Cho'Graph - Feast on your Foes! RoA and Alternate Tank Builds

Flash TP in hard lanes or if you expect to get camped.

Flash Ignite if you feel confident in the matchup/ want to dominate your lane.

W max is the most reliable and easy to land, it increases damage and silence duration which is huge. Q is saved for last because of how unreliable it is. Against good players it is extremely hard to consistently land Rupture. If you max it in an early fight and miss it then you have given your opponent an opening to punish you because you highest damage normal ability is down.

Depending on your build and playstyle you may consider maxxing Q second instead of E. If you are versus more melee focused champs then it is worth it to max E to brawl with them, if you are against more ranged champions and need to enable your teammates/can't get on the enemies to even use E then max Q second.

Cho'Gath benefits from the extra attack speed which will lead to more damage output than taking traditional mage runes such as mpen.

IMPORTANT: In league of legends it is significantly easier to build armor than magic resist. Most matchups you will vs in top lane in Classic will be mostly physical damage.

I recommend taking Scaling MR glyphs as the MR difference between flat and scaling is about 22~ at level 18. You are essentially sneaking an extra null magic mantle into your build which is 400g.


Additionally Cho'Gath values movement speed over ability power especially early.

One of Cho'Gath's weakpoints is how immobile he is, sometimes an enemy gets away because you can't chase, sometimes you get ganked because you are slow. Movement speed quints to enable your sticking power and mobility.

9/21/0 is a standard page. I take attack speed in offense because the 4% cdr just becomes inefficient because you will be building items that will get you to 40% CDR anyways which is the hard cap for classic.

Here is a deeper analysis on the 4% CDR rune and my rationale for the 4% attack speed rune.
None of Cho'Gath's abilities gain reduced cooldowns from ranking up, they can ONLY be reduced from cooldown reduction, here are the numbers.
By the numbers below it is up to your judgement call on whether or not you think the 4% CDR will actually make a meaningful change.
In my opinion none of the jumps that include 4% CDR are impressive and eventually after building 40% CDR you are losing gold efficiency in the late game.
Is the 4% attack speed particularly impressive? Not really, but on Cho'Gath you will never reach the attack speed cap so it is ALWAYS more gold efficient the longer the game goes on.
Cho'Gath Cooldowns:

0% CDR

Q- 9s

W - 13s

E- 0.5s.

R- 60s

With 4% CDR"

q - 8.64s

W- 12.48

E- 0.48

R- 57.6

With 20% CDR

Q-7.2s

W.10.4s

E-0.4s

R-48s

With 24% CDR

Q- 6.84s

w. 9.88s

e- 0.38s

R- 45.6s

With 40% CDR

Q- 5.4s

W-7.8S

E-0.3S

R-36S

Defense tree:

Additionally remember to take the armor/magic resist runes applicable to the matchup.

If you are versus someone like Tryndamere or any champion which relies on critical strikes or they have multiple champions that like to crit it is reasonable to swap one point in tenacious or juggernaut for reinforced armor.