What this Guide is
This is a guide playing a Hybrid Taric - DPS/Support. You're not going to be a Yi or anything, but you'll do some respectable damage and support your team nicely as well.
The Basics: Skills
Q:Imbue
Taric channels earthen energy to heal his target. As the magic flows through him he is healed for the same amount. If Taric heals only himself, the total effect will be 1.4X the base heal amount.
- Heals for 70/120/170/220/270
- Costs 70/85/100/115/130 Mana
- Cooldown is 20/19/18/17/16
- Cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds every time you hit with a melee attack
- AP Coeffecient is 0.9
The Main use of imbue should be readily apparent. It heals you, it heals your teammate. Getting a mana regen item to start and you should be able to lane for a long, long time and keep your lane partner and yourself healthy even when being harassed. This is the main reasn you want some AP on taric, it's coeffecient isn't amazing, but it's good enough to want some AP for the heal to do something.
W:Shatter
Taric increases the armor of his nearby allies. He may choose to activate this ability to deal damage and decrease the armor of his nearby enemies at the cost of this benefit.
- Passive armor is 10/15/20/25/30
- Armor Reduction is 10/15/20/25/30
- Deals 100/150/200/250/300 Damage
- Costs 50/60/70/80/90 Mana
- Cooldown is 16
- AP Coeffecient is 0.5
This skill is rather versatile. It's great for farming, the passive is also fairly useful for damage mitigation, in addition it's also useful when ganking or in a team fight, the armor reduction and added damage helps out quite a bit.
E:Dazzle
Taric emits a brilliant ball of prismatic light from his gemmed shield, stunning and damaging his enemies.
- Stuns for .5-2s Based on range (max range is 2s, point blank is .5)
- Deals 0-80/160/240/320/400
- Costs 95 Mana
- Cooldown is 14/13/12/11/10
- Damage is a random number between 0 and the max, range does not affect it.
- AP Coeffecient is 1.0
This is the other reason we want AP on taric. It has a flat 1:1 ratio and while the range is random, hitting for 550 on your stun is a decent chunk out of someone's health when you're ganking them.
Ult:Radiance
Taric emits a brilliant light, healing his allies and increasing their physical damage.
- Heal is 30/40/50 HPS
- Damage increase is 40/60/80% for you with half effect for nearby teammates.
- Initial cost is 10 Mana, draining 10 mana per second to start, increasing by 10 every second it is maintained.
- Cooldown is 20
- Ap Coeffecient is .2
This is another versatile ability. It has a short cooldown so you should use it frequently. Pushing a tower? Hit it. Need to run from a gank with a teammate? Use it. In a team fight? Use it. it has quite a few uses and the cooldown is short enough that you should use it frequently. It however will start sucking mana out extremely quickly if left on too long, so use it in bursts and don't just leave it on all the time.
Passive: Gemcraft
Taric loves to socket magical gems into all of his weapons, resulting in his melee attacks repleneshing his mana for 7.5% of damage dealt.
- -Get 7.5% of damage back as mana
This is straight forward, it simply gives you mana to toss out more Imbues, more stuns and more shatters.
Pre-Game: Summoner Spells, Masteries and Runes
Masteries I believe in the utility tree. The Cooldown reduction on your summoner spells is handy. The cooldown reduction on your skills is also useful, and the better teleport is good too. Rather then me telling you exactly what to get, look through the tree and see what is useful to how you play. If you don't spam spells, the mana regen isn't as useful as if you do, after all.
Runes, I personally use Ap/18 in every slot. (ok fine I gave up on getting the last few and threw in normal AP in a couple, but AP/Levels is more ideal). This achieves two purposes. First if gives you a good 60 or so AP just for playing, second due to the AP gain we can focus less on AP items and more on DPS/Surviving items.
Summoner Spells is usually a hot topic, but I think there's only a few worth bringing on taric.
- Teleport
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- Bring it. Just. Do it. The map mobility is too useful to give up.
- Heal
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- This is my second spell of choice, it's an instant good chunk of health to you and your allies. Pretty straight forward.
- Clarity
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- This is probably useful early game, by late game it's not worth it as you should have enough regen from other sources.
- Flash/Cleanse/Ghost
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- I group these together as they share the same purpose - getting out of a bad situation.
The rest are situationally useful. Fortify is useful for defending a turret when you're not near it and can be used offensively to score a kill (fort+stun=dead tower diver).
In game: Item build/Skill build
Taric's skillbuild is very flexibile. It's also very situation dependent. As a general rule I focus on imbue first, but if we're not getting harassed much I might pick up more ranks of dazzle to harass them more, or shatter for faster farming. Evaluate the situation and see if you need more healing then level imbue.
The item build:
- Chalice of Harmony
- Berserker Greaves
- Frozen Mallet
- Nashor's Tooth
- Rod of Ages
- Black Cleaver
Chalice provides you with tons of regen even when you're not hitting stuff. Berserkers/Nashor's provide you tons of regen and a faster imbue due to your passive, Mallet and Rod provide ATT/AP and survability (HP) and Cleaver provides a nice stacking armor debuff and more damage if the game lasts that long. If you're feeling confident in your survivability, Archangel's staff is a good alternative to Rod of Ages. It can also replace black cleaver for less Damage but more emphasis on support.
How to Play a Hybrid Taric
Early Game: Laning
So now you've got your imbue, you're ready to go start last hitting some things and get gold. Focus on last hitting and heal your lane partner as needed. Keep in mind it heals you too when you do. When you get your stun you can start really harassing them with your teammate, let them push out from their tower, let your teammate open and when his disable wears off, chase them with a stun while your temamate hits them a few times. Keep in mind your damage is not bad by any means so feel free to hit them too.
Midgame: Ganking people!
Once your team starts= roaming around and ganking follow them, heal as needed. Stun the target as it tries to run and assist in ganks. THe main difference between playing this style of Taric and a pure support is you're a bit squishier, but you'll also put out much more damage and assist in downing the target faster. You're imbues will also be incredibly fast due to your attack speed. Always ult if you push a tower, it increases your damage significantly and is only on a 20 second cooldown, so you might as well.
Endgame: Teamfights and Team Pushes
So you've managed to make it to endgame, hopefully you have at least your mallet for surviving. Toss out heals as needed. You're more then likely going to want to stun their carry as it tries to go after your support or other squishy people. Attack the focus target and you'll want to use your ult in pretty much every team fight. That 40% Damage for your team (80% for you) is a huge power increase, add in sivir's ult for extra lulz. you should have your mallet so when they start falling back hit things to snare them and launch a stun at them if they flash to ensure mopping up their team and allowing the push into their base.
