Have you ever wanted to play a champion that had a little bit of everything? Crowd control, a high amount of damage, self-healing? Look no further. Gragas is the answer to all your wishes, and he is the champion that has been quietly taking over the competitive meta across every region. His barrels and belly fit perfectly into a multitude of team comps in all ranks of League of Legends.

This guide will go in-depth about Gragas Support, but many of the tips, tricks, and ideas can be applied to other lanes and roles in the game as well.

Abilities

Passive: Happy Hour – Gragas will periodically sip from his barrel whenever he uses a spell. He is healed for a percentage of his health when he does this. Using this ability as often as possible is crucial when playing Gragas. This ability when used as often as possible allows you to regenerate a decent amount of health with your spell casts, allowing you to stay in lane and in teamfights for longer.

Q Ability: Barrel Roll – Gragas rolls his barrel at a target location, revealing the area. The ability can be recasted instantly for a small amount of damage and slow, or after 2 seconds, where the damage and slow is heavily increased. This ability can be used in lane to help poke out enemies, slow down enemies that may be trying to escape from your team, or slow down enemies that may be trying to chase you and your teammates. This ability is also a very good zoning tool because it allows you to throw the barrel into a crowded area, and if you let it sit for a few seconds then enemies will be forced to walk away from it because they do not want to take the increased damage that comes from Gragas’ barrels sitting for a bit.

W Ability: Drunken Rage – Gragas drinks from his barrel, gaining damage reduction for the next few seconds. After drinking from the barrel, Gragas’ next auto attack has extended range and deals bonus magic damage to the target. Using this ability as often as possible during fights is crucial for being effective as Gragas. This ability not only lets you deal increased damage with your next auto attack, but it provides a huge amount of damage reduction. This ability is also the most convenient for taking advantage of your Happy Hour passive, because Drunken Rage is the lowest mana cost spell in Gragas’ kit.

E Ability: Body Slam – Gragas throws himself belly-first at the target location, knocking back and stunning targets in the area. Barrel Roll and Explosive Cask can be cast during this spell’s animation. The cooldown of Body Slam is reduced if the ability hits an enemy. This ability will be your primary engage and disengage ability. You can use this ability with your Flash summoner spell in order to do combos that are nearly impossible to dodge as the enemy (See video below). You can also use Body Slam as a means of traversing over walls and other terrain if you need to get into a certain area for a fight/gank. But be careful when using this ability, because it has a very high cooldown.

R Ability: Explosive Cask – Gragas throws his barrel at a target location, knocking back enemies and dealing magic damage. Enemies are sent away from the center point of the barrel. This ability is one of the more difficult to use abilities in the game for a number of reasons, mainly because if you miss the ability or if the enemy flashes the Explosive Cask can send them away from your team and towards the safety of their own team. It is crucial to keep track of enemy Flashes and know when you can or cannot use the barrel to throw an enemy into your team. This ability can also be used as a means of zoning the enemy if you are being chased or being tower dove. To use it in that context, you just throw the Explosive Cask in the middle of the enemies or towards the front of them to try and send them backwards or send them away from yourself. Casting Explosive Cask where you stand is also a useful way of pushing enemies off of yourself or your teammates.

Skill Path

Generally, we want to get points into Q first on Support Gragas. This is to help you during your laning phase with poking and slowing down enemy engages. We max E second for two reasons, one being that this is the ability that allows you to really shine during fights, and two, it gives really good cooldown reduction whenever you put a point into it. Gragas’ W ability is really good, but we are setting it aside since Support Gragas is more focused on heavily slowing and stunning the enemy team. Gragas’ R ability is extremely useful in laning and teamfights, so we put a point into it whenever possible.

Runes

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Gragas is able to take Aftershock, Arcane Comet, or even Glacial Augment as his keystone, but I recommend Arcane Comet since it allows you to deal extra damage with your barrels in lane. This is helpful because your Barrel Roll will slow opposing players allowing for the comet to nearly always hit. Having Arcane Comet as your keystone also allows you to take Manaflow Band, which lets you have better mana sustain in lane. Aftershock is standard for a tankier style of play but offers less poke damage and utility during the lane. Glacial Augment is a rune with super high potential and has seen a significant increase in usage since the start of this season. Glacial allows for you to have the engage bonus of Aftershock, but with extra utility instead of damage.

Items

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Gragas Support is able to run a wide plethora of items with the new item system. As of Patch 12.6, Everfrost and Locket of the Iron Solari are the most popular Mythic items to build on Gragas Support. Evenshroud and Shurelya's Battlesong are also viable Mythic items on him, but are less popular in this current meta due to the strength and reliability of Everfrost and Locket.

You will more than likely always start the game with Relic Shield and 2 Health Potions, but if you are in a lane where you can harass with your Q ability you can opt to start with a Spellthief’s Edge instead. You will follow up on your mythic item with either an AP item like Zhonya’s Hourglass, or a tanky support item like Zeke’s Convergence. After building one of those items, you can follow up with a mixture of tanky items that give AP, or tanky items that give support buffs.

Early Game

Gragas Support in the early game is rather unique. Though you do have the tools to engage and disengage fights with ease, you will want to opt to use your barrels to deal damage and poke the enemy ADC. After reaching level 3, you can either play super aggressively with your ADC, or play super passively allowing your ADC to be protected from enemy engages. Either playstyle works fine, and in the end you will want to figure out which of the playstyles works best for certain situations and different lane matchups.

For example, if you were against a Tristana and Blitzcrank in the bot lane, you would want to focus on using your Body Slam and Barrel Roll to push the Tristana away from you during fights so that she does not Rocket Jump onto your ADC and kill them instantly. In a lane where you might be up against a Zeri and Yuumi in the bot lane, you can opt to use your Body Slam and Barrel Roll to instead engage onto the enemies since they have a very weak laning phase and will have trouble punishing you for being aggressive.

Mid/Late Game

Gragas in the Mid-Late stages of the game is a fantastic initiator and disruptor during team fights. He can use his Explosive Cask to break up enemy teams while also knocking enemy carries into your teams’ hands. During the later portions of the game, Gragas’ Body Slam will also be castable multiple times during a teamfight. This is just another example of what Gragas does best during fights – Engaging and Disrupting. If you opt for a higher AP build like mentioned in previous sections, Gragas’ Barrel Roll also does significant poke damage in the later stages of the game.

Tips and Tricks

Using your Drunken Rage before engaging allows you to instantly use your empowered auto attack after landing on an enemy with your Body Slam.

You can also cast both your R ability and Q ability while you are in the dash from your Body Slam. This allows you to set up extra damage by never missing a barrel on a stunned target.

Be sure to always use your Drunken Rage as often as possible during skirmishes. Even though we don’t put points into the ability until last, the ability is still one of Gragas’ top damage dealers since it deals percent health damage to enemies. This ability also allows for Gragas to benefit from the damage reduction that he will get during this ability's duration.

Closing Thoughts

In conclusion, Gragas is an incredible champ and is playable in almost every role in the game (Maybe not ADC…). Though Gragas is not as popular in the Support role as he is in the Top or Jungle during this current meta, I believe that Gragas Support is a very good pick for any support main to learn. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope that this guide was both informative and entertaining and that it could give you an insight into how Gragas Support works in League of Legends.