League of Legends: Gragas Guide

Gragas is a very unique champion that blends many different roles. Although this is a good thing, many players don't understand how to play a Tank/Mage/Dps hybrid like Gragas to his full potential. The instinct that most players follow is to build Gragas like a mage - stacking AP. However, Gragas' skills are not well suited towards this approach. The only skills Gragas has that benefit from AP are 2 AOE skillshots. Even with 1000 AP, these skills on their own would be ineffective at best. If you want to play a mage with strong nukes, there are far better choices (ie: Karthus or Veigar). In this guide, I'm going to showcase a more effective strategy for Gragas.

League of Legends: Corki Guide

League of Legends: Master Yi Guide

League of Legends: Karthus Guide

League of Legends: Fiddlesticks Guide

League of Legends: Annie Guide

Happy Hour (passive): Every time Gragas uses an ability, 2% of his hp is replenished over 4 seconds. This skill is amazing. With max CDR, the healing it gives you is ridiculous.

Barel Roll: A skillshot AoE nuke that explodes in 5 seconds. It can also be manually detonated. Not a great damage skill, but it's good for playing mind games and last hitting minions.

Drunken Rage: Gragas drinks from his cask gaining attack damage, restoring mana, and reducing all incoming damage for 25 seconds. This is one of Gragas' best skills. The mana restoratoin is especially useful early game. The other effects are great at all stages of the game - early and late.

Body Slam: Gragas bursts forward slowing and damaging all enemies he collides with. Deals static damage + 66% of AD. This skill is amazing for its utility. You can use it for chasing, running away. going through walls, or simply for its damage.

Explosive Cask: Gragas throws a huge cask dealing AoE damage, knocking enemies back, and slowing their attack speeds for a short duration. This skills is great for farming, repositioning enemies, or simply for its damage. Your allies will also love you for saving their butts as they flee.

9/0/21

I take the offensive tree up to the 15% spell penetration. I take the utility tree for the mana regen, CDR, Neutral Buff duration increase, Experience increase, and the Summoner Spell CDR. I also take the ghost mastery since I always use ghost on Gragas.

**Check Out The Poll On The Right.**

For Gragas, I always take Ghost and Cleanse. Some people might tell you to take Flash, but it's been nerfed so heavily that I rarely ever consider taking it anymore. Plus, Gragas can already body slam through walls to escape, So flash isn't needed in that respect. Cleanse is taken to augment Gragas' survivability. CC (crowd control) is a huge aspect of the game. With cleanse you can escape stuns and slows with ease. Also, contrary to popular belief, you CAN absolutely cleanse taunts and silences. Beyond that, you can also cleanse any negative debuff that gets applied to you. This includes Mordekeiser's ultimate, ignite, and any other DOT (damage over time) effect you can think of. Do you need any more reasons to take cleanse? I didn't think so =D

For runes, I do it like this:

Reds: Magic Pen | Blues: CD Reduction | Yellow: HP/Lv | Quints: Flat HP

Q,E,W,E,E,R,W,E,W,E,R,W,W,Q,Q,R,Q,Q

The most important stat to itemize for on Gragas is CDR (Cooldown Reduction). All of his abilities already have fairly short cooldowns. With max CDR they become highly spammable. Beyond CDR, you're going to need armor, mana, and Hp on Gragas. Glacial Shroud takes care of mana, armor, and CDR all at once, so it's usually the first key item I go for. Eventually, I'll upgrade it to Frozen Heart. The boots I get depend on the match ups. If I'm facing an auto attacking team I could go Ninja Tabi and eventually Phantom Dancer to go the dodge route. If they're stacking damage sometimes I go Thornmail. If I do go Thornmail, I'll take Mercury Treads instead of Ninja Tabi. Boots of Switftness are also a possibility. If I choose to go Thornmail, I pass on Phantom Dancer and instead work on Trinity Force, Stark's Fervor, and a BF Sword, which can be built into an Infinity Edge. Stark's Fervor post nerf isn't as amazing as it used to be, so I'm going to say that it's interchangeable with any of the other attack speed items. If the other team is stacking armor, you may want to go Last Whisper. If they're stacking HP, you may want to go Madred's Bloodrazor. If you're going against Jax stacking dodge, you may want to go Sword of the Divine. It all depends on who you're facing. It's nice to have some lifesteal, so you might want to go for a Bloodthirster over Infinity Edge assuming you didn't go for Starks Fervor. Also, if you're going dodge, Guardian Angel is a nice alternative to Thornmail.

Gragas is a decent laner early game, but he really starts to excel after lv 6. Early on, you'll want to use barrel roll judiciously (due to mana constraints) to last hit and harass. Throughout the game, you're going to to want to keep Drunken Rage up continuously. It has no cost, so the only thing you need is a safe distance to channel from. Remember, the buff is applied at the end of the channel time, so you need to wait until it finishes before you order another command. Drunken Rage gives a nice boost to AD (attack damage), which will help immensely with lat hitting and jungling. Once you hit Lv 6, you can use his ult to farm minion waves and neutrals. The most effective approach is to barrel roll, then body slam, and finally throw your ult to finish off the wave. I use the ult last since it scatters the minions in all directions. This effect is good for champions, but bad for last hitting minions.

I play Gragas primarily on TT (Twisted Treeline) on this map, I shuffle back and forth between the 2 lanes rather frequently. In doing so, there are two things you need to watch for: 1) incoming minion waves and 2) Enemy Champions pushing. There are nuances that apply to each of these situations. I will go through them in the following strategy section.

On the fip side, you'll want to watch the lanes for enemy champions that are pushing - especially if they're alone. Because of the way TT is set up, you can actually body slam through the walls and into n unsuspecting enemy. This makes for a fabulous initiation move and almost a guaranteed kill provided that you have an ally already in the lane. At the very least, you'll force them to retreat and heal, which in effect deprives them of gold and xp (experience).

Also, because of its long range, you can toss the larger cask from behind the walls as well. I find it especially useful to use this technique to blast enemies towards friendly turrets or into allied champions. Once you've blasted them back from behind the wall, use body slam to charge into combat. With max CDR (Cooldown Reduction), body slam has a 3.6 second cooldown. Provided that you land the first one, the slow will allow you to chase and effectively kit with it.

Gragas is pretty versatile, so he can do well with a wide range of allies. Personally, I prefer teaming with ranged DPS carries, tanks, disablers, and certain support champs. For each type I'll include a few possible champs.

Ranged DPS: Twitch, Tristana, Ashe, Corki

Tank: Malphite, Nasus, Alistar, Taric, Mundo

Disablers: Fiddlesticks is probably the best. Several of the tanks also have stuns/slows, so they could be considered disablers as well.

Support: Janna, Zilean, Soraka

Since TT was released for MM (Matchmaking), I haven't played almost any games on SR (Summoner's Rift). The playstyle on TT is very fast paced. The laning phase is short and erratic. On TT, you can't stay in the same lane for very long (at least not against experienced players). SR is almost the complete opposite.On SR, the laning phase is much longer and drawn out. SR has 3 lanes, which are much farther apart, so it's much more difficult to traverse quickly between them. For this reason, players tend to stick to their lanes in order to maximize gold and xp intake.

I feel that Gragas is much stronger on Tt that he is on SR. However, this doesn't mean that you can't play him on Sr. If you play him on SR, you can be successful applying many of the same strategies I've outlined for TT. Keep in mind, though, that on SR you're going to want to stay in lane much longer than you would on TT. In order to do this you need to minimize the number of trips you take to shop or heal. Beyond that, there are various other subtleties that are unique to Sr. I may draft another articles solely to address these differences. Stay tuned.

Thank you for reading my guide to Gragas the Rabble Rouser. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please give me some positive feedback. To do so, just click the vote up button below. Thanks!

League of Legends: Editor's Rating/Analysis

League of Legends: Master Yi Guide

League of Legends: Fiddlesticks Guide

League of Legends: Karthus Guide

How To Maximize Your Google Adsense Revenue Using A Simple Trick