Talk:Xerath/@comment-24055932-20150825112255/@comment-24055932-20150826123305

You can't count his passive as a "feature", because actually it is a limitation. Riot looked for a way to force Xerath to go into AA range of minions or champions, so they highered his mana costs to a laughable amount and counter-acted this by giving him a passive that refills his mana on auto-attacks. Rather than one of his strong points, it's one of his weak points. Besides that you have to go into the danger zone for mana, just imagine being zoned by an assassin. Even with a mana regen item you'll run oom after merely 2 or 3 waves.

And I don't say "Xerath" is like any other mage at all. I say Xerath is worse than his counterparts. Xerath is by far the most aggressive of the long range mages, having a kit designed entirely to fire AoE to hit the one target you want to hit, sacrificing mobility and safety for better odds of hitting that target. So if Xerath actually can "do his thing", being a squishy on the opposite is a hell of a task. But nobody ever let's you do this. Just one bruiser or tank in your face and you are forced to fight this guy, because with your kit, you can't outmanouver anybody. Unluckily, Xerath isn't made to fight tanks/bruisers. He needs insane protection or has to step down on casting to survive, and even if, the damage dealt isn't all that impressive.

Ziggs on the other side has a harder time hitting his Q, but offers with W and E two strong abilities to zone his opponents away from him and the other squishies (unlike Xerath's w/e, those spells are persistent, and can therefore both inhibt the enemies movement on hit, or simply force them to go around the obstacle). He synergizes just as well as Xerath with hard CC, but can also fare well against bruisers or tanks, as his Q is almost instant and he can hit & run while staying out of their dash range. He is hardly mana reliant (Athenes, and maybe a blue, and you can cast all day), his waveclear is just as good as Xeraths, he has no problems laning if he is zoned away from minions. His ganks are more powerfull, and he is safer overall.