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Why are you (riot) trying to make me hate my favorite character (xerath)

Bear Juice·5/5/2016, 7:06:56 PM·7 votes·1,685 views
Xerath - The Magus Ascendant Shurima

Xerath has gone from a gray character questioning his desire for power and the great sacrifice he would have to make to gain it. To a strange puppetmaster style villain.

When Azir was first released Xerath's lore was rewritten from being a physically weak being who sacrificed his humanity to gain tremendous magical power, to a slave who stole power and destroyed a kingdom. Now he is a former slave who purposefully murdered his enemies and emperor, for his own ends. This has changed his character in such a negative way.

when the lore was rewritten the first time there was still a bit of gray area left to his personality as he might not have known the ascension ritual would destroy Shurima and its people. Now it shows Xerath as murdering people directly and forcing the ritual to continue and watch as Shurima burned all in the pursuit of total freedom and revenge.

So is this the plan now make all the gray characters in the game depicted as purely villians. My three favorite characters (lorewise) were Xerath, Viktor both of them used to be stories of individuals who had to sacrifice to evolve. Both were shown as being people who were either born weak or used by others and turned to extreme means to fix their weaknesses. Now both seem to be portrayed as really lame villains.

TL:DR Why did you turn Xerath into a mass murdering sociopath with intent in all of these actions?

42 Comments

GreenLore5/5/2016, 8:16:11 PM9 votes

You say he was a grey character before,but that simply was never the case.

Original Xerath created a ritual that would let him achieve godhood,which wouldn't have been so bad,if it wasn't for the fact that he destroyed large parts of shurima with it. He basically killed hundreds or maybe even thousands of people(among them his own girlfriend) for power and he had no regrets about it. And he didn't even want the power for something specific.He just wanted power for powers sake. It was even said that the shuriman mages entombed him because they saw his complete disregard for life.

After the new lore came out(which wasn't even retconned,only expanded),we knew that Xerath killed azir to gain the power,though it was never specified why he did it. I mean revenge seemed to be his motivation,but he went a bit too far for that,since he took shurima with him. In the end it was not clear what drove him,so it was simply hard to judge him,but that didn't make him a grey character. In fact I'd say the new lore pretty much went the best route with that,as Xerath wanted to reform shurima because he thought that it was morally rotten(which wasn't taht far off if you think of Azirs father)

Beyond Legends5/5/2016, 7:18:27 PM6 votes

End Justify the Means. New Xerath is amazing. Finally Riot actually give out some real interesting character.

TiiGz5/5/2016, 7:36:11 PM4 votes

Idk man, I love Xerath too but I think the new lore is pretty awesome. He isnt really the psychopath you're saying he is, he's just power/knowledge hungry, and is willing to go to the extreme for it. He is, and always has been a student of knowledge (and magic), and over time his quest for knowledge has corrupted him. Now Riot has further developed his backstory and incorporated how Azir, Renekton, and Nasus were born. I thought the part was pretty awesome where Nasus and Renekton battled together to lock Xerath in the tomb, but Renekton was locked in with him and then, over a millenia, Xerath brainwashed Renekton into hating his brother. So cool.

warpenguin5555/5/2016, 7:24:07 PM4 votes

Because hes a fucking villian.

Meep Man5/6/2016, 4:22:01 PM4 votes

The poll has a false statement in it. Xerath is still a slave and a traitor. He hasn't changed incredibly with the rework, just we get into much more detail.

Helmight5/5/2016, 10:22:01 PM3 votes

Xerath is far from a mass-murdering sociopath, as you've labeled him. He's a human who's been through the ringer. He was a slave for most of his life, which is pretty shitty even if you're a slave in the lap of luxury; he fought endlessly to protect his "brother's" life, only to never be rewarded for his actions; and the promise of freedom was constantly denied to him. His actions to betray Azir make perfect sense, given that context.

I don't believe that Xerath intended to kill the entire kingdom of Shurima with the Ascension ritual. It's possible he didn't know the details of the arrangement (the Sun Priests probably kept that knowledge pretty close to the chest to keep someone from stealing it) and hadn't realized that by taking the power for himself, he'd cause a massive amount of power backlash. Still murder, but at least it wasn't intentional.

Xerath isn't necessarily the villain here - it's all a matter of perspective. From one side, he's a mass-murdering sociopath as you've said. From another though, he's a slave who's been lied to his whole life and is finally working to take vengeance on those who exploited him.

333lom5/11/2016, 1:39:32 PM3 votes

I am sorry you got downvoted so much. I've noticed that certain people here on the Boards support every change of the Lore, never giving criticism. Their arguments that the new lore is more dynamic, longer, filled with flamboyant words which nobody understands etc. cannot rule out the fact that Xerath's personality had been changed. I've linked this part of his old Judgment in another thread:

"They make weapons of it, but they don't understand. The more you force your control over it, the more you lose your true connection to the arcane." -Xerath

This alone shows that the old Xerath had mastering arcane magic as his main motive. New Xerath masters magic only to use it as a tool for revenge. Whoever ruthlessly here on Boards says they think Xerath should be the sociopathic villain and about time he became one, has no sense of respect for other people nor understanding of character development.

Let's look at Jhin: a villain made from the start. Nobody feels cheated out of their favourite character in this case. Perfectly fine. But with champions that were originally gray, amazing characters with moral struggles in their lores, it's a different story. When they get turned into absolute villains with no argument against, they get ruined. It's like the writers don't know how to develop them and keep them realistic, with motives that don't include revenge and absolute power by any means necessary.

Xerath, Leona and Viktor were my favourite characters. Two of them got ruined, turned into villains. One is left, but I dread the day Riot decides to give him a lore update too.

TiiGz5/5/2016, 7:30:46 PM3 votes

Idk man, I think the new lore is pretty awesome.

Ebonmaw Dragon5/6/2016, 10:57:27 PM3 votes

The "Rework" and "Now" is the same Xerath... Nothing changed, its just a continuation.

rand0mredneck5/5/2016, 7:56:03 PM2 votes

When you're bro's for life with a guy who could free you with a snap of his fingers, but doesn't, it's naturally gonna fester. Xerath became misguided and violent, cause he thought it was what was good for Azir. Until the whole "Remember your place" thing. If Azir hadn't decided until the last possible minute to free him, it wouldn't have happened. No one is innocent in that story. Even Xerath.

Hige5/6/2016, 4:38:43 PM2 votes

In my opinion there has to be a villain somewhere, and playing AS the villain can be pretty fun too, this problem is also present with Viktor's fans... they complain that they don't want to see him as a villain, but sometimes characters are just evil and you can't deny that sacrificing a whole nation is an evil act, it doesn't matter if he wanted to kill them all or not, in the end, what happened is how everyone recognizes him, if he himself doesn't see how that was ill, well... he's a psycho.

Remnar5/5/2016, 7:15:08 PM1 votes

He sorta sounds like a power hungry kinda dude.. so, that's a thing..

Fasmodey5/5/2016, 7:22:26 PM1 votes

To be honest, killing Azir's father is not a bad thing because he was an asshole who thought no slave deserves respect and life.

But he went too far with killing the Empress and her children. He burned alive them! DAFUQ. (Xerath can burn a woman and her child alive but Graves can't have a cigar hehe. I'm so funny, no? k)

Anyway, when Xerath learned the Azir's real purpose, he felt so bad and started to cry. But it was too late to stop. If he didn't stop, he would die and everything he did would become nothing. He values freedom more than anything, he wanted to live free. So that's why he couldn't stop. He loves Azir, but he loves freedom more.

Shortly, Life with freedom > Azir > anything for him.