If you read nothing else, the most important thing about playing Taric Top is to stay chill and trust in your stats. I am not referring to tilt, I am referring to when you start to panic in the middle of a fight and start spam clicking your abilities and the mouse, you will mess up and die. If you can stay chill you more than double your chances of success.

You're probably here because you want some off-meta good times and I respect you for that, but I'm here to tell you that playing Taric Top is not only fun, it is genuinely viable. What if I told you that I consistently win against Darius players that disrespect your gems? What if I told you that Teemo mains spend the whole laning phase hiding under tower? There are several matchups where Taric absolutely crushes it, and he looks fabulous doing it.

It works mainly because of Bravado, Taric's passive. For a short time after activating any ability, Taric's next two basic attacks deal bonus damage, gain 100% attack speed, and reduce the remaining cooldowns of his basic abilies. Taric's Q is a heal that can store charges equal to its level, and each hit of Bravado will grant a stack of Q rather than reducing its cooldown, allowing you to then cast it again and again and again, allowing you to abuse your passive and win fights with all that extra dps while also granting you huge amounts of sustain (this applies even if you're playing taric support). The combo is strong enough to dominate in top lane against several of the meta champs, and when you start joing teamfights you will be a truly outrageous frontline powerhouse.

Max out Q first but only up to 4.
Max out E next all the way to 5.
Max out W next all the way to 5.
The final Q upgrade will be the last thing you do at level 18.
Trust me, there's a reason for that, I'll explain further down in the combos.

Level 1:
Always start with E.
This will allow you to get some early poke with a single auto if you can, or otherwise it will allow you to keep your opponent at a distance, or otherwise it will allow you to last hit a minion or two if you are getting zoned.

Level 2:
Always get Q, now you can start combos.
Open a fight using E auto auto.
Follow up with Q auto auto over and over again for the duration of the trade until E is back up, then repeat the process.

Level 3 and 4:
Open a fight with E auto auto, W auto auto, this way your shield will be up the moment your opponent retaliates with whatever they got.
Afterwards spam Q auto auto just like before until you can use W or E again.

Level 5 and above:
At level 5 you should have 3 stacks of Q. You want to stack as many charges of Q as you can because the mana cost is basically the same whether you're using 1 charge or 5, so go for the extra heals rather than just trying to auto attack.

Therefore the combo is simple, alternate between using Q and another ability while doing two autos inbetween casts.

In a perfect world it will look like this.
Q auto auto, E auto auto, Q auto auto, W auto auto, repeat.
Notice how there are 4 autos between each cast of Q, this means that every time you use Q you will have 4 stacks.

But this is not a perfect world and your W and E cooldowns are a bit higher than that, so after this combo you will have to spam Q at 2 stacks until one of those abilities are back up again.

The reason you get the 5th Q charge last is because trying to stack 5 charges in a combo heals you less overall. Remember that Bravado reduces the remaining time of your cooldowns along with giving you Q charges, so if you "Q aa E aa W aa" to enjoy the benefits of 5 stacks, you will not gain a stack on the 6th auto and you will have to spam Q with 2 stacks one extra time just to get the same ammount of cooldown reduction as the original combo. In the end, you are only getting 7 stacks per combo rather than 8 in the original combo. You're better off getting used to the rhythm of building 4 stacks per Q and upgrading your E than going for one more Q charge.

With Taric, everything scales with attack speed thanks to Bravado. Attacking faster means spamming abilities faster, which means you heal, shield, and stun more in a shorter amount of time, and don't forget that Bravado also grants your auto attacks bonus magic damage. Therefore, Lethal Tempo is far and beyond the best rune for Taric Top.

Almost all of your damage comes from auto attacks, so Pressence of Mind can help consistently smooth out your mana issues, and trust me, Taric needs mana. There's a reason you're building Tear first.

I run Legend: Tenacity because CC is an easy counter to what you want to do, but Legend: Alacrity is fabulous for the same reason as Lethal Tempo. Legend: Bloodline will stack well with your late game lifesteal items, so that's a good option too but I'd prefer the others. Up to you really.

Lastly I go for Last Stand over the other options to give you a little boost when things are looking dicey. You are a tank still so Cut Down wont suit you, but you can get away with Coup De Grace especially if you find you're having a hard time finishing people off.

Go with the Resolve tree for the secondary runes.
Shield Bash combos incredibly well with your kit and is very worth picking up.
Same can be said with Revitalize, which is only going to make both your Q and W that much better.

For your spells, take Teleport because of course, and take Ghost. Taric's kit requires that you land basic attacks, and since you have no mobility, Ghost will help you stick to targets and run them down, especially little buggers like Teemo. It's also a great way to escape ganks, I've always preferred Ghost over Flash for that purpose.

Follow the build order at the top of the guide.

First item:
Trinity Force is a great item for Taric, it gives him everything that he wants to have except for Armor.

Boots:
Build whichever boots you want based on the matchup.

Second item:
I haven't settled on what to build for the second item. Maybe Titanic Hydra, maybe Thornmail Plate, or maybe Randuin's Omen like I have in the guide. I'll leave it up to you, I'm open to suggestions.

Third item:
Finish building Winter's Approach so you can upgrade it into Fimbulwinter. You can trigger the shield off your E, and by this point in the game you should be entering teamfights so the extra shield will help.

Fourth Item:
This is where the build gets a little spicey. Instead of going with more defenses, we are going to build more sustain. Blade of the Ruined King is one of the few lifesteal items in the roster, but it has the added bonus of doing huge amounts of bonus damage. If you feel like your damage has been dropping off, this item will reinvigorate it.

Fifth item:
The final item is Immortal Shieldbow, another lifesteal item. I chose this over Bloodthirster because lifeline may just save you from dying when you are hit with a bunch of CC, and when you're this late into the game, dying matters. The same can be said if you choose to build Guardian Angel instead, but I'd rather go for more lifesteal.

The matchups page of the guide is a work-in-progress that I'm updating in real time as I face more opponents as Taric Top. If you would like to contribute to the list, feel free to comment and I might add it. That being said, feel free to comment about anything in the guide, perhaps things I said that are wrong, or even superior builds. I want this to be the best Taric Top guide out there and with everyone's help I can make it so.