Cho’Gath isn’t the prettiest champion, in fact, he is pretty dang ugly to be frank with you. However, he is unfathomably strong in 7.14, specifically when played in the jungle.

“But Cho’Gath is a top laner,” I hear you say.

“Ryan, he hasn’t been played jungle in forever,” someone on Twitter yells. All of these things are true friends, and yet, the multi-armed menace can dominate the jungle game all the same.

Here’s why:

Sweet Upgrades

First, he has a pretty decent clear with his new E, an ability that was heavily reworked this patch. The slow that it now applies also makes him quite potent in early game ganks. When Cho lumbers out of the jungle, players aren’t expecting much more than a quick knock-up. Activating the E allows him to almost permanently slow most escaping enemies.

All of the other great Cho’Gath jungle tools are still there. His passive is excellent for sustain. His Q makes for excellent gank CC. Even his W can remove folk’s ability to escape with their spells. However, it is his recently reworked R combined with his E that makes him so powerful.

Health is a very powerful stat right now, and Cho’Gath’s ultimate not only gains health per-stack, but also scales off of bonus health. Because of this interaction, combined with the fact that his E damage also scales off of Feast stacks and grows in size based on Cho’s size, Cho’Gath is an unstoppable tank with very high damage.

Feast now having unlimited stacks allows Cho’Gath to become and infinitely scaling beast. Now that stacks can no longer be lost, it also allows Cho players to be a little less cautious with their plays. So if that is what makes Cho so great in the jungle, how do you actually find success? Well, there are a couple things.

Skills

You want to max your skills in this particular order:

1. (E) Vorpal Spikes
2. (W) Feral Scream
3. (Q) Rupture

As always, you want to level (R) Feast whenever you can.

Build

The build here is crucial and there are a few different options.

First, Champion.gg’s most popular build:

1. Chilling Smite Cinderhulk
2. Ninja Tabi
3. Righteous Glory
4. Gargoyle Stoneplate
5. Warmog’s Armor
6. Thornmail

Being frank, I think this build is bad. Most other people probably do to, considering that it has a 41 percent win rate on a champion with a 56 percent win rate in the jungle.

I have a much better build that I have been using:

1. Chilling Smite Cinderhulk
2. Boots of Mobility (or Ninja Tabi)
3. Dead Man’s Plate
4. Titanic Hydra
5. Thornmail (or Spirit Visage)
6. Warmog’s Armor

In this game, I was of course very lucky that there were no threatening AP members to hold me back. With this build, in this game, with Iron Elixir, I have over 8000 health and did the most damage on my team by quite a large margin. I 1v5’d and not only survived, but killed several enemy teammates.

A great deal of my Cho’Gath success has been thanks to Titanic Hydra. Because this build focuses so heavily on Vorpal Spikes and basic attacks, Titanic is able to pump up your damage even further while also tossing you some extra health.

This build is strong and very fun to play. Trying to get as many stacks as possible makes for a fun mini-game that pays off immensely. I would recommend trying it all out for yourself this week before Cho inevitably gets some nerfs next patch.