League of Legends Releases Xerath, The LoL Siege Tank
After a long three week dry spell without new champions (due to the chaos involved with releasing their new Dominion Map), Riot Games is proud to announce that Xerath, the Magus Ascendant will be joining League of Legends‘ ever growing champion pool.
Xerath plays out like a heroic Starcraft Siege Tank, with the ability to root himself in place to drastically increase the range of his magical bombardments. He is naturally tanky with the ability to convert his AP in armor, and features plenty of combos and stuns to keep his enemies at bay. When combining his ultimate with his range increasing stance, he can truly be considered one of the most dangerous sniping champions in the game. Your turrets will no longer keep you safe against Xerath.
Let’s take a closer look at his skills:
Ascended Form (Passive): Xerath feeds on arcane power, making him increasingly resilient to physical harm. He converts a percentage of his Ability Power into Armor.
Arcanopulse: Fires a long-range beam of energy, dealing magic damage to all targets hit.
Locus of Power: Xerath anchors himself to a source of magical power, increasing the range of all spells and granting him bonus % Magic Penetration. Although he is immobilized while Locus of Power is active, his movement speed increases upon disabling the ability.
Mage Chains: Deals magic damage to an enemy and marks them with Unstable Magic. The next spell Xerath strikes this enemy with stuns them.
Arcane Barrage: Calls down a blast of arcane energy, dealing magic damage to all enemies in an area. May be cast up to three times before going on cooldown.
As you can see from this tool kit, Xerath excels in a long battle of attrition versus a foe. Those unable to spike him down quickly will inevitably be destroyed one poke after another until forced to either B or feed him a kill.
In other news, this patch was less than stellar in balancing as Riot doesn’t want to rock the boat too hard before a few of their upcoming tournaments. However notable nerfs were sent to Lee Sin, Morgana, and Singed, taking away a little bit of their bite from their most overpowered skills.
For a full review of this patch, keep an eye on OnRPG for Jason Harper’s upcoming Xerath review!
