User blog comment:Megames1/Against the Meta- (Insert X Champion) is UP/OP because (Insert Y Reason)+More/@comment-5263329-20121111093248

I feel that Xerath can be slightly underpowered in certain situations because of a few reasons:

One of them is because his spell cast animations are a bit long, resulting in some difficulty landing his 4 skillshots (Arcanopulse and 3 Arcane Barrage casts) compared to other AP carries, especially on highly-mobile champions and is thus not as effective against the current meta of many champions with gap-closers or other high-mobility skills. He also gets creamed by many of those champions despite him having his armor-boosting passive.

He is also not that great of a minion farmer with his current kit, not including his ultimate (Rank 5 Arcanopulse cast on the 3 ranged minions leave them with a sliver of health that requires an autoattack to finish them off) compared to other AP carries such as Cassiopeia or Orianna who do not require use of their ultimates to farm a minion wave purely with abilities.

Finally, his only crowd control is a conditional stun like Brand's which is quite frankly harder to land than many other champion's crowd controls such as Annie's much more reliable stun, which renders him not the most useful champion to have in teamfights.

My point is not that he's a trash champion, but there are better alternatives that can do Xerath's job better or offers more utility to their team, such as Gragas if you require high-ranged poke, LeBlanc if you require pure burst or Orianna if you require a lot of team utility.

He's still a fun champion and you cannot ignore his high burst (1330 +320% AP magic damage with his 3 damage abilties maxed out and 1060 +240% AP magic damage being AoE) and long range that few other mages can beat, combined with his innate magic resist penetration which still makes him quite a fearsome AP carry.