Talk:Xerath/@comment-2179912-20150328180311/@comment-24385282-20150806173003

Many people who aren't even professionals can land at least 2 Arcane Barrages fairly consistently. It can be dodged but the indicator is only there for less than a second before it hits you, so your reaction time has to be better than his aiming skill (and honestly if you have bad aim why are you playing Xerath). Landing even one of these gives you somewhat close damage to Ziggs' ult around the edges and Lux ult, around 60-70% of their damage in most cases.

Let's switch focus to Ziggs. A very long delay, an obvious indicator on his ultimate. Unless you're hard cc'd by something for at least a second or two, you're not getting hit by the epicenter damage under any circumstances (excluding blindness). A Xerath who lands his Shocking Orb has a guaranteed chance of landing at least one Arcane Barrage before the stun ends, probably 2 with a max range stun. 2 Arcane Barrages deal more damage than even epicenter Ziggs' ult, which should be impossible for him to land on his own anyway.

And now let's check on Lux. She has to land at least one ability before her ult can hit a target. Let's be honest, if she doesn't, not only will it do greatly decreased damage, but it proabbly won't even hit. If she chooses to use E, which is the easiest to hit, her target is slowed at worse, and not even for a very large slow. And if she detonates the Singularity, her target is no longer slowed, but if she doesn't detonate, the mark isn't applied from her passive.

Best case scenario is landing Light Binding before using Final Spark or Lucent Singularity, it's the only way to guarantee her ultimate hitting (same as with Xerath's Shocking Orb). Only then will she be dealing 700(+95% AP), but in a similar scenario, Xerath will be dealing 600(+86.6% AP) with his ultimate. Not a huge difference, especially considering Lux will likely have less AP (she generally needs a mana regen item, Xerath does not).

Furthermore, Xerath has something the other two don't. Second chances - two in fact. If Lux misses one shot of her ultimate, it's on cooldown. If Ziggs misses one shot of his ultimate, it's on cooldown. If Xerath misses on shot of his ultimate, he gets 2 extra tries. Let's also remember that, as I said before, he'll probably get more AP than either of them.