Climbing Ranked Ladders: Taric's Outrageous Teamfight Potential with New Support Itemization
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20 Dec 16

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Climbing Ranked Ladders: Taric's Outrageous Teamfight Potential with New Support Itemization

With new and changed support items, Taric's teamfighting potential has quietly skyrocketed. 

In Patch 6.22, choices for support itemization expanded through changes to Aegis of the Legion and its derivative items, and the addition of Redemption and Knight's Vow.

In particular, Redemption is generally seen as a must-buy for supports, given its universally beneficial stats and its long-range, possibly post-mortem, burst heal and nuke. With its bonuses to shielding and healing as well, Redemption has increased the popularity and success of support champions like Janna, Karma, Soraka, Sona, and Nami.

Overlooked, however, is Taric, even though the new itemization plays right into his kit, covering his weaknesses and amplifying his strengths, allowing him to disrupt his enemies and enable his team.

Taric shines in the mid- and late-game. His strengths include:

  • innate bulkiness,
  • sustain,
  • crowd control - especially his ability to enable his teammates' application of crowd control,
  • teamwide invincibility

However, he has clear weaknesses that can be counterplayed:

  • mana hunger,
  • low mobility,
  • telegraphed abilities

New support itemization allows Taric to effectively combat these weaknesses. Namely:

  • Ruby Sightstone - Necessary to provide vision, and the health and active item cooldown reduction are great benefits
  • Boots (tier 2) - Necessary for both aggressive and defensive mobility; many choices are situationally optimal
  • Face of the Mountain - Provides gold income, bulk, and a targeted shield that can cover item cast times
  • Locket of the Iron Solari - Large shield for teamfights that can cover the activation times for Cosmic Radiance and Redemption
  • Redemption - Grants a burst of healing and damage, and provides bulk, mana regeneration, and healing/shielding power
  • Knight's Vow - Reduces damage taken from an ally, and grants you bulk and defensive (peeling/disengaging) mobility

Let's see how this build works together. In a teamfight, if Taric stays between his frontline and backline and designates a backline carry as his Knight's Vow partner:

Redemption's healing/shielding power buff applies to numerous aspects of Taric's kit:

  • Starlight's Touch (Q) - an area-of-effect heal scaling with Taric's own maximum health, which is large due to his itemization

  • Bastion (W) - a targeted shield scaling with his target's maximum health, which can benefit a frontline trying to land Taric's stun

  • Face of the Mountain - a targeted shield scaling with Taric's maximum health, which can benefit a backline

  • Locket of the Iron Solari - an area-of-effect shield scaling on level, with high base values

Knight's Vow enables Taric to help peel for his carries, as it grants him 15% bonus movement speed when moving toward his designated partner.

Bastion and Dazzle can be used to keep the frontline healthy, find picks, and disengage from carries (as the stun can be used toward the backline to peel for carries, or away from the frontline to stun key enemies)

At a pivotal turning point, Taric can reset the fight on his team's terms.

  • To start, Taric activates Locket of the Iron Solari and Cosmic Radiance simultaneously.

  • During the next 2.5 seconds, Bastion and Starlight's Touch can be used to keep teammates alive along with the shield from Locket.

  • After 2.5 seconds, Taric activates Redemption where he predicts his team will be fighting in the immediate future.

  • At the same time, Cosmic Radiance completes its cast time, and Taric's team is now invincible for the next 2.5 seconds.

  • After another 2.5 seconds, Redemption completes its cast time, and Taric's team is healed with their enemies damaged.

This is an extremely potent ability combo, giving Taric's team high survivability at a critical point in teamfights.

This item build synergizes well with Taric's kit in that the shields from Locket and Face of the Mountain, as well as the heal (Starlight's Touch) and shield (Bastion) in his kit, enable Taric to use his ultimate, Cosmic Radiance, with ideal timing. Furthermore, Cosmic Radiance allows Taric to use Redemption with ideal timing. The 2.5-second activation times and protection durations for his items and abilities cover his weaknesses perfectly.

One caveat is that this is highly dependent on strong teamplay. Taric relies on proper grouping and positioning of his teammates; this is not a weakness, per se, but unnecessarily messy positioning will dramatically reduce the efficacy of Taric's abilities and items in this build. With proper use, however, this build and ability combo can easily swing teamfights heavily in his team's favor.

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