FOTM Report: Xerath Mid | Patch 26.15 Build and Runes

Patch 26.15 never mentions Xerath once. It spent the whole patch nerfing the champions who keep him honest, and he climbed into God Tier without lifting a finger.

As of Patch 26.15, Xerath sits in God Tier on the solo queue tier list with no changelog entry of his own. Riot reined in Locke, Naafiri and Sylas in the same patch, and those are three of the exact champions built to punish a mage who can't move. He's now one of the three most banned champions in the game.

Check out the details on runes and builds below!

FOTM Report

Xerath Mid

God Tier · Patch 26.15

Patch 26.15 never mentions Xerath once. It spent the whole patch nerfing the champions who keep him honest, and he climbed into God Tier without lifting a finger.

This is worth saying plainly before anything else, because it changes how you should read the climb. Nothing about Xerath is stronger than it was two patches ago. His abilities deal the same damage, cost the same mana, and cover the same distance. What changed is the list of champions who can walk through that range and end the fight in two seconds, and that list got shorter. A champion whose entire game plan is "stand further back than the other person can reach" gets better every time Riot takes power away from the people doing the reaching.

How to Play Xerath

Abilities: Q, W, E then prioritize R > Q > W > E
Summoner Spells
Starting Items
Strategy: Hold the wave where you can charge Arcanopulse [Q] from its full length, open trades with Eye of Destruction [W] so the slow guarantees the follow up, and keep Shocking Orb [E] for the person who walks at you rather than spending it on poke
Core Items

Xerath Rune Setup

Primary: Arcane Comet, Manaflow Band, Transcendence, Scorch

Secondary: Presence of Mind, Coup de Grace

When to Pick Xerath

Pick him into an enemy mid laner who has to walk forward to do damage and has no dash to get there. Control mages, mages who want to trade at their own range, and melee mid laners all lose the same way, which is that they spend the first ten minutes choosing between farming and taking Arcanopulse [Q] to the face. That matchup is more common this patch than it was last patch, because the champions that used to answer it are the ones Riot just nerfed.

He's also worth the pick when your team has crowd control and nothing that reaches. A composition with an engage jungler and a frontline top laner gets far more out of Xerath than one that already has three ranged carries, because every stun and knockup your team lands turns a dodgeable skillshot into a guaranteed one. Avoid him when the enemy draft has two or more champions who can cross the gap on a cooldown, and avoid him if you aren't comfortable playing the entire game one bad step away from dying, because that's the honest description of this champion.

How It Works

Everything Outranges Everything

Shocking Orb [E] reaches 1050 units and Eye of Destruction [W] reaches 1000, which puts both of them past the range of most of the mid lane. Arcanopulse [Q] charges to a longer beam than either. The practical effect is that Xerath doesn't need to win a trade, because a trade requires two people in range of each other and he can simply refuse to be the second one.

A Stun That Answers the Dive

Shocking Orb [E] is the only defensive tool in the kit and it's a good one. It stuns for longer the further it travels, so the person sprinting at you from across the lane eats the longest version of it. Holding it for that moment instead of throwing it into a minion wave is most of the difference between a Xerath who dies to ganks and one who doesn't.

An Ultimate That Plays Other Lanes

Rite of the Arcane [R] fires across most of the map, so Xerath contributes to a bot lane fight he's nowhere near. Mana Surge [Passive] keeps him topped up between waves, which means he can hold priority mid, shove, and still have the mana to fire a full ultimate at a skirmish happening two screens away.

The Patch Helped Him Without Naming Him

Read the 26.15 champion list and the pattern is hard to miss. Locke lost base health, damage on Ritual Nails [Q] and most of the move speed on Soul Ignition [W]. Naafiri lost damage on Hounds' Pursuit [R] and had its ratio moved to bonus attack damage, which specifically hurts the chained ultimates she was using to run people down. Sylas lost damage on the first lash of Chain Lash [Q], which is the button he uses to bully a lane. Every one of those champions solves the Xerath problem the same way, by closing the distance and killing him before the second cast, and all three got worse at it in the same patch.

The Bel'Veth rework pushes in the same direction from the jungle. Her level three invade is gone and her early clear got noticeably slower, so the jungle is a little less likely to arrive in your lane at the exact moment you're standing still charging a spell. None of this is a Xerath buff on paper. All of it is a Xerath buff in practice.

The other half of the story is the bot lane, where Xerath has quietly become a real pick rather than a joke. The lane is full of mages right now, and an artillery mage next to a support who can peel is a miserable thing to walk into with a marksman. If you'd rather take the pick somewhere the enemy has less mobility on average, that version works too, and the build below doesn't change.

Potential Pitfalls

Every Button Is a Skillshot Somebody Can Sidestep

This is the reason to keep expectations honest. Xerath produces better results in average solo queue games than he does at the top of the ladder, and the explanation isn't complicated: Arcanopulse [Q] telegraphs itself with a charge animation, Eye of Destruction [W] lands on a delay, and Shocking Orb [E] is a slow travelling orb. Players who respect the range and hold a sidestep take a fraction of the damage that players who stand still do. If you're climbing through lobbies where nobody dodges, he's enormous. Against opponents who do, he's a lane bully who stops mattering the moment somebody reaches him.

You Are Not Getting Him Very Often

Only Locke and Mel get banned more than Xerath right now, which means the champion is unavailable in a large share of your games. That's a real cost of picking up a ban magnet as your main. It also cuts the other way in a useful sense: if the enemy team spent a ban on him and you were planning to first pick something else anyway, that's a ban they didn't spend on the rest of your draft.

Zero Movement, and the Assassins Are Nerfed, Not Deleted

Xerath has no dash, no blink, and no move speed steroid, and Rite of the Arcane [R] pins him to one spot for the duration. Locke, Naafiri and Sylas all lost power this patch and all three still kill him if they get on top of him, and nothing in 26.15 touched Zed, Fizz or Katarina at all. Warding for the flank and buying Zhonya's Hourglass on schedule aren't optional items on a checklist, they're the champion. Our Xerath counters breakdown covers the rest of the list if you're on the other side of this matchup.

Conclusions

Xerath is the clearest example this patch of a champion rising on somebody else's changelog. He did nothing differently, the mid lane simply got safer for a champion who needs it to be safe, and the tier list moved him up accordingly. That kind of climb tends to last exactly as long as the surrounding nerfs do, so this is a good patch to play him and a bad patch to assume he will still be here in three.

If you like holding a lane at arm's length, punishing every mistake from further away than the other person can answer, and firing an ultimate into a fight you aren't in, he's one of the best picks available right now. Just go in knowing the ban screen will take him away more often than any lane opponent will.

Suggested Tier: God Tier