User blog comment:Megames1/Against the Meta- Xerath, and More!!/@comment-216.58.59.39-20121020170720

Xerath is sleeper OP, imo. Yes, most of his damaging skills are skilshots, but so are Ezreal's, Ahri's, etc, and they are extremely popular and viable. Yes, he does lack some mobility, but as a guy below me said, he is more mobile than some champs. He also has his epic range to make up for it. If he had high mobility AND epic range, then he would be so broken. And obviously, he has to have counters, and those counters happen to be people with high mobility. esp. high mobility bruisers like Xin. Because of the recent 'mobility creep', he has turned a bit less viable, however he is still strong. Also, he is a bit hard to master, he isn't the traditional mid mage. You have to know when to activate your W and when not to, and when to exit it as well.

Other than that though, I think Xerath is a situational pick- if the enemy team doesn't have many people with big gap closers/you have a champ on you team that can peel very well, Xerath is extremely strong. He has a 3.2 AP ratio on all his spells (for reference, most AP mids have around a 2.6 AP ratio), most of them are AOE, and he has in built magic pen too. Yes, they are skillshots, but in teamfights not many people focus on dodging, and I read somewhere that you would need 600 MS to dodge a Xerath ult placed right on top of you.