Hi, I'm one of those people that plays only Aram. I enjoy the fast paced end game that Aram brings so much faster than Rift usually does. Previously, I played only Rift, but ever since I discovered Aram, I got hooked and pretty much didn't go back. The laning phase to me just takes too long. I need that 'low cooldown/rapid attack speed/stutter step/enemies everywhere/one lane/constant teamfight/lots of items' phase to come quickly. In Aram that happens way sooner than on the Rift. I simply enjoy Aram more, so that's my main mode.

I own every champion and can play every champion. Some better than others, of course, I have a few that I don't click with as well as others, some I haven't played very much and some I'd like to think I'm quite good with. But I have at least some experience with each and every one of them and a combined mastery score of 330+.

With around 2800 Aram wins under my belt and over 5000 games total, I'd like to think I have some idea of what I am talking about when it comes to Aram tactics, different builds, team compositions, mechanics, etc. So I thought I'd put some of those thoughts into pixels, see if maybe someone else might benefit from it.

For no reason at all, Aurelion Sol is up first. I played him AP/Tanky recently, as opposed to the full AP that I usually play him. It surprised me how much fun it was.

Feedback is appreciated of course.

Because if you are dead, you're not doing damage anyway.

It's in fact that simple. You give up some Ability Power for huge sustain. Because you're not dying, you're still dishing out huge amounts of damage.

The idea behind it is, you build yourself a circle of self sufficiency. You get healed by the mana you constantly spend with your stars out and your stuns and by the damage one of your carries is dealing to champions. You get mana back through the damage you take, you dish out a lot of damage because you're not dying, you get loads of assists because your stars are punching everyone in the face, you get kills because the enemy underestimates how tanky you are and die horrible deaths trying to 'quickly gank you' and realize you're not dead yet but they are and on top of that, you're bullying the enemy so hard with your stars that they think twice about that gank on your adc.

This build works even better when you have a healer on your team (but then again, doesn't everything?), but it's not even required.

The only thing that is sort of required for this build to be viable, is that you have a glass cannon teammate in the back who is basically keeping you alive by nuking the enemy to pieces. You want someone who won't take a lot of damage, because you'll be taking 6% of it through Knight's Vow. Mages like Vel'Koz and Brand, ADC's like Draven or Vayne are basically ideal. Someone who knows how to not get caught, while tearing the enemy champions to pieces.

You need to keep your team alive. If you don't have a solid peeling tank like Leona or Maokai, you can do a lot of the peeling for them instead. Your stars will be flying around all the time and believe me, the enemy will not enjoy them constantly popping in their faces, slowing them down and ticking their health down to a pixel. With this build you're not a Nautilus or a Sejuani, not by far. But you can bully the enemy away from your carries while they basically keep you alive while you're doing it.

If you get loads of kills on this build, great. If not, also great. Remember, you want your carry to do all the damage to heal you, so it's likely they will get most kills. You're a tanky support mage.


Of course, a game is a game, and a game wouldn't be a game if it wasn't different every time. Sometimes the enemy just has that champion combination that completely ruins your day, or the opposite. Adjust to what's needed. This build is just the basics, something to start from.

Give it a try, let me know if it works for you as well as it did for me.