How is Taric these days?

Outrageous.

I think he's still a good choice as support and top lane, but he can be somewhat situational.

He doesn't really provide a lot of early pressure as a support, but he is pretty good for defending and sustaining his ADC during laning phase. However, he scales really well with items and can be a monster in the late game due to his passive. He's not great as engaging or disengaging fights, but he can easily defend/peel his carry using his auras, armor reduction, stun, heal, and damage to kill them while keeping his allies alive. You have to take advantage of his passive by autoattacking between spell-casts; with high CDR, your spells have a very low cooldown and are very spammable. Iceborn Gauntlet is a great purchase to improve your damage (spellblade) and peeling (AoE slow). My normal build is something like: or , , , , ,

He can be a strong bully in the top lane, though he's best used as a counterpick to melee AD casters like Riven, Zed, Wukong, etc. His durability and damage is deceptively high, especially once you get some CDR so that you have little downtime between abilities. His Q and E make is hard for enemies to kill you while W and R provide a lot of burst damage. I would typically recommend focusing on farm until around level 5 or 6 before beginning to zone and bully your lane opponent. If you don't die early, there is very little that AD casters can actually do to you. A normal build is something like: or or , , , , ,

Jungle isn't too bad. http://i.gyazo.com/2d56f96599a07aed3a11f7e96631ca8b.png Stays relatively healthy in the jungle with only 1 point into Q. I take 1 point into W for the damage and early armor, then Q, W, E, and max W. Cinderhulk is great on him because he scales great with health (the math on the heal is essentially 70 health/1000hp; so late game you can heal for upwards of 500 per cast).

I like building Furor+Rage passive+ Spellblade make you stick pretty well. W+Black Cleaver make him really good at debuffing tanks who stack Armor. (30% from Black Cleaver, and ~35 flat armor from his W).

If the Abyssal Scepter rework comes back on the pbe next week, I'm thinking about trying the build there and replacing Spirit Visage for Abyssal Scepter. I think there will be potential for him to become a really potent stat debuffer, which can be great in this meta.

Can't really say how good he is, but anyone saying he's useless is wrong (in fact, I don't think there's really any champion in the game that's crippling useless with the right build.) Not Bard, not Miss Fortune, not Urgot, not even Yorick.

Well I go top taric and supp . however his ult needs to do something else badly it's kinda useless

Cinderhulk Smite Taric Top is actually surprisingly strong and viable.

http://matchhistory.oce.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/OC1/87733842/200276954?tab=builds

He is weak, but not useless. His kit is not specified enough, he got heal, cc, steroids, damage and protection but not good ones. He is a champion who needs a serious rework in to a more specific kit.