Rammus Build Guide : Just another Rammus guide. [Updated 2013]

Introduction (Please read)

January 14th, Season 3 Update Information
I've been lazy the last couple of months and not updating this guide with the new Season 3 items, masteries and meta/Rammus changes. The reasoning behind this is mostly cause of lazyness and school. I haven't been playing as much League as before. Enough about my life.

I've updated the guide according to Season 3. I've added items in the quick sheet that you can look at from a second monitor, ALT+TABing from in-game or whatever. They're just general ideas of what to build. It ALWAYS depends on the opponent team - never have one single build you use. I will talk more about this in the items section down below. Masteries have also been updated. Runes are the same.

About Rammus
So, as it seems he kind of doesn't fit into the current League meta - kind of like Master Yi (AD). The only thing they can do really, is jungling. And even that, they aren't the best at. Although Rammus is a great jungler, his character is just... not as good as others. Let me draw you a picture.

Passive:
Rammus gains AD (25%) of his armor.
What the hell will you use this for? You're a tank. A little more AD would be good, but you'll get like 40-50-60 late game. Sure, that's kind of a big deal. It's more than B.F. Sword. Then again you're a tank and have no use for AD. You will have a little smaller damage output but you're melee and it won't help you much. You can barely land 3 basic attacks in a teamfight. Your job is to run around taunting the dangerous people and dealing damage with your ultimate, also cancelling channelig stuff with your Q.
- It's a decent passive and can help in 1v1 situations.

Q:
Not much to say. It's Rammus' skill and what defines him as an awesome armordillo. Good skill. Use it well.

W:
Nice defensive boost.

E:
Taunt. Long. Good.

R:
AOE Magic damage. Works on turrets. Allright.

Now, what's the problem?
Well, first off all he's gonna get kited around like a little gnome. You'd catch up with your Powerball, but it doesn't help much because there's a big-*** cow in the way headbutting you away from their carry. Now what? You're ****ed. You can't do your job.
Another story, you're done with your route and you're level 2-4. You go to gank and oh wait, they saw you with a ward and you can't do **** about it. It's too early to gank and you'll have to go back to the jungle. Laners level faster than junglers (Rammus anyway) and get more gold (with sustain in mind). You're ****ed either way.
The only way you're going to get to pull off a good gank is in a good opportunity or if they didn't ward. There is still another option though, which is what brings Boots of Mobility to the scene. With this and Powerball, along with some good timing, you'll be able to hit about the middle of their lane +- when the Powerballs ends, thus taunting them. With the speed combined of Q+Mobility boots, and maybe even shurelya's later in the game, you'll be able to land the taunt and an easy kill.
But how will you get the money to buy these items when you can't gank early? They even removed a core item, Heart of gold. Oh well, not much you can do.

I could loop on with arguements and solve them forever. I won't.
To succeed, you'll have to play smart and grab opportunities.
Rammus generally gets beat by another jungler.

Update: To be honest, Rammus is a bad laner in ranked and level 30 games in general. He does not fit into the current laning meta (AD Carry & Support, AP Mid, Bruiser Top) as he is best built as a full tank. Therefore, you are probably better off jungling.

Hello. This is yet another guide by me, and now for the unique armadillo, Rammus. Before we move on, I'd like to tell you some things.

Please do not down-vote, flame or do any other negative action just because the cheat sheet is incorrect in your opinion, or lacks anything. I will suggest you make a comment on this, after your have checked the following things:
1. Please check all the five builds. They all are for different situations, and I'll explain them all later in the guide. Please read that section first.
2. Read the entire Items section. You might find the answer to your question there.
3. Read the FAQ, and see if your question might be in there.
If all above is done, feel free to leave a comment. I beg you not to down-vote or do anything else negatively before you have submitted a comment and I've answered you.
This guide is my way of playing Rammus. I'm in no way telling you exactly the best was of playing Rammus. Several sections of this guide will explain the different uses of items in different situations. This is all personal preference.
If there is something you dislike, please tell me so I can eventually correct it, or give you an answer to your question.
When voting, please tell me WHY you up/down-voted. I'd like constructive critism very much, as I'm not a professional guidemaker or player of any kind.
If you have a screenshot of a game you played you think is good, feel free to give me a link in the comments if you want me to add it.
English is not my primary language, and I don't know it too well. There might be a few mistakes here and there, but I'd be really happy if you could comment and tell me where I eventually made the mistakes, for so me to correct them.

Runes, Masteries and the original items in this guide (Yes, there are a big items section handling all the items in all the builds, but...) are after build ONE on the cheat sheet, which is the general build. Of course I will talk about the other builds, but for at least runes and masteries, it's for build one.

With that being said, it's time to move on to the guide. Thank you very much for reading above. "Mhm"

Abbreviations

In case you don't understand a couple of abbreviations I use in this guide, here's a list of commonly used abbreviations:

Abbreviation - Definition
Armor - Armor
MR - Magic Resist
ArmPen - Armor Penetration
MagPen - Magic Penetration
AD - Attack Damage
AS - Attack Speed
AP - Ability Power
Hp5 - Health per 5 seconds
Mp5 - Mana per 5 seconds
CDR - Cooldown Reduction
CC - Crowd Control Effects (Disables)
CS - Creep Score
MS - Movement Speed
tl;dr - Too Long ; Didn't Read
IMO - In My Opinion
TBH - To Be Honest
ASAP - As Soon As Possible
Pull or Leash - Get a teammate to hit the target and go back to lane immediately

Let's get on with the guide, shall we? "Ok".

Pros / Cons | Why Rammus?

SPACE

Pros:
- An exceptional tank
- Easy to play
- Can save people's butts countless times
- Really hard to defeat with activated
- Is an armadillo. Ok. How magnificent.

SPACE

Cons:
- Easy to play yes, but hard to really master
- Tenacity is really annoying
- Very, very often banned in rankeds. At least in the lower ELOs for sure. Probably the most banned champion?
- More vulnerable than other tanks when is deactivated.

Why Rammus?
is probably one of the best tanks in game. He has a great taunt that lasts for up to three seconds. This can save your teammates so many times, and I feel so good when I get a "omfg ty rammus<3" in return. He is really easy to play, and you should start getting the holds of him after just a few games. However, he is hard to really master. He is hard to play very good. If you can fully master , you're the one who can lead your team to victory. With , you can get your carries fed enough to carry the game themself.

Rammus also has an awesome speed boost. You can catch up with escapers, roll away from enemies chasing you, or use it to interrupt channeling spells. I will come back to this later.
There's so many nice things you can say about . I won't mention everything, or it'd look like a book.

Now, let's get started for real, "ok"?

The Builds

First of all, I will explain the cheat sheet builds.
But before that, I'd like you to know that the builds have a lot of items in them at the end, as the items you would get should really vary on the opposing team.

Build 1:
Build one is the general build. It's how you would build for a decent enemy team, usually consisting of around equal damage output of AD and AP. If the teams gets a little bit more unbalanced, I've added a bunch of other items you can get to satisfy you and your team.

Build 2:
Build two is the general Rammus jungle build. Rammus is a decent jungler, and it's quite easy to do. A video will be added later.
The runes of this build are a bit more specified to your job as a jungler, and so are the early-game items. The rest of the items are around the same as build two. Remember to adjust them after how well the enemies' AD or AP carries are doing.

Build 3:
This build is for if you're facing a very heavy AD team. It contains a bit of MR aswell, however it mainly focuses on getting Armor. Armor will also improve your AD, which is a great bonus. Remember to not always exactly follow this build. If the enemy's AD carry is fed, and you see the AP carry also has picked up a small bunch of kills, it might be smart to a little bit MR. Guardian's Angel should give you MR needed enough though, if the enemy's caster sucks.

Build 4:
The opposite of build three, is build four. This mainly focuses on heavy MR, with a little boost of Armor aswell. Remember that getting some Armor is great for Rammus, due to his passive. However if you find your enemy AP carry with a blowing 30/2/14, it's worth investing some money in a bunch of MR. Remember that the enemy might have an AD carry there too, having a potential damage ouput. Be aware.

General information
Common with all the builds, you will find health items as a key. Why, you ask? Well, as you probably already know, when you start stacking higher Armor and MR, the effects will just decay more and more until you get stuck at round 83%. You can't go much higher if you don't have six Thornmails and activate Defensive Ball Curl I guess. However, this shouldn't be done. You lose too much money.

Here's a nice graph for you:
As you can see, around 400 is the limit. It flattens so much out that... well yes. The cap of Armor/MR you should get before you should stack health, is around 200-300.

Then, the question would be: But I have my Defensive Ball Curl, which gives me +150!!! Shouldn't I then just get 50 Armor and 50 MR then spam Warmogs???

No. Why? Simple. As said in the tips when playing against Rammus, his stats are slightly lower than any other tank when Defensive Ball Curl is deactivated. Along with any other abilities, it has a cooldown. And to cover the room between the cooldown and the activation of this spell we need Armor and MR. A fight will probably last longer than six seconds, and the cooldown of this spell is 14 seconds. That makes you very vulnerable within those eight seconds, and therefore getting Armor and MR is a must, like with any other tank. It's when Defensive Ball Curl is activated Rammus really shines. That's when he is amazing. When it's off, he's like any other tank, except that he is an armadillo.

tl;dr
Really? Well, since I'm one of the nice armadillos, I'll give you the short story.

Use build one/two for general games. If the opponent team is quite balanced, I'd recommend one of those. Notice that it's up to you what you buy late game though.

If you're facing a heavy AD opponent team, go for build three. It also builds a little MR of course. However if you're facing a strong MR team, go for build four. Build four also builds a bit armor.

Runes

In this section I will be explaining my choice of runes.
Hence that this is for build one.

Marks
Any rune could fit here. Marks doesn't give a good defensive bonus, so you should use what you have. If you have 9x , I'd suggest you use them. If not, anything else. These runes aren't too important for an tank.
Jungle: In the jungle, these runes are great. I'd suggest you to use , or Greater Mark of Desolation. These are runes that really help you out. is a decent choice aswell, imo.

Note that I don't encourage you to buy 9x . If you have them, they're better than . If not, go with the . The health bonus aren't too big, but it is something.

Seals
Seals are probably the most important runes for . All I can say is . Armor, Armor Armor. gains AD from Armor, and Seals' biggest boost is Armor. You can choose for yourself wheter you want flats or pr.level, but I'd prefer flats myself. This is due to the great help it gives you in the jungle: 1.41 x 9 = 12.69. It gives you a whopping 12 armor bonus in both lane and jungle, and this will be 30 with your cloth armor, along with 6 from masteries which will give you 36. ' base armor is 21, which will reward you in having a sick 57 armor to start off with!!! As you can see on the graph in the previous section, the physical damage dealt to you will be reduced by around 36%!!! This bonus is SICK early game, where spells doesn't do too much damage. Wow. No doubt here.
Jungle: Exactly the same. Insane surviability boost.
Remember that this will add to your AD aswell. 57 armor divided by 4 equals 14. That means an extra 14 AD for you.

Glyphs
As for glyphs, the best for to get would definitely be or . This is really, really up to you, but you want to get MR for sure. Per level might be a good idea though, as these will kick in at level 7, and their effect will be bigger than the flats right there at level 7. By that time, peoples' spells aren't way too strong, and therefore I'd suppose that per levels would be the best.
Personal preference.

Quintessences
. Health quints are imo best, but it's up to you what you choose. Quints are good overall, and anything tanky would work. Greater Quintessence of Defence, etc. Nothing really much to say here for sure. It's all up to yourself. I just have to state that starting out with (26 x 3) = 78 more health will really help.

Runes

Now, lets move on to the masteries I've chosen. "Ok".

Masteries

SEASON 3: Look at the 'cheat sheet'. Not much to say. General tank/jungle masteries.

S2
For the general build, the masteries are set as the follows:

Masteries

So, basically this is my personal preferences. Some points can be swapped here and there, and yet today I don't know which is the best. etc can be very useful, however so is . is another decent spell, I mean it will reward you with some good gold if you get 40 assists, huh?

30 assists:
level 1: 240g
level 2: 480g
level 3: 720g

720g is something, and for only three mastery points. However, again, requires 5 mastery points, and so it goes on... It's up to you to decide, and just putting 30 points in there somewhere will make great difference :)

The rest is pretty much basic tank masteries, 0-21-9.

The jungle build isn't really very different;

Masteries

Again, it's a wide selection of alternatives. will grant you some bonus gold throughout the game, just like again, as explained above. A very very useful mastery point for any jungler is the . 20% longer buff duration is gold! is good for moving faster... everywhere. The point placed in is for your .
- Keep in mind that can be incredibly useful in some situations.

Rammus Jungle is now much better than before!
- Why is that?
Due to the new mastery, . This stacks up with your , and will make a sweet difference. Your jungling will go faster, and all the red wraiths will now die while you attack the blue. (Well, you're probably too fast so you gotta auto-attack them anyway :)). and will protect you nicely, granting you more surviability in the jungle.

A good choice for almost any jungler is . Some, like and are tanks, and will have much more benefits from the Defense Tree.

Items (+Treads or Tabis!?)

Season 3:
Not much have changed except for the new items. The only new item concering Rammus really is Runic Bulwark. It's a great item for your team. Below are the items from the S2 guide, I'm too lazy to change it. If you're not some kind of idiot that can't think logically (no offense).

Basically you want to build items depending on the other team.
- If their physical damage output is large, get armor.
- If their magical damage output is large, get magic resistance.
- If their damage output is a combination of the two above, get HP, armor and magic resistance.

It's really that simple. Also obviously you'd counter true damage (ignores resists) with HP(Health). Good health items are Banshee's Veil, (Shurelya's early), Randuins Omen, and heck, even a Warmogs. Although Warmogs gives a lot of health, that's all it gives. Items like Randuis Omen gives both debuffs to the enemy team, health and armor - something much more viable against pretty much any comp with an AD carry (which is 95% of teams these days).

Season 2:

For the item section, I'm going to talk about the general build and the jungle build. The two others are very situational, and I will also explain situational items; when and where to get them.

STARTING ITEMS

General: ,
Physical: , 5x or 3x and 2x
Magical: , 2x

Make your support cv their base 5-15 sec after start.

General Build (#1)(#2)
- Regrowth Pendant
This item will give you extreme sustainability in the lane, aswell as later on build into . It's amazing to have, and can let you stay in lane basically forever, as long as you don't risk too much. With your , this will make you never ever need to go back. I'm not telling you to NOT go back. No.

- Philosopher's Stone
Built from your starting item, this item is to be got early on. It'll reward you with 5 gold per 10 seconds, which will reward you in getting 30/1min, 300 gold each 10 minutes you have it. Keep it for 30 minutes and it'll give you more than it costed - and that's when you sell it. You only need the hp regen and mana regen on your way in the early game phase.

- Heart of Gold
'A tear was shed.

- Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi
It's up to your opponents what you get. I'd like to get if they have 5+ strong cc's (stun, suppress, taunt) or like 6-7+ cc's including slow. I also get them if the opponent team is balanced AND have 3+ cc's. If you're facing a heavy AD team, or just heavily fed, and barely (5-) cc's, I'd go for .

- Guardian Angel
A great item which gives both Armor and MR, along with an amazing passive! This item tends to be gotten in late game, however getting it before is actually very rewarding. It's passive will always be 750 HP and 375 Mana, which will be worth more early game than late game! Therefore I use to get it earlier on, but it's all up to yourself. Before this, I do grab a to get another small boost of HP on the way though.

- Sunfire Cape
Nice item, both armor and HP! A sweet passive, and doesn't cost way too much. I'd say its a nice item to get.
Note: If you need to sell an item, this is the one I'd go for. E.g. if you face a very heavy AD team and want to buy another or so. This is the one I'd sell.

- Randuin's Omen
This item will give you an AOE slow to both attack and movement speeds, and if you use this while your is activated, it has an amazingly longer effect. This is built from your earlier gotten item, .

- Warmog's Armor
Crazy HP boost. With the kind of ""minor"" stats you've gotten so far (not really HUGE boost - items), it will help great together with your . This is where you get at the point that HP items is worth more of your money than getting Armor/MR.
Note: This item can be extended and bought later instead.

- At this point, your should be sold a bit ago.

Now, it's up to the opponent team what YOU need:
If you seem to need armor, get a for sure! A freaking amazing passive (30%!!!!!!!) will TEAR down their AD carries, and with the sick Armor you'll get form activating , you'll be dealing more damage from to them than they deal to you, lol.

- Thornmail
This item will give you a sick Armor boost. It's quite cheap also, so it can be an alternative to stacking, if you need LOADS of Armor.

- Frozen Heart
This item gives you an awesome armor boost, and mana. It has a 20% CD Reduction, along with screwing up the enemies' AD carries by lowering their AS by 20%!! That means that their AS will drop from 2.000 > 1.600! *Insert-Trollface-Here*. So basically, this item combined with is just magnificent if you fight against a heavy AD team.

- Warmog's Armor
If you feel like you already have enough Armor and MR or the opponent's carries aren't way too fed, getting another would be a good investment.

Situational Items

All builds (#1)(#2)(#3)(#4)
So, every game you play, the opponents characters and amount of feed will vary. This is why I made this section. Let's take a closer look on when to get which items!

- My opponents have really heavy AD damage.
Build 3.
An AD carry's worst enemy is definitely the and . None of them should be stacked, as both of them gives different bonuses along with great Armor. Therefore, getting one of each and a or another HP-yielding item would really do. You might also consider as an item, due to both Armor and HP, along with a small CD Reduction AND TWO AS slows. WHAT? Yes, because of the 20% chance on attacked to slow their carries AS, this will be activated. No doubt. Any AD carry should have a good attack speed, making this very likely to affect them. Not to mention you get an AOE slow which also slows their AS. With your on, you get a free +1.5sec with this slow, EXCLUDING your original armor and MR. This is incredible to .
tl;dr: , , , . Dem AD carries bees mad.

- The enemy has prodigiously high magic damage.
Build 4.
Unfortunately, there's no item similar to the marvellous , which they imo should create. As Magic Damage usually are a bit bigger than Physical, they could make like returning 20% or 25% of the damage as Physical Damage.

So anyway, your core items in this situation would definitely be and NOT ANYMORE. Both of those items will provide you with a sweet MR boost, along with other bonuses. NOT ANYMORE will give you a pleasant HP Regen, and will give you an astonishing passive which removes a debuff every 60 seconds. Yes. Any stun, silence, fear... won't affect you. Note that this also blocks spells like . After acquiring those two items, I would recommand getting any HP items, e.g. or . You might think, "Omen!? Why in this situation?". Well pretty basic - you need some armor to protect you anyway. It also adds to your AD, and gives great surviability with both its Passive and Active.

- I'm facing an 100% balanced team. What do I build?
Both. Absolutely both. I recommend looking at Build 1, which is the standard. is a flawless item for these cases. It provides you with both Armor and MR, along with a sweet passive which imo works better the earlier you can get it. Anyway, don't worry. Get Armor, MR and HP items and you should be fine. Your should do a huge amount of the job though, so getting HP would be your best bet here. Of course not just only HP, but mostly HP for sure.

A list of situational items

- Aegis of the Legion
Really cheap cost for the bonuses it actually gives, and can really help your team. A good item when your team is squishier than usual, or you need a nice boost early on.

- Spirit Visage
Another pretty cheap item, gives a nice little MR along with some CD Reduction and a 15% increase to your regenerations. Combined with items like NOT ANYMORE, you can get really strong.

- Warmog's Armor
Stacking? If really needed, then yes. This would be only when the enemy has like two really fed AD carries, and you already got yourself 400 armor with your . However, I think any tank should get this. This item might be considered pretty nooby, but I deny it. It gives really great health, and when it gets stacked up it gives you incredibly much health. Not to mention that it doesn't cost way too much either. Imo, this is a must.

- Thornmail or Frozen Heart?
I'd prefer both. However, if you only need one, I'd go for which probably contains the best passive in the entire game. It will just tear down their AD carries along with your . Either of them is a must I must say, anyway. Atleast as long as you dont meet a full AP team. Let's just not for god's sake hope this happens to our dear LoL comrades...

The rest of the items are pretty straight forward or mandatory imo. If you have any suggestions, or if I left out anything, feel free to PM me or leave a comment.

Do I get Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi? (After dodge removal)

This is, in fact, a large topic. Now as I write this pre-patch, I haven't tested the new yet. However, a 10% damage reduction from auto attacks would be GODLY against a heavy carry team.
I WILL update this as soon as I get to test them a bit. Please tell me what you think too in the comments.

I'd say the following (before testing):
If the enemy has strongly with auto-attackers... That is one-two fed, or three+ - get . A 10% reduction in addition to your armor (I do not know which one of those will apply first. Hopefully it will be Armor first, then the bonus) would strike their carries hard. They can't do **** to you now. Your were immortal before... Then what are you with an additional 10% reduction? Woah. What I'm pointing at here, is that it's an extremely strong item against AD carries especially.

To sum it up, if they have strong auto-attack damage, it's a brilliant item. I will update this sooner or later, please leave a comment on this if you have any input or opinions on this. Thanks.

Skill Sequence

Build 1#, 3#, 4#

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

We'll start out with. We only need one point in this skill for the speed. You should basically always be spinning when not in lane. Afterwards get a point in for a great increase in your sustainability, thereafter maxing asap. This is your main skill, and what makes an amazing butt-saver.

We want to get as second priority, excluding the ultimate which always should be gotten when it can be. Lastly just put your points in .

Skill Priority: > > > .

Build #2

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

Pretty much same as above, except for the starting phase. You want to put two points into, as this is what makes you able to jungle. Always keep it active while fighting. Get at level 4 for a gank, then max it asap.

Skill Priority: > > > .

Summoner Spells

S3: Same as below. Flash/Smite. Flash for the great utility it provides you with and Smite cause of jungle. Never jungle without smite. Ever.

Alright, so this is the deal. I think Flash is a must. At least for myself. It has so incredibly many uses, and I just love it. Now, if you're going to lane, I think Teleport or maybe even Fortify would be your best bet. Personally I choose Teleport. As for jungling which I do most of the time, Smite is a must.

Some of Flash's uses are...
- Escaping
- Escaping though a wall
- Kiting
- If you get counterjungled
- Getting over creeps while in Powerball mode
- Which allows you to catch the enemy with Puncturing Taunt
- Saving a teammate
- In case of danger

...and that's only some.

Viable choices:
- Cleanse
I heard of this strategy once... Soft cc (things that can't stop you 100% but weaken your effectiveness; slow, silence etc). counts as one point - hard cc (stun, taunt, suppress) counts as two. If it passes X points, get the item/summoner spell. I think this was for Mercury's Treads but it can be used for Cleanse aswell. Let's put it 8 points? You can decide this, I normally don't use this spell tbh, unless I can see (draft pick) that they have a very heavy cc team. Keep in mind that you maybe want to get Mercury's Treads though, which has Tenacity (reduces cc durations). So, decide it yourself.

- Ghost
This is a summoner spell that is amazing for escaping enemies chasing you. This can save your life many times, or maybe even a turret for that matter. Combined with Powerball it can give you a magnificent speed.

The rest of the summoner spells are better not to be chosen by a tank imo.

Playing Rammus: Jungle

SEASON 3:
General jungle path now is simply Wolves > Blue (Leash, if you get help from (top/bot) you can do it smiteless and do a faster red buff instead; if not, smite it) > Golems > Red Wraiths.

Level 4 gank:
Wolves > Blue buff > Wraith camp > Double golems > Red buff > Wraith camp > gank.

Level 3 gank:
Wolves > Blue buff > Wraith camp > Red buff > gank.

Of course feel free to gank anywhere in between if there's a good opportunity.

Season 2:

The new jungle
Looks like Rammus still can do his old route. He's still capable of completing the whole jungle, clearing all the camps, before going back. Another possible route would now be going Double Golems first, however I think that the Blue Buff route is working better. It makes you able to spam your skills by both basically unlimited mana and 22.5% CDR. Thereby you can Powerball whereever you are.

Rammus Jungle has been extremely improved from the latest patch imo. The mastery change patch. Bladed Armor makes his Defensive Ball Curl even stronger. Those two combined is incredibly strong. Now, I tried a few other starting items in the jungle. Still, it seems like Cloth Armor is the best item to start out with, along with Health Potion x5. This gives Defensive Ball Curl a boost, and adds to your AD aswell. E.g. Ruby Crystal or Doran's Shield gives you some great boosts to easily survive soloing Blue Buff, however leaves you without any Health Potions, making you die at either Wraiths or Double Golems. With Cloth Armor and 5x Health Potion, you are able to complete the route with two potions left. These should be used though, making you able to gank straight after red buff. And all this without any runes (Maybe 1 hp pot left without runes). SOLO blue.

This allows for an early gank for your team, hopefully bringing you in the lead. A great start.

Now, the best route would be the following;
Grab and 5x and head to Blue Buff place. Find a nice bush to scout from, and ask your team for protection. Let's assume there were no invasions. Head to the Blue Golem and ask for a pull. You should get it, but if your team is doucebags then solo it. From now on, you can still kick *** by soloing it. Smite at around 445 HP.

After acquiring Blue Buff, put a point in and drive to the wolves. At the end of wolves, you can either use to deal some quick damage and make them hop back (immediately after autoattack), or kill them with auto attacks and drive on to Wraiths instead, for quicker movement. Atm, I don't know which way is the quickest. However you'll save 30 HP by doing the first.

Wraiths is gold as , as from now, both and will kill all of the three red wraiths automatically, so therefore all you need to do is attack the blue wraith. By the time you finished the blue, the reds should already be dead. Move on to red buff.
Q: Why Red Buff before Double Golems?
A: First off, there's no risk to take. You will manage to kill both for sure. Also, Double Golems will go down quicker if you already have the Red Buff.
Though, make sure you have below 15-20 sec cooldown to complete Red. If you have it above, it might be smart to go Double Golems first. Some times you're just too fast. :)

Move on to either of the ones you haven't killed yet (Red/Golems), and kill them. Make sure you always keep a potion up, except for when at wolves though. Anyway, you SHOULD have enough hp to gank (I'd say 50-60%+) if you count in the amount of HP restored from potions within you reach the lane. If not, you failed. Assuming you have, go gank now.

Hopefully the gank was successful, and you can now recall, and eventually , depending on how much gold you got from ganking yet.
Move on to wolves>wraiths>golems>gank>blue>............... Gank WHENEVER there's an opportunity; Low HP enemies, lane pushed too far (by them) etc.

Tips
- As long as you have Blue Buff, should be used at all times available for sick movement speed around the map.
- After the first or second blue, try to give it to your AP carry if possible. If you can do this without messing up too much for yourself, your AP carry will get a SIGNIFICANT advantage over its opponent in an iron grip.
- Rammus is extreme at ganking. Getting early can help you towerdive aswell. The tower will cancel shooting at you while you're reviving, breaking its extra-damage chain. If you have creeps or an ally at the tower, it will attack them aswell.
- A nice strategy to use when ganking is loading up in a bush, drive in at maybe 50% of its duration, eventually use to hop over minions (if you're really in for the kill) too.
- Your standard ganking combo would be , > Immediately > .
- OH NO! I GOT THE KILl! SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT IM SUCH A BAD TANK.
No. No. Your ally/allies DID get an assist, and it's something. Though it would be preferred that you give the kills to your carry, it ain't armageddon ;)

UP-TO-DATE Jungle Video for Rammus as of 16th of November 2011.

Level 30 Masteries, NO tank runes only a few Tier 2 Armor Penetration and Tier 1 AS runes, not even full page.Was recorded on another account on another server. ;) (Explanation for the runes, if you wondered).

Old videos; < 16th of November 2011

Default route

I didn't use full runes in the video - barely any at all. << It was some time ago that I did this. I will probably add another in the future if I get time - hopefully in a real game.

Default route with commentary by Hahano

Another jungle route

Not by me. Click the video to go to YouTube for credits ;)

Playing Rammus: Gameplay, Strategies & Teamfights

Lane

Grab your and and set speed against your lane. Your best bet would be to lane against melee champions, preferably AD's. Your lanemate would preferably be a ranged dps.

Early Game just try to keep on last-hitting, and leave the harassing part to your lanemate. You might want to be sure that your lanemate gets a bunch of lasthits to get farmed for sure. Also when you see an opportunity, don't be afraid to try to roll in, taunt and activate your shield to grab a kill for your team. Make sure to mark the target and tell your lanemate first though. If you're going for the kill, make sure the target don't have flash. If it don't, pop your ulti; . It has really low cooldown and decent damage.

If you're pushing a tower, don't be afraid to pop your ulti either. It can help taking down the tower's health a lot faster, but make sure there aren't any enemy champions in range to get hit by your ultimate. If your tower gets pushed, taunt them with , make sure you're in tower range, make them hit you once and run towards the tower to make the tower hit your target as long as possible. This is a great harass.

If you're solotop, play defensive and wait for the creeps to come to you. doesn't have a lot of damage output, but due to his passive it's a little early on; .

Make them do the mistakes. If they overextend, make them pay for it by using . When maxed, it can give your target 2-4 turret hits if used correctly - huge damage early on!

Around mid game you will look for opportunities to gank, or help a lane if needed. If mid needs help, go there. You also have for emergencies, e.g. a tower is about to be destroyed. Duo to your taunt they probably won't stay anymore when you teleport there.

If you see a situation where there's like 4v4 mid, just pushing eachothers up and down without really doing anything but putting a small harass every now and then, look for opportunities, or create them yourself, to taunt one enemy (prefer melee) and drag them into the middle of your team. They should be done in a few seconds. Now the battle is 4v3 and you have a huge adventage. If you can manage to pull their carries, it would be awesome! You make those battles easy wins.

Late game is basically sticking with your team. Baron if possible, dragon... If there's a "pause" go to a lane and don't lose time. Time is exp, and exp is money. Money is items, items are necessary. But yes, sticking with your team and doing what you do.

Teamfights is where are incredibly awesome. For a whole THREE SECONDS, you can taunt the enemy's most damaging player, making them vulnerable to all attacks from your team. They will be down in no time at all. Remember to activate your , and of course whenever available. If you see there's a spell getting channeled etc, use and set speed towards the enemy to interrupt it. If it's a longer lasting fight, you can get to use several times.

Remember the technique to pull out an enemy and into your team, this will REALLY REALLY make a difference!!! It can turn a fight from LOSING 5-4 in deaths, to 0-5 for you. Amazingly enough. If you can pull out their carry, they simply can't do ****. Well except if it's a . He will probably pull off his and get the hell back in panic. This means that he won't have his ultimate in a minute or something though. Care if he's really fed, he probably will try to kill your entire team instead of rushing back in panic ;)

Playing Rammus: Using Powerball

Powerball is a very unique and nice spell. It interrupts stuff. Great.

Different uses:
- Travelling A LOT faster
- Escaping by ^
- Saving peoples butt
- Interrupting channeled spells like Requiem, Nether Grasp etc.
- Detect where an Akali, Twitch, Evelynn or Shaco is hiding
- Initiate [Wait in bush for it to charge up for a gank, or just roll into someone]
- Chasing someone

Patch changes:
In January of 2012, Powerball got a small... 'tweak'. Powerball duration reduced to 7 seconds from 8. Powerball initial speed increased to 30% from 25%.
In my opinion, this is a buff. You can travel a little less with Powerball turned on, however, you start off with a greater speed. This means that it's easier to catch up with enemies, you have to wait one sec less in a bush when ganking (make sure you don't activate it too early now though, if you roll straight in), and it's easier to get away (thinking this way - you get off fast so they can't cc you - hopefully).
The only negative side imo is the fact that you travel for 1 second less. However some of this is paid back in the speed, but not all. One second won't cover those extra 25-30% you would have another second before. (The 25% to 30% in the one second if you compare them). If you'd imagine a graph, you would travel further in less time before this way, but not much. It might save you 0.5-0.75 seconds. It would be life saving in one out of 274 situations.

^This is basically my thoughts about this now at the moment, before using it (wrote this pre-patch). Thank you.
In-depth:

Quoted:

The lifeblood of our little friend. Powerball has a thousand uses. It does everything one can ask of an ability and more. Powerball (PB) is a small-aoe nuke/movement boost/short stun/slow that can hit invisible units. Plus its cooldown isn't long at all. I am about to try to enumerate all of the tricks I have developed and learned for Powerball use. I have broken it up as best I could. Some of this you may already have thought of, but you never know when you might learn something.

I. Map Movement
Powerball allows Rammus to fly across the map every 12 seconds. Do not walk around when you should be rolling. The movement speed bonus should be used often. Rely on your mana regen and time in lane to fill you back up.

1) Fountainball: Hit Q and wait 2 seconds in the fountain. This will let PB's speed charge up and allow you to regen all of your mana. Right before the final mana-filling tick, leave the fountain and head on out to cause mayhem. This gives you a nice free boost out to your lane, and gets you to the first inhibitor a whopping 6 seconds faster. It may not seem like much, but in LoL, time is definitely money.

2) Basic map movement: When there is a fight that you are eager to reach, it can be worth using PB to get there in time to make a difference. For instance, it takes about 2 PBs (one of them a fountain freebie) + the 12 second CD to get to the second tower of top or bottom lane. You should arrive with about 6 sec left before you can PB again. You will have lost about 100 mana and still have enough to use all of your abilities and still have a chunk of mana left over. This means that it's worth it to get there as fast as possible.

Oftentimes, people think that they will be too late and so it is not worth wasting the mana to miss the fight. WRONG! It is better to be down 100 mana than to miss being able to get in there in time to taunt an enemy and save your friend, and possibly get a kill. This is almost always true. If you have a chance to get to a battle by using PB and you aren't doing something more important to take it. That said, if you do not have enough mana to make a difference once you get there, forget it.

II. Initiation
You are the tank. Make sure to get right into the thick of things and draw fire. Give your allies a chance to unload their spells and attacks. Powerball is essential to this. Few champions can take a surprise 300 dmg stun/slow without flinching. One of the strongest assets of PB is its high-speed impact scariness. Even Alistar wants not to get rammed by a man-sized, spikey, rotating armordillo. Use that! The two ways you will be initiating is with surprising speed or scary mind-games. These tactics are more important in initiating ganks, because in team fights your focus is mainly to hit as many as possible and get into the thick of things.

1) Lightning Initiation: There are two tricks to what I call Lightning Initiation. These can be used both to start a gank or a initiate a big team fight.

i) The Face Flash: One tactic people never seem to expect is the Face Flash. This can be both a mind game and a speed tactic. Make sure you get a feel for PB's length first. Then follow these steps. Turn on PB. For maximum results, dance back and forth behind creep wave a bit, so that he thinks you hit Q by accident. Then as your speed is getting high, casually get closer to the the front of your creep line until you make your move. As you roll toward him at high speed wait until you are about to hit his line of creeps, and Flash right onto his face. If you can strike at a time where he's farther forward than he ought to be (trying to last hit) you can Flash onto his back side, knocking him a little ways forward. Now is when whoever you have waiting in the wings to gank can come on forward. Just before the PB slow wears off use your taunt as you both hit your prey.

(If you are Face Flashing to initiate a large-scale team fight, go straight into their squishiest champion without stopping for mind games. Against whole teams it's pretty useless to work so hard to get behind the enemy.)

***Make sure to Flash before you hit a bunch of creeps or you ruin the whole tactic. I've seen a bunch of Rammi charge forward to Face Flash and fail miserably by losing their PB on a creep just before they hit the button. It's funny... but not when it's you.***

ii) No Flash Lightning: This tactic is less effective but is doable without flash. You need to start in the brush. Many people expect Rammus' PB to accelerate at them starting slow, giving them time to run around creeps to cause you to mi****. In order to prevent this tactic, simply charge up your PB for a little while (about 4 sec) in brush. You don't need to move for the speed to increase. After you hit about 500 MS or so, come around behind the unwary enemy and use the same PB-from-behind tactic if possible. Once again, your disconcerted prey will feel the pain as you and and your teammates rip him to shreds.

(This works for large fights as well, it is always more effective to come in with surprising speed.)

2) Mind Game Initiation: The most effective way to use Rammus in a gank is to come up from behind. However, you are most formidable while in PB roll. Don't waste any of the time you have in your PB. Instead of coming from behind and slamming into the enemy, PB in and play some good ol' basketball defense. Don't foul her, but mirror her movements and stop her path to the hoop. She will do his best to avoid you, but if you continue to block her path out he will usually do something stupid to avoid you (like running back toward your friends). By being a large, spinning escape route blocker you effectively increase the time the enemy is forced to stay where you want her. As soon as PB has served this purpose or is about to run out, then make sure to ram her from behind and knock/slow her into your team.

III. Escape
I touched on this during Summoner Spells, but PB's escape usage needs a stretch of free space. The basic goal of this section is to teach you how to make yourself an open runway, and when to save PB until you've made that runway for yourself. Remember that once your PB is down you are pretty much trapped for 12 seconds (AKA dead).

1) Group Flash Escape: When you have Flash up, this escape move isn't too difficult. Use DBC to hold off fire until you get to a wall to Flash over. Cancel DBC just after you Flash. As soon as you get over the wall, start your PB and zoom off in any direction other than the one with your pursuers. Naturally try to avoid their creep waves/towers. If you can get away anywhere unseen, PB can take you far enough that they are unlikely to find you before your blue pill gets you safely home. In this situation do NOT use PB before you Flash. It's likely that one of your enemies will take the impact and you will be stuck for 12 seconds.

2) Escape without Flash: This is much more difficult. For this you can't be trapped in the middle of a large group unless you have some teammates helping you. You have to try to run a little ways out while DBC is up, and as soon as the coast is clear, PB out of there.

The most dangerous part is during the opening stages of PB, while it is slow enough to be interrupted by an enemy trying to run into you and block it. To prevent this, use your juke power. As you try to make it out, run into some brush before you PB. Don't immediately use it. Stay at the very edge of the brush. As soon as the enemy enters the brush, or even right before, run out of the brush and use PB. Most enemies will not be able to react in time to catch you, meaning you can escape freely.

IV. Chasing
I've seen many young Rammi think that PB makes them powerful tower-diving chasers. They are only partly right. You can't chase too far into dangerous territory with PB alone. If you get into a hostile situation against a tower and/or enemies without PB up to escape, you can be in serious trouble. Only chase when you can cut off an enemy far from their tower, they are very low HP and there is no chance of other enemies in the vicinity, or you have allies with you. Don't chase too far from your allies either. Usually you end up ramming an enemy alone and with low mana, and you end up either dead or severely injured. So what should you do?

1) Be the blockade: Because your PB has the potential to get to the enemy with your allies trailing far behind, don't just run straight after the enemy. Let your slow allies do that. Go the long route around and try to cut off the enemy with PB. Just spin in place at the exit that the enemy wants to use. This will give your allies a little bit of time to catch up. After keeping your prey pinned in place, finally smash him in the final seconds and let your team do the rest of the work.

2) Tremor Chase: Tremors works while rolling. Use this to your advantage. As the enemy is trying to flee catch up with Powerball and try to roll alongside them while dealing damage with Tremors. Ultimately hit them with your PB for the finishing blow.

3) Minion Hopping: When chasing down enemies, make sure to avoid any minions. They are the quickest end to your Powerball and chance of killing the enemy. Use Flash to hop over them and continue chasing. They will lose aggro on you so you will be able to catch your prey.

V. Saving Allies
Once again you are most powerful while your PB is still spinning, not after it has hit.

1) Be the Scatterer: You see your ally running with a bunch of enemies on his tail. Wait until there is a stretch of open land (don't do this in brush). Use PB and act as though you are about to charge into the group of them like a kamikaze maniac. As they prepare to switch targets, quickly change direction to the side. The fastest part of PB should be coming up. Though they are trying to change targets, there is no way they can catch you. Try to get them to attempt to follow you, while making sure you don't let them get close enough to get to you after PB wears off.

2) Use Your Knockback: If an enemy is closing distance on your ally, get between them with Powerball. This will knock your enemy back away from your ally and apply a slow, discouraging further pursuit.

VI. Invisibility Detector
This one is tough, and doesn't work all that well unless you have some knowledge that an invisible champion is trying to gank you.

1) Test the Waters with a Fake-out: If you think that an Eve or Twitch is likely trying to gank your lane, simply hit PB. If you don't immediately go and attack something, half of the time they will think that you know something about where they are... as though you had a ward near you. This will cause them to stupidly move into the brush... as though it made them more invisible than they already are. This tactic limits their possible location to a single line... perfect for a PB test. As you hit the insanely fast sweet spot of your PB, make a quick run through that brush. If you collide with something you have just successfully scared off their invisible champion. Congrats!

2) Protecting Versus Assassins: This bit is from iPlastic's Rammus guide:
Now, you have your precious cargo or one of them laning with you...your carries or allies...You have a shaco , an Eve and a Twitch against you (haha what a bad idea.) If they stealth, I will often use my power ball, and spin in a random pattern behind and on the sides of my team mates. There's a 65% chance, I hit pay dirt and pop one of the annoying *****es, and then start barking like an alarm dog in vent or in game chat.

VII. Interrupting with Powerball
This is another piece from iPlastic's Rammus Guide:
Remember that Power Ball knocks your target(s) for a second interrupting their casting/movement. A good scenario would be Twitch and Shaco. Most of the time your team will stick you on detail to pull their massive damage off and onto you. When you guys focus Twitch and you guys can't kill him fairly quickly he will stealth. Once you taunt, count your seconds, then pop him with Power Ball. This gives you an added couple of seconds to guarantee his demise. Do not forget his Power Ball will work with channeled spells such as Nunu, Fiddle sticks, etc etc.

Note: This works by moving the enemy champion. Therefore it will only work to cancel channels that require the champion to stand still (courtesy Frappe).

Credits: Bguggs' Guide
Easier, instead of me just practically copying & pasting it into here.

Playing Rammus: Tips & Tricks

Using Puncturing Taunt if an enemy is near the tower, go to the opposite side of him, and use Powerball to push him further in can get an extra turret hit on your target.
Charging up Powerball in a bush before going in can be smart, especially for a gank.
Your passive, Spiked Shell gives you an adventage early on.
Rammus can harass. Taunting the enemy and activating Defensive Ball Curl will actually do a good amount of damage (against melee champions) due to both the fact that it increases your AD, and it hurts the enemy whenever he/she hits you. Only good early on.
You can surprise enemies by using Powerball and flash over obstacles or minions to hit them.
As I've said earlier, taunting an enemy (preferably a carry) AWAY from the enemy team, into your team for so your team to take the target down in 2 seconds can be very rewarding. 5v4 fight much?
Rammus is a really strong tower diver. With Guardian Angel and Defensive Ball Curl both activated, you can tank the turret pretty hard while both you and your mate dives.
GREAT ganking capabilities from the jungle.
You can travel over the map quite fast to help other lanes, or doing other things.
If you jungle, give the 2nd blue to your AP carry. This will give them a huge advantage in their lane.

Have more? Comment and I'll add.

Screenshots

Too lazy to add any more, sorry guys. Point is, you can achieve good scores.
Got some good scores with this guide? Comment with an URL to your picture, and I will perhaps add it. ;)

Seabass016:

oxide110:

syeburn:

ModoTheGreat:

Freezak:

TofuCakes:

Justthere:

Summary & Change Log

Thats my guide for Rammus. Nothing really in-depth, but a little. I found more in-depth guides out there, but it's some quick builds describing how to build Rammus in different situations, and how to play him.

Change Log

5th of November 2011
Published the guide.

11th of November 2011
A few minor changes. Added a picture I edited myself.

16th of November 2011
MAJOR update to the Jungle Section. Added a new up-to-date video, walls of information etc etc. Also added Patch Changes section.

23th of November 2011
The Mastery chapter was updated with up-to-date info and mastery points from the new update. Planning on releasing a new video soon, using the new masteries. It's much quicker now. All the builds' masteries are set and updated.
The guide reached 1st place on the MOBAfire rating list over Rammus guides. I'm honored. I don't know if it will last for long... but it really felt great! Thank you all so much for your support!! :)

11th of December 2011
A few changes to masteries. A thanks to PsiGuard.
My guide isn't at top any more for now. Was expected, but I'm happy that it have been there and I got a picture of it :)

22th of December 2011
Starting to update the jungle section according to the new jungle. Added all screenshots submitted in the comments. Fixed two brokes images. Also fixed minor changes/typos.

15th of January 2012
Took some time due to some christmas and new year delays etc... However I figured that it wasn't much of a change for . Updated the Jungle section according to that. Also, looks like the #1 is here to stay... hopefully :-)

18th of January 2012
91%. Brilliant guys, thank you very much. Also I have added to the Patch changes and wrote something about it in the guide, about the changes affecting and . Added a video from Hahano to the comments section aswell, with commentary. It's a nice video and can really help you if you're new to .

14th of January 2013
I'm a lazy bastard. Finally updated it for S3. Pretty much. You get the idea.

Patch Changes

Patch changes affecting in any way.

November 2011
Huge update. The Masteries were all changed, some Summoner Spells were added.

December 2011
The jungle was changed.

January 2012
was tweaked. got a small cut on its damage. // Sejuani Patch Notes

Feel free to comment on what you think is good, or what could be better! If I did anything wrong, any mistakes or you think I need to change something, feel free to tell me! I'd love constructive critism.

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Rammus Build Guide by Zyv0x

This Guide Has Expired!

Just another Rammus guide. [Updated 2013]

Champion Build: Rammus

Recommended Runes + Notes

Core (READ NOTES (Hover over '+NOTES')) + Notes

Situational (choose dep. enemy team) + Notes

Ability Sequence + Notes

Masteries

Offense: 0

Defense: 21

Utility: 9

Champion Build: Rammus

Recommended Runes + Notes

Core (READ NOTES (Hover over '+NOTES')) + Notes

Situational (choose dep. enemy team) READ NOTES + Notes

Ability Sequence + Notes

Masteries + Notes

Offense: 0

Defense: 21

Utility: 9

Introduction (Please read)

Abbreviations

Pros / Cons | Why Rammus?

The Builds

Runes

Masteries

Items (+Treads or Tabis!?)

STARTING ITEMS

Situational Items

A list of situational items

Do I get Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi? (After dodge removal)

Skill Sequence

Summoner Spells

Playing Rammus: Jungle

UP-TO-DATE Jungle Video for Rammus as of 16th of November 2011.

Default route

Default route with commentary by Hahano

Another jungle route

Playing Rammus: Gameplay, Strategies & Teamfights

Lane

Playing Rammus: Using Powerball

Playing Rammus: Tips & Tricks

Screenshots

Summary & Change Log

Change Log

Patch Changes

Rammus

The Armordillo

This Week's Free Champions

About the Author

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