poor mobility. Distortion can also be a good situational pick, especially when you’re facing Flash dependent initiators like Annie or are attempting to avoid large sweeping ultimates like Orianna’s Command: Shockwave.
Your final item is a choice between Rylai’s Crystal Staff and Liandry’s Torment. I prefer the former, as it provides quite a bit of self-peel that will allow you to easily kite away enemy Junglers who attempt to get near you. However, Rylai’s is at its best against teams that rely on dashes or speed boosts to get near you and doesn’t really help you against characters that are able to instantly close the distance, like Kassadin.
MID-LANE MATCHUPS
Part of the reason that Xerath is so popular in professional and solo-queue play is that he has very few bad matchups and he has an almost universal favorable matchup against the entire Mage class of champions. Xerath is strongest against low-to-mid range Mages, like Ryze, Cassiopeia, and Azir. Xerath is able to bully out these characters with the long range on Q and the zoning potential of W.
Xerath’s “bad” matchups aren’t actually that bad in lane. The same bullying is possible against Assassins, using Q to whittle down their health while farming the lane. Since they threaten so much damage post-six, you don’t want to threaten as much with W or E, but beyond that the behavior in lane doesn’t change that much. Just push the lane hard, and then back off as it crashes into the enemy turret. Assassins are strong against you because they are able to get on top of you in skirmishes and teamfights and your low mobility means that you're not able to escape.
JUNGLE MATCHUPS
Picking Xerath allows for a large number of Junglers that have synergy with him. He isn’t too impacted by level six Junglers, as his range allows him to safely farm up until six. Once both he and his partner hit level six, he can use his Jungler’s lockdown to instantly melt the enemy with a barrage of skills, finishing them off with R. Early game Junglers also compliment Xerath, as his early game lane presence allows him to bully out potential challengers and kill off level three/four ganks as well.
If there is a Jungler that Xerath doesn’t work well with, it’s Lee Sin. It’s a fairly awkward situation in which they both lack reliable CC, and the CC they both have (E and Dragon Kick) do not complement each other. An initiation by Lee will likely mean he’s kicked out of E’s path, and it’s hard for Xerath to be the one to set up the gank, as a move to open space telegraphs an attempt to stun the opponent.
Unlike Xerath’s “bad” mid-lane matchups, there are some Junglers that can punish Xerath’s lack of mobility. Vi, Pantheon and Jarvan IV are all able to put substantial CC to lock you up, and are able to close onto you very quickly. Jarvan is the prime suspect here, as even stunning him during Flag-Staff doesn’t prevent the CC, and Cataclysm almost automatically drains your Flash. The only way to mitigate the effects that these Junglers have on you is to ward early and often. When you choose to ward, ward before you push – pushing and then retreating to ward is a prime opportunity for the enemy to gank you, as they were already closing in to gank.
VIDEO COMMENTARY
CONCLUSION
Xerath is an all-around strong character with the ability to become a late game monster who obliterates the enemy’s back line from long range. His strong laning phase and excellent wave clear make him an excellent choice on both offensive and defensive teams, and his ability pool is equally at home in poke comps as well as teamfight oriented compositions. He has significant issues against teams that are able to quickly lock him down and dispatch him, making him weak to teams with Sivir, Annie, and a large number of initiators from the Jungle. However, if he is allowed to run unchecked, or if his team is able to keep those initiators away from him, he can become a hard carry that single-handedly drags his team to victory.