“Stand Behind Me!” - Braum in the LCS

Braum’s primary role is obvious: he’s a big ole manly, protective support. Most other supports fill one of two roles: frail but replete with utility, peel, or damage or brawny and designed around diving face-first into the fray. The Heart of the Freljord toes the line between protective and brawny. Secondarily, he fulfills a fantasy many tank players have: he just gets in the way. Before, if you wanted to block damage, you could pick a big champion like Cho’Gath or Nautilus or Zac and simply stand in front of the enemy team. But those champions lack the mobility to really adequately protect teammates with their bodies alone, while Braum’s unexpected agility allows him to get in front of the rest of his team. Also, that ‘stache. Let’s take a look at where Braum’s kit succeeds at fulfilling those roles and what LCS AD Carries and Supports think of Braum.

Loadout

Pro players disagree in the optimal way to play Braum, but there are two common themes: he can be built for tankiness, maximizing the value of Stand Behind Me! and Unbreakable, or he can be built for utility and movement speed, guaranteeing his ability to initiate. Either way, pros run largely a combination of Armor, Health, and Magic Resist for their runes. However, Mastery pages vary from 0/9/21 for movement speed and initiation to 0/21/9 for tankiness, with 0/16/14 serving as a nice middle ground.

Laning

Braum has an interesting laning phase. On the one hand, LCS supports seem to agree that Braum isn’t the absolute strongest in lane, listing “lack of sustain,” “no damage if I miss Winter’s Bite,” and “weakness to poke” as major weaknesses. On the other hand, according to ROCCAT’s Vander, “most of Braum’s matchups are even because it’s hard to go all-in against him, thanks to his passive and shield”. However, this isn’t a huge problem because he synergizes very well with almost any jungler, thanks to the stun from his passive and his ability to apply it from range with Winter’s Bite. Notice that Svenskeren (on Jarvan) doesn’t even need to initiate the gank, and can just walk in without using his flag and drag combo. In lane, Braum starts with Winter’s Bite (to have the ability to apply his passive from range), then takes Unbreakable and Stand Behind Me. His skills are maxed in the same order, with preference given to his ultimate Glacial Fissure, of course. Almost every bot laner agrees that Lucian pairs well with Braum, as Lucian’s passive gives 2 of the 4 stacks needed to get the stun (and Braum provides the first hit already). Interestingly enough, Braum also performs well against Lucian due to his ability to completely block The Culling with Unbreakable. However, his best matchups are those against ADCs with no dashes or escapes, allowing him to stick to them and easily get his passive stun. His worst matchups are heavy poke lanes with disengage, most notably Morgana, who can shut down his CC. The Manliest Bot Lane on Earth The Graves + Braum lane has been nicknamed - among other things - the Mustache Lane. But how well does it really work? Pretty poorly, in lane at least. Braum’s main weakness is poke, a problem Graves suffers from as well, thanks to being “relatively weak in the early game due to his short attack range”, which also makes it “difficult to stack Braum’s passive”. Of course, this hasn’t stopped several bot lanes from running the Braum/Graves lane, as Braum makes up for Graves’ main late-game weaknesses. AD Carries who suffer from low range - like Graves - have trouble sieging towers or participating in teamfights because it exposes them to auto-attacks and skill shots. Braum can mitigate those weaknesses by intercepting those projectiles and auto-attacks. As one LCS AD Carry put it, “he stands in front of me and makes me feel safe and secure”. It’s not just Graves that Braum allows to shine in the late game, of course. Notice how in this teamfight, Corki is free to stand still behind the safety of Braum’s shield and unleash all of his damage.

Teamfights

In teamfights, Vander likes that “Braum is extremely versatile”. On the one hand, he has very strong “engages with your frontline thanks to Stand Behind Me and Glacial Fissure”. He is especially strong at initiating when backed up by AoE CC and dive buddies who can clean up the targets he knocks up or stuns. Of course, he doesn’t need to be the one starting the fight. If the enemy team engages on his team, he can easily use his ultimate to buy his team the time they need to make an advantageous counter-initiate of their own! LMQ’s Mor uses Glacial Fissure to buy his team time after NoName’s Jarvan is engaged on, and the resulting teamfight goes extremely well for LMQ, despite Cloud9’s baron buff. Finally, Braum has extremely strong peel for his carries. In this teamfight, SK nRated is able to use Unbreakable to block Orianna’s and Lucian’s damage onto Jesiz’s Kayle, turn and peel for Candypanda’s Twitch, and still has his ultimate up to clean up a kill for the ace. The big guy excels at keeping his carries alive in teamfights long enough to keep his carry friends long enough to deal, well, “tons of damage.”

Mustache Power

Despite his usefulness in teamfights, there’s one thing about Braum that really makes him unique and different than every other champion in the game, and everybody knows what it is. Vander says it best. “He has cool mustache and you can protect your teammates” (not to mention poros). Me? I’m waiting for the ultimate lane combination in the world. It’s not Brauven, it’s Braaaaaauven.

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