Galio has been a pocket pick of mine for a while, and comes in especially helpful with my flex-queue team. The new changes to galio make him a really powerful assassin, that can transition into a bruiser/off tank late game. My goal with this guide is to build out a guide for a new AP bruiser playstyle.

With the insane scaling they've given to Galio alot more emphasis is placed into stacking AP. This places RoA back into the meta for Galio, but as a bruiser these builds will often be dependent on your lane matchup. Most of your fighting will be bursty and close range which makes frontloaded damage, and health very good on him now. Both RoA and Abyssal are likely strong on him now and I would ask you to consider these two things when choosing which catalyst item to build:

1). What type of damage is my opponent?
2). How often am I all-ining?

These questions are important since it helps outline how you're playing your role, and how your opponent will play against you. Against an AD matchup it doesnt make much sense to rush MR. Instead I would suggest a catalyst/arm guard laning phase. This will delay your damage but you'll make it out of laning phase and be available for some high-impact roams.

How often you all-in really affects your playstyle since it makes survivability very valuable on you. Abyssal's %AP aura is super powerful at close ranges which means you will get alot of value out of this item. With this playstyle an early lichbane would also be a good idea, since it will let you really chunk with your rotation, and give you the movespeed to engage/disengage as you wish. Later on I would say that an early Rab isn't a terrible idea given his ratios now, but if you need survivability banshees is very efficient on Galio now or against AD finishing your Zhonya's is a similar powerspike. In most cases I think rab is stronger as a 4th item on galio given his need for tank stats. After rab it generally makes sense to go full tank like adaptive helm or spirit visage, against AD maybe a randuins.

With bruiser Galio your typical flow chart in a fight looks like Dive > Pick > Disrupt > Escape/Pursue. Like many diving bruisers Galio works well if he can get a flank, but tankfully your ult allows you to really catch your opponents with their pants down. Since you're squishier than tank galio you need to be more strategic with the ults you take, and once you land you need to move quickly to identify and assassinate their nearby carries. With a full rotation you can easily 100 > 0 nearly any squishy, and with his scaling %dmg he will shred health stackers. Once your damage rotation is on CD it's best to either taunt and escape, or fall back to your backline to provide peel. You don't want to spend too much time in the frontline as bruiser galio, and you really need to avoid being kited by ADCs since they will absolutely shred you. A good strategy against being focused by ADCs is popping your W and running away. You're tanky enough to eat a couple crits with your DR, but getting focused for long will melt you.