Greetings all,
If anyone's interested I thought I'd contribute a guide to Gragas, IMO one of the best junglers at the moment who is not banned frequently in ranked due to devourer craze. I've reached plat 2 maining Grag and had a KDA of ~6.4 until I reached mid plat, it has declined slightly since then. This was without the use of any scripts etc. as I'm not interested in risking my main account, I've only explored them for botting to 30. RUNES:
3x Quint of Armor
9x Seal of Scaling HP
9x Mark of Attack Speed
9x Glyph of Scaling CDR
I used to run MS quints, however if you don't have a decent amount of armor in your rune page you won't be able to gank after clearing 3 camps, keep in mind that your potions are more effective the more armor you have due to the way effective HP operates. If you need to know more about the way resistances and health synergise, look at effective health here: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Health. This is handy to know as it can help your itemization choices. If you have the luxury of multiple rune pages for jungling, take scaling armor seals against all AD, and scaling MR glyphs against all AP (can occur if corki / kog is enemy ADC, most of their dmg is magic).
Masteries:
If the link dies just go to probuilds.net and search Gragas / mimick a pro's page. Basically 21/9.
Itemisation:
Rush your Cinder-hulk first as you need it for extra gold and regeneration. On your first back buy the purple upgrade to machete (aoe smite / regen) as it helps you sustain during clear. On your second recall try to have enough gold for boots + pink ward + pots and green ward if you have enough gold. From here complete your cinder hulk and then boots.
Boots: Merc Treads if the other team has significant CC. Keep in mind that suppression will not be reduced by tenacity (Malz ult, warwick ult, skarner ult, urgot ult). Knock ups are a bit more complicated, in that tenacity will not reduce the knock up time but it will reduce the stun associated with it; for example if you get Pulverized by Alistar (Q) you get knocked up and when you land you are also stunned for a period of time. If you have tenacity, the stun duration will be decreased allowing you to flash away earlier, but the knock up will not be reduced.
3rd Item: Is the enemy AD or AP more of a threat? If it's AD you choose between Frozen Heart and Randuins Omen, if AP choose between Locket, Spirit Visage or Banshee's Veil.
IF AD: Identify whether the main AD threats are caster based AD or auto attack based. Casters are champions such as Zed, Riven (sort of), Pantheon, who use primarily spells with AD ratios to do damage and will typically rush raw AD. Auto attackers make up just about every ADC minus corki, who will build AS/crit and some AD. The distinction between the two matters: building frozen heart against casters will be far less effective because they are not reliant on attack speed, and thus the FH passive will be wasted. Randuins after 5.16 is much better verse auto-attack dependent ADCs because it reduces crit damage by 10%, it's also better against mixed teams because it provides HP which is useful against true, magic and attack damage, but not % HP damage. This is similarly why we don't rush a thorn-mail as third item in almost any scenario, it has no HP and is basically limited in usefulness to teams heavily dependent on auto attack damage, as it will not reflect spell damage (pantheon Q, Zed Q for example).
IF AP: You need to get a Locket if your support won't, obviously the best way to figure that out is to ask your support if he will build it. Even after the nerf the item is still huge against AP based teams as it is 35 MR for you (20 base stats + passive) and 15x4 = 60 MR for your team. If your team ends up with two of them due to mis-communication it's not the end of the world; basically you and your support will get the passive from the item twice (yours and theirs) but your teammates not carrying either locket will only get the passive once. If your sup is getting Locket, pick Spirit Visage if the enemy team doesn't have major initiation such as Malphite Ult, Wukong Ult, Annie Ult, and you need the CDR (don't stack this with FH). If the other team does have major initiation or huge poke (nidalee) then pick Banshees. If it's 50/50 I'd pick Spirit Visage if you have room for the CDR (the cap is 40%) because the passive synergises with Gragas' passive nicely.
IF AHEAD: If you are way ahead of the other team before you get to building your third item, consider Righteous Glory. Basically you are sacrificing resistances for a tool that will let you hard engage. Lacking hard engage and/or poke will often result in the other team defending towers and farming back into the game, especially in low ranked games. The way to use this item is not to activate it and dive a tower (unless you are absurdly far ahead), you need to use pink wards around an objective that the other team cannot refuse to contest (5th drag, baron) and activate the item when the other team is forced to face-check brushes leading to the objective.
4th/5th/6th Items: Continue building resistance items as dictated by the other team's damage. If you built Spirit Visage and the other team's main threats are still AP, build a Banshee's. A typical full build against mixed damage would look like: Cinderhulk, Merc Treads, Locket, Randuin's Omen, Banshee's Veil, Warmogs.
DO NOT BUILD:
AP Items: Your ultimate should be used for engage or disengage, not for damage. Two of your spells (W / E) can only be used in AA range, this means that the more damage you build for them, the squishier you are and you are FORCED to use these in auto-attack range (dangerous). You don't have incredible AP ratios and your spells are not on incredibly low cooldowns unless you build CDR, which you aren't building much of if you are building flat AP.
Rylais: Three reasons this item is not a good purchase. 1: Investing in AP does not work well on Gragas for the reasons just mentioned. 2: Your kit has three sources of CC as it is - your Q slows, your E is a small knock-back stun, your ultimate can push or pull someone to you, you therefore don't need more sticking power. 3: Randuins is very often a core item in your build, this gives you a secondary slow (the active) and thus gives you a fourth source of CC, no one is surviving all of that. Investing in this item is simply sacrificing resistance for excessive crowd control.
A note on elixirs: buy Elixir of Iron. If you have merc treads, the tenacity of merc treads and the elixir will stack multiplicatively and as such your tenacity will be: 1-(1-MercTreadsTenacity)*(1-ElixirTenacity) = 1-(1-.35)*(1-.25) = 0.5125 or 51.25%.
Early Jungle Clear and General Jungle Advice:
I typically start Gromp if red side, Krugs if blue side with a leash from bot. High elo bot laners may take these camps in which case you do the buff of that side solo. Usually I'll do gromp -> blue -> wolves -> base or krugs -> red -> chickens -> base for first clear. Pay attention to your top lane match-ups and minion wave position, as well as the other jungle pick, in order to determine if you need to gank top after the three camps. If your top laner has pushed his wave and the enemy jungler is pantheon, you absolutely need to be top lane after your clear because panth is going to gank him. However, you cannot do this if you fall below 50-60% HP because you'll easily give away a kill as pantheon has an easy clear due to his passive, and will crit you once you fall below 15% HP. This kind of decision making essentially improves with practice, you need to take account of both top laner's trading early game, the minion wave and the other jungler's dueling potential, as well as your own.
If you are against ANY jungler who takes smite + ignite, shaco or evelynn, you need to switch up your clear. What I do is start at the buff bot side, then go to the other side of jungle and ward either behind red buff pit if you started blue buff, or between the two entrances to your jungle between baron pit and mid lane if you started red buff side. Against these champions it is ESSENTIAL that you buy a pink ASAP and either place it behind your red buff or in your blue-buff brush to catch the other jungler invading and collapse on him with your laners for kills later on.
A note on pink wards: if you aren't placing your pink to counteract invades as mentioned above, my favored position to place one is the mid lane brush opposite the enemy jungler's raptor camp (and thus near yours). Placing this ward with a mid-laner who pushes lane will almost gaurantee that is isn't cleared by the other mid laner, and won't proc the enemy jungler's raptor buff (ward detector thing). In combination with your raptor buff it enables you to determine whether that side of mid lane is warded at all and thus gives you the best opportunity to gank mid lane.
Finally, try to control the scuttle crab and especially dragon against Devourer junglers. Dragon gives 5 stacks, scuttle crabs give 2.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON GANKING:
The biggest mistake I see from bronze to gold when jungling is not taking into account the position of the minion wave. Every single time you gank you HAVE to look at where the wave is currently, and how far up the lane the enemies' next wave is (it's the mirror opposite of how far your own wave is). If you gank into a full wave of minions in early levels, the minions will do enough damage to make a 2v1 gank essentially a 2v2 or worse. Also, if you gank a lane from behind you need to time your gank so that the next minion wave isn't walking past the tower and spotting you as you come up behind the enemy laner. Another tip: if you take purple smite, smite the minion wave if it is aggroing onto you or your ally during a gank, remember that spells do not draw minion aggro (only auto attacks).
Skill Order:
Start W if beginning gromp, Q if beginning krugs or red/blue buff. I typically max R->Q->W->E. I'll max W if the other team has numerous high-hp tanks, don't max E because it doesn't reduce the cooldown.
Keep in mind the power of using E -> Flash to succeed in a gank where the enemy doesn't have flash, it is extremely worthwhile if it will secure a kill. Scarra did an amazing flash - E in this video when Gragas was an AP mage: Will probably add to this if there's enough interest and as I figure out formatting. Cheers.
Edited by adlbr, 29 August 2015 - 07:44 PM.