Dark Horses - Jungle Gragas

Riot·3/25/2015, 11:13:13 PM·2 votes·78,664 views

We're used to seeing Gragas dominate the mid lane and occasionally go top, but recently we've also seen him roaming around the jungle. Here's how to add a little more rabble-rousing to your gank routine.

Carousing from camp to camp

Jungle Gragas advantages

Gragas's abilities are surprisingly useful in the jungle. You can use Gragas's E (Body Slam) to dash through walls and jump from camp to camp faster, and it applies area-of-effect damage and stun to help you quickly clear camps without taking tons of damage. His Barrel Roll (Q) reduces enemy movement speed and applies area-of-effect damage, giving you good camp clear rates. Also, Drunken Rage (W) was changed in Patch 5.5 to deal more damage to neutral monsters. The icing on his cake is the Explosive Cask (R) which is great for both setting up teamfights and ganking solo lanes.

Gank early, gank often

Gragas is very mobile (for a guy his size, anyway), which means that when he's in the jungle, he's got plenty of opportunities to gank. Before level 6, he already has a stun and a slow. From level 6 onwards, his ult gives you the chance to break hard-to-gank positions and even open up tower dive opportunities. Plan on your top lane ganks to be more focused on pushing out the enemy laner compared to his bot lane ganks, where he can be more aggressive and engaging with Explosive Cask.

Can build to take damage - or dish it out

Gragas will always have a big impact on teamfights due to his abilities, which means that you can build him to tank damage and still stay relevant later in the game. However, Gragas' abilities also have nice AP ratios, so you can choose to build offensive items and make him more fragile, but his cask won't be the only thing exploding here and there.

Go home, Gragas

Watch out for mana usage, aggressive enemy junglers

Gragas needs a strong early game in order to stay relevant later on, and his impact will be most noticeable after you build Cooldown Reduction and Ability Power items. Also, you'll need to be conservative with your mana usage; Gragas spends a lot of mana to clear camps, and if you don't save some, you won't have an effective presence in lanes. This dependence also makes it hard for him to deal with aggressive junglers like Lee Sin or Rek'Sai, who can make your life miserable by contesting your camps and starting duels you'll have a hard time winning.

Needs a good initiator

Gragas relies a lot on his teammates to make plays by tackling out-of-position enemies or forcing fights. Lissandra, Maokai, Leona and Blitzcrank are excellent teammates for our keg-draining friend.

Powerful tools take practice

Gragas has a lot of useful tools, but they've got pretty steep learning curves. A poorly-placed ult can help the enemy tanks dive your own backline. Hitting your own barrels can also be hard, and it takes a while to learn exactly when to use your Body Slam to get in (or out) of a fight. Always keep your mana at an average level so you can gank or move around the jungle if necessary.

You can add Gragas to your champion pool for 553 RP (30% off), and his Superfan Gragas skin for 525 RP (30% off) from March 26 until 23:59 PDT March 30.