Talk:Xin Zhao/@comment-9048637-20130529123934

I must say, I don't get why so many people play Xin as a tanky bruiser. It's just not his forte. If you build items like Locket of the Iron Solari, Black Cleaver and Randuin's on him as your core... well, alright, you might be able to tank a little damage, but so could an ADC if they built that way, and you wouldn't call that maximizing their potential. I believe that Xin is best built as a damage-heavy assassin who can, well, do what assassins do: skulk around on the sidelines and then leap at an undefended squishy to neutralize them.

My Xin build has three core items: Blade of the Ruined King, Frozen Mallet and Zephyr. That's because I find Xin likes one stat more than any other: attack speed. That lets him spam Q faster, triggers the self-heal on W more often and generally just maximizes both his offence and defence. Frozen Mallet is usually all I need by way of defences; the slow is also invaluable for stopping enemies from fleeing. Zephyr, as well as AS, gives him the MS he needs to get in position properly and some Tenacity to stop CC from shutting him down (which, like a lot of champs, he is very vulnerable to). And Blade of the Ruined King gives him life-steal as well as an active to chew give him even more sustain and chasing power.

After those core items, I usually just build straight damage - Youmuu's Ghostblade, Last Whisper, maybe an Infinty Edge if I've gotten really fed - whatever the enemy team comp calls for. With this build, and some good positioning skills, one can do horrible things in team-fights. It's not just me, either; I very recently watched a ranked game featuring a Xin Zhao on top who managed to get a simply beautiful pentakill using basically the exact same build as I just described, which won his team the game in very short order. He hadn't even gotten particularly fed, either; his laning phase was very even, and he only started really picked up gold once teamfights rolled around. But because he actually had some damage rather than just being a CC-less meatshield (alright, he has the knockback on his ult, and the pitiful slow on his E, but that's hardly much), he was able to become a real presence once that phase of the game started.

Plus you'll be a split pushing machine. Full-build Xin as just described can take down both minion waves and turrets like nobody's business, even tanking the latter if there's no one around to interfere because he can just take them down so damn quickly. So, what gives, Leaguers? Why don't more people build Xin this way?