EPTAnd now, what you've all been waiting for...
5HITCOMBO's guide to Chogath
Hi everyone, I'm 5HITCOMBO, and I'm the #1 Chogath. You may hear otherwise from some people but those guys all suck so just disregard their opinion. Anyway, on to the guide.
Skills
Cho is a beast of a champion when it comes to CC. He has an AoE silence and an AoE knockup slow and both of them nuke pretty hard. His first point in Vorpal Spikes adds 20 damage to his auto-attack. Feast nukes for 800 true damage at level 3 and it has an AP ratio. His passive allows you to ignore harass as you last hit and regenerates your mana/hp to full from a large creep wave lategame. Your model size is like a free Banshee's Veil for your squishies, just stand on top of them and make it hard to target them while tanking skillshots.
If you are taking a lane, grab ghost and flash. If you are jungling, take smite and ghost.
Runes
On lane Cho, I run mpen reds, mp5/lv yellows, rising AP/lv blues and flat AP quints. On jungle Cho, I run MS Quints, armor yellows and attackspeed blues and reds. Do what you want. People tell you it's bad, but fuck those guys, they don't know shit.
Masteries
Lane Cho--0/9/21. Take SoS, good hands, improved ghost, awareness, meditation, greed, buff mastery, movespeed, cooldown and capstone. Defensive tree can be substituted as well--0/21/9 or 0/22/8 isn't terrible and it lets you tank the hell out of your lane.
Jungle Cho--1/8/21. Same but with one point from armor in smite.
Builds
Decide whether you're going AP or tanking and carrying auras. Either way, you want a solo lane. I prefer to be the nuker on the team early and tank out later, but I also see the merit in carrying an aegis early.
You can do basically anything on Cho. If I'm going AP, I open RoA and Zhonyas then build tank. I want to end up with 1-2 big AP items like Rod/Zhonya's and then a bunch of tank items like GA/FoN/Banshee's depending on the situation. Merc Treads are non-negotiable for their CC redux and MR, but if you're raping you can try out sorc boots for the lulz. A lot of the time against lanes that I can win with straight mobility because they're squishy (MF comes to mind) I go Ring-Ring-Sorc for the win.
If I'm in the jungle, I like to tank out to be useful for my team later. I open cloth + 2-5 potions depending on how aggressive I'm planning on being in the jungle. If I open more potions, I won't bluepill until after my first gank, and if I open 2 potions, I might buy a ward to place at their wraiths after I jack it, so I can catch where they're at and if I can jack a second time/gank them there.
My first buy is almost always another ring and boots, then I usually finish merc. Depending on what you want to do you can build either RoA AP or Randuins/spirit visage/frozen heart CDR. If they have a burst nuker that's threatening your team, get double negatron and make a veil and FoN instead. Don't forget to do things like buy Oracles, wards and blue elixir if you need to stack feast or hit harder during teamfights.
Lane Strategy
If you are in a lane, you are hopefully in a solo. A 2v2 is fine because Cho is a beast but I feel like you really want him to be 6-stacked as soon as possible and the faster your true damage nuke hits level 2 and 3 the faster you can feast someone for 3/4 their hp. Basically, you want to open Doran's Ring and HP pot. Anyway, take mid or top and get out there and last hit everything. If you go below 50% hp, step back and regen for a bit, using your SoS and your passive with rupture to last hit from afar. Go QWWQWR then R>W>Q>E.
Your strategy is to use rupture at first but then save it for when you either know you can hit it or to cover as you run/hit as they run. Otherwise, zone them with W, which does a ton of damage and is pretty easy to hit.
When you hit 6, you should be trying to get your flash feast kill. People completely freak out when they're hit by a rupture and you walk towards them because they know you might have feast up and they might get instagibbed, so they blow flash and ghost and cleanse and exhaust like there's no tomorrow. Usually you're just going to hit rupture, scream, and maybe whack them twice before turning around to last hit all the minions, but even this will do a huge chunk of damage to most characters, and you can sometimes drop a rupture-scream-flash-feast combo if they are careless. Even if you don't kill them, they will guaranteed bluepill and you can regenerate everything by last hitting while pushing the lane straight to the tower.
Sometimes the enemy will be playing very safe or harassing you very hard, and in cases like that, you should just take advantage of your great zoning with scream and strong passive to farm while stacking feast to 6. Being 6-stacked is pretty crucial to playing Cho well. If you die and lose stacks, buy a blue elixir and grab blue buff to help get it back up asap.
Watch out for ganks and ults like Mordekaiser's and Malzahar's and you should be fine.
Items to work towards: NLR, boots, lots of hp pots, wards for your lane, RoA, etc. Decide whether you want to go AP or Huge Tank Cho. Huge Tank Cho builds CDR so you want stuff like spirit visage, randuins, and frozen heart.
Jungle Strategy
Jungle Cho is all about keeping their jungler completely denied. Wraith jack, ward buffs, set ambushes when you know they'll be somewhere, hit and run. You are one of the fastest junglers in the game if you do it right, and your red buff gank with ghost is really strong because if you hit an auto attack it's really easy to hit rupture and vice versa so get in there and gank with red/ghost. If you manage to kill one and make the other bluepill just take that tower asap. Cover lanes when you're needed and spend the rest of the time trying to counter-jungle. Stack feast asap and work towards boots and Randuins, going HoG first. Grab merc treads, then go whatever you want, really. Other times I'll grab stuff like Frozen Heart or Banshee's/FoN. If you're up against a heavy magic team just grab a negatron or two after spirit visage.
Midgame
Teamfight push time. Ward all over and force a fight at a low tower. Sit back and poke at them with rupture and scream, usually holding blue buff for the regen and tanking a bit to let your ranged dps whack the tower a couple of times per wave. Don't engage unless you can kill someone pretty easily without anyone dying. Throw down ruptures and save silence for champs like Amumu, Nunu, Akali, Vlad, and Mordekaiser. Burst down anyone low, but make sure your team can finish them--if they can't, save feast for the kill. Someone will get low enough. You're still not uber tanky at this point so be careful not to die, although it's not a huge deal because you can stack out feast pretty fast by chugging a blue elixir. Try to convince your team not to fight until you've stacked out feast again unless they're just absolutely crushing or the other team forces it at baron or dragon.
Lategame
Hopefully at this point you're 6-stacked with a bunch of defensive items and maybe some AP. If you were jungling you should be one of the main tanks for your team, and if you were in lane you can either be a huge tank or a huge tank that has like 250 AP. If you went AP you'll have Zhonya's, but always remember that your role is to use your huge character model to tank hits for your carry, so usually you won't be activating it unless you just charge them and have them blow a ton of cc on you. Feast anyone you can kill and any carry that gets close. If they lifesteal, try to save it for the instagib. Lay ruptures and screams to disable and set up kills and generally be really aggressive. You want to be one of the first ones in and the last one out. People will follow you wherever you go so make sure you know what is going on at all times--you don't want to lead your team into that galio-amumu-kennen-morg-nunu in the bush. Make sure you have an oracles at this point even if the other team doesn't have stealth--ward detection is really important and it gives them more incentive to focus you, which is exactly what you want. You should have like Randuin's Merc Visage Frozen Heart Banshee's and maybe FoN depending on the game, and if you went AP you'll have RoA and Zhonyas and MAAAYBE sorc boots with a bunch of tank items. It's easy to farm a ton as Cho so at around 40 minutes you should be pushing 200 creeps, which is an easy 8k gold for items, plus any champ kills, dragons, towers, minions, barons, assists and your passive gold gain from HoG/gold/base.
Be aggressive, but pull out so your regen can make itself worthwhile. Kill minions for a bit if you're low on mana or hp--one wave can replenish quite a bit of hp/mp and it can mean the difference between having mana for that last feast or getting run over by Yi. I pretty much always feast anyone that I can instantly kill because feast has a short cooldown compared to death time late game and just the fact that they're out of the fight and you're still there, even if just to soak damage and auto-attack, is huge.
Anyway, I'll keep updating this to polish it as time goes on. I eventually want to get a section on matchups and a bit about rupture prediction in there because that's the most important part about playing Cho well. I hope you enjoyed this guide. Please discuss in a civil manner.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/lmeY5.jpg)
