xing tian: GET IN MY BELLY!!!!

Xing Tian is probably one of the most well rounded gods in the game now and I hope he doesn't get buffed/nerfed in a future. High Rez really did a bang-up job disigning him and piecing him together. Xing Tian has regen, excapes, stuns, knock up, protections, and debuffs. This makes him a very balanced choice for solo or support.

In this guide, I will explain his strengths and weeknesses, early game - mid game - late game stratagy, some basic team fight sinarios amd my item build for him.

Thanks for reading!!!!

Ok, I've talked a lot already about some of Xing Tian's stregnths, he really does have a lot going for him.

NOTE: These are based off the solo lane not the duo lane.

Pros:

- Regen passive ability makes for a very good early game presence, and further stacks with other items for an even better mid to late game presence
- Has pretty good lane clear for a guardian (other than hades and ymir).
- His first ability, FURIOUS ROAR is a DoT ability (Damage over Time). This makes kills on escaping enemies much easier.
- FURIOUS ROAR also has a debuff that reduces the enemies basic attackl. This is very good against junglers and in-your-face types of gods.
- lane clear is decent with Furious Roar and HOOK SLAM
- HOOK SLAM does the most raw damage to an enemy and sets you up for aditional attacks with its stuns
- SKY-CUTTING AXE is a great escape and initiator. It gives a protections buff too.
- WHIRLWIND OF RAGE AND STEEL is obviously his "claim to faim" so to speak. This is probably his best trait because with this ability he could (in theory) pick up the entire enemy team and throw them into/out of danger (towers, allies' ultimates, away from fire giant, etc).

I don't see too much that would be his downfall but here are some cons I have found to encounter:

Cons:

- high cooldowns all around
- not a particularly fast god
- doesn't have an ability to do a lot of burst damage. This makes it hard for him to finish off enemies as he relies on a steady and gradual amount of damage.
- the lack of a slow makes catching up to, and killing dying enimies difficult
- his health regen is gradual and not instant. This makes him slightly less durable in fights as opposed to someone who could instantly get 250 health in ones second.

Too be honest, I really had to think of things to go in his CONS list. He is a great god choice!

Alright, lets talk about Xing Tians build a little bit. I'll start with his abilities since thats pretty much the same no matter how you build his items.

Level 1: FURIOUS ROAR should be his first upgrade. This will help with minion clear, jungle camp clear and doing moderate damage to enemies from a distance.

Level 2 - 3: Just get HOOK SLAM and SKY-CUTTING AXE. It doesn't really matter which, if you want an escape plan first then go with SKY-CUTTING AXE but if you want damage and stuns first then go with HOOK SLAM.

Level 4: Now is when you will want to focus on one ability and get it leveled up. If you feel like protections is what you need then go with SKY-CUTTING AXE. If stuns and strait up damage is what you need then go with HOOK SLAM. If you're struggling with minnion clear and frequently ganking junglers, then go for FURIOUS ROAR.

Level 5: UPGRADE THAT ULTIMATE!!!! Also, I would advise against further upgrading WHIRLWIND OF RAGE AND STEEL untill all of your abilities have been upgraded. The reason for this is that the point of his ultimate is not to do huge amounts of damage but to place the team in a bad position. Since the only stats affected by upgrading your ult is the damage your ult deals and the cooldown, then I wouldn't worry about it until late game.

Level 6-16: Now heres the easy part! Just focus on upgrading your primary ability for damage first, and then get the rest of your abilities (but your ultimate) to level 5. Pretty strait forward, just focus on the need at that time and upgrade what will halp you the best in that situation.

Level 17-20: Finish off the ultimate upgrade.

The build that i will run with 80% of the time is listed at the beginning of this guide. I'm gonna go through it and give a bit of an explenation as to why I chose these items.

We will start with the starting build. Possibly the most important part of any build is what items you choose to start with in an attempt to get that little bit of an edge on your opponent.

For my starting solo build, I use:

MARK OF THE VANGUARD
This might be the most underated starting item in the game. This item gives me a solid amount of protections and 150 health. Keep in mind that you start out with about 485 health as a guardian and most everyone else you will be facing early game will have less thatn that to start with. So an extra 150 health brings you to 625. Also as a guardian you gain more health per level than others do (100 health to be presice). So by the time you and your jungle have finished with both camps you'll be at 725 health and you're enemy will be right around the 500 mark! Huge difference in early game fights!!!

SHOES
An obvious choice... Gives you a bit of movement speed.

MEDITATION
This is great when you've exhuasted all your mana on killing your foe and the enemy teams jungler decides he wants in. Meditation can be a life saver!!! It will replenish 75% of your mana allowing you to either continue punishing a week opponent or to get that clutch escape! Also, later it becomes a good team item as it heals you and others and gives you all a ton of mana regen.

MANA AND HEALTH POTION
Need I say more?! For when you need some extra mana or health early on.


THE MAIN BUILD:

SHOES OF FOCUS
A good way to balance out the longer cooldown times. Gets you a smidge of magic power and 18% movement speed increase :)

MYSTIC MAIL
This is one of your core items for XING TIAN. you get protections, health, a way to clear minions quicker, and some added help when you wanna get in someones face! This is a huge part of your build!

STONE OF GAIA
This is another core item designed to help stack with your passive ability. You get some decent magic protection and some mana regen, health, 25 health regen per 5 seconds, and then an extra 2% of your max health gets regenerated every 2 secconds! Make you a regeneration champ!

WARLOCK'S SASH
This item needs a bit of time to build up the stacks to help you. so I would deffinately recommend that you get this item no later than your 4th item. This is a great item for you as you not only get power but also a **** ton of health and mana, and thats without stacks. with stacks you will get a total of 110 extra magical power, 600 health, and 300 mana! Pretty good if you ask me! and the damage and health are permanent stacks not temporary!

ETHEREAL STAFF
This will make any tanky character a force to be reckoned with! It not only gives 30 magic power, 600 health, and 300 mana; but it takes 2% of your max health and makes that power too!!! I had just over 4100 health at level 20 and that gave me and extra 82 magic damage!

ROD OF TIHUTI
If this item doesn't put the icing on the cake then I don't know what will... 125 magic damage added and 25 mana per 5 seconds is great, but what really tops off this build nicely is the extra 25% increase in my magical power! Thats worth the price of admission folks!

Finally to top off the rest of your build, I would get the actives you want as the situation detirmes it. if you're dealing with a lot of healers, then get weakening curse. If you have a lot of CC then get beads. Actives are more situational than they are part of a set build.

Also, I did place attack speed as an option for a build. I have had little success with this, and it works about 25% of the time. It makes him more focused on a single target and that doesn't work well in his favor as his abilities do better when he can hit more than one god.

Ok now its time to learn the "hows" and "whens" of this god.

Gods that work well with XING TIAN:

Any god with a high damaging area of affect ability.

ODIN - you can throw people into odin adn combo his ult and trap them in his ring of death.

HADES - Toss the enemies toward hades and have hades ult. This will do a mass amount of damage and concentrate the team into one area.

ZUES - zues' ult works well as he can place it as soon as the thrown enemies hit the ground or are rooted by XING TIAN's HOOK SLAM ability.

YMIR - again a large damaging area of affect ability helps a lot!

SOBEK - Similar to Yimr's ult sobek can move a bit and does less damage than Ymir.

JANUS - Can suck the whole team into a portal where they are thrown and do mass amounts of damge to them with a good combo from his abilities.

HOU YI - Great way to initiat hou yi's ult

MEDUSA - could freeze them and then acid spray them after you've thrown them.

RA and KUKULKAN - both have a strait line pure damage blast. This would work well with a trow or a root from XING TIAN.

THANATOS, THOR, APOLLO - allows their small area of effect ults to hi many enimies at once. It would give Thanatos (in Theory) and oppertunity for an instant penta kill from his ult. Thor would be able to do huge team damage with a combo from his hult into his 3 ability.

There are endless possibilities for how you can combo with XING TIAN's ult. Now for some counters to XING TIAN.

Bastet - THE CATS!!!!!!

Ne Zha - able to imobalize me and then deal a high amount of damage.

Thanatos - getting me to a health threshold and killing me is devistating

Most ADCs are good at mowing down my health as long as they have a support to keep me off of them.

Early Game:

XING TIAN is very tanky early game with this starting build. Use this to your advantage! Keep your opponent at bay and unable to farm. If you can get him to go back attack the tower. with your jungler is with you or ganking he can help you get early kills.

Mid Game:

This is where things get tricky. During Mid game XING TIAN will set the pace for the rest of the game... in a nut shell, if you fall behind in kills and can't keep up in gold/exp then you'll be unable to get the core items needed to succeed late game. However, should you hold your lane and keep your opponent at bay, you'll easily become a known threat on the battlefield, striking fear in your enemies and watching them flea when they see your face!!!!

Late Game:

This is where you'll grow into yourself, and become the team! The enemy is grass and you've got the lawnmower! It is important to not become cocky in this situation and give the enemy unnessecary kills and a chance to regain their foot hold. You and your team should now be focusing on phoenix and the titan. You should thrive in these team fights and you should basically manhandle the other team, throwing them wherever you please.

Some Scinarios:

- Make use of SKY-CUTTING AXE as an escape. you get to uses when you cast it and you can pick any direction so it would allow you to go around corners and throw the chasing enemy off. It can save your life at times.

- when you find yourself laning against a mage or someone with a lot of magical power, get STONE OF GAIA befor MYSTIC MAIL. That will help counteract the maagic power. And Vice-Versa. XING TIAN excells against magic opponents. He can jump around the battlefield so much it gets hard to aim their abilities. Mages are also vunerable to stuns and roots and any type of crowd control. All of which you have which make laning against a mage quite easy. If Ra wants to get in his health circle you grab him and toss him out!

- obviously you want to make use of your ultimate and throw people into danger. thats the best part of XING TIAN!

- Should you need to reatreat back to your tower after taking significant damage, don't be so quick to head home, your regeneration gets your back to decent defending health in no time allowing you and tour team to fend off the enemy!

- you should try to combo all your abilities together starting with SKY-CUTTING AXE, then HOOK SLAM for the root, and a FURIOUS ROAR to finish it off. This probably won't kill but it will do plenty of damage to the enemy forcing them to retreat unless its their support.

- another combo is to grab them with WHIRLWIND OF RAGE AND STEEL and toss them in a bad direction for them. Follow that up with HOOK SHOT for a rooting and blast them with FURIOUS ROAR. When they run away like a little girl chase them with SKY-CUTTING AXE (if you're using the attack speed route you can then keep attacking with hasten fatalis). This is gonna be the most burst damage you will get from him.

- Use FURIOUS ROAR with junglers and fast attacking enemies because it reduces their attack damage.

- if you have friends see if you can get your friends to play characters that work well with XING TIAN. Getting your team mates to pick gods they dont want to play is a challenge

THANKS FOR READING!!!!