Little counter play to Xerath?

Stand behind your minions

Stand behind minions, is indeed one thing. For some reason, Xerath feels an awful lot like now. His q goes through minions for some easy harass, his w also can damage the enemy champ very easily, and his e works as an engage/disengage. So taking that into account, with the relatively long cd on it, bait it out, and then engage on him.

Definitely very similar to Ahri and definitely plenty of counter play. He still lacks what is pretty significant in the meta currently: mobility. So he isn't a strong roamer and he lacks movement in teamfights meaning he can be easily focused or forced into a less than optimal position for Xerath. Furthermore the stun no longer needs a proc, but it is now a skillshot, and an extremely slow and obvious one at that, plus it has a pretty short ranged compared to similar skills.

As far as his other skills are concerned, his Q now requires a charge up to reach it's maximum range meaning it has a big giveaway and the decrease in movement speed can generally allow a skilled player to avoid or shift to a better position to endure the poke. The W also has a decent delay after the indicator of where it will land, so any champion with boots can probably dodge the majority of those as long as they are paying attention to the players patterns in the lane match-up. His new ultimate is actually what I feel to be his biggest weakness. He can be immediately CC'd out of it with anything from a silence or stun to the slight displacements like Vi's Q. On top of that it has a much smaller AOE than his previous ultimate so it doesn't have a large of impact in grouped up teamfights or sieges, on top of it being fairly easy to dodge unless your target is CC'd.