Champion Throwback: Urgot

Thinking back to my little Rammus writing I looked for more champions who I used to see a lot but have since never been seen much, and after looking up some stats I found Urgot was one of the least played champions right now. I remember pro players playing him as an ADC one or two times in Season 2 and I've even seen Imaqtpie play him on his stream a little bit a few months ago. So naturally I decided to find out why he became one of the least played champions.

I play ADC a decent amount so I had decent masteries and runes, just going for a simple 21/9/0 with AD, armor and magic resist runes. Generally (at first) I treated Urgot like any other ADC just to see how he compared.

As is likely that most people won’t be quite sure on what Urgot’s abilities are, so I’ll quickly run over them before I getting into more detail:

Passive - Zaun-Touched Bolt Augmenter

Urgot's autoattacks and Acid Hunter (Q) reduce all damage that his target deals by 15% for 2.5 seconds.

Q - Acid Hunter

Urgot fires a missile in a straight line towards the cursor, dealing damage to the first enemy it hits with his passive also applied. If the cursor is over a target effected by Noxian Corrosive Charge (E) the missile is locked on and will always hit (if within range).

W - Terror Capacitor

Urgot gains a shield for 7 seconds, while active all auto attacks and Acid Hunter (Q) missiles apply a slow for 1.5 seconds.

E - Noxian Corrosive Charge

Urgot launches a corrosive charge which explodes on all enemies in a small area, all enemies hit take damage over time as well as have their armor reduced. This corrosive effect also allows the Acid Hunter (Q) lock-ons.

R - Hyper-Kinetic Position Reverser

Urgot suppresses a target and channels this ability for 1 second, then switches their positions around, applying a 40% slow to the enemy for 3 seconds. Urgot also gains bonus armor and magic resist from the beginning of the channel for 5 seconds.

Once again again it's only a simple overview and more info such as scaling can be found on other sites however it's enough to get a quick understanding of Urgot and how he works - the most important aspect being the E - Q spam combo. 

One of my games had a fairly odd support in my lane (Miss Fortune) however my early game was fairly decent. Building general ADCs item quickly made me realize mana is really needed on Urgot so while you get decent damage you really need to pack something like mana potions or just have a Soraka supporting you (though that’s a very specific way to deal with it). I think Urgot & Soraka is definitely the best way to use Urgot, lots of sustain as well as the damage and range from Urgot, this is a pretty hard lane to counter but it’s definitely possible.

I decided to try out a blue build on Urgot (Mainly cooldown reduction and mana items with a little AD to top it off, of course called a blue build as pretty much all the standard items for it are blue) which worked decently well but as can be said for most champions, a blue build needs a nice early lead to be able to work well.

Urgot’s early damage is fairly lacking compared to most common ADCs, though his range if you land an E and poke with Q is very good and it does help get a little damage off while you can stay safely behind minions. Urgot has a lot of utility and debuffs built into his kit which while this does trade off pure single target damage in team fights or ganks it can really give you an edge.

With damage reduction, damage over time and slows all built into his kit this can definitely be a good benefit for you, but generally I think champions such as Ezreal or Vayne’s high damage output can simply outmatch an Urgot.

His ultimate feels fairly useless especially at level one where the range is pretty small. The ability to switch you and an enemy’s places around shouldn’t be underestimated - supressing, placing an enemy under tower and then applying the slow is great along with your added resistances after it – however it just lacks a lot of useful ness. Ezreals global ultimate or Vayne’s steroid and small stealth application is just much more useful in locking down an enemy and taking them out, Urgot’s ultimate simply a pretty specific situation to be able to use it. His E is also fairly hard to land as it has a long travel time and is quite easily dodged, a nice tactic is to active your W and then auto attack once for a slow, then land your E, although this really can make his huge range a little less useful.

Urgot has a few advantages over very squishy or short range ADCs, switching a Vayne into your team or simply using his E/Q combo can be deadly to squisher champions such as her. He’s pretty decent at countering a lot of ADCs but at the same time it doesn’t take much to really fight back at Urgot. He might be tankier than most and have decent range but a simple silence will cancel his ult or even a spell shield. It’s really a very risky pick with Urgot and you’d probably end up relying on the enemy team simply not knowing how to play against him.

Generally I like to think Urgot is a very situational pick and one that requires some learning and getting used too. He has the potential to stomp his lane and completely shut down the enemy carry but at the same time it could easily turn the complete opposite way and make laning incredibly difficult. I actually think I was playing him wrong, Urgot is not really an ADC and is much better suited to playing as an AD brusier or just generally a champion to try and out poke the enemy carry and attempt to shut them down, in this sense I think Urgot is fairly unique and very interesting to play as it's a slightly different playstyle to what most people may be used to.

A good Urgot player with a support such as Soraka will probably have a fairly fun and easy time in lane and his team fighting ability with both the ranged poke and ability to initiate make him both a strong and often viable champion, however a lot of the time a straight up damage ADC will just be more useful to the team when all you want to do is shut down the enemy carries.
I’d love to see Urgot played more in both professional and normal games however I can’t really see it - but who knows what Season 4 might hold in terms of gameplay changes and meta switch ups.