This guide presents an extremely mobile, very aggressive, highly tanky, super ganky champion for Dominion.

I first started this Rammus guide in December of 2011. Rammus was my go-to tank. He was OP. My builds rocked. I wanted to share.

Then, in January, Rammus got nerfed. Hard. It took time, but I gathered my senses... Straighted my disheveled note papers... and determinedly pushed my eyeglasses up the bridge of my nose... and began to redeploy this humble guide.

Soon, in February, Rammus took another hit. Nerf. Straight to the Defensive Ball Curl. Then Shen got buffed and, sadly, Rammus went on the shelf.

Rammus isn't the kick to teeth that he used to be, but he's still OP and he can show Shen a thing or two. The same strategies that I wanted to share in December still work today. Tried and true.

You will be shocked at just how well Rammus can emerge victorious from seemingly unbalanced encounters. It will take some practice and thorough knowledge of your opponents in order to get the most effectiveness out of any Rammus build. But some fights using these builds will be extremely unfair. There are some champions that, pound for pound, will never be able to kill a well built Rammus. This is especially true for just about every auto-attack champion in the game. Further, Rammus does especially well against all AD champs. But even the most elite kiting casters will have trouble with this tanky, taunting unrelenting Rammus!

Since in Dominion you don't know who you're fighting until the game loads, the masteries, runes, and summoner spells in these builds are always the same. The items change depending upon the enemy team composition.

The first build is designed to counter a well balanced or mixed dps team. Like, 2 AD, 2 AP, 1 tank. or if you can't tell what certain champs are going to make yet. Like with Shaco, for example, he might go AD or AP and you want to keep your options open.

The second build is designed to counter auto-attack heavy teams containing 2-3+ champions like Ashe, Sivir, Tryndamere, Twitch, Vayne, Kayle, Gangplank, etc. If most of the enemy DPS is going to be coming from these types of guys, go with this build!

The third build is desgined to counter AD heavy teams that are not necessarily auto-attack. They contain champs like Riven, Garen, Pantheon, Wukong. If there are 3+ AD champs like this, use this build.

The fourth build is for countering AP heavy teams with 3+ DPS casters. That's going to be Ryze, Morgana, Malzahar, Lux, LeBlanc, etc.

The fifth build is an experimental AP DPS build that works by exploiting the insane DPS from Soaring Slam and the procs on Defensive Ball Curl. Use at your own risk.

If you aren't sure if they are AD or AP - hold tab in game and check their items!

Some champs might fit into more than one catagory. Use this to your advantage and tank against the most common damage type. For example, Kayle is on-hit, but does lots of magic damage. If Kayle is teamed with 2 pure AP casters, tank AP, rather than on-hit.

Reds: Magic penetration simply makes the most sense for reds since Rammus will be dealing mostly magic damage. You would have to use secondary runes to get anything else useful in those spots which isn't the best idea.

Yellows: Health. You might think Armor would be a better choice, especially since Rammus has so much inherent health and he gets bonuses from armor. The fact is, Rammus will be getting plenty of armor from items. Health is better because it allows more sustainability from all damage types!

Blues: Magic Resist. You needz it.

Quintences: MOAR HEALTH. All the quintences are pretty cool. Health is the best!

Rammus is a tank. Tank with Rammus.

Rammus is very dependent on getting the right items. There are a few key items that you must not skip. And a few items that you must avoid.

MUST GET:

Thornmail is an absolute must. I cannot stress it enough. If you are going to skip this item you might as well go play Alistar. With no armor runes on this build, Rammus needs at least 1 armor item anyway. And most damage dealt will come out of the Defensive Curl skill combined with the taunt and this item! Every champion taunted will attack with an auto-attack. Damage returned will be based on the damage dealt by that auto attack before armor is applied! And 100 armor at only 2k gold is the best bang for the buck!

STRONGLY RECOMMEND:

Guardian Angel provides needed armor and magic resist. Springing back to life once in a while is also a pretty neat trick. When this item is off of cool down, you can be extremely aggressive knowing that if you die, you can just powerball away when you come back to life... or finish your kill! Try not to die though :)

Sunfire Aegis also provides armor. The extra AoE DPS is more than welcome. The only way you could justify skipping this was if there was no AD enemy.

AVOID:

You might be tempted by certain armor items that happen to reduce enemy attack speed. I.e. Frozen Heart, Warden's Mail or Randuin's Omen. Avoid these! You want your enemies attacking as fast as possible! This is how you deal massive damage! I have seen champs melt in seconds because they have stacked attack speed and tried to kill this Rammus build.

Thoughts:

Armor - Rammus gets a damage bonus for Defensive Ball Curl based on armor. That is extra damage dealt per hit. This guide/champ relies heavily on Defensive Ball Curl, so, naturally, instead of stacking AD or AP, you want to stack armor! This will get you kills. Armor is also just plain nice for survivability versus AD champs.

Too Much Armor? - The way the effects of armor are calculated, the stat reduces damage to health from physical attacks. It's possible to have negitave armor, which increases damage taken by physical attacks. In the case of Rammus, armor is also a modifier for skills. Most importantly, it's not a flat 1:1 ratio of damage reduction. Further, as armor increases, the effectiveness of the armor decreases. This raises the question, how much armor is too much? The answer depends entirely on the team composition of enemies and their runes and weapons. Since any sensible auto-attack champion will include armor penetration and/or armor reduction, Rammus is most useful by exceeding the traditional armor:effectiveness ratio. More simply, use the following equasion: Armor + Rammus = win.

AP - Rammus has an insanely powerful AoE radius effect ultimate skill. Even without any AP the skill does pretty serious DPS. It is 195 base magic damage per second over 8 seconds. So, if you stick on top of your prey for the entire duration, you are dishing out 1560 damage total without any added AP! And this hits ALL enemies within a radius of 300! (to put this into perspective, Ezreal's ult deals 650 + 1.0 AD once) If you toss on a couple AP items after Thornmail, Guardian and Sunfire, you might find that an added bonus of .3 damage per point of AP is a tempting bonus to the already insanely powerful ult. Consider Rylai's Crystal Scepter for example: a little AP, good health and a slow effect... nice! Will of the Ancients would be fine ( Defensive Ball Curl does proc spell vamp)! Haunting Guise is good too!

Tenacity - Don't really need it. Rammus is one of the few champs that is just fine and dandy being stunned, slowed, whatever. The reason is that once the skills are activated, they stay that way. So if you hit a shroom, and Morg stuns you and Ali knocks you away, you will still return damage to Teemo's attacks as long as you turned on your Defensive Ball Curl in time. Plus, it's just a matter of re-activating Powerball to get back into the frey. Rammus's cooldowns are really short, so everything is pretty much off cooldown once stuns wear off anyway.

Start the game by using Powerball + Ghost to the windmill (top) and capping it before the enemy team can. With Mobility Boots and if the enemy gets slowed up for some reason, sometimes you can get first cap before they even get there!

After that, priority 1:
Do not miss a team fight. Ever. No excuse. If you miss a team fight because you're dead, you effed up. If you miss a team fight becuase Rammus is fast and you want to try to backdoor a tower, realize that your DPS teammates are depending on you and their deaths could be costing you the game.

Priority 2:
Defend. Use Garrison. Powerball away from enemies trying to take your tower. Ram them if they try to cap it. puncturing taunt them into your tower/allies.

Priority 3:
Gank. Sit in the bushes with your team and initiate fights with Powerball. puncturing Taunt AD champs. Defensive Ball Curl.

Usually bot will face off 1v1 most of the game. If the enemy at bot is low on health, work with your teammate to gank him and take his tower.

Priority 4:
Tank towers. Someone's got to do it. When your team is all around a tower to be taken. Die wth dignity and Powerball right into the meanest looking guy defending. The tower will attack you. If your teammates are moderately intellegent, they will attack enemies while you tank. If the health bar gets low, Powerball and gtfo.

Priority 5:
Backdoor a tower. If there's no opportunity to gank and your teammates are all waiting to respawn and your enemies are all piled up top waiting for you to try to cap... sneak around and force them to abandon top to stop your cap. Powerball away before they get too close.

Garrison
Single best spell for Dominion. Every player should take it. It works for capping or defending.

Ghost
Rammus + Speed = win. That's just the way it is.

Exhaust
it's OK...

Promote
Good for a little extra gold...

Pros
Best mobility
Very tanky
Strong CC
Good DPS
People be scared
They run
You catch them
They die

Cons
QQ another game ruined by Rammus QQ