Many of you might be familiar with this champion. Usually played in the jungle Rammus shines with great early presence and ganks, that snowball his lanes. This however is no normal Rammus guide. Instead of playing him in the jungle as a support jungler I will tell you how the armordillo becomes a toplane-carry. But why would I pick him outside of his natual habitat ?

1. He is a fex-pick:
If you see your enemy pick a match-up that is does not favour you, you might be able to swap to jungle durring champselect.

2. He is uncommon:
Most people will not expect the Rammus to go top, so you might surprise them and end up in a good match-up even if you are first pick.

3. You can carry:
As alreadyy mentioned Rammus usually is a support jungler and thus can function on low gold. However if he gets the resources he needs he become increadibly tanky while dealing large amounts of AoE damage.

4. Teleport
Ganking bot-lane with a homeguards-q-teleport is just hillarious. You can start channeling you q in base and use a ward deep in river to avoid usual wards from revealing your tp until you charge in with 2000ms.

1. General in Picks and Bans
There are many situations that Rammus works great in. As I already explained he is a fex-pick so you can pick Rammus early. Obviously he performes best against lots of physical damage, but if the enemy picks ap in response to you showing Rammus, you can always go for a mixure of mr and offensive items. Your build is really flexible.

2. Your lane match-up
I listed a few representetive champions above. There are some general rules however: You want to avoid champions that have good poke and kiteing and champions with remarkable sustain.

3. Alied Champions
Top-lane Rammus fits many different team-comps, as he is very flexible in what purpose he fulfills. However he only has 1 single target cc (his e) and 1 minor AoE cc (his q), so it is preferable to pick some additional cc, like a Sejuani, Nautilus or Braum.

Playing Rammus Top takes a very differnt aproach than jungle Rammus, while maintaining some similarities. Here are my tips on how to win top as Rammus:

1. Abuse your amazing level 1 and 2
If you use my Runes and Masteries and build cloth-armor you have with your w 130 armor at level 1. Thanks to your passive that means you also have 88 ad. Combine that with the damage portion of your w, that returns 28 magic damage per auto and you can bully any melee ad toplaner.

2. Ask your jungler for help
You have lots of cc ganking for you should be fairly easy. Also if you have a tank toplaner your team can afford a carry-jungler (like Rangar), who can get fed from your lane opponent.

3. Push
Even with all your champion-select shenanigans it can happen that you and up in a bad match-up (especially in poke-lanes). In which case you can resort to a simple tactic: You use your low cooldown ult to push the wave to the enemy tower. Then you back, get early home-guards and roll back to lane to push it out again. That way you can get some farm in a loosing lane.

4. Roam and help other lanes
Since Rammus originally is a jungler it makes sense that is raoms and ganks are very effective. With clever map-movement you can try to snowball your midlane or tp bot.

After the laneing-phase you should have your core-items and be level 11 or higher (that is important since your ult deals a lot of damage). At this point there are a few this a toplaner should do:

1. Split-push
Your wave-clear is not the greates, however it gets better with sun-fire-cape and your spam-able ult. Once your reach a tower your ult damage to them can be quite a lot and your q is an easy escape.

2. Cross-map actions
Use your tp and mobility to your teams advantage. Rotate to secure objectives or get a pick on an enemy.

3. Teamfighting
You are very flexable in what jobs you can do in teamfight. You can both peel for your carrys or be a backline threat. Dealing large amounts of AoE around you it is your job to be in the mids of battle. Use your w to stay alive and taunt withever enemy seems the most dangerous.

This is my first guide let me know what you think and how I can improove it. :)