League of Legends (Old)

[IH]

By AP tank... do you mean get a rod of ages and then build tank?


Oh.

[Chronopie]

Rod of Ages
Abyssal Sceptre
Zhonya's Hourglass

What are the other AP tank items?

Edit:
+Rylai's Crystal Sceptre

[Nuwen]

facepalming at people who think "his abilities scale with AP... therefore MUST BUILD AP" as the most cost-effective way to spend the precious little gold you absorb as a tank.

(if you can afford to build dps items on cho, you've stolen valuable resources better spent on your carries - congratulations!)

[Knight of Cydonia]

If you're not taking solo top and bullying the fuck out of anyone with your passive, you're not doing Cho right.
Saph Crystal and 2HP
Boots and Catalyst
RoA
FoN
Sunfire Cape/Thornmail
Abyssal/Zhonya's

[TheButtonmen]

Buttonmen - that guide means you're playing full-tank Cho'gath.

Where did I talk about items?

I The reason I don't go Cho'Gath for a full tank is because his Rupture is his only defense for his carries.

Instant AoE silence is a thing of beauty.

Without any damage, there is no reason for him to be a threat to any ranged carry beyond his knockup/slow.

But the deeeeeps, how will I deal them?

You get +80 dmg from Vorpal spikes, +100ish dmg from Atmas, +20 / slow from Frozen Mallet and massive burst in Feast, if you're left alone after dropping your disables you're able to shred carries.

But what about Feast, I mean it deals tons of burst damage!

Drop it on the first carry you reach, when they notice a third health suddenly vanish and half their screen is taken up by a giant crawfish that's now dealing 200+ dmg a hit they are forced either A) Cry for their tank to get you off them, B) Waste CC on you or C) Run away negating 100% of their sweet deeps.

Saph Crystal and 2HP
Boots and Catalyst
RoA
FoN
Sunfire Cape/Thornmail
Abyssal/Zhonya's

RoA = 80 AP
Abyssal = 70 AP

So you've spent all that gold to get +150 AP and you're using your spells offensively rather then defensively. So lets say your opponents are pretty awful at postioning and your rupture hits a hero, your silence hits 2 people and you have a feast up.

So that 150 AP you spent all your resources on adds 105 damage to feast, 210 to scream (105 x 2 targets) and 150 to rupture so that's a total of 360 damage when you blow all your cool downs. 2650 for the abyssal and 3035 for the RoA so that's 5685 gold for 630 HP, 57 MR and 360 damage when you blow all your CDs.

Five thousand six hundred and eighty five gold for three hundred and sixty damage.

Ability power is expensive.

Now it gets even worse, you used your spells offensively rather then defending your carries, I mean the 360 bonus damage (before resistances even) by playing him offensively is equal to what?

1.4 Auto attacks from your AD carry?

Stop trying to be a hero, defend your carries and your team will deal far far more net damage then if you could ever do yourself.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Except you're not defending your carries because Cho'gath has absolutely no reason to draw auto or burst champs to him until everyone else is mopped up. He's an offtank, not a true tank, stop playing him like one and being amazed when bad players instantly focus you because you're taking up half their screen and they haven't learnt to turn the monkey switch off in the back of their heads that yells "BIG = SCARY, KILL KILL KILL IT". Oh, and please please please continue to ignore the MR and MR debuff from Abyssal that benefits you far more than just stacking health and waiting for a scaling true damage champ to come along and kite you all day, and the health and mana PLUS the Valor's Reward that RoA carries over from the reworked Catalyst.

[TheButtonmen]

Except you're not defending your carries because Cho'gath has absolutely no reason to draw auto or burst champs to him until everyone else is mopped up. He's an offtank, not a true tank, stop playing him like one

But the deeeeeps, how will I deal them?

You get +80 dmg from Vorpal spikes, +100ish dmg from Atmas, +20 / slow from Frozen Mallet and massive burst in Feast, if you're left alone after dropping your disables you're able to shred carries. And if they shut you down with CC then you just laugh as they waste precious spells on the Cho rather then the people who might actually die.

But what about Feast, I mean it deals tons of burst damage!

Drop it on the first carry you reach, when they notice a third health suddenly vanish and half their screen is taken up by a giant crawfish that's now dealing 200+ dmg a hit they are forced either A) Cry for their tank to get you off them, B) Waste CC on you or C) Run away negating 100% of their sweet deeps.

By god it's almost like I'm recommending playing him as an off-tank, maybe even a tanky dps shockhorror.

stop playing him like one and being amazed when bad players instantly focus you because you're taking up half their screen and they haven't learnt to turn the monkey switch off in the back of their heads that yells "BIG = SCARY, KILL KILL KILL IT".

....Where did I ever say they focus you? I'm not exactly playing against scrubs. Let's review what I said.

You don't give a shit if they are disabled when you're

walking in

, you're Cho.

if you're left alone after dropping your disables you're able to shred carries.

And if they shut you down with CC

then you just laugh as they waste precious spells on the Cho rather then the people who might actually die.

A)

Cry for their tank to get you off them

, B)

Waste CC on you

or C) Run away negating 100% of their sweet deeps.

By jove, it's almost like I straight out said you will never be focused down moreshockhorror.

So I have to ask, exactly where did you get the idea that everything I said revolves around the enemy team dropping everything to try to kill you?

[Knight of Cydonia]

Oh wow. You're... you're actually advocating playing Cho as an AD offtank. You probably think rushing Warmog's is a good idea too, right?

[TheButtonmen]

Oh wow. You're... you're actually advocating playing Cho as an AD offtank.

Far far faaaaaar more tank then AD but in a way yes as very very few other offtanks have anywhere near his levels of disables, AoE knock-up and AoE silence are very very rare things. The only AD items you get are items such as Frozen Mallet, Atmas which are "tank" items, they are there to make you a viable threat that needs to draw some attention to stop you from bullying a carry back.

They are also much cheaper then AP items and add more damage then AP items (300+ dmg per auto-attack vs 360 more damage to you blowing all your CDs), so mind explaining why Tank / AD Cho is so terrible when you're advocating AP / Tank Cho?

[JDodge]

i plan on playing as much as i can this week while i'm on vacation in order to both get level 30 and push myself to play better as a whole in hopes of eventually play ranked successfully

hit me up (ahallucinogenic both on AIM and on LoL) if you're interested in joining me, keep in mind i'll probably be streaming as much of it as i can

[Otolia]

Sorry of my life

[TheButtonmen]

Those pros stole my damn strategy didn't they.

[Shanba]

Oh, and I absolutely agree that build should be adjusted for ELO - if you're up against a team who want to focus a 5.5k HP Cho without Bloodrazor's or scaling true damage like Malz' W or Vayne's Silver Bolts, by all means, build that way. Against a decent team, though... not so smart.

Question - why do you have 5.5k hp? Cho is a character with a health steroid, so you build resistances, since resistances scale with health and health scales with resistances. It's exactly equivalent to being tristana, seeing you have a 90% attack speed steroid and going "YEAH I'M BUILDING MORE ATTACK SPEED". You build damage when you have as, and as when you have damage. You build resistances when you have health, and health when you have resistances.

Second - when is a tank ever being focused down? Tankiness is only a minor part of a tank's job. I'm assuming you're not saying that the only true tanks are characters with taunts (which is probably the stupidest position you could have and unfortunately one I have seen repeated multiple times - a taunt is really just a complicated stun (in most cases strictly worse than a stun, in a few corner cases better)). Tanks protect their squishies by peeling bruisers and assassins off them. Cho does that just fine - scream stops them using gap closers on your squishies, rupture under ashe's feet allows her to run away from the scary irelia or akali or whatever it is that's beating her the hell up. True damage is useful against those bruisers who are frequently tanky as fuck.

Rod of Ages is so awkwardly itemised in general. It has so much mana on it. Only like, ryze, blitz and singed want that mana, and ryze and blitz dont really want the ap.

Thornmail is cheap resistances, but an iffy item (imo) on a char without a taunt. Taunt makes the passive cost effective. Otherwise, you're just hoping to get value out of it by people choosing to hit you which is unlikely to happen. Also personally I think frozen heart and randuin's omen are amazing items and if you're looking for armour you should be getting one of those instead - frozen heart giving cdr (which pretty much every tank loves (spam dat cc)) and a nice aura, while randuin's has an amazing active which allows your team to clean up more of an enemy team after winning a teamfight, or alternatively win the teamfight harder.

I've onyl played a few games as cho, and I build him straight tank and it worked fine. I can see how tanky AD would work with atma's (the synergy with the health steroid is pretty nice) and I can see that tanky ap could be viable - but I think there are characters who do that role much better - rumble, gragas, nunu, singed, ryze...

[RayFrost]

I don't know if you guys payed any attention to songs of the summoned, but my very good friend Alex (Raventessen) made this song, and won one of the grand prizes. I believe he bought riot singed with his prize.

He also won the costume contest with a singed costume.... who are his most played champs? Cho, AP kogmaw, and as of late Sona.

Ftr, this song is amazing.

Oh hi guys. I've been on RayFrost lately, but I've got a level 18 account that's named VoidenBlaze as well. I'm essentially terrible with everybody but annie, who I'm mediocre at.

[JDodge]

I don't know if you guys payed any attention to songs of the summoned, but my very good friend Alex (Raventessen) made this song, and won one of the grand prizes. I believe he bought riot singed with his prize.

He also won the costume contest with a singed costume.... who are his most played champs? Cho, AP kogmaw, and as of late Sona.

Ftr, this song is amazing.

Oh hi guys. I've been on RayFrost lately, but I've got a level 18 account that's named VoidenBlaze as well. I'm essentially terrible with everybody but annie, who I'm mediocre at.

i recall hearing about the last time we played with you that you turbo-fed and hung at the tower not doing anything all game

just as a forewarning to everyone

[RayFrost]

I recall that being when I was level 5, had started the game two days ago, and was playing with you level 20+ people in five man premades.

HMMM.

Not to mention I have a more recent experience with cyberbob & co. where I actually did quite fine in my first time as alistar. You weren't there, though.

Edit: did I mention cyberbob

told

me to tower hug in that game you mentioned? He did.

[IH]

everyone knows that turbo feeding is the best way to activate hardmode.

[popsofctown]

Frozen mallet cho?

Ew..

[hitogoroshi]

i plan on playing as much as i can this week while i'm on vacation in order to both get level 30 and push myself to play better as a whole in hopes of eventually play ranked successfully

hit me up (ahallucinogenic both on AIM and on LoL) if you're interested in joining me, keep in mind i'll probably be streaming as much of it as i can

I could go super serious business mode and try to work with you, if you like.

I'm actually gonna play in a tournament soon (we're not taking it too seriously because I still hate high-level competitve LoL, but I'm the kind of person that ALWAYS takes tournaments at least kind of seriously) so I kinda feel like pushing myself too, and getting my mains fired up instead of "well time to run the superior warwick"

also I have a headset again so (>_>)b

[Cyberbob]

Edit: did I mention cyberbob

told

me to tower hug in that game you mentioned? He did.

I thought it was implicit that you weren't supposed to literally stand right next to the tower for the entirety of the laning phase and not use any of your spells on anyone in that whole time

[Ankamius]

By AP tank... do you mean get a rod of ages and then build tank?


Oh.

No.

I've onyl played a few games as cho, and I build him straight tank and it worked fine. I can see how tanky AD would work with atma's (the synergy with the health steroid is pretty nice) and I can see that tanky ap could be viable - but I think there are characters who do that role much better - rumble, gragas, nunu, singed, ryze...

So you're saying Cho'Gath is useless?

[JDodge]

I've onyl played a few games as cho, and I build him straight tank and it worked fine. I can see how tanky AD would work with atma's (the synergy with the health steroid is pretty nice) and I can see that tanky ap could be viable - but I think there are characters who do that role much better - rumble, gragas, nunu, singed, ryze...

So you're saying Cho'Gath is useless?

i can see exactly where you get that from that thing you quoted there

I recall that being when I was level 5, had started the game two days ago, and was playing with you level 20+ people in five man premades.

it seems like it would be implied that you need to at very least learn the most basic concepts in the game before you play it

[Ankamius]

I've onyl played a few games as cho, and I build him straight tank and it worked fine. I can see how tanky AD would work with atma's (the synergy with the health steroid is pretty nice) and I can see that tanky ap could be viable - but I think there are characters who do that role much better - rumble, gragas, nunu, singed, ryze...

So you're saying Cho'Gath is useless?

i can see exactly where you get that from that thing you quoted there

I recall that being when I was level 5, had started the game two days ago, and was playing with you level 20+ people in five man premades.

it seems like it would be implied that you need to at very least learn the most basic concepts in the game before you play it

It wasn't obvious at all where I got that. If Shanba's saying that Cho'Gath being a tanky AP is useless because there are better choices.

If this is correct, then playing Cho'Gath as a Tanky AD champ is just as useless, since there are much better choices. Zin Zhao, Trundle, Olaf, Garen, Irelia, etc. Your job as these champions is to jump in the fight and take out the primary carry as soon as possible. What do these champions have that are better than what Cho'Gath would have as a Tanky AD champion?

Xin Zhao: Knockup, very high attack speed, %-based damage, Slow from the gap closer
Trundle: Reduces Armor and Magic Resist, steals Damage, Increases attack speed while reducing CC, Able to jungle while ganking much more effectively than Cho
Olaf: Very fast jungler, Excellent Ganker, spammable true damage, tankiness directly turns into damage, only gets deadlier as you focus him down, can ignore any and all cc except for blind
Irelia: Gap closer, can either stun someone or slow them heavily, heals with every attack, deals true damage with every attack, gets reduced cc reduction, can heal while doing damage to the whole enemy team

What does Cho'Gath have? The ability to deal a good chunk of true damage, knockup, and silence. That's it. There's no reason to take Cho'Gath over the above champions if you're going for a Tanky AD champion. You are completely ignorable.

--

As a straight tank? Let's see what other tanks have.

Alistar: Free damage reduction, spammable heal, AoE knockup and the ability to knock a carry into his team. He doesn't need items to be effective and doesn't need pure tank items to be effective.
Malphite: AoE knockup, Speed debuff, AS debuff that scales it's damage off of armor. He gets stronger as he's tankier.
Amumu: Single target stun, AoE Snare+No Attack, %based damage, physical damage reduction. Doesn't need much AP to be a threat and can initiate fights at ease.
Rammus: Free defenses, Speed buff that gets better the longer it's used, 3 second taunt, AoE damage that affects towers.
Shen: Ability to save an ally champion at any point, AoE near-2-second taunt, Free spammable shield
Cho'Gath: Unreliable knockup, AoE silence, terrible initiation.

Cho'Gath is not an initiator. He is not a straight tank. Other tanks either are more effective with pure defenses or dare effective damage-wise without building any sort of damage. Cho'Gath is neither of these. With the time you're spending building your Tanky-AD stats, you could have become more tanky, did more damage, and taken out more towers.

And this Warmogs -> Frozen Mallet -> Atmas build? I used to do that on Xin Zhao. It didn't work there, either. It's so incredibly slow that you're better off not doing it at all. Your ranged carry builds damage. If you are enough of a threat that the enemy is building armor,

you are hurting your team's dps by building attack damage

.

--

This is all I'm saying on this. This conversation has been entirely pointless and it's all a matter of opinion. I have shown why I go Tanky AP on Cho'Gath. If you agree, fine. If you don't fine.

[Nuwen]

Blacklist Rayfrost for rapidly feeding to like 0/8, then leaving our scumteam to 4v5. Terrible.

[IH]

I enjoy how angry people get at just discussing this game.