Hello everyone, and welcome to my second guide here on Mobafire. I'm DSM Aubery (ig name), I am a Platinum jungle and support main (EUW), who has been playing League of Legends since the beginning of season 5, and ranked since the end of it. Ever since I started playing ranked intensively, I've always hit at least gold. This is the first season I attained Platinum in soloqueue.

Furthermore I'm a business engineering student at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). I'm a big fan of eSports, watching it ever since I started playing competitive League. I'm supporting King-Zone DragonX.

Why did I decide to spend a couple of hours writing a guide for Braum I hear you asking yourself? And it's a good question indeed. Braum was, apart from the very very early champions I played such as Nidalee, Ashe and Tryndamere, my very first champion ever I really started maining. It should’ve been somewhere at level 14 I picked him up, because the relative straight forward purpose of his kit. I just had to sit in lane with my adcarry, and shield him from any incoming damage, easy isn’t it? Well it was, and it was a very good way to start discovering the – in my opinion rather difficult – game at first. After I started playing Braum, I continued playing support, picking up champions such as Thresh, Nautilus and Leona, my very first role I started maining, is still the one I main today!
So as for that, I decided to write a guide on one of my all time favorite champions, Braum! As one adcarry someday said to me someday: “If you can’t win the game with DSM Aubery on Braum, you can’t do anything but blame yourself!”.

DSM Aubery

Pros → High peel potential → Big teamfight presence → Tons of crowd control → Hefty tankiness → Ability blocking potential with his shield

Cons → High cooldowns at early ranks → Low amounts of poke → Low sustain

Main rune tree Resolve: From my point of view, resolve is the only valide option for Braum. Some players, and especially the pro-players tend to play him every now and then with Unsealed Spellbook, but in my opinion, this way of playing Braum requires more coordination than you’ll find in your everyday soloq game. Another argument is the heavy fighting you’ll encounter in soloq. Picking Resolve is a good counter to all this fighting damage you’ll absorb. Major rune Guardian: This is the go to Rune choice for Braum in most match ups, atleast as far as I’m concerned. This gives Braum and especially his adcarry some extra shielding and tankiness during laning phase, which is worth taking. First minor rune Font of Life: This is a great choice, given Braum’s big amount of crowd control. This enables your adcarry to heal up a little bit more during this close in lane fights. You definitely don’t want your adcarry to die when the enemy adcarry is at 50hp, that’s why we choose this rune. Second minor rune Bone Plating: Standard stuff on Resolve supports, strong in lane, especially against auto-attack heavy marksmen such as Twitch and Caitlyn. Third minor Rune Overgrowth:This rune gives an extra buff to Braum’s high base health, which will enable him to take more aggresive fights around the 10 minute mark.

Tree Inspiration: As a support – unless you’d pick Unsealed Spellbook – you’ll wanna grab the inspiration tree as a second choice for runes. This will allow you to stay longer in lane, and has the benefit over hard fighting runes such as Precision and Domination. First rune Magical Footwear: As Braum, you won’t have the roam potential such as a Thresh or a Morgana, so rushing early Mobility Boots isn’t really the big thing here. So saving the 300 extra gold might be worth, considering you’ll spend a lot of time in the lane. Second Rune Cosmic Insight: Cooldown reduction will enable you to use your shield more frequent during laning phase. Cooldowns will be quite high early (18-16-14-12-10), so you want to grab some extra cdr, especially handy against poke heavy botlane champions such as Ezreal and Caitlyn.

In this paragraph, I would like to explain you a little bit more about the building patterns on Braum. There are 2 big ways on how to build Braum, tanky, or adcarry protecting focused. I'm not gonna lie in telling you that I'm more focused towards the tanky playstyle. My motivation for this is the fact that around my elo, medium gold to medium plat, people tend to play a lot of squishy champions, and don't we all know that tanks win the game? Especially when you pick a tank in this meta, you should build him tanky. The second type of building is peeling focused, this might me a good option when you play with a premade adcarry, whom you know can hardcarry.In what follows, I'll start by describing some strong tanky items, followed by strong carry peeling items.



]Tankiness oriented items

- I think everyone will except this choice of warding stone on Braum. Remnant of the Aspect gives hp, hp regen and cdr, everything Braum needs early on. The big amount of hp enables Braum to go early resistances, another nice benefit of going this item.

- Dead Man's Plate is a strong item on Braum. You'll always encounter atleast one physical damage dealer, so the armor will be very effective anwyway, the hp will give a boost to Braum's base tankiness. The momentum stacks will give Braum additional movement speed, which allows him to go something else than the traditional support boots in Mobility Boots.

- A good option when playing heavy fighting games against champions such as Twitch, Vayne, and Kindred, might be the Frozen Heart. Because Braum can get mana hungry in these long and extended fights, it might be in your favor to pick this item up. It gives you tons of armor, a nice added value to Braum's tankiness (mainly HP early on in the game). The passive will reduce the attacker's attack speed by 20%, which is quite an amount, especially against attack speed focused attackers. Overall, I think this is a good item picking up on Braum. It fits his kit quite well, and is in general a strong item.

- A strong option against big Critical strike and attack speed comps, such as teams including Yasuo and Ashe, is Randuin's Omen. This item will reduce damage dealt by critical strikes, aswell as a reduction in attack speed for the enemy. Rush this item when the enemy's have a yasuo and another crit heavy champion, it will pay off any day!

- In terms of magic resist, you should opt for the Adaptive Helm, which will give you everything you need. Hp, magic resist, cooldown reduction and hp regen. Why would you opt for this rather than for a Spirit Visage? In my opinion, the passive from the Spirit Visage won't really give you a lot of strenght, you'd be better buying the Adaptive Helmet to reduce the damage received from the same spells.

- Because Braum can sometimes get a bit mana hungry, especially in high intense games, you might wanna opt into the Abyssal Mask. This item will gain you basicly the same stats as the Adaptive Helm, but with the addition of mana, but you'll lose hp regen for it. As I said, a great option in bloody wars!




Peeling oriented items

- When your seeking for pure resistances, and a shield is a nice bonus, then Locket of the Iron Solariis your most valid option. This item will get you a lot tankier, and you'll have a nice and strong shield for your adcarry. This item is very valid when they have mixed damage, including an assasin, such as Zed or LeBlanc, so you have the time to shield your adcarry.

- A very popular support item these days, is the Zeke's Convergence. Zeke's is the number one item according to peeling your adcarry. If you're playing duoq with someone playing adcarry, this might be a strong option. The passive will increase Braum's crowd control, which is always a nice bonus. Your adcarry will be a lot safer aswell, nice item overall.

- : Worth considering when you're playing against heavy physical damage compositions. You'll get armor and hp, and so will your allied adcarry. When playing against (for example) a Yasuo, a Zed and a random adcarry, this item might be worth considering, even as a second item. The time you'll complete this as a second item, midgame will be there so you have immediately some good peel for your adcarry.

#1. Glacial Fissure 6 / 11 / 16 #2. Unbreakable 2 / 7 / 8 / 10 / 12 #3. Winter’s Bite 1 / 4 / 5 / 9 / 13 #4. Stand Behind Me 3 / 14 / 15 / 17 / 18

> > > As Braum, your biggest ability is ofcourse your ultimate, called the Glacial Fissure. This ability does a great job at zoning out enemy players, knocking them up and slowing them. It can be used both for engaging and disengaging purposes. Imagine an enemy Kha'Zix trying to jump onto your low ally Ashe, you can use your ulti to knock him up the moment he would land on Ashe, which insures your ally will get away safe, and you might be able to deal some damage in return. The second big ability for Braum - and this is the ability that really characterizes him - is his Unbreakable. Braum is throughout all players known as the one with the big shield, and this is the reason a lot of people start playing him. He can reduce tons of damage dealt onto his allies by blocking the incoming damage with his shield. The amount of damage reduced increases from 30% up to 40%. This is the reason we’d wanna get some points stacked into that w, so By nature of his kit, Braum has very low poke, but the poke he has, can be used to great extend! His Winter's Bite deals magic damage empowered with percentage max hp from Braum himself. It also gives 1 stack for your Concussive Blows. You might wanna poke the enemy adcarry every now and then with this ability, so you have atleast something to play around. Given you are a melee attacker, you can't really harass the enemy carry, such as a Morgana or a Thresh, so you have to use your Q in order to get a little bit of poke damage. Make sure you don't spam your Q, and you only use it when you are sure of landing it, otherwise mana costs will stack up fast. Last but not least by any means, we have Braum's W, called Stand Behind Me. This ability can be used to dash back when harassed on, to dash forward with your Unbreakable, to block incoming damage, or to dash over walls for escaping. Learning the range of this ability is key important in using it, since it's just a point and click dash. You can dash onto allied minions and champions, not on wards such as Lee Sin and Jax. Braum's passive is called Concussive Blows, and is mainly focused on cc'ing your opponent. Opposite to Sejuani's Permafrost, Braum's passive doesn't require melee attackers only to stack it up. So when you're laning with for example a Lucian, you'll be able to proc the 4 stack Braum passive very fast! This is one of the strongest laning combo's for Braum. In teamfights when you aren't "completely" peeling focused, you might find benefit in auto attacking every opponent one time to enable the Concussive Blows stacking. After the primary targets have been stunned, you can use your Glacial Fissure to ensure the chain cc.

Under construction

Braum has by nature 2 ways of being played throughout teamfighting: either way he can be played passive, by peeling his teammates with his shield and using his Glacial Fissure for disengage, but on the other hand, he can be played as a fight initiater aswell, because yeah, his ulti can be used to engage fights too. I'll give a more brief description of how to use Braum as a fight initiater, and a more detailed analysis of how to play him as a peeler.

Braum as a fight initiator
It's relative straight forward on how to play Braum as an initiator. Try to dash forward with Stand Behind Me, to poke one of the 2 (or 3) enemy hardcarries with your Winter's Bite. When landed, it will ensure a slow on the enemy, which can be followed up by your own team. Once the enemy team tries to engage on you, you can use your Glacial Fissure semi agressive, semi defensive.
Another way of engaging, is by dashing forward, to use this as a gapcloser, followed up by Glacial Fissure, to split up the fight and ensure heavy crowd control onto the enemy line up.

Braum as a passive disengager
The other way of playing Braum in teamfights, is as a disengager. You should make sure that you focus on shielding your main carries by blocking heavy incoming damage with your Unbreakable. When you see a particular skillshot getting thrown at one of your major carries, for instance Morgana's Dark Binding, you won't want that to hit on your Vayne or your Xerath, because it will ensure the enemy team to win the fight. Instead use your Stand Behind Me on your ally, to take the skillshot for him/her, and use your Unbreakable to reduce further incoming damage on your carry. They might take their shot and throw a lot more abilities at the same time, which can enable your team to make a reactive play and win the fight, because the enemy team has cooldowns.
When you see champions flanking, or just forcing a fight in general, such as Hecarim, Sylas or Zac, make sure to jump immediatly on the "engaged-on ally", use your Glacial Fissure to cut-out the engage, and stop the fight. You wouldn't want your adcarry to get one shot by a Hecarim!

As everyone knows, it's very important in League of Legends to keep strong vision control over the map. When you want to siege, you need wards to avoid a flank, when you want to sneak Baron , you need vision around the pit so you know where the enemies are located,... In this paragraph, I'll explain the main ideas of how to ward under certain circumstances. How do you ward when you are ahead and want to snowball? How do you ward when you are behind? Which are critical places for warding? I'll explain it in this piece!

Warding when ahead/snowballing
When you are trying to snowball around the 10min mark, it's very important to work together on an efficient base with your jungler. Deep warding the enemy jungle is a good trick to abuse your jungler's advantage. Making sure you can spot out the enemy jungler, and his camps is crucial. Remember, the idea is to track the enemy jungler so he doesn't have ganking opportunities, but at the same time you're jungler can go and steal camps away, so he's left with nothing, no ganks, no camps, so he'll fall behind significantly! Great job! When playing the red side, you should ward the triangle of bushes around the enemy red buff. This will track an incredible amount of movement from the enemy jungler, and it will give your jungler track on when the enemy red is spawning.

Warding when falling behind early
When you're falling behind early, you won't place deep wards into the enemy jungle, because you'll be easily picked when they spot you out. Because the enemy lines will be pushed in, they'll be a lot quicker to respond and they might have a chance to kill you or blow your Flash, just for nothing. So when behind, you'll want to guarantee your own jungler to atleast have his own camps, so make sure you ward jungle entries such as the tribush with a Control Ward, and the jungle entrance between the jungle pit and midlane. When you are playing redside, it's a very smart idea to place a Control Ward in the bush between blue buff and midlane, this will spot out a lot of movement. At the entrance near to the blue buff, should also be a ward, junglers will seek to invade this spot a lot when they're ahead, espcially junglers with easy escaping tools such as Hecarim or Sejuani.

Critical spots to put wards
When we are talking about key spots for warding, we're talking about spots were junglers pass a lot, but can't ever be seen without the wards. Good examples are the 2 bushes at the raptor camps (one on red side, one on blue side), the river entrances at midlane, when coming from red buff, and many more. They'll be indicated on the pictures down bellow.

Warding as blueside:Warding as redside: