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Chogath is Top-Tier (Again): The Definitive Guide by 5HITCOMBO
Introduction
If you played back during beta, you remember how good Chogath was considered to be pre-nerfs and the introduction of all the new characters. Since the game went live, he’s been nerfed significantly—Rupture’s range was really overpowered then—and other characters have taken over the spotlight. A bunch of the newer players started playing Chogath just because he says nom nom nom, and the general consensus came up that Chogath was a bad character because everyone sucked. I’m here to change that.

I’m going to clear this up right now, because everyone is going to bring it up. This guide is NOT the MFing Chogath. I used that guide when I was starting out with Chogath a long time ago and found it to work great until I got to the mid ELOs. At that point, where you start running into dedicated team comps and tryhards, the MFing Chogath really loses its viability. I started doing the Rod of Ages first build, and it worked—but then I ran into a Cho who completely wrecked me, and he was stacking Mejai’s and Leviathan with a Lich Bane. I asked him about his build and he told me it was his standard AP build. For a long time, I played that Cho, and it worked great. I would take mid lane and get a Feast kill and generally run people over.

If you’re interested in that build, I’ll put it at the end. It’s really fun if you’re playing against mid-level players who will let you get 20 stacks. At that point you can pretty much 2-shot heroes with Rupture/Feast and the game just becomes a huge game of running around tanking 5v1s and hitting things really, really hard.

Cho is my #1 played character with a bit over 210 wins. A few patches back, a bug completely screwed his character model and it became impossible to Feast. I tried the “stand on top of them and hope Feast hits” thing, but it got me killed a lot more than I would usually die because I would have to be inside their group for a feast to hit. I stopped playing Cho for a while.

This patch fixed Feast, and the significant buffs from the patch that messed up his character model came into play. With the addition of Needlessly Large Rod (NLR) as an achievable farming objective, my build has undergone a complete rework. This is the definitive guide to Chogath.


Summoner’s Rift
Summoner Skills, Runes, and Masteries
Ghost/Cleanse: Escape, chase, survive, and surprise. Ignite isn’t good when your finishing blow is Feast and Flash is 1) likely to be removed and 2) nerfed to hell already. Other options are nice, but the sheer utility and synergy of Ghost/Cleanse trumps all.

Flat HP quints, Mpen marks, mp5/lv seals and glyphs. Cooldown reduction, flat or per level, are also acceptable for glyphs. Don’t get caught up in the hp/lv stupidity. The flats for your early game and lane phase are more than enough. Dodge is nice, but mana regen is nicer. This is just what I do, though. There are other arguments which have validity. Whatever works for you.

0/21/9
Defensive:
3/3 Hardiness, 1/3 Resistance, 4/4 Evasion, 1/1 Nimbleness, 3/3 Harden Skin, 2/2 Defensive Mastery, 4/4 Veteran’s Scars, 1/1 Willpower, 1/3 Ardor and 1/1 Tenacity.

Utility:
3/3 Perseverance, 1/1 Haste, 4/4 Awareness and 1/4 in your choice of Mediation, Greed or Utility Mastery. I take Meditation usually.

The Build:
Open Regen Pendant
Boots + NLR + Wards
Merc Treads/Boots of Mobility + Wards
Finish Zhonya’s + Wards
Work towards Warmog’s + Wards
Finish Warmog’s + Wards (do you get it yet?)

From here, the build diverges. Depending on team comp and the situation, you’re going to want these.

If you need…
Mpen: Void Staff + Wards
HP/Slow/AP: Rylai’s+ Wards
Survivability (MR or Armor): Banshee’s, Force of Nature, Thornmail, Guardian Angel (+ Wards)
To get your stacks back: Blue Elixir
Detection: Oracles (Can’t stress how important this is against Teemo, Evelyn, Twitch, Shaco, Akali or even just a team with wards)

Typically, in a game where I’m not particularly concerned about their magic damage or attack damage, I’ll end up with:
Zhonya’s
Mob Boots
Warmog’s
Rylai’s
Guardian Angel
And a slot for wards/elixirs/Oracles—if I know I won’t need the slot and have a ton of gold I get one of the other items (Lich Bane, Thornmail, Banshee’s Veil, Force of Nature). Honestly, I’ve had hour long games where I haven’t filled my last slot out, so you shouldn’t really be concerned about the last slot unless it’s a Thornmail against a bunch of physical DPS.

Strategy:
Cho mid!
Pros: Great farm, fast Feast (6 and 11), good 1v1 game, pretty easy to survive.
Cons: Hard to get ganks off, slow movespeed; if you get nuked early because you made a huge mistake it’s dangerous to bluepill because they might take tower.

(Special note about mid: At level 5 or 6, if your opponent goes back to buy, go to golem and grab the buff. Do this whenever your tower is in no danger. After you do it once or twice you can usually wait in the bottom or top bush for a gank—they won’t be on guard for it. If you get a double kill or somehow force both to leave lane, take the tower with your teammates. Try to have the other lane swing one to the mid to cover if it’s in danger.)

Cho 2v1!
Pros: Feast when your opponents are level 4 (!), lots of HP and built in regen with a ranged AoE knockup-slow skillshot, your jungler gets to jungle.
Cons: Blitzcrank is a pain in the ass to 2v1 against, farm not quite as good as a 1v1 lane, sometimes you’ll get zoned really hard by a combination like Teemo/Ashe or Kat/Pantheon.

Cho 2v2!
Pros: Second-stun combos (Targeted stun + Rupture), GREAT auto-attack damage early due to Vorpal Spikes and having the highest attack damage per level gains in the game, very strong lane presence and control.
Cons: Feast hits 6 when everyone else does, regular farm, less level and item advantage, some doublestun or stun-nuke combos really hurt (Annie/Pantheon? Blitz/Taric?).

Your goal, regardless of what lane you are in, is to avoid dying unless you’re getting a double kill. Don’t ever trade 1-for-1. Chogath isn’t one of those characters that can or should trade 1-for-1. Your value comes from reducing the other team’s effectiveness by a huge factor. To do that, first, feed no deaths.

Your second goal is to farm every single minion you can while maintaining lane control. Sometimes this means you strictly last hit every creep to keep them in the middle of the lane. Sometimes it means clearing a wave immediately to push their tower. Either way, you are Chogath, and you control the flow of the lane, not them.

Your third goal is to harass really, really hard with Rupture and auto-attacks. With your defensive masteries and your passive regen, you should be fine taking a few seconds of damage from creep waves, so if you land a Rupture, go ahead and whack them. You’d be surprised how often people blow ghost or flash to get away from your auto-attack after they realize they’re slowed, and all it takes is one good Rupture to get champions to use their potions. After they run, last hit the creeps for hp/mana. Depending on your lane mate, if you’re in lane, you might have to play more defensively, so just keep your tower safe and your hit points high.

Stay in lane until you’ve farmed a NLR and boots. Buy wards with the leftover gold. If you’re forced back early, get boots and wards. Rushing a NLR is crucial for having +200 damage on your Rupture and Feast during the midgame.

[i]Skill order:[i]
QEQEQRQWQWRWWWEREE, pretty much always. If it’s hard for you to remember, QEQEQR and then R>Q>W>E. The reason is that you don’t have the mana for both Rupture and Feral Scream early game and Vorpal Spikes adds a lot to your auto-attack and lane control. Sometimes you’ll get kills early with Vorpal Spikes, and it really helps farming. Two levels is 30 extra damage (+.2 of your AP). That’s pretty big early on every attack when most solo mid champs only have ~500 hp. In the side lanes, it helps you last hit, because you’ll be up against dedicated harassers sometimes and you can’t always wait around for that last 30 to drop.

When you get to level 6, it’s time to start gunning for kills if you haven’t already got one. Work on maxing Rupture and start putting points into Feral Scream here. You need Feral Scream for teamfights. This is where you’ll be glad you have mp5/lv seals and glyphs—running out of mana in a teamfight makes you a huge liability, because all of your teammates are depending on you hit a Rupture, a Scream and a Feast, and if you’re out of mana they usually won’t notice and will subsequently blame you for not having any. Teammates get really bold when there’s a Chogath tanking for them, especially if you have a habit of hitting sick Ruptures (like me :D). Your goal in teamfights is to land a rupture on someone who’s stunned or running, and when you do your team will instinctively jump on them and usually get a kill. Sometimes it’s good to silence the team and tank a few hits while you walk through to get a Rupture off on the ranged carry. Land a Feast on anyone who gets low enough to kill or even someone close. Get out before you’re low on HP with Ghost/Cleanse/Zhonya’s, and get used to using Rupture to make safe escapes. It’s easy—just predict how long it will take them to get to your Rupture spot with their runspeed and time the delay accordingly. Rupture’s range is still long as hell, so sometimes you can hit people from across walls or around corners. Remember, with Zhonya’s you’re going to be doing upwards of 500 with each Rupture, plus a knockup slow on anyone it hits. Follow that with Feral Scream and whack them once or twice before the slow wears off. Feast them as they run, the range is really long. If you’re good at this you’ll get a lot of complaints that Feast is OP—as long as the animation starts, there’s no way to stop it, even if they blink or jump away.

Mid to late game—you’re tanky. You have about 5000 hp and can land a Rupture-hit-Scream-hit-Feast combo for upwards of 2000 damage, instantly killing most champions. Rupture takes 1/3 of a squishy’s life, and Feast does over half of Teemo’s HP bar instantly. With Guardian up you revive for enough to still be a huge threat, and you and your team can be pretty much completely fearless if you’re doing well. The most important thing here is NOT to get aced. Remember all those wards you’re buying? Make sure you have them (in order) at baron, dragon, their buffs, your buffs, the grass by the wraiths, the grasses near the mid lane in the river, and anywhere else they might hide. If you don’t know exactly where the other team is at all times you’re not doing it right. Defend your wards and try to kill theirs with an Oracle’s. Baron when it’s safe and push towers when you can. Trading deaths for towers is dumb at this point unless it’s their nexus towers because those regen.

In general, trading a death for a tower is dumb, but there are select situations where it’s acceptable. Usually an inhibitor is worth one or two deaths, but tell your team to gtfo as you retreat and try not to lose any. There’s no point in sticking around after you get an inhib and there’s nothing worse than having your team die because you pulled out and they were too dumb to follow.

tl;dr
QEQEQR --> R>Q>W>E
Ghost/Cleanse
0/21/9
Don’t die, farm hard, harass hard.
Rush Zhonya’s + wards, get Warmog’s + wards, diverge + wards.
Land sick Ruptures, Screams and Feast for the win.

That mid-elo build that lets you stack Mejai’s + Leviathan:
Open Regen
Mejai’s + Mob Boots
Leviathan
Finish Warmog’s
Guardian Angel
Thornmail/Lich Bane/Banshee’s Veil/Force of Nature

Thanks for reading!
I hope this helps! And the next time someone says AP Cho sucks just carry them super hard and they’ll shut up.