I'm making this guide for Rammus because I don't like the other guides and as I experiment with different Items I may add to it. Or I may be lazy and do nothing of the sort allowing it to rot. If you like it let me know why I like getting my head wrapped around new and old concepts from different perspectives. If you don't like it don't say something stupid like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOB. I'll pretty much write you off as a troll but if you say something constructive I may include your advice in my guide. again no promises as I'm pretty lazy but who knows maybe I'll get 500,000 votes like that one guy for talon.

Runes are still being tested and I have two theories about how to approach this matter, both being at odds with each other. one hand is that armor is needed to stop an enemy from hurting your health so that your curl ball can do its job, the other is that if you have more health and let your items do the talking for your armor then your curl ball has more health to trade and you'll be slightly more versatile when facing opponents that prefer to use magic to attack you. I might let you know how my research goes.

Rammus does damage to enemies by fighting them plain and simple. "But five that's stupid everyone knows that you say, and you'd be both wrong and right to point that out. Rammus's ability to do damage stems from the damage output of your enemy hands down if your enemy doesn't attack you you'd never get a kill. The style of play behind an effective Rammus starts by using puncturing taunt followed by using curl and your Ult if its off of Cooldown (with a 60 second Cooldown it's not that hard really.)

I chose these masteries because first I love ghost on Rammus there's nothing funnier then people getting mad because a giant turtle outran their master YI while his ult is active (of course Ghost by itself won't let Rammus do this with his horrendously slow base speed under 400 but I'll get to that later.) Now the other masteries are simple, Rammus won't early game jungle or gank(if you prove me wrong with a you tube video I'll not only redact that statement but link your video) and is sometimes forced to hang back and soak exp because of low health and the opposing team putting pressure on him so a little extra exp doesn't hurt to help keep up with the other people early on.

This is where it gets a little blurry as I'm still learning what does and doesn't work but the progression I'm using here is pretty basic for fighting enemies that deal both magic and physical damage. However, whenever I find my self facing an entire team of physical damage dealing opponents I do not hesitate to grab my boots and stack 5 Thornmail's on top of everything *if they have a LOT of burst damage exchanging 1 Thornmail for a Guardian Angel. with almost 600 armor bringing your damage reduction up to 88% and higher depending on if you follow this build even when your curl ball is off they'll be giving themselves a black eye trying to hurt you. please note that Thornmail is useless if they use only abilities to attack you as damage isn't calculated from abilities (yes that means ults) so pick your battles wisely and pay attention to when they use up their ults and are still on Cooldown.
as for all you nay sayers out there going "ARE YOU MAD???? BOOTS OF MOBILITY?" settle down this guy is slower then molasses without them and as my build is mana intensive I find myself frequently forced to recall making those boots an invaluable asset both in getting myself redeployed quickly after recharging but they've saved my *** more then once from getting ganked making slower chars like Ashe (yes with these boots you can even leave Ashe in the dust) also don't hesitate to use your powerball to slingshot yourself back into the battle as with the boots and powerball's speed boost you can cover 25% of the map before it stops speeding you up (around 750 speed for those of you who are curios)(950 with ghost)

Its not very fancy to look at and it's really pretty brutish but it gets the job done. Basically think of your skills as having a hierarchy Like this r,w,e,q when ever you level if r is able to have a point dropped in then do so if not check to see if w is available followed by e, and lastly q. the only exception to this rule is starting out you want to have at least 1 point in each to get you started so that you can do your job. so your first three skills will be w,e,q just like that, and by the time you have a point in q you should be ready to recall back to recharge and get back up to your tower (and buy your boots of mobility if your lucky enough to have ganked early on.)

I choose Ghost first and foremost above flash but if your a flashy guy/gal go with it, I use Ghost because with Rammus's ult active enemies like to run and its really irritating to watch them get away with 10 hp as they just barely out strip your ult. With Ghost on you can literally run circles around them as they helplessly watch their health slip away every second. and if your puncturing taunt is off Cooldown don't hesitate to keep them a few more precious steps from the protection of their tower. Now for the second skill. Flash I use both these skills in conjunction to easily run down an opponent and splatter them as well as an emergency escape route. On more then one occasion I've run down an opponent with them, and the same can be said for when all 4 of them happen to find one of my buddies I'll not hesitate to jump into the fray against their entire team towards the mid game to grab their attention and my ally has a chance to get away followed immediately by flashing through a wall and spinning up just in case one of them has flash and thinks they're going to chase me. After using tactics like that the enemy team will sometimes Face check a tower to kill me and in the process wipe their entire team leaving my team to push a lane right back to their front door.