While I’m not an expert jungler by any means I decided to go back and try jungling Rammus after remembering how much he was contested in Season 2. I picked him up and flicked through some guides, made a 9/21/0 mastery page which gives me a lot of tankiness and damage resistance, as well as helping with early damage, sustainability and ganking ability.

I didn’t have a perfect runepage but I had one close enough, giving me enough resistance (and in the case of armour – damage, but more on Rammus’ passive later) as well as a little bit of extra damage for early jungle clear. If I had the IP to improve this rune page I’d buy some sort of movement to generally improve my speed when I wasn’t Powerball-ing (more on his abilities below).

I find Rammus to be an incredibly fun jungler with some fairly unique mechanics, though he definitely has a lot of draw backs compared to some of the top junglers right now such as Aatrox or Elise. In case you don't know much about Rammus here's a quick overview of him, of course you can find more detailed info in the client or on other websites if needed but this should be enough for an overview.

Passive – Spiked Shell
Rammus converts 25% of his armor into attack damage.

Q – Powerball
Rammus starts to roll, accelerating forward towards the mouse. When he hits an enemy champion or minion he knocks them back and deals slight AOE damage.

W – Defensive Ball Curl
Rammus curls up, increasing his armor and magic resistance, anyone who attacks him while this spell is active takes a little damage.

E – Puncturing Taunt
Rammus taunts an enemy champion or minion to attack him, also slightly reducing their armor.

R – Tremors
Rammus begins to create tremors under and around him dealing damage to enemy champions, minions and structures.

I’ve started every game with hunter’s machete and 5 health pots, I think it’s a nice balanced start helping me with clearing the jungle camps early and keeping as much HP as I can so I can either gank early or simply carry on jungling to get the most gold before I go back to shop. I start at blue and always try to get a smiteless leash then move onto wolves, wraiths, golems and then red. I then usually either gank if a lane could be an easy gank, otherwise I go back to shop.

Ganking with Rammus I find really enjoyable, it’s almost a skill in its self and it’s a lot like timing a ghost gank with Nasus or another jungler like that. Learning when to activate your Q (powerball) and then navigating around creeps to knock the enemy champion towards your own, then activating your W (defensive ball curl) and THEN taunting them – it’s simple to learn but quite honestly it can be difficult in certain situations.

This is one of Rammus’ downsides however, all it takes is an enemy to catch on and simply hide in minions. They probably don’t want to stick around during a gank but either way a Rammus can be entirely
stopped just by minions which not many other junglers have the issue of, I believe this is probably the most major drawback of Rammus and a reason why a lot of people don’t use him. You can flash over minions and continue the Powerball but it's fairly risky and requires a lot of timing and practice, it's definitely a flash move and always catches people off guard.

Another issue is that Rammus is a naturally very tanky champion and while your passive (converting armor to damage) does help a little with damage, he’s just not very useful for ganks unless you can roll in behind the enemy, get a good knock back and then taunt them. Otherwise it's just not enough to secure an early kill as after the taunt most champions can just walk away, mid-late game Rammus' taunt does start to get pretty long however. That's not to say that because you haven't killed the champion it was a bad gank, pushing them back and denying farm is successful, it's just the fact that other champion can gank a lot better in the early game.

I think Rammus is great for tanking and finishing off a game. His ult is great for both splitpushing (as it’s on a decently low cool down) plus it damages structures too, so you can help either destroy towers or at the end of the game get those inhibitors and nexus towers down faster. His passive lets you build armor and also gain a little bit of damage basically for free, though Rammus is definitely better at flat tanking, and trying to do damage doesn’t usually end too well unless your entire team is there to back you up.

Overall I do wish Rammus was picked more, he’s incredibly fun to play and generally if all lanes are going well he can be left to farm up and get extremely tanky, it’s frankly hilarious taunting someone, hitting your W and watching them take a bunch of damage from attacking you while you take almost no damage in return – coupled with a high damage or high burst team Rammus can be extremely useful by just tanking a bunch of damage.

This of course isn’t really a Rammus guide as honestly I haven’t played him enough and jungle really isn’t my strong point, however I wanted to just run over the champion, his strong points and his drawbacks and see why he isn’t really picked at all any more – I’m hoping I can do a few more of this quick throwback type thing and look at some older champions who don’t get much love anymore, find out why and hopefully try to get people playing them again.