I think you have put a lot of effort into the build but I have a few concerns.
I hope you will not take anything I say the wrong way, as I am not insulting you but simply attempting to offer assistance in optimizing your runes, masteries, items, etc. using the knowledge of the game which I have accrued over time.

On your "armor heavy build" between items and masteries you are sitting at 66% cooldown reduction. The game will only allow you to get 40% so the other 26% you have obtained is 100% cost ineffective. Yes aura items are good on Taric but when you start wasting gold to get stats from an item that include stats you no longer need, it becomes an issue.

On your "MR heavy build" you have 46% CDR. The wasted 6% comes from your masteries, but seeing as the masteries give you the stat at LVL.1 I would recommend optimizing your build as opposed to changing masteries.

A lot of people for some reason don't take inarguable math into consideration when looking at mastery points. You have the point in "scout" for "increase vision range of wards by 5%" but this point is practically useless in all honesty and would be much better spent in the improved recall, or in another tree. The point only increases the range of Sight / Vision wards from 1000 to 1050.

Another thing, on both of your build's mastery pages you have a point in ALL THREE summoner spell improvements. You can only have 2 summoner spells. One of them is a wasted point no matter which 2 summoner spells you choose to run. This needs to be fixed and optimized.

Supports that don't run flash are generally free kills. They are easy to gank and can't reposition quickly. Even if YOUR positioning as a support is superb, you may need to get over to your AD Carry if they are forced out of the fight, CC'd, or make a mistake in their positioning. You include in your reasoning for this the claim that if you are in trouble you can use Exhaust and Dazzle, but using Exhaust defensively is going against the very essence of the theme and objective of this guide's game play description. Yes Heal will heal you and may keep you alive, but most times if you are being chased, heal only delays your death, not saves you. There is no substitute for the survivability Flash gives you. The ability to go over walls, get out of range of champions using consistent low CD slows to chase you, and the ability to make it back to your team when caught or CC'd is priceless.

Both of your builds have 1 single GP10 item, you are not running GP10 quints, and you do not include purchases of sight wards for laning phase in your uploaded build. You don't have to spam sight wards throughout your item build list, but starting with a few at level 1 is crucial ESPECIALLY if you are choosing not to run flash. You are indicating starting with Mana Manipulator and 1 mana potion. AD Carries do not spam abilities prior to having all of their abilities. AD Carries' main concern early levels is last hitting, playing safe, and capitalizing on the enemies' mistakes if they make any.

Lane dominance is an area that Taric does really well in. He has strong bush control due to his good base damage on all of his abilities, his natural defensive steroids, and the fact that he has a stun. The enemy team will attempt to poke you out of bushes, and if you do not have any health sustain item or health potions, you are going to be unable to hold bush control. Most people achieve this via the faerie charm, 2 sight wards, 1 vision ward, 1 health potion combination of starting items. The faerie charm could be used to go for Soul Shroud if you are truly against Shurelya's.

When I first glanced at your build and saw you not running any escape / chase summoner spells, I expected to see a Shurelya's rush as it gives you increased mobility, which would be highly valued with your summoner spells. Helping your AD Carry chase / escape via the speed boost aura has more definitive value than giving them increased mana regen. You could start faerie charm, 2 sight wards, 1 vision ward, 1 health potion and on your first back to base grab your mana manipulator, seeing as early levels they do not have mana issues. However, by the time you and your AD Carry push and return to base, they are more than likely solving their mana issues on their own. Ezreal and Corki commonly buy a Sheen prior to laning phase ending; Urgot tends to rush Glacial Shroud for the mana, CDR, and armor; and other carries don't tend to spam abilities as much AND have natural increased mana per level stat which exceeds the increasing mana cost of their abilities as they level them up. What AD Carries enjoy the most is the CDR Aura, which is nice but not needed early on.

Aegis is a GREAT rush item, as it helps your team during river skirmishes, ganks and counter-ganks, dragon fights, and jungle invasions. It does appear you opt for it early in your build but not necessarily first.

If you wanted to rush an item besides Aegis, Zeke's Herald would be a better rush item instead of Soul Shroud. The life steal it gives your AD Carry gives them far more lane sustain as opposed to the mana regeneration Soul Shroud gives them. Giving them sustain via life steal ALSO increases YOUR mana sustain inadvertently because you are not having to use as much mana to heal them up. Zeke's gives you less HP than Soul Shroud, but it is 140 gold cheaper and it does give you health just not as much. The Attack speed buff will also help them win trades more easily.



I understand that you are stating that this build is based off the idea of a kill lane and playing aggressive, but you CANNOT play aggressive without wards, and if the enemies are playing a defensive lane, you are going to fall behind in gold. You cannot always get kills in lane, some people play too smart / defensive. ESPECIALLY seeing as you are using AP quints, the enemy can click on your champion, see that you are not running GP10 quints, and decide to play defensively since they will naturally scale into mid game faster than you without even having to kill you.

Since the nerf to the range of the Abyssal Scepter this past week, as Taric, the only time you are going to be in range of someone for the Aura to affect them, is the one single target that you have walked up to in order to Ulti + Shatter. As your build mainly focuses around being a pure support for your AD Carry, Abyssal Scepter does not really benefit them. It won't really benefit your mage either, as the aura range is no longer large enough. Will of the Ancients would give you better support for an AP heavy team or if you are concerned about buying more Magic Resistance, Banshee's Veil would make you tankier and increase your effective health more, along with giving you the spell shield and extra mana. If it is the AP you are concerned about getting, then you are worried too much about your damage capability and less about your support ability.

Also when buying Zeke's, if you are building the components it is far more beneficial to buy the dagger before the vamp scepter. Attack speed scales with Taric's passive, whereas life steal is not useful on him and you would be better off using that item slot for wards and saving your gold until you can buy Zeke's Herald in full.

You are running 9 magic penetration reds, 1 magic penetration quint, 2 ability power quints, and 9 ability power blues. You seem very concerned for early ability power, which makes little sense by itself but with that point aside, I would expect you to rush Kage's Lucky Pick as a GP10 item, as it gives you more of the stat you seem so concerned about having and is cheaper than Heart of Gold. Though I am not saying Kage's is better on Taric than Heart of Gold, as I would never buy Kage's on him and fully believe Heart of Gold to hold far more value on a support, just that it would fit the agenda of what you appear to desire in your build.

On a further not on the same subject, your job as Taric is to provide utility in lane via your stun, heal, armor buff, reducing the enemy's armor with Shatter's active, and AD/AP aura with your ult. AP can be good on supports who excel in poking like Sona, Karma, or Lulu but is not a valuable stat on a support with the play style of Taric. He focuses on zoning and setting up kills, not poking down the enemy. In fact the best kill lanes have very little poke and focus on hard engages, seeing as the more you poke an enemy, the more defensive they will play, and the less likely you are to be able to kill them. Taric zones through bush control and the threat of a stun which would set up a damage exchange in your team's favor, making defensive stats like health, armor, and health regeneration far more valuable in lane than AP. So if you do not have GP10 quints, the best options would be more armor, flat health, or health regeneration quints. If you run GP10 seals, then you NEED flat armor reds. Even if you do run armor seals, armor marks are still probably the most beneficial. For blues, MR per level or flat MR tend to be best. If they are running a poking support like Lulu or Sona, flat MR would be best. If they are not running a poking support, run the MR per level runes to help you survive the enemy AP Mid's damage in team fights where you have to get in the front lines.

Another inarguable error in your build path is the fact that you display buying ALL parts of Force of Nature before completing it even though you only have 1 empty item slot. Once you purchase the Negatron Cloak, you do not have room for the Regrowth Pendants in your item slot.

You also do not indicate at which point you sell your Heart of Gold, as you do not build any item that builds from it.

Moving on to your descriptions, I agree that Alistar is a counter to Taric but not in the way you are describing. You state that Taric's heal is far stronger than Alistar's, which is true based on the amount of one heal versus the other BUT Alistar's heal is on a much shorter cool down and costs less mana. Alistar's heal costs 40/50/60/70/80 mana based on the level of the ability, Taric's heal costs 80/95/110/125/140 mana for each rank respectively. Alistar's heal is on a base cool down of 12 seconds at all ranks. Taric's heal is on a base cool down of 20/19/18/17/16 based on it's rank respectively. Alistar's Triumphant Roar heals himself for 60/90/120/150/180 (+20% of AP) and half of that to EVERYTHING around him (AoE heal as opposed to Taric's single target / dual target heal). Taric's Imbue heals for 60/100/140/180/220 (+60% of AP) and if cast only on himself has a 40% increase. You can decrease the CD on Imbue via auto attacking, but you specifically state in your guide to not attack minions unless your AD Carry is mia.

I also disagree with your opinion that Soraka counters Taric. This is just my personal opinion but Soraka relies on sustaining the lane, and Taric relies on hard engaging and zoning. Soraka can silence you from stunning, making the bush control objective an ongoing process of going in and out. Soraka has far superior mana sustain, but that is not a good reason to buy Mana Manipulator, as you claim. Her armor buff post-heal also outweighs your armor reduction from Shatter's Active but these are all mere challenges to overcome and will not stop you from doing your job. You will rely on hard engages and killing them as opposed to out sustaining them. As long as your AD Carry is running Ignite, her heals will not be an issue when going in for the kill.

You state you do not like long guides, yet include a lengthy, coding filled, 100% unnecessary abilities section. Nothing in this section is needed, as you can see ALL of it's information by simply mousing over the abilities in the skill sequence at the very beginning of the guide.

You seem mechanically sound in your game play theories and tactics, I just have concerns about your itemization and lack of concern for early game. Your section on being a good support is AWESOME with the one exception of your claim that you should only focus on warding once mid/late game starts. Most junglers nowadays capitalize on ganking early, therefor setting up lane dominance. You NEED early wards in order to be successful.

The only other suggestions I have to improving your guide are spell checks and a few grammatical errors. Just read through it and make sure you aren't contradicting yourself, and have a friend proof read it for you.

I hope that this doesn't seem too harsh and that I have helped you to improve your guide. I have not voted it up or down and will wait to see what changes you make to it in the near future before voting (:

Thats really awesome to hear, I appreciate that you took the time to try it out before you voted. Thanks.

Very nice guide, Tried it out 3 times now and all resultet out in a victory.

Keep up the good work mate, Voted +1

-Chris, Mr.Swag

I really appreciate it thank you

GJ

Awesome thanks!

Great guide :D upvoted

You know whats weird, I amd really bad with Leona, I just can't use her. I'd imagine that she is the top 5 of all supports. I think the top 5 would be Alistar, Leona, Soraka, Taric, and Blitzcrank. These champs are just amazing. Thank you for the up vote though, really appreciate it.

P Worra, I've noticed you've been trolling a lot of peoples buildsand you came acrosse this one I have no idea. It seems that your account is just a smurf or fake. So I assume you have a taric build on your regular account and are just going around spamming peoples builds trying to boost your own. I'd appreciate it if you just act like an adult and stop being so childish.

I'll stick with Leona.

I'll stick with Leona.