Right now I play a support Taric. I want to better learn how to hone my skills.

To start, I have 0/9/21 masteries, delving into the extra gold portion of course.
My runes are MP marks, Mp5 seals, AP glyphs, and MS quints.
I usually start with a faerie charm, wardsx4, and a mana pot. I get the 4 wards so I can have an extra set.

I grab my stun first so I can help accommodate my ADC with first blood, followed by the heal, and then follow the skill level up process by R->W->Q->E.

My style is usually cautious but I get aggressive when me and my teammate have a significant amount of health over the enemies.

Does anyone have any suggestions/tips to play Taric? I find him to be one of the best supports as he's tanky, has a range of ways to assist team, and has a heal.

Who's the best ADC to play with Taric? Who counters him?

Feedback please?

Some notes:
Just because Taric has some natural tankiness, doesn't mean you can get away without standard support runes. Especially because Taric is, by nature, aggressive, you need the following rune setup:

Armor, Gold, or Mana Regen Yellows
Armor or MPen Reds
Gold or MS Quints
MP or MR/lvl Glyphs

One standard example would be:
Armor Reds and Yellows
Gold Quints
MR/lvl Glyphs

You need gold runes for a support, no exceptions. If you really want the MS quints, at least get the GP seals. And you need armor, even though he has a lot naturally.

For summoners, you usually want Flash/Exhaust, so he can Flash-Stun-Exhaust in for a gank/kill.

He synergizes well with any of the holy trinity of ADC's (Corki, Ez, and Graves) for high burst potential. Caitlyn also works nicely due to being able to chain their stuns.

Consider starting with a Vision Ward on Taric too, since he's scary enough in lane to clear an early ward with little opposition.

Some of his best items include Aegis of the Legion, Shurelyas Revelrie, and Randuin's Omen.

I primarily play support these days, since my brother wont play unless I support his ADC bottom lol.

That being said I'm starting to favor a more aggressive approach to support, it's more fun in my opinion and I find it better in team fights as well.

I would recommend going 1/16/13 masteries, getting the movement speed in the defense line and 1 point in the utility line coupled with movement speed quints and whalla you can easily close the gap to get off a W R combo and burst down their ADC.

As for runes I go Flat Armor Marks / Seals / Mr per level glyphs / movement speed quints.

In solo queue and with a good aggressive ADC you wont need the extra 5 gp/10 from seals and quints.

I'm beginning to prefer ghost over flash because of the slow reaction speeds people seem to have in team fights, I would rather be able to chase someone down or escape a team fight.

I like to start with boots, 2 pots, and a ward for the river. The 2 pots gives you a lot more sustain and makes it almost impossible to keep you off the adc, combined with hopefully some team work and you will dominate that lane in no time!

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The only problem with this is that you're essentially betting on the other team to feed you assists. If you can't secure kills, you're going to fall behind without the GP runes. It's the same problem with building an item like Mejai's, except that you can't adapt your decision during the match. Hence, the best bet is usually to take the gold runes with you.

As an example, take a look at some of Chauster's rune pages (I believe he uses #19 for Taric): http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/79195#runes

Taric is a mediocre support in teamfights, so you have to take advantage of his laning phase.

So, first, I'd definitely start running 15 or 17 points in defense, so you're tankier.

http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/79195#runes

I'd run this for runes.

You NEED flat armor yellows. Mp5 yellows suck on Taric. Eff MPen reds too, get flat armor reds (for tankiness). And get flat MR glyphs. (and i'd prefer gp10 quints, but that's fine, you can also run flat hp quints)

This whole setup will allow you to play WAY more aggressively, which is important for Taric. You will be able to go E-W and then retreat, winning the trade, which is VERY important with Taric. You do not want to be squishy.

As for your build, I like rushing HoG instead of Philo Stone, and then after your core of Philo + HoG + boots --> Aegis --> Shurelya's --> Merc Treads.

This will make you tanky, and help out a lot. Keep 5 wards in inventory, buy oracle's when you need to.

Taric is an aggressive support. You want to get kills and snowball the lane. So ward everything and GO BALLS DEEP.

i had your problem once too and it is not solved but what you can do is go 0-21-9 for your masteries taking 3 in armor,3 in mr, 4 in hp per lvl, 1 in hp,3 in hp regen, 2 in reduce damage,3 in cdr per lvl,3 in reduce percentage damage,1 in juggernaut and for the utility take the standerd 1 in improved flash/teleport/promote/clarity/clairvoyance,3 in mana per lvl and 3 in mana regen

runes is armor or attack speed reds, armor yellows, mana regen per lvl blues, and gold per 10 quints



another solution is go support nid like what i did
she can heal, poke, put trap like a support
when she reach lvl 6 she can do some real damage

for nid go 14-9-7 taking the standard hp route for defence, mana route for utility, and 1 in 10% armor pen and 1 in 10% magic pen in offence (make sure you put 1 point in improved exhaust).
for summoner take exhaust and flash
for items start with faire charm 2 ward and some mana/hp pots
get philo-stone and boots first
then get heart of gold
follow that up with a aegis of the legion
get sheen for some dps
get guinsoo's rageblade for even more dps
turn that philo-stone into shurelia's reverie
then you can turn HOG into randuin's omen,sheen into triforce, or start a new item

That's the same thing as saying if you get fed assists you can't change from the gold/10 runes... Sure it's nice to have them when you need them, but so is the armor, besides we did just fine without those runes as supports before they came out.

I did some dominating last night with a friend doing a Taric/Corki Combo.
Our opponents were Vayne/Sona, Ezreal/Sona, and Graves/Nunu.

So here are the things I learned:
Taric counters Sona. Why?
The whole point of picking Sona over other supports is for her early game poke. If you want better heals, you should get soraka. If you want earlier stuns, you should get Taric. So you get Sona for that poke. But in order for her to be in range to poke, she's also in Taric's stun range.
So, she can poke, then get stunned and murdered.

Nunu counters Taric.
He's beefy and provides a solid AS/MS steroid and has a nice mini-nuke and slow. It's difficult for taric to heal through the poke and not burn all of his mana, and Nunu is too tanky to burst down before he can chomp a minion and run away. All the while his AD is pounding you.
HOWEVER, you can just run Exhaust. Exhaust counters Nunu. What? Blood boil your AD? Too bad he is "le tired". Give him a dirt nap, then fire the nukes

Taric's strength is early game.
That stun is really powerful at level 1-6. It never really falls off in utility, other people just get harder to kill and more people show up later in the game. Stunning 1 of 2 people is a big deal. Stunning 1 of 5 is nice, but not nearly as impressive.
Late game, you need to find some way to still be useful. Here are the following concepts I have:

Aura taric- load up on aura items. Incidentally, this also makes you rather tanky. Stun, RW, Heal and walk away. Continue healing until you're ready to burst again.

Super Fabulous Support Taric- load up on CDR and heal/stun as much as you can.

Bruiser taric- Get the more defensive items. Wade in, face-tank attacks. Stun the punks, and auto attack them. Pop W to shred armor, etc. You stay in the fight and duke it out. Heal yourself too. This is more trollish because it's unlikely you'll have the gold to pull this off.

None of these concepts are mutually exclusive. You want to keep these 3 mentalities on hand for different situations. But you'll want to build to emphasize one or another.

Taric synergizes with early game nukers.
Having trouble landing your nuke? That Sivir BB or Ezreal skill shots? Never fear, Taric is here to hold them in place while you wind up your shot.

Taric-Corki is very snowbally.
It's more snowbally than other teams. Why? The armor shred...oh my god so much armor shred.
So, what's the response to the enemy AD getting fed? Build some armor right? Yeah, whatever, Taric and corki both Shred armor, so it takes an inordinate amount of armor items to curb Corki's damage output. From early to late game, the combo is easily shredding half or more of your opponent's armor. It's just incredibly hard to shut down.

Starting boots first will let you capitalize on Taric's strong early game. The initiator mastery is strong for this as well. If you can kill a lane opponent then it won't matter how many wards you have because you'll have time to go back. Boots also keep the enemy from getting free harrass on you or any ganks as well.

Actually I'm referring to taking the Gold Quints instead of the Movement Speed Quints. I'd still recommend the armor Seals.

The reason that I recommend the Gold over the MS is because the MS simply won't grant you enough assists to makeup for the gold loss. Consider that each assist will typically grant you around 180 gold (not counting gold distributed to teammates, killing sprees, etc). In a 60 minute game, 3 Gold Quints will typically net you around 1080 gold (about 14 sight wards). This would take about 6 assists. In a low-skill match, where people die more often, there may be less of a gap between the two strategies, but the fact is that the MS difference is too small for it to be the deciding factor in that many assists over the course of a game (at least not in a typical, evenly matched game). MS Quints are more useful for staying alive, positioning, and closing the gap as a champion that can actually finish the enemy off themselves. Definitely useful, but not enough to justify the lack of GP quints in my opinion. They maintain their usefulness throughout the whole game; one extra ward can mean the difference between winning and losing a match easily.

Further comments on this can be seen here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...ht=theunburned