Cho'Gath / Strategy

Official Strategy

Playing with Cho'Gath

• When you attack with  Vorpal Nails, try to position yourself in such a way that you can kill minions and harass enemy champions at the same time.
• If you have a hard time devouring champions, try eating minions until you are bigger.
• Use  Breaking over bugs along with  Carnivore is a good way to get Life and Mana.

Playing against Cho'Gath

• Buying some health items reduces the chances that  Cho'Gath kill you quickly.
• Concentrate on preventing  Cho'Gath reaches its maximum size, or has it retrieved after killing it.
• Rupture has a cloud of smoke that indicates the area where it will hit. Try to be attentive to her to avoid  Cho'Gath can combine his abilities.

Use of Skills

• Carnivore allows Cho'Gath to maintain his life and mana, making him a great solo down the line. Although, to be clear, the mana restoration is quite low - since it takes 4 waves of minions to be able to pay the use of  Breaking off.
  • Kill omens of  Yorick's is affected by  Carnivore.
• The powerful disruption of  Rupture and the fact that none of the skills of Cho'Gath has reduced cooldown on leveling up making the cooldown reduction highly valuable. Place  Break in the path of mobile enemies, as it is a delayed ability.
  • Its backward nature and good CC can be used to your advantage as it can disrupt deadly suppression endings like  Warwick's Infinite Oppression and  Infernal Grip of Malzahar, so if you can anticipate when they will be used. This is really powerful against the ultimate  Infinite Oppression since it is a common gank starter, then you can interrupt that by placing  Break under you.
• Wild Scream is a strong AoE / silence damage ability, especially in conjunction with  Breaking off. Due to the fact that your basic attacks are melee, you can use first  Breakout to blast the target up, then get close enough and try to silence them with  Scream Wild, preventing their escape or act of retaliation. Due to the great power of the slowdown  Rupture, unlikely to be out of basic attack range before silence expires, allowing you to finish them off with your ultimate.  Devour if possible.
• By the way, if you try to use  Wild Scream in the opposite direction you are moving will often be thrown at a bad angle and that will be counter-productive.
• Having at least one level Vorpal Spikes is a great way to farm minions due to linear splash damage, this is good to activate Carnivorous.
• Vorpal Nails and  Carnivore allow  Cho'Gath junglear.
• Sometimes it may be a good idea to disable  Vorpal Spikes to prevent you from pushing your line and also be open to enemy ganks. If you don't disable this ability while attacking a turret, an enemy champion can stand behind the turret and cause you to hit them due to  Vorpal Spikes deal area of ​​effect damage, causing the turret to start attacking you.
• If you find it difficult to finish off with  Devour champions, try to eat minions until you are older, as the true damage you deal exceeds the health of most minions. It is recommended to get 6 stacks first by finishing minions with  Devour and after that you could use your ult to finish off champions, since the damage to minions is significantly higher (particularly in the early-mid game, since  Devour has a base damage of 1000 to minions, regardless of the level of  Devour).
  • If you are looking to push the line faster, it is best to use  Devour on a gunner minion to give them an instant kill as they are the hardest for your little minions to kill. However, keep in mind that if you have 0 Ability Power, the minion's maximum health could be more than 1000 after 12 minutes of play, avoiding getting a charge of  Devour.
• A red circle will appear on champions who die when used on them  Devour.
• Cho'Gath can be a great pusher. Use  Rupture to kill melee minions, and  Wild Scream to kill minions from a distance, to kill minion gunner use  Devour if necessary,  Vorpal Spikes help take down the missing minions. Nevertheless,  Cho'Gath is very vulnerable if ambushed in enemy territory.

Build usage

• Buying a Doran's Ring along with mana regen masteries allows spamming of Rupture and Feral Scream without risk of mana starvation, in addition to allowing him to gain health with Carnivore.
• Another good starting item is a Crystalline Flask allowing Cho'Gath to stay in lane along with Carnivore.
• An early Catalyst the Protector will grant Cho'Gath an enormous amount of staying power in lane. Rod of Ages provides hefty mana, health, and ability power which scales well with Cho'Gath's high base damage.
• If your team has a tank already, Cho'Gath can switch to an offtank ability power build in order to do more damage. Since Feast already increases Cho'Gath's maximum health, he will still be difficult to take down.
• Buying a Guardian Angel will make Cho'Gath very hard to kill if he stacks Feast. Also, Out of Cho'Gath knock-up and slow will help you run after being revived.
• Getting damage mitigation (Armor and Magic resistance) instead of Health is a good idea, since Feast already grants a hefty amount of health.
  • Items such as Abyssal Scepter are excellent if you want Ability Power, as they increase resistances as well.
• Since feast de Cho'Gath deals true damage to champions as well as minions, a caster build on Cho'Gath can allow him to deal extreme damage to single targets and can easily execute unaware enemies especially late-game with his high amounts of AP.
  • Investing in cooldown reduction items such as Glacial Shroud early allows more frequent use of his ultimate ability to build Feast stacks quickly and/or to threaten enemy champions with its high burst damage more often.
• Rylai's Crystal Scepter is not as effective as it may be, as all his basic abilities deal area of effect damage, and his longest-ranged ability, Rupture, already includes a knock-up and a large slow. However, as Vorpal Spikes is added to all his basic attacks, it could force his opponents to use their movement abilities to get out of his melee range only to be caught up by Break.