Lazy Here With Another Outrageous Off Meta Pick To Consider!

Hello everyone! I've posted a few other threads with guides for off meta characters players might be wanting to try out, and I'm back with another!

With a lacking in diverse champions right now (time to counter that pesky guys), there is a champion who is could shine bright in the current heavy ad meta. He is normally underrated, though he admittedly has quite the outrageous community perception of his character.

I'm talking about the one and only .

To be honest, I don't see many players pick, or even consider, the gem knight which is sad. His rework is soon, so I think with the rise of AD in every lane (not always, but it is fairly common!) He should be one of your considered picks!

This thread is going to focus on his role as a support. He can also be played top lane, though I believe he is best suited for support.

Let's talk a bit about his role before diving into the nitty gritty. Taric is essentially a Juggernaut, though admittedly a bit different than his counterparts. While he lacks mobility and is tanky like the other juggernauts, he is lacking in damage. He does have a lot of abilities to support his allies however and act as a tank. With this in mind, I consider Taric to be a peel tank. He is not meant to engage or always be in the middle of the fray, rather he is meant peel your carries and draw attention away from them as much as possible.

So the first question I'm certain some of you might be thinking is "Why would I consider this joke pick?" Simply put, he is a great pick when your team might need an off tank, and the enemy team has a lot of AD champions.

Taric currently holds a lot of invisible power in his W. He makes your whole team tankier when it comes to ad. This alone can make a huge difference in team fights when your team has an extra 30 armor (roughly 30 armor anyway, and that is 600G worth of stats on all 5 players which is pretty nice!). Often I play support, and when I see the enemy team has 4 ad based champions (or sometimes 3 ad depending on who their ap is) I will choose taric.

His other bread and butter skill is his point and click stun. This the other ability that makes Taric, Taric. The stun duration starts at a measily 1.2 seconds. Not the longest stun in the game, but it is reliable due to the point and click nature. Thankfully for Taric players, the stun lasts longer as it increases in level. This is what defines him as a peel tank. Due to the cooldown, low range, and lack of mobility for taric, this spell is almost always best used for counter engages / peeling your carries, and can ultimately lead to some very dead enemies.

Taric's Q is a pretty straight forward heal. He can heal himself and one other target, or he can heal himself and heal a bit more than he would healing someone else as well. His ult is also straight forward. It is aoe damage near him, and increases both AD and AP for him and his allies. It is best used when you plan to all in for team fights due to its CD, increase in stats for everyone, and the extra burst it adds to fighting pattern.

With that last part said, it's time to talk about his passive thst brings it all together. Any time taric casts a spell, he gains gemcraft which makes his next auto do 20% of his armor as bonus magic damage. This is nice for some extra damage but the real power lies in its other effect, attacking someone with your enhanced auto also reduces your spell cds by two seconds.

At first glance this might seem pretty straight forward. What this does however, is it encouragez taric to "juggle" his spells into a rotation. An example. Let's say you are with your adc, and an enemy riven tries to all in your adc. You stun Riven and auto her. Your stun is now on a 12 second CD rather than 14. You follow up with an ult and auto again. A full second has gone by now, and you activated your passive putting it at 9 seconds. Riven is out of the stun, but not before you W and pull of one more auto. Another second has potentially gone by as riven dashes toward your carry, putting your E at 6 second cd and your W is now roughly at an 8 second CD. You have bought your carry time to kite back and kill riven, and you use your heal on them. Someone also tries to dive for your adc but you manage an auto, at this point your stun should be ready to repeat the entire rotation again. All of that is before taking any CDR into account.

Alone, Taric might not be the strongest, but paired with a stronf carry he can make sure they stay safe to kill the enemy team.

So what are good masteries / items / runes on him you might ask? When I play the fabulous gem knight, a full build will often look like this, , , , or or , , and . There are other builds as well, and it is likely you won't reach full build all the time with him. But against a standard AD heavy team, this build does wonders. Locket helps you and your team cover any ambient magic damage as well as finishing up your max cdr and giving a shield, IBG gives him some nice damage and a slow field so he can peel easier and stick to his target as well.

Masteries I like to go 0/12/18 with him, with my keystone being bond of stone. This helps with your job for peeling and saving your important allies since you won't be deep into the fray, as well as simply making the beefy knight even beefier.

Runes are mostly used to further his defensive options. Either health or armor seals (with quints being whichever you didn't choose), glyphs are scaling magic resist to help against whatever little ap your enemy has, and marks are used for attack speed. The AS is to help make Taric's rotation smoother and more reliable.

Anyway, I would love to see everyone's thought about our beloved knight! What are your builds? And was this post helpful? I at least hope so! So let me know!