User blog comment:Emptylord/2017 Patch Notes (Unofficial)/@comment-12904660-20170625181923

May I add some ideas that I had for Xerath for a while now?

Perhaps it would be cool if Xerath's ultimate does indeed function more like his old Locus of Power, like you're trying to aim at. What I came up with, is that Rite of the Arcane locks Xerath in place for a fixed amount of time, and Xerath cannot end the effect prematurely. Xerath players will have to carefully pick the place and time they want to unleash their artillery. Furthermore, Xerath is revealed to the enemy team for the duration. Xerath is however, only revealing himself and nothing else standing next to him. Furthermore, he is untargetable unless he is revealed by normal vision sources. (No free nocturne ults)

Rite of the Arcane is a very conditional skill and requires carefull strategy. It is better to not use it if the scenario is not safe enough. As such the cooldown would be rather low, maybe 30 seconds. Since Rite of the Arcane empowers Xerath's regular abilities, and he does sort of have this 'ultimate mage' theme going, Rite of the Arcane has a second cast with an individual cooldown. This spell would share it's cooldown with other high cooldown ultimates. I don't realy have a solid idea of what it could be, perhaps something in the line of the Obliterator Lazer from the Nexus Siege gamemode. Regardless he would have an high cooldown ultimate ability on top of Rite of the Arcane.

For 'Mage Chains' I had some ideas aswell. Imagine Xerath's current E. Xerath fires an orb in a targeted direction, that hits the first enemy champion. It moves slightly slower then on live, but it passes through minions. Instead of stunning it now roots, because thats more 'chain-y'. When used during Rite of the Arcane, it becomes more powerful but less reliable. Now, the orb gains a massive range increase, to the point where it can almost reach the outer lanes from midlane. The orb now has a turn rate, and changes course to the left or right if the player's mouse is close to the orb and on the associated side. The orb cannot pass through terrain.

When the orb hits an enemy champion, he is chained to the area he was first hit, but is allowed to move in a small circular area like Hextech Ultimatum. The chained enemy cannot leave the area by movement commands, but should he use a dash that takes him over the edge of the cage, the chain breaks, deals additional damage and knocks him down. The effect would be much longer then the basic non-empowered mage chains. Maybe eight seconds. (overkill?)

Lastly I realy think the concept of overcharging his Arcano Pulse could have interesting potential. I can imagine that during Rite of the Arcane, Xerath could overcharge Arcano Pulse, which would increase and lock Xerath into a longer charge time if he passes an initial period of charging Arcano Pulse. He would be unable to move the to be targeted area, but the damage of the spell would be substantionaly increased.

What I try to aim at is to give Xerath more power at the cost of counterplay. Xerath being able to keep an enemy locked down for an extensive period of time, from far away if he lands his orb. His enemy, being able to dodge incoming spells from Xerath while he is stuck in a small area, or leave the area but sacraficing his dashing ability. Xerath gaining more damage on his Arcano Pulse at the cost of reliability. Xerath gaining increased range (duh) from Rite of the Arcane on all of his basic spells at the cost of making himself easy prey if they can reach him.