User blog comment:ClariS/Why Xerath's Passive is Bad/@comment-4929329-20130317232050/@comment-4881935-20130318025202

most of your poke and siege comes in area where you know your enemy team is forced to hold up, like towers and baron. It's not that hard to get vision at those location or even randomly guess where they are. You most likely won't burst someone down until your team engage to get full vision, but you will able to poke. And with W's low cooldown of 4 second, it's very easy to use the bonus movement speed to re position yourself when you need to.

But honestly, if you're not going to take full advantage of that massive range, then you aren't making the best use of this champion as Lotus best assist is the magic pen and range.

If your tankline can hold their ground half-decently, then you will be safe in most situation as it's not easy to jump through the tank line (unless the enemy is confident enough to fight both you and the AD carry).

And the second thing is, you don't have to stay rooted for more than 2 seconds at any given time. You pop it on, use E,Q, and one R (or maybe two). Release it to re position, and then use it again to repeat everything. It doesn't require a long period.