Rammus/Strategy

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Skill usage

• Powerball can interrupt jump moves such as Jax's Leap Strike or Tristana's Rocket Jump mid-jump.
  • Abilities such as Jax's Leap Strike, Garen's Decisive Strike and Xin Zhao's Audacious Charge will not stop Powerball if Rammus is accelerating in the opposite direction.
  • If an enemy Renekton uses Slice and Dice through Rammus while he is using Powerball, the ability won't be cancelled.
  • Whilst using Powerball, Yasou can't dash trough you with Sweeping Blade.
• Defensive Ball Curl increases Rammus' armor, which increases his damage due to Spiked Shell by 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30.
• Powerball can be used as an effective escape mechanism. It also has a slight knock-back effect, and this allows for you to run into pursuers to momentarily disable them.
• As Powerball speeds up continuously after the initial cast, it's sometimes better to let it speed up in a brush before rolling at someone.
• Flash can be used while in Powerball to jump across a minion wave to catch your opponent off-guard.
• Powerball can hit stealthed champions such as Twitch, Shaco, Akali, or Evelynn, dealing damage and knocking them back. It will also work against a Camouflaged Teemo, knocking him out of stealth. This can be useful for chasing them if they go stealthed at low health.
• You can use Powerball then use Teleport to be at a high speed when reaching your destination. This is also amazing in conjunction with Homeguard.
• Powerball will damage and slow enemies reviving from pseudo death ( Guardian Angel or Zilean's Chrono Shift Chrono Shift) or Zhonya's Hourglass, granting an easy kill.
• Puncturing Taunt can be used on enemies pushing your turret to make them attack you and causing the turret to attack them. It can also be used to take the focus off more squishy allies, allowing them to deal more damage than they would have had they been the focused target.
• Puncturing Taunt can also be used to "pull" enemies towards your team as an enemy will be forced to get into attack range to hit you. This is more effective with melee champions whose attack range is shorter than ranged ones.
• When using Tremors, you can use all your spells to keep enemies in range of this spell in order to maximize damage. This is possible because the ultimate is not channeled.
• Tremors affects turrets, making Rammus a very good pusher, especially late game when he can tank the turret for his team.
  • Backdooring is a simple matter because you can easily use Powerball to run away before enemies catch up.
• Rammus can use Tremors while using Powerball, making it very useful for destroying towers or champions that are low on health and escaping.

Build usage

Building armor is necessary to put Spiked Shell to good use. Having a lot of armor will still result in a large amount of damage. However, do not disregard building magic resistance, as your high armor stat means nothing to the enemy team's AP mages. It can however be argued that building health will synergize better with the free armor and magic resistance provided by Defensive Ball Curl.

• Chalice of Harmony can be helpful for laning mana issues and building magic resistance.
• Archangel's Staff is a more offensive alternative to his mana problems.
  • Get it if you'll be buying at least one more item providing mana e.g. Frozen Heart and/or  Iceborn Gauntlet
• Randuin's Omen in conjunction with Puncturing Taunt and Defensive Ball Curl allows you to slow the enemy team heavily and make chasing easier. However, it reduces the enemies attack speed so they won’t get as many reflected hits off you when you taunt them
• Atma's Impaler synergizes well with Spiked Shell, increasing his damage further while also providing armor.
• Thornmail is a very effective item on Rammus, as it reflects damage from auto-attacks (which the enemy is forced to use during Puncturing Taunt) as well as stacks with the reflecting damage given during Defensive Ball Curl along with a lot of attack damage due to his passive.
• Talisman of Ascension's active synergizes well with Rammus' Powerball.
• Rammus' Tremors and Powerball can deal massive damage with some ability power. This makes Zhonya's Hourglass a rather potent item as it also provides a large amount of armor.
• Rylai's Crystal Scepter can be a powerful item, causing Tremors to slow a massive area, slowing on Defensive Ball Curl if you don't have Randuin's Omen, very slightly increasing Powerball's slow, and providing a high amount of health.
• Another powerful item is Liandry's Torment, which is applied on enemies attacking Rammus during Defensive Ball Curl, and can also be applied with  Rammus' Powerball or Tremors. It synergizes well with Rylai's Crystal Scepter, and also provides a generous amount of health.
• Sunfire Cape also synergizes well with Tremors.

Jungling

Rammus is a strong jungler, with exceptional ganks. Powerball allows him to initiate ganks suddenly, and Puncturing Taunt is a strong CC ability with a fairly long duration.

• Note that Rammus' Powerball, whilst it still does damage, it has no crowd control effect on Baron Nashor or the Dragon Dragon. Also note that Puncturing Taunt now has absolutely no effect on Baron or Dragon (it will not reduce armor or force either to attack you). Both skills will still affect all other neutral creeps as normal.
• Starting items: Hunter's Machete, Health Potion x5
• Skill progression: Defensive Ball Curl → Powerball → Puncturing Taunt → optional from here on.
• Jungling order: Blue golem Blue golem ( Smite) → Wolves Wolves → Wraiths Wraiths → Red Lizard Red Lizard ( Smite) → Small Golems Small Golems → Gank
• Alternative order: Blue golem Blue golem ( Smite) → Wolves Wolves → Red Lizard Red Lizard ( Smite) → Gank
  • This order allows an early gank while unlocking all of your abilities and giving you both buffs, allowing you to secure first blood in most cases.
  • Take Puncturing Taunt at level 3 when doing this.
• Rammus' Powerball allows you to gank a warded lane since your enemies have less time to react as you are approaching them with high speed.

Recommended builds

Countering

• Avoid attacking Rammus while his Defensive Ball Curl is active.
• Try to purchase tenacity items early to reduce the duration of his taunt from his Puncturing Taunt.
  • Be careful; even with 35 tenacity Puncturing Taunt will last for up to 1.46 seconds.
• Try casting a slow or stun when he uses Powerball so that way Rammus cannot initiate with his full combo by using Puncturing Taunt, Defensive Ball Curl and Tremors straight after hitting a target with Powerball.
  • Be aware that crowd control abilities will not stop Rammus' Powerball while it is active, but will slow/stun/snare him in place, allowing you to potentially dodge the attack.
• Rammus is an excellent counter to all AD carries due to his Defensive Ball Curl and tendency to build high armor. It is wise to have a mage or a hybrid champion (e.g. Jax or Akali) take him down.
• Building armor penetration items like Last Whisper and The Black Cleaver will reduce the effectiveness of his armor, allowing you to deal more damage to him.
  • The Black Cleaver is especially effective agaisnt Rammus, as it reduces his armor, thus reducing the AD he gains from his passive.
• If Rammus is building AP don't let your guard down, Powerball and Tremors have decent AP ratios and low cooldowns.
• Although picking AP champions can make Rammus less effective by forcing him to build magic resistance in addition to armor, be wary of picking too many AP champions, as the enemy can pick champions like Veigar and Galio to counter that.
• Quicksilver Sash is an excellent item against Rammus. Not only this item get rid of his taunt, but it also has magic resistance to reduce the magic damage that Rammus does with his abilities.
• Apart from AP champions, AD champions who have abilities that deal magic or true damage, such as Darius, Master Yi and Vayne can be good options against Rammus, as armor is a less effective option to deal with them.

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