Summary
Items
Early game
- Doran's Shield allows you to hold the lane well, so choose it if the match-up seems difficult for you. Accompany it with a Healing Potion.
- Doran's Ring offers power, mana regeneration and allows you to play more aggressively, excellent in a relatively simple match-up.
Boots
As with most tanks, it is wise to go with Mercury Treads or Ninja Tabi depending on the composition of the opponent. On a character like Cho'Gath, these are usually the only two boots you should take.
Core items
- The Hextech GLP-800 and the Twin Shadows are the two mandatory items in this build. You will try to proc a maximum your fundamental rune via automatic attacks as well as the active properties of your items. Righteous Glory will allow you to quickly get to the hand-to-hand combat, you'll just have to eat them with R - Feast.
- Righteous Glory offers a lot of health points and an active that considerably increases your movement speed when you move towards an enemy.
- Warmog's Armor is excellent for the absurd amount of health points it provides. Moreover, with its passive, you can stay out of combat for a few seconds in order to recover all your health points.
- Last object, Gargoyle Stoneplate. This item provides you with armor and magical resistance that you haven't yet purchased, but its main interest lies in the Active - Metallicize which increases your max. health points by 40%. With R - Feast inflicting raw damage over your max health, this is absolutely mandatory for Cho'Gath.
- For your fifth item location, choose an Adaptive Helm to counter champions with burst, or Abyssal Mask to counter those who deal damage with a single spell repeatedly, such as Cassiopeia or Malzahar.
Situational Items
- Thornmail allows you to reflect magical damage when an opponent attacks you. In addition, it can significantly reduce the amount of healing he receives, which can be interesting against some champions or a composition based on healing.
- If there are several champions in front of you who are using critical damage, Randuin's Omen is an optimal choice. As a bonus, its active, which slows down all nearby enemy targets, makes Cho'Gath even more complicated to manage.
How to play Cho'Gath?
During the first levels, you'll stay inactive and focus on the farm. Try to inflict damage to your opponent with E - Vorpal Spikes if he stays behind his minions. If your mana allows it, try to roll Q - Rupture to inflict damage and prevent your opponent from farming. When you are level 6, look carefully at your opponent's health points and rush him if you judge that R - Feast will be able to finish him off.
When the teamfights come, your role as Cho'Gath is to be an imposing frontlane for your team. With the slowing effects at your disposal and your Righteous Glory, open the way for your allies and decimate opposing carry, which don't have enough damage to knock you down quickly at this stage of the game.
Tips & Tricks
- Begin your attacks with your W - Feral Scream to prevent your opponent from using one of his spells that would allow him to avoid Q - Rupture.
- E - Vorpal Spikes increases the range of your basic attacks.
- Activating E - Vorpal Spikes resets the delay of your base attacks, so use E - Vorpal Spikes right after dealing damage with your base attack to maximize your DPS.
- Don't hesitate to use R - Feast on minions as soon as you get it to quickly gain health points. Don't forget, when you kill a minion, the spell's cooldown time is halved.
- Your passive P - Carnivore returns you points of life and mana when you eliminate a unit, do not hesitate to trade between two waves to benefit fully from this regeneration.
- Once your ultimate skill R - Feast is full stack, you can continue to gain stacks by eating enemy champions or epic monsters.
- If you deem a target as neutral (such as a Dragon for example) to be disputed/contestable, use R - Feast to secure it.
