Rammus is considered a champion confined to the jungle. If you're playing Rammus then you're jungling, right? WRONG! Rammus is a very mean AP mid with a lot of undiscovered potential.

In this guide I will cover the basic playstyle of Rammus mid and how to achieve great success with him.

My build with Rammus mid provides a fair amount of tankyness with ridiculous damage potential.

Start out with boots 3 pots. I find this the safest to start with and wouldn't reccomend much else to start with. You just need to survive until 6, so starting with offensive items such as a Doran's Ring isn't really playing to Rammus's strengths.

For my first item I rush a Catalyst to help me stay in lane building it into a Rod Of Ages, however before finish the RoA I buy a Kage's Luck Pick for extra gold income. Next I finish my boots, Mercury Treads, Sorcerer's Shoes and Boots of Lucidity are all great options and I reccomend buying boots which matches your playstle the best.

After this I go for a defensive item, either Abyssal Scepter or Zhonya's Hourglass depending on who's doing the most damage on the other team.

Now it's time for some serious damage, I buy my Rabadon's Deatcap next. This will give you "tons of damage".

At this point it's a good time to build Deathfire Grasp, AP Rammus really benefits from Deathfire Grasp, it's essentialy another ability.

If the game goes on for this long and I get to my last item I reccomend any defensive item depending on what you need. Banshee's Veil, Guardian Angel, Frozen Heart etc.

I've been playing a lot of Rammus mid recently and you'll find most players simply don't expect the madness that is Rammus mid. This is always a great advantage when your enemy just doesn't know how to play against you which really helps to make this viable. Rammus is very vulnerable pre level 6. He has virtually no potential for damage or harass and doesn't stand on his own well at all early on. However, once you reach level 6 you're a killing machine!

At level 6 you now have what makes Ap Rammus so good, his ultimate! No one expects the Powerball, flash, taunt, W + Ult combo. This probably won't be enough to kill someone from full hp however such combo's allow your jungler to gank effortlessly. For the jungler no lane is easier to gank than Rammus mid, both pre-6 and post-6.

One big problem for Rammus is farming minions. He has mediocre AoE for reliably farming minions. You'll find yourself pushed under your turret a lot early on, it can be very tricky to farm with but working with your jungler can make your lane a kill happy lane.

Glueing yourself to mid lane is wasting great potential with mid Rammus. He can very easily gank side lanes with Powerball and taunt just like jungle Rammus. Be warned however because he's terrible at pushing a lane without his ult you'll probably lose your turret in mid if you keep leaving to gank too much.

Pros

Very effective when working with your jungler
Heavy AoE damage
Strong CC
Great potential for roaming ganks

Cons

Very weak pre level 6
Bad at farming

Once teamfights begin to happen you get your chance to really shine. AP Rammus can cause havoc in a teamfight but be warned! It is very dangerous to intiate with AP Rammus. He's not very tanky compared to your traditional tank Rammus so you really don't want to be the center of attention. Wait for a fight to start then roll in, taunt someone squishy and press W and R and Watch as everyone dies around you!

Mid game is when AP Rammus is at his strongest, he's tanky enough to survive and does great damage. Sadly late game he becomes too weak to properly survive against any organized team, you'll have a hard time surviving late game as you have to be right in a fight getting hit by a lot of nasty things.

Overall I feel Rammus mid is a unique way to play Rammus that no one seems to be doing. He has a strong mid game and great potential for kills in every lane post-6. His powerball + taunt makes for an easy kill when ganking other lanes just like jungle Rammus but his R packs many lethal punches.