Something items this way comes:


My item build differs a little bit from how I understand other dmg/tank Gragas' are begin played. As above with runes and masteries, I am only giving some pointers and writing nothing to stone. What you build is up to you. Hell, I dont even know all the items, so how I can tell what you can and what you cant have. The list of items is also longer than you have open slots, so it gives you space to manouver around.


Item build is definitely the Achille's heel of my guide because there are so many good items and I had got only time to play approximately 140-150 games with Gragas so far, so I am still testing different options. Also, my tests have been hindered by the fact that the game is practically over before all the slots are filled. Therefore you, dear reader, should, if you ever try this recipe, bring farming up to completely new levels. That way you could actually get all expensive items, and in the end even substitute Tiamat with something more sophisticated. Just kill everything in low health. Even if it is in your side.



Clerk, gimme the queen of evil dragons!



Start with Regrowth Pendant. It regenerates your life and keeps you at the lane! Raw life, at this point, is not as necessary as regeneration, so with HAPPY HOUR, Regrowth Pendant supports your efforts to reign very well! After this you build 2 items parallel to each other. Buy those parts you can get each time you visit the home base (hopefully because of recall, not death). Items are Tiamat and boots!

And oh, I know, I hear it all the time! Ignorant prats who favor OP heroes and spit on Gragas are all the time giving me so-called advices how NOT to build Tiamat but go for AP. They might even afk or leave. Thats is soooooo funny, because it makes winning overwhelmed and overconfident enemy even more satisfying. Plus 4v5 is early on your side because your levels skyrocket! Just win fast.

But with all seriousness, Tiamat serves in 3 important roles: It gives you mana regeneration, it gives you health regeneration, it gives you damage, and splash damage. Of these the last might be even the most important because it helps farming and thus gathering more gold! I cant stress enough: dont pick BARRELL ROLL, your mana income is not suitable to use that ability. The consequence is that you either mix the build or keep running home to refill your mana. Both equals fail. Tiamat, on the other hand, works perfectly with your mana-modest, BODY SLAM and melee dmg oriented build.

Shoes need a little bit consideration. Do not buy lvl 3 speed boots, what ever their name is. You area fast enough: you got Ghost and BODY SLAM. With these 2 you can catch the worm every time even if you are not the famous early bird. Even after excluding this option you got still 3 left. Mercury Treads, Ninja Tabi and Magic Penetration -shoes.

Go for Mercury if a situation needs. Your rune dodge percentage is decent enough even without Ninja Tabi. However, if you are facing tanks and other melee shrimps, you might want to get Ninja Tabi to improve your dodge and armor. In this case, dont forget to buy Spirit Visage, and maybe even Force of Nature, because they are gonna unleash their abilities on you anyway! On the other hand if you go with Mercury Treads, you might want to considere if other MR items are necessary at all. Some players believe on Magic Penetration, expecially with MP rune selection AND already implemented CD build. BODY SLAM damage is magic so if you have tremendous Magic Pen, and extremely low CD, enemy feels like your throwing baby nukes at him every other second.

Dont be afraid to leave a lane to go shopping, Tiamat for example, has many parts that can help you killing the enemy and farming the creeps even before you get the whole item. You only need to know when 2 leave. Do not leave when on defence, because it will hurt the tower. Neither never leaven when your lane mate is attacking enemy. Leave when enemy, or maybe both of them are dead or gone for some other reason. Recall, and then Ghostwalk back.

Here it gets confusing

At this point of the game you should have Tiamat, Regrowth and you should have chosen your boots. Then build Sunfire Cape. It will stack life and first time actually give you some stamina. Now you can, for first time, tank a little. In addition Sunfire improves your passive life regeneration too, gives you some armor and deals passive damage. It is frikkin' awesome on Gragas. Thanks ”King”-something dude, it is because of your earlier guide that I tried it. Many are the widows of my enemies who now curse your name. However, I could not find your Innervating Locket to be as usefull as you convinced. It should be build early to have some notable effect and early you definitely should build Tiamat.

After you get Cape, you can go with the feeling. If your team got tanks, like Cho, Sion and such, but you lack fighters like Yi, you might not want to build Warmog right away but go with Sheen, Spirit Visage or Brutalizer. However, make sure to get Warmog at some point because you should have got their attention already and when they see you they are gonna unleash Dante's whole inferno on you.

Your build should depend on what you have in your team, who you are facing and what role you decide or are put to fullfil. For example, choose Frozen Hearth if enemy has a lot of ranged and you need to rely more than usually on BARRELL ROLL. In melee encounters you might not need FH at all but choose Sheen and Brutalizer over Spirit Visage. When your inventory is full and if the game is still going on, you might want to choose to replace Tiamat with some b a d m u t h a f u c k a item, like Infinity Edge or Blood Thirster. If you, on the other hand, have forgotten to build Sheen, replace Tiamat with Trinity Force. Frozen mallet might not be necessary either if you believe that BODY SLAM is enough. If you find hard to stay alive or in good health, and you already got Ninja Tabi, buy Spirit Visage and maybe also Force of Nature.

It all depends on what is going on. It is definitely up to what you like, how your team looks and what is expected of you. One of the multiple good things with Gragas is that so many items work on him. H e l l, you might even want to add Rod of Ages instead of stacking damage 2 much. It at least gives you precious health, some not so important mana and AP which is useful later on when spämming your ulti, even when AP is not mandatory at all.



How the game is gonna work?
(or, live or die, win or lose, you best be aware of my iron shoes!)



You got BODY SLAM, Regrowth Pendant, Ghost, and Ignite. And aggressive attitude for all of those ignorant OP freaks who despise your obese but royal figure.

Start by trying to score the FIRST BLOOD. With a decent lane mate Gragas is a high prospect for getting one! Hide in the bushes with your mate, wait the enemy, and if he comes alone target him. If there is two, target the squishy, or course. You can take some damage so dont be jumpy. Good place to wait is at the tip of the first bush, for now you have room to pursue him and you dont get hit by tower. That means you have to hurry, so buy your item and run to the bush. Dont spend Ghost. Pick your ability while on the move so you dont waste the time. You might very well be there before the enemy.

Enemy shows up. Hit him and right away BODY SLAM him. He runs back. Start Ghost and hit him while he runs. Just when he escapes to a safety of a tower throw in your IGNITE. BODY SLAM to safety, for you definitely got his companions attention by now and if his not bad player he has put considerable amount of dgm to you too.

Enemy dead, you and your lane partner alive wait the creeps and heal over time. Stay now behind your own creeps and get the experience to make your way to the lvl 2. Now pick DRUNKEN RAGE, start drinking and BODY SLAMMING both, creeps and enemy heroes. Make sure to go behind your own creeps every time you are in low health. You heal significantly fast, and you can return to take low health creep kills and BODY SLAM enemies earlier than most heroes low in health because you have Regrowth Pendant and you heal every time more when you just use your abilities.

Dont tank before you get some meat under your skin. Even after that, tank wisely. You should not die only to kill a tower or your mates to be able to score. You are not that kind of a tank who dies, but the one who kills. Every time you tank, have drunk buff on. Try to get CD buff from forest as often as possible. This is extremely important if you dont build CD item, but instead rely completely on runes. Then you definitely should get the buff all the time it is available. Because of runes and forest buff you may skip CD items and choose another ones instead.

What you should get is DMG, armor, health, health regeneration and MR. CD and MP only after these, in that order. But what ever you choose to do, it is your character and your game, make the best of it; over anything else have FUN playing maybe the most challenging hero (not least because of social pressure) in the game!

The actual guide ends here, but below you can find always so juicy war stories!

War stories
(or, series of isolated incidents that might not be helpful but are definitely funny)

What not to do with Gragas?

Gragas ulti simply relocates the targets. It does not stun them nor interrupt their spells and such. This is fatal if enemy is doing AoE dmg and you relocate him to a place where his AoE hurts your team mates. When just learning the dimensions of this hilarious hero, I managed to wipe out my whole team. We were taking down a middle turret. Nunu runs to fight us and in the middle of our team trickers his ulti. Ok, everything good so far. Guys got out from his AoE. I, on the other hand, placed an EXPLODING CASK behind Nunu moving him forward so that his ulti went off exactly where my team was. Those who did not die, was chased down by the enemy in the middle, while I body slammed my way to the safety of our base. I was popular after that, not gonna lie. I believe that this will work also with Amumu, Kart and Fiddle, but dont know for sure. Just be careful out there!

Revealing camouflaged targets!

Putting in AoE dmg will reveal camouflaged targets in some occasions even if you dont see them already. I believe you can do this with BARRELL ROLL too, but because I dont really use that ability I did it with EXPLOSIVE CASK, most likely the only ulti in the game one can truly spam! 

What had happened is that Teemo had gone missing. You know the guy right? Ugly prat played by ugly prat who does not have patience to learn difficult heroes, nor mental stability to take the social pressure of Warwick and Gragas. There is one particular point in both lanes, up and bot, where semi/qausi-wannabe-pro Teemos' hide. It is at the intersection of river crossroad and the earth wall just a little bit before your turret range, on the middle lane side of the space. Well, if you dont know the drill, I cant really explain it, but Teemos' usually hide in that location to score a kill when you run past them and their lane partner attacks you forcing you to take steps back. At this point Teemo reveals him self and gets a kill, sometimes two.

Well, as said, Teemo had dissapeared. He was exactly that kind of guy, who was starting to master his champ and was hungry for blood but not pro enough to realize that he was facing serious folks too. This was only a huntch, I could not see the guy. It simply did not make any senses that he would have gone back to base at that point, nor try to gank our other lanes who all where in good positions. So I decided to try my luck and placed an EXPLOSIVE CASK in that exact location where Teemos' usually hide. Teemo made funny, squishy noise when the iron lining of the cask's bottom penetrated his forehead. Almost peed my camo underwear. BODY SLAM, couple of hits and he was done. Their Ashe did not even have time to react, for he must have been preparing to score 2 kills or something.

If situation arises, dont be afraid of throwing an EXPLOSIVE CASK over your self. For example, if you suspect Eve or Shaco approaching you with evil intentions, CASK will ruin their plans, relocate them, hurt them and reveal them all at the same time. Proper aim and/or luck will also throw them to your team, who hopefully will feast on their sneaky flesh!

Extending your line of the sight!

One thing similar to what happened above was when enemy had pushed our team back to our base. They had taken the forest completely under their control and we were losing the game.

Their TF had got for some reason an idea that our side of the map was his house now. I admit, we were pushed to our base, but hey! HAVE SOME RESPECT! You dont come to farm our wild life. Stay on your side if you want to kill innocent. Well, enemy TF was conservative, not a green, and decided to benefit of the nature by farming some gold and xp.

It started from the enemy's dissappearance. Some of them were down, so they surely were not taking Baron. It would have also been surprising if they would had lift their siege by granting us and our creeps free passage on their remaining towers. No, it was not like that. The remaining guys were out there, in OUR forest, conducting recon, farming, and waiting to gank us.

I just got the impression that because there's only few mobs out there, they might be killing the closest ones at this particular moment. So without spending effort to compose complicated English sentences I decided to conduct counter recon alone. I BODY SLAMMED over our wall, between the top and middle doorways and dived to the forest. How silent it was, to be there alone! It was beatiful.

But the peace was deceiving. Death was creeping near.

Evil TF, that Michael Jackson tribute who is even more fragile than my paralyzed granny, and surely can do less damage than her 2, was attacking my golems just behind that wooden wall on my right side. I did not know this at the time, but for a reason or another decided to swing an EXPLODING CASK over the treewall. Simply to see if I can find what was going on in that silent and motionless forest.

THE SURPRISE WAS COMPLETE!

After being thrown to the wall by the CASK, the poor guy did not know where to escape. He ran circles a bit, going here and there for few secs and when he finally understood that raid was upon him, and tried to escape. Of course 2 late. It had been too late already when I dived over our fortress' wall in the first place, but that is something only the great maker knew at that point.

After extending my vision with the EXPLODING CASK, I made risk assesment. TF seemed to have been there alone and he was panicing. I decided to go in and show him that he should play another character. Gragas, for exmaple. By BODY SLAMMING over the tree wall I slowed him down. My Frosen Mallet did not even have to work, because he never recovered from that slow. Poor guy, I would have said. If he had not been the enemy. NEVER COME TO MY HOUSE AGAIN! And btw, play Gragas next time.

I BODY SLAMMED back through the tree wall, waited a sec and BODY SLAMMED again back to our base. And, in few minutes we lost the match....