Tiamat is ridiculous on a lot of champions, it's something I've been considering on a few junglers though obviously it's far better on AD junglers and laners. I love watching people just destroy with it.

Dunkmaster Yi will return, now that his Alpha can crit, that'll be interesting to watch out for.

 

Tiamat on Talon is something I've been doing for a while, since I saw someone do it on a stream, and it's really strong. It gives that extra bit of oomph to really let me kill both of their botlane at the same time, instead of the boring old-fashioned one after the other.

 

So, just logged onto League today in hopes that eventually Spirit Guard Udyr will be available. But alas, it is not so. Just a boring maintenance patch. Also, they changed Riven's splash art and icon. So that's interesting.

 

EU Nordic East is funny.

Played some normals, clock is 2am, my team consists of 1 diamond 5 player, 1 gold 3, 1 bronze 4, me at just 12 ranked games and silver 4 + a friend who is level 24 and just starting out.


Enemy team is Gold 3, Silver 1, 2 Platinum 5's and a Challenger at 473 points.


Long story short, I killed the challenger player 2 times at top due to him going over aggressive with my jungler near, but we lost horribly, because the mechanical/tactical difference between the teams was fucking huge.


TL;DR: Normal matchmaking is shit in the middle of the night, no surprise, I'm just mad.

 

Oh, I've known that for a while. I actually got Tiamat a lot for the burst boost when it first got changed.

What I've been doing now is changing the item order I've been working with. Instead of a Brute rush, I'm trying out Tiamat rush to boost wave clear and add more AD ratios to burst combo.

I'm indecisive about whether it's actually superior, but wave clearing an entire set of enemies with a AA Q Tiamat is nice.

And the sustain upgrade if I rush it into Hydra makes it sweet for those annoying mids.

 

That's one of the great things about Tiamat and Hydra. Amazing clear. Especially great for those like Lee Sin and Talon. Talon can clear faster and go roam more while keeping his lane pushed. Lee Sin can push his lane and go counter jungle with it. I was a bit doubtful of going Tiamat on Lee Sin but i've found it to be amazing.

 

So I just tried jungle Taric. For that matter I just tried regular old support Taric as well. I've read a couple of guides on how to use him and gone through maybe a half dozen games, but I'm finding that I die much more than I'm used to. I regularly play ranged support so maybe it's just adjusting to a melee support. Ages ago when I tried Leona I had the same problem.

I guess what I'm asking is: does anyone have any tips for playing melee support and Taric in particular?

 

It's not a matter of "how to play" as much as "how to think".

Zone the hell out of the enemy and vision/ward spam.

You're melee with on-demand point-and-click hard CC and an ass-ton of armor from Runes + W. You're a serious threat at all stages, whether you're fully geared or just running on sight stone + mobi boots because of stun + AR Shred.

You need to think like you're the pimp slapping around an uppity bitch. And then, you need to work on how to make this happen.

Taric is melee, therefor, he can not auto-harass like other champs. He has huge mana costs, so he can not skill spam. The option left is complete vision control.

You own their wards as Taric. They drop any sort of bush ward, you should be killing it instantly or making your ADC murder it. You need to be the "Garen" in every bush at bot lane. The enemy bot lane should be terrified of walking within 400 range of an bush because they can't see you yet know you're there waiting to stun them so our ADC and jungle and railroad their asses. Remember, you are the pimp and they are paying you for the privilege of a slap.

You also need to build much more defensively as Taric. He's melee, has melee skills, and wants to whack people with a mallet. Build tanky. Aegis + Locket + Sightstone for massive effective health boosts.

Go balls deeps on defensive gears and CDR items that help you skill spam to survive more.

And if you happen to man-mode and have tons of money/kills? Get a Sheen. Upgrade that into Iceborn. Be even more of a pimp with shiny blue god hand pimp-slapping multiple bitches at once and force them to stare at your fabulous gear.

 

Stun, ult, shatter, whack. He's fallen off a lot since the end of S2 and hasn't seen much competitive play, if any.

Don't actually waste your stun but zone out the enemy adc with the threat of it. The problem is Taric lacks a gap close like Leona or Alistar so you'd have to walk up to the enemy after stunning to combo.

Don't eat too much harass, keep your ADC alive. Leona can make painful trades at lvl 2 and 3, same for Ali. Leona has to be aggressive and initiate but Alistar and Taric can be fairly passive and protect with heals and their CC. Aegis/Bulwark is awesome on Taric. However, he's just outclassed by almost every other support right now.

 

Taric is SoloQ-tastic. He works perfectly for what SoloQ needs. I've tried basically every support, and I find Taric one of (if not the) best for solo q, when you don't know any of the other assholes playing with you.
Taric has on-demand, spammable hard cc, spammable heal, three different buff auras, and a debuff armor move all in his base abilities. That's insane.
Build him tanky with CDR, and watch the enemy cry tears of frustration as you keep your team alive while stunning priority targets which instantly get melted (if your team doesnt suck) and constantly spamming /j

TLDR: Taric is my favorite support. Build him so he can spam abilities and laugh at enemy attacks, buy the pink skin, and never forget to bind /j to the J key and spam it.
ALWAYS SPAM IT.

 

Maybe it's just me but I've not been a huge fan of Taric since they altered his kit a little. He's still a great support but I find he's just out-classed by almost all other supports.

The only real time I'd consider playing him is against a full AD enemy line-up and even then, you need to build something like a wardens or glacial shroud for your W to be super-beneficial, though of course it's still very useful just on its own.

Main complaints w/ Taric are his heal is terrible, which is why it's often levelled last, and the stun duration isn't long enough on his e. Yes, it's a very simply mouse-over targettable cc, but 1.1 seconds? It can be long enough if you have some follow-up CC but on its own in a 2vs2 I just don't agree with it.

That said, I have neither played Taric, nor played against one since they nerfed him when he was the terror of the jungle & top lane following the kit rework so, all personal preference. I'd rather have a Nami/Leona but that's just me. His W and ult are however great in fights, just not a fan of his laning and as I said, find him outclassed.

I guess Riot heard us talking about tiamat as I've had several crashes in ARAM today with tiamat's involved. Though now it's just down to PvP.net problems and my client randomly crashing whilst playing/spectating. Haven't gone near ranked because of both of these bugs.

 

In fairness, Taric's stun's duration extends as it levels,though its only by 0.1 per level or somesuch. And his heal, while no Soraka, is better than sona's (i think) with a decent cooldown that drps with every auto attack.

And have I mentioned his /j?

Edit: Leona, Sona etc is probably loads better in organised play where specific comps are chosen, but Taric is a jack of all trades that is great for solo q.

 

TSM why you fail so hard? Aggro early team? Okay, but Regi picks Zilean...Who has negative pressure early game.

Edit:

Now that the game is over let me expend my rage. First of all, that bottom lane was terrible even theoretically. Your ideal scenario is that annie ranged stuns with tibbers, Xin walks up and knocks up, and saves his dash for when the enemy ADC escapes. That''s the best of all possible situations. At least Leona/Jarvan has its simplicity and kill power going for it. Leona E->J4 E->Leona Q->J4 Q->J4 W, save ults (2!) for any possible escapes.

Other possible better kill lanes: Motherfucking Rengar+Xin. Rengar zones from bush (by the way, if you are running a kill lane you need vision control dumbfucks) or if they are stupid enough to come close enough either double Q or Q Snare Snare.

Zilean was the worst of all possible picks in middle too. He runs OOM too quickly (by the way Regi, if your team is losing and needs power NOW buying a tear is fucking pointess), doesn't have enough damage, and is overall fairly useless (number of times an ult that game saved someone important which turned the teamfights -I fucking counted- : 0). Gragas would be good for the pick potential, Karthus for the end game siege and carry power + slow. Like the list goes on and on.

Overall, my rage is unending. The number of obvious mistakes are almost beyond counting, but at the end of the day here's a few of the glaring ones: You are playing a really shitty pick team, your comp is based around Xin engaging and not dying, and you have no way of taking objectives. Your entire game plan is: snowball or go home but you didn't even pick good snowballers. Zilean is a crap APC, he is mainly used for his utility, Shen doesn't snowball at all, Annie support is a support and Jarvan is a tank.

How to run that comp (Wildfeather style)

Bottom lane: Taric/Rengar. Aggressively zone the opponent and punish them if they come near the brushes. Zone them from all XP and CS. Dragon control needs to be assured through ward control.

Jungler: Sej or Hecarim. Huge AoE initiations and strong tanky presences to provide the CC and Health to dive towers early. Starting at 6 Rengar should be getting a kill on every CD.

Mid: Gragas/Galio/Karthus. All three of these can serve the same functional role; initiation and wave clear. Karthus is also a hyper-carry.

Top: Kennen (though I hate the little rat)/Chogath/Elise. More wave-clear and engage/disengage. Elise is dive buddies with Rengar, Kennen AOE ults the whole team, and Chogath is a huge tank for engage/disengage.

 

I don't know what you are talking about, but Zilean's early game is not weak at all. Maybe weak against your trololol Mordekaiser shield, but Zilean out trades quite a bit of ap mids early level.

 

Yes. Comp was questionable, but what really did it was that overaggresion. Zilean flashing in for a single timebomb on top, then lacking flash to escape. Or later in mid, where Annie got caught and they burned Shen ult. Obviously that's the perfect time for Jarvan to initiate since Shens ult is down and both he and Annie are still around wraith a full screen away.

So impatien, trying way to hard.

 

Except I said nothing about trades and everything about lane pressure. Zilean has 2 choices: Harass opponent or push lane. He shouldn't be able to do both (which he didn't this game) hence why Jayce pushed him in for days.

They aren't playing standard (for s2) lanes where you push lane then go roam; TSM had to win decisively early and hard. Zilean doesn't have the power to do that (double bomb one target and 1 slow/speed up) nevermind the apparently crap matchup of Zilean/Jayce. Nevermind that Regi built for a late game comp (loltear) in an early game rush, and that he hilariously wasted his flash on the failed gank top (which had a poor engage in the first place) which helped the reverse snowball.

By the way, some quick math at level 3 of the bomb his damage is 400 magic damage*1.8ap. At that same level (5) Ahri would have dealt 340+1.75ap damage, with a taunt as opposed to a speed up/slow down. Ahri would have given them ranged clear and an assassin to help Xin dive with.

Zilean is actually pretty good against Morde, he can push wave as hard and is immune to Mordekaiser poke and ult (for the rest of the whole game) and has that slow to screw him over in a gank and the speed up to escape one.

 

Regi was against Jayce, a 3.8 Jayce who rushed tear, so, he was fucked either way. I question the Zilean pick as apart from his ult... He doesn't really do much once there's a Bulwark on the field. His early damage is brutal even if he's mana heavy till you get that tear, but even then... I dunno, I'd have to sit down, watch the game in silence (there's a party downstairs for my brother) and think on it. Probably won't happen though.

I tuned in halfway through, took one look at the comps and went back to the start of the game, just, the hell NA? I like it.

 

Are Worlds going to be played on 3.8 as well or are they going to run the latest patch at the end of the season?

 

LCS -should- be going to 3.9 next week, possibly with Aatrox enabled, not sure, they might say more at the end of the day/weekend. I know that the Europeans will be in Tenerife to play week 6 so, might not be on 3.9 in Europe, maybe NA, it's all up in the air so far as I know.

Worlds will likely be played on 3.9, maybe 3.10 - I guess it depends on how fast they get 3.10 out and what they change. Worlds are what, October 4th? With the groups etc starting September 16th, so that would suggest to me that it'll be 3.9 if 3.10 doesn't come out before mid August at the latest.

 

It's really not fair tbh, to be comparing damage between a skill shot champion and one that's not. And I'm not trying to say Zilean is some sort of crazy midlaner, just that his early game damage/pressure is not joke either. And if it's about tower diving, nobody does better than Zilean. Speed up helps jungler go in immediately, and ult means you will both likely survive with no problems. By level 10ish, Zilean can single bomb to kill range minions, double bombs can clear wave.

I do agree though, that rushing tears is a bad choice if you are going for early game pressure. Rod of Ages is usually better, assuming you have blue control.

(Also, the whole either harass/push lane is really false. Most good midlaners would purposely let your bomb blow up near their minions early levels, forcing you to push the lane). And by level 8-9, double bomb is enough to chunk someone 2/3 of their hp, unless they built magic resist. It'd no longer be called harass, but rather take a couple more bombs and you will die.