Survivability early. Ap powerhouse by midgame. Tanky Infinite mana combo caster lategame.
Pillar and Conflag are consistent, guaranteed damage. Early cdr boots will give you 39.12% cdr @ lvl 18 with these runes. Get blue buff or buy early/midgame blue pots (or add one cdr item if like the combomage's DeathFiresGrasp to suplement your 21% mastery/boots cdr if you have no blue/purple cdr runes like these).

Start boots+healthpotsmanapot or Doran's Ring or Mana Crystal health pot (another viable build would be following RoA with Archangels and Sheen->Lichbane earlier instead of the early Health-Slow Rylai's, and getting Rylai's 3rd or 4th).

Build the following for survivability:
Merc Treads, Banshee's, Quicksilver Sash, Spirit Visage (combines with spellgun book and regen talents and a large health pool along with giving 10cdr and some MagicResist for around 1k gold) for Magic Resist and Cleanses, or Soul Shroud (Kindlegem and a second Health crystal and a mana manip (and the two faerie charms) make for a very easybuilding health-regen-10%cdr aura that you could even combine with an Aegis, or Frozen Heart for armor (sell cdr boots for merc treads and don't buy the ap tenacity), Zhonya's (for armor and invincibility activate)

Build the following for AP carrying:
Haunting Guys (that health + AP book that turns into an early game Mpen mask, you can sell later), Void Staff (better than Sorcerer's boots - just get the cdr boots early with this), Archangels (get the mana tear first, after boots, either before or just after the RoA's (or banshee's) Catalyst, Zhonya's (again, if you need that AP and survivability if you can remember to click it - preferably right after unloading 4 spells and your dot onto 5 aggro'd enemies), DFG if you don't have CDR boots or runes (as a combo hero, you cast this first (bound to your 1 button by dragging it to the top right inventory spot where like your boots or first item were) and it does maximum damage based on their health (tons more on high health heros, like garen's ult or madreds) and the as it's traveling towards the unsuspecting "high health hero", unload 4 or 5 more sources of magic penetrating magic damage including your dot and maybe ult, and watch that hero (health bank-sponge-tank or squishies or actual MR tanks alike) will quickly fall, at which point you GTFO with some form of flash,ghost,Survivability,Zhonya's,etc with Magic Spellsteal heals and movement speed from lichbane and boots).

For Support/Ganks:
Faster Boots, Wards, DFG or MovementSpeed Buffing Kindlestone team speed buff or Soul Shroud (or a dedicated blue buff farm, or more blue pots), Truesight Wards, Oracles if there's a carrying Teemo, Shaco, or Akali. Other than that: with any amount of AP and Mana pool, you are a fastmoving, short cooldown powerhouse of a caster, just keep to the fringes of combat, let your tanks tank and initiators initiate and chasers chase while you play it cool like annie and burst down anyone that doesn't manage to retreat or separate from their teammates during your burning fiery pyroclasms, and reenter the fight every 5 seconds with 3 more spells, possibly summoner spells, possibly item use CDs, and possibly an ult or your next item in your powerful sack of AP auras and goodies.
Spellgun Aura book and an early ManaTear or Catalyst are required in this support build. Get either AP or survivability as you see fit.

If you can manage having all the per lvl runes, masteries, farm your lane (use your pillar of fire to ignite creeps and/or the laning hero with your passive, then use the single target skill on a burning creep to aoe it, the other weakened creeps, and another hero. With pillar of fire->cauterize, you can farm a creep wave and have one of the heros burning for a Sear Stun (keep Sear lvl 1 because it has no AoE farm potential and you want it cheap while you buy the AP/CDR to pump sear, and all other 3 skills, up, and also gain the mana to (with RoA or Tear or Archangels) spam all 3 or 4 of your spells while farming/pushing/jungling/ganking all game long.

Never stay still. Be actively farming creeps with autoattacks (kill the melee creeps as your creeps widdle them down, and use your w -> e combo to farm and possibly harass the back, weak caster creeps).

With this build you are:

An AP powerhouse
Inifinite regen/mana
Large health supply.

once end game rolls around.

Alter your build if ever any of these are uncertain:
Good farm on creeps.
Roaming after going home, for a gank (or having someone else occasionally gank for you, or have other people that are tanky get you blue buff and you give them red)
Ward after going home if you have 100 / 150 gold but you shouldn't be the one to buy Oracle's or wards unless you get a ton of freefarm or freekillz on some noobs (either by fooling them with some big dps combo; outnumbering them with ganks or antiganks or ward knowledge; jungle ganks) or, again, having a team who will ping and mia along with your helpful teamwork and clearly expressed and carefully orchestrated ganks.
Not getting ganked or outcombo'd in your own lane (know your character and know the 2 or 4 summoner spells that you are in lane with, and know what 2-4 you have up on your team; note when people are lvl 1,2,3,4,5,6,11,16,18 because that's when they will jump in to kill you, a team mate, or a tower (or go mia to pull off a really rad gank attempt, which should be foiled by you pinging the lane, then the tower of that lane (to publish to your team that it's you pinging), and then say "mia" or "mia [lane]" or "mia [hero]", and tell your team that you, and the rest of the team, appreciate it when the other 4 reciprocate MIA callings, rather than raging postdeath in /all).

If you can't get these runes, items, or leveling up to the right pace in a certain game, there are alternatives: Red should be Magic Pen hands down; Yellow can be health, mana regen, or armor flat or perLVL; blue can be mana, cdr, MagicResist flats or perLVL; purple can be MovementSpeed, CDR flat, Health (per lvl?), FLAT AP (better than per lvl in this case), Mana or Mana/lvl or some other form of +gold/exp/survivability/earlyregen/etc.

Your runes and masteries should reflect your favorite summoner spells.
Heal, Fortify, Teleport, Exhaust, Ignite, Clarity (and no mana item), Clairivoyance, and even revive are all viable and can, for the mostpart (not fortify or ignite or rally) can be improved while still being 9-?-21 or 20 in green (if you want heal - it's really good before summoner level 30, and supports the team).

It's also about who you Q with. If you're Queing with a tank, a healer, another stunner, and a physical carry: you can build less health and more AP (like Void Staff). If you're steamrolling, get your cdr through 20stack Mejai and sell your boots for MpenBoots or Speed or Mercury Treads for the best tenacity.
If you want boots other than cdr (I love the early cdr and think that it's viable to then get the alternative tenacity AP, and have red runes and masteries for the mPen), you can get those Merc Treads or Mpen, or speed, or sandals for ganking. Just not Attackspeed. Unless you otherwise max your cdr and get a Lichbane, Warmogg's, Atma's combo to do some impromptu replacement physical damage when your Gangplank Disconnects or something. But yeah. No AS boots. Don't troll. 5 warmoggs mundo, gragas, soraka, taric, and twitch may be funny (so is 5 PD's on pirate, Ez, or any other character), but this is one of those "better" builds. It's... better. Than trolling at least.

This is my first guide to try out the website's posting requirements.
I have only ever played Brand once, but have always studied him and seen some succeed with him while many fail by being too squishy, too bad or laggy for skillshots, or not aware enough of the map to be there for those Brand PentaKills with their team. I played him once on a Scrub smurf account, and got a build similar to the ones described in the text on this guide (as I didn't have lvl 30 runes to experiment with at the time). I'll try this build in practice myself a few times. I'll post when it's a final product, again. I'll edit often until then.


I'll try and make one for:
Nocturne, Jax, Pirate, Yi, Gragas, Malphite, Ryze, Singed, Tristana, Alistar, Monkey King, and any other heroes or old classics that I believe I have stumbled upon a good method for IMHO.

Tell me wh***up. If it's horribad, I'll edit.