Galio Build Guide by L42cf

Special Thanks to...

Jhoijhoi and his Making a Guide
which helped me through making a guide and has a lot of helpful templates you'll see following this guide. Even if you've made 100s of guides I'd recommend checking it out anyway. It has a lot of helpful tips and codings.

Introduction

Welcome to my first Mobafire guide of Galio-The Sentinel's Sorrow. Galio is a great support/tank to any team due to his nice utility and game changing ultimate. In this guide I'll be showing you an unconventional way to play Galio, as a counter mage.

Pros / Cons

Pros / Cons

spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace

Pros + Great farm with abilities + Great harass in lane + Awesome passive + Game changing ultimate + Good utility + He freaking flies

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Cons - Skillshots take time to master - Only hard cc can be avoided with tenacity or hard cc itself - Out of mana early game - Static cooldowns except on ultimate

Runes

Runes
Greater Mark of Magic Penetration 9	Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration 9	Greater Glyph of Magic Resist 9	Greater Quintessence of Health 3

• Greater Quintessence of Health:The extra 78 health helps all game but it's vital to survive burst damage that you'll most likely be facing.
  
• Greater Mark of Magic Penetration:Good to hurt their AP carry a little with the magic penetration.
  
• Greater Glyph of Magic Resist:Early game is where you'll be dueling casters, which is why we don't get per/level glyphs.
  
• Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration:Galio is mana starved early game, so getting the extra mana regeneration helps.

Masteries

Masteries
4/4	4/4	1/1	3/3	3/4	4/3	1/3	1/2	3/1	3/3	2/3	1/3

I grab basic defense and health in the Defense Tree reaching to Juggernaut while grabbing Arcane Knowledge in the Offensive tree for that extra punch.

Summoner Spells

Great to escape over walls or Flash+ Idol of Durand

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Just a good spell in order to escape or limit damage to someone in a teamfight.

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I think this spell is okay, but considering you have your own speed boost built in it's basically unneeded.

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Ignite is good for AP mages, and can help you kill a squishy easier or pesky Swain mid.

Abilities

• Runic Skin:This passive is nice converting half of your total magic resist and turning it into ability power, making items like Abyssal Scepter great on Galio.
  
• Resolute SmiteYour main harassing tool in lane. This and your Righteous Gust also clear minnon waves pretty nicely.
  
• Bulwark:An ability that grants you or an ally a shield that gives bonus armor and magic resist while healing Galio for a flat amount of the damage that shielded champion received.
  
• Righteous Gust:Your main escaping tool. Use this to help allies get places faster, escape or even chase with.
  
• Idol of Durand:Game changing ultimate. Use it wisely during big fights because it can determine that fight with it's potentially huge impact. We'll be going over this a little more in a bit.

Skill Sequence

Ability Sequence
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18

> > >

You want to max Resolute Smite first as it gives you the best early game harass grabbing Idol of Durand] whenever available. The reason for maxing Righteous Gust before Bulwark is because in a solo lane I don't really find much use of the shield.

Items

Null-Magic Mantle

Wards

As a support buying Sight Ward are a must in order to help prevent ganks, seeing buffs and more. It's a vital part of a build and should always be bought whenever you go back and can spare some gold. For help on where to ward click here.

Situational Items

Usually Frozen Heart handles DPS pretty well, but if you feel your armor is lacking you can pick this up in exchange for Force of Nature

This item can be used in exchange for Banshee's Veil if you feel like you could use heavier MR protection.

I would consider this item since it gives a good chunk of health, armor and a neat active, but only if your facing a lot of DPS like Master Yi or Tryndamere. If you do want to get this item swap out your Philosopher's Stone for Heart of Gold.

Items to avoid

Buying this item returns no favorable stats for Galio and is way too expensive for what you're getting out of 3000 gold.

I find this item pretty bad on Galio since he the passive isn't too useful on him, and the stats your getting out of it aren't the best. If your in desperate need of armor and health, it would be a last resort.

Teamfights

Your role in teamfights are to protect the carry and usually initiate the fight. I wouldn't start the fight with your Idol of Durand unless you can flash in, only considering you can be disrupted of your channel, which could make or break a teamfight. What you want to do is usually shield yourself while rushing their carry by landing your Resolute Smite and getting the enemy to unload their cc to try and stop you and make them commit to the fight. Once they've blown the majority of their hard cc then you want to ult, as long as you can affect at least three of the enemies for maximum results.
This video is a good example since you notice he pokes around a little and waits for the majority of the cc to be unloaded and makes the enemies commit leading for him to Flash and Idol of Durand all five of the enemies with a nicely placed silence by Blitzcrank.

Summary

I hope you enjoyed my guide of Galio, a great support-tank and at the same time mage counter and hope this guide helps you in getting many victories to come. I realize this guide is not perfect so feedback and constructive criticism really helps.

Changelog

01-03-12-Guide created
01-04-12-Edited guide for spelling errors while adding more content
02-19-12-Changed "Items to Avoid" after dodge removal and considerations on items.
05-29-12-Organized recommended items to fit the mid role better.
08-10-12-Added Ignite to better match the Mid meta