I've read quite a bit on the forums about people's ideas about strategies and builds and I've come up with what I feel is a decent list of concepts. Some of these are contrary to what's already been posted and some of it is the same. I do not believe these ideas to be "God's Word" and they are all up to interpretation and debate, hence the question mark in the title. I do not claim to be the best player in the world, nor am I the worst. However, I do claim that my skills lie more in the builds and team fights than in the laning, mid-game farming areas. This is why I choose ARAM. Below is the list:

Summoner Spells

Barrier: It seems well-established that this is the best summoner, it gives you that extra oomph in the early game fights which seems to make all the difference in winning and losing the early fights, especially if you're already low from pokes/earlier fights.

Heal: I personally choose heal for two reasons. First, it gives you that extra oomph in early team fights just like barrier, albeit less individually. Second, and more importantly, it heals your entire team, which is GREAT for recovering from a fight that you won or healing off harass.

Flash: I never choose to use this because, at the random pug level, proper positioning is more than sufficient to stay alive and/or initiate fights. I constantly see people way out of position and use flash as a crutch. However, at the higher levels of skill, I can imagine that flash would be necessary for some comps to initiate. I might consider using this if a MM'ing system gets implemented where ratings are taken into account.

Runes, Masteries, Items


REGEN REGEN REGEN

This is the point that most people seem to agree on. However, few people seem to emphasize that you need both mana AND health regen, assuming your champion has mana. If you eat some poke and have no significant health regen to be able to fight, you are completely useless to your team, you are simply waiting to die.

Mana Regen: There are three "good" mana regen items to start with, Chalice, Tear, and Philo Stone.

Chalice: If you have long cooldowns with high mana costs that you want to spam, buy a chalice. Ex. Morgana, Taric, Alistar, etc.

Tear: If your cooldowns are short enough to fully charge a tear, buy a tear. Ex. Urgot, Sona, Singed, Ryze, etc.

Philo Stone: Otherwise, buy a philo stone for one big reason. If you don't benefit from the added effects of the previous two items (Mana for Tear, and Extra Regen from Chalice), then buy a philo stone for the health regen.

Emblem of Valor: If you have enough money and are ever going to need any survivability, buy an emblem. It gives your team bonus health regen, and you get double the benefit if someone else on your team buys it as well. I would argue this it the second best item for ARAM.

Aegis/Bulwark: Everyone that is every going to take significant damage should get an aegis. It is the most cost efficient defensive item in the game, even more so if the enemy team has enough magic dmg to necessitate upgrading to Bulwark. A bulwark costs about 3kg and gives WAY more defensive stats than any other item in the game. The only contenders are Randuin's and Frozen Heart, which only give armor. I think this is the best item for ARAM, by a large margin.

Vamp Scepter: If you are an adc, you should start Vamp Scepter instead. How quickly you build into Sanguine Blade is up to you. However, the early sustain and dmg bonus is necessary. Unless you want to gimp your mid-game and buy an aegis (which I don't recommend)

Almost every non-carry champion should build part tank, part dmg as you get into the mid-late game. For example, Singed should get Liandry's Torment (sp?), Shen should get TriForce, etc. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Jax shouldn't go as tanky as other bruisers if he has someone to initiate for him, his damage is too high to gimp. Other exceptions for similar reasons, Yi, Soraka, Sona, (did I miss any?).

Points of Contention

[INDENT]Philo Stone will not pay for itself. The goal is to get the early game regen. If you have no significant use for a Shurelya's late game, sell it. However, I love Shurelya's on Garen, because there is almost no amount of slows that will save you from a Garen with Captain's Merc Treads and a Shurelya's. Same applies to Singed.

Level 1 FaceCheck. I am all for the solo level one facecheck. Bush control wins games, PERIOD. If you get pushed to your tower because the other team has bush control, your gonna need a heck of an initiate/poke to get off your tower. Subjectively, I'd say that about 80% of the time my team doesn't get immediate bush control, we lose. To prevent this, get to the bush ASAP. Best case scenario: you get bush control, WIN GAME. Worst case scenario: you die (which should only happen if they are all there and have massive CC), and lose bush control. The thing is, if their whole team beat you there, you already lost bush control, and 1 early death will not affect the game, they can't push off of it and can't spend the money until they die. So just rez, run back and wait for your chance to regain bush control.
[\INDENT]

If you feel I missed anything or would like to input some rational thoughts, please reply with your thoughts. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

This is pretty sound advice all around. I have a few personal preferences that differ a bit, though.

I feel like evaluating summoner spells on an individual basis is generally flawed. I agree that barrier is always a good option. But the other spell isn't so clear-cut, even as a choice between just heal or flash.

I'd look at the spread of summoners across the team as a whole. Having a couple summoner heals is a good idea for any team. But since heal was changed to being more of a support-for-your-allies spell, rather than a somewhat selfish spell that somewhat helped your nearby allies, it has seemed like less of a must-have for everybody. Take a couple across the team, but one on everybody seems to be overkill. This often results in them getting used at the same time, or at least while the debuff from a previous heal is still on you, making any subsequent heals in the same fight less worthwhile.

Flash is a generally good spell on anybody. Some need it more than others. As is usually noted, champions like Fiddles and Galio should take it to help with their ults. But my preferred use for flash is to secure that 'one that almost got away'. Of course, if I'm in a bind and need an escape, I'll use it for that as well. But by and large, I do agree that you often see it used as a crutch or excuse for bad positioning.

I also think that having at least one ignite, and possibly an exhaust, are also terrific picks. Ignite helps counter health packs and that summoner heal. It also helps deal with sustain-heavy teams (like those with a Sona or Soraka). It's also helps deal with Yi's and Mudno. And exhaust can be a big difference-maker if the other team has a champion with particularly high damage output. Hypercarries or high-burst mages/assassins. A well-timed exhaust on that Annie will really gimp her combo damage, and may well be the difference in your team losing or winning a fight.

Regen is extremely valuable on the map for sure. But I'll admit that I cringe any time I see somebody buying Phil Stone as a first item. It truly is unlikely to be worthwhile in terms of the GP10. But my biggest problem is that it does absolutely nothing for you in those early engagements. It won't give you any extra damage for more early kill potential. It won't give you any sort of resists or health to make you a bit tougher of a target in the early game. I'd rather see a rejuv bead + some manner of damage or thickness as starting items. Then make the rejuv bead into Emblem, for Aegis/Bulwark, or Warmog's.

I would value HP regen much higher on the melee champs than on ones with safer range. Lux, for example, shouldn't really need it. All her spells have such high range that she shouldn't really be getting caught. Same goes for some ADC's, especially Cait.

I totally agree with the mana regen split between chalice and tear. There are also some situations (Sona...) where you'll even want to snag both. Once Sona has both, she can just mash keys on cooldown and she will never run out of mana. She'll get to 1/3 of her total mana pool remaining, and be up to some 25 mana/second regen.

I don't know that I would agree with that statistic on losing the initial brush-rush determining the outcome of the game. Then again, with my experience being bent heavily toward playing with a group of a few friends, I may not be the best judge. We win a lot of our games, and we also tend to rush the brush very fast. But it's hard to tell if the initial brush rush or just having a coordinated team is really what is making the difference in the wins.

The brush check depends on a lot of things. Is your team with you, or close enough to help if things get dicey? Do you have an escape available? How much CC (especially reliable CC) does the other team have? How much early burst do they have?

If your team isn't with you, and you're remotely suspicious that the other team may have made it to the brush before you, just hang back and wait for your team. It's better to give up the brush than to give up the brush and first blood gold with several assists attached. I really don't think that missing out on that brush in the rush to the lane is going to lose you the game. If your team has strong enough poke, or ways to 'check' the brush with spells, you'll make it back to the creep line. If you don't have enough poke, you were probably going to get stuck back under your tower anyhow, whether you won the brush rush or not.

I really appreciate your analysis. You seem have a keen understanding of ARAM. I would like to add one thing that I would love to write an article on. However, it would pretty much be a book in-and-of itself. The point of ARAM is not to get kills. Kills are not all that beneficial to your team. They are actually a hindrance in the short term. If you kill someone, all you've done is allow them to buy items and come back with full hp/mp while you are lower than when you started. However, if you let them sit on their turret with no hp, they will be completely unable to stop you from pushing the towers (which is ultimately the goal of the game).

The one thing I really hope for is a rating system (possibly through an MM Implementation). This would allow an actual metagame to develop. It's unlikely that the average joe will learn that he's playing suboptimally if he thinks he plays well and that all of his losses are due to bad team comps (Realistically, these people will always exist). I hope to see you in game at some point.

I personally feel that when it comes to summoner's spells, it's all relative to the individual champion. As stated above, someone like Fiddle, Galio, Amumu, or even Vayne, Alistar, or Poppy can make good use of the spell as it allows them to quickly re-position for their other skills.
As for second spell, heal is always a good option but it's all dependent on the champion you get or what the enemy team has. On melee champions that like to jump right in the middle of things I prefer to take both heal and barrier as not only can you block damage you can heal up and that helps you deal with the inevitable damage you are going to take from being focused. Either of these can be substituted for ignite or exhaust, if they are needed (ignite is situational, exhaust is usually okay since most of the time the enemy team will have an ADC.) I don't like taking any of these on ranged unless there is no other option because chances are if will be difficult to use it properly without being out of position. Even clarity has it's uses, imho, if your team is especially mana hungry. Sure, late game it becomes almost next to useless but being able to sustain your teams mana early on allows for lots of harassment that can give you an edge.

As for items I generally agree with you, OP. If the enemy team has a lot of poke like Nidalee and yi, etc, and you are melee always grab an early negatron cloak and perhaps t1 boots and potions. Alternatively, if they have a lot of AD poke such as Jayce, Caitlyn, or Ashe, etc, you can grab a chain vest instead. If they have a mix of both, I like to start with a giants belt and build from there. As a general rule I also tend to take tank masteries on most melee's in ARAM as the tenacity and damage reduction helps a lot.

This suggestion is mind boggling.
The best ADCs do most of their early-mid game damage with pokes/abilities. The risk involved in moving in to autoattack a minion/ champ to regen some health is incredibly high, and you're only going to be healing like 10-15/shot with your amazing 117 attack damage.
Show me an Ashe, Cait, Ez, Varus, with a vamp sceptre as a starting item, and I'll show you an idiot. An Ashe with a Tear/Sheen/Philo/Chalice will roflstomp an Ashe with vamp sceptre early game, and he's going to be putting sustained damage on the entire enemy team. Same goes for any of the other matchups.

Chalice is perfect for AD carries because it's cheap as hell, sells back later if you don't want it for ~70% of it's value, and gives you MR, which mitigates the most common damage type you'll receive poking from the back.

Getting there first doesn't guarantee control. There are so many skillshots that can be thrown into the bush to detect enemies. Wait for your team, use skillshots. If they don't want to be detected, then they'll have to eat the skillshots.
Or just let them sit in the bushes. When the minions come, you will have the benefit of standing behind your own minions, launching skillshots into the bush, and the enemy can't retaliate.
Typically, one team loses the first engagement BECAUSE a lone idiot facechecks. Even if you're the first one in the bush, so what? If the enemy comes as a group of 4 or 5, you still lose. Staying with your team is always the best option.
Bushes don't give you any mitigation/regen/damage/special abilities. They are a small area of the map where you can't see exactly where the enemy is (but you still know he's there.) It's not like SR where the enemy support MIGHT be going off to ward or MIGHT be going to gank your mid: He's either in the bush or he's in the lane with you. There's nowhere else to go but back down the lane, and then he's not a threat.

Don't forget about will of the ancients in some games. Even zekes can be good if you roll a lot of adc.

That's a very good point about how the game isn't all about kills. What I see most is that it's more about when you die or get those kills. If you're killing the same person on the other team over and over, and they never get enough gold to buy anything really useful, that will help your overall cause for winning, because you really won't need to worry about that person anymore. And back on SR ARAMs, I do remember some games where we would intentionally try to NOT kill the one carrying on the other team, so they couldn't go back to spend the 3-5k gold they probably had.

The skill here is choosing the right time to die. If you've got enough gold to buy something useful, you do start to actually want to die so you can get your better items. But at the same time, you don't necessarily want to go down with your entire team and lose your tower for it. So basically, always make sure that when you decide that you need to die, that your team will still be able to hold the other team off until you're back. Ideally, you manage to get a kill on the other team while you're at it, so a 4v4 is left, rather than a 4v5. So the counterplay to this sort of strategy is to kill the opponents when they aren't actually ready for it.

Also, kills often help translate into pushing objectives. Sometimes you just need to kill one or two on the other team to let your ranged work on the tower some. Eventually you'll whittle it down.

So yeah, kills for the sake of a kill aren't really necessary, but there's more depth to it than just that.

And I'm in total agreement with your second paragraph there. While I think there would be an awful lot of QQ over an actual ranked queue, a normal queue (with hidden Elo, as the normal queue already has) would be great for it. I'd love to be able to see some strategies fleshed out a little more, and also to play against similarly-skilled competition.

I often play ARAMs with 2-4 other friends. While running a 5-man premade in ARAM as it is now feels just a tad dirty, it's also immensely fun. And we've played ARAM quite frequently for a couple years now. So we do have a handful of strategies and such that we'll go to, depending on the kind of comp we have, and what we're up against. But the competition isn't truly fair, since we could be running up against all manner of skill levels in the custom lobby. It would be fun to test where we are in relation to the rest of the ARAM-playing community.

Ah, right. Auras, auras, auras!

We already talked about Bulwark. And Stark's, er... I guess it's Zeke's now... is probably a heavily under-appreciated item in ARAM, since it actually boosts the pushing potential of your entire team. That smidge of extra AD across the team will get those towers down just that much faster.

And Shard of True Ice is a great upgrade from Manip for some champions. Like on Sona, for example, you can start tear + manip, and really not have many mana problems, even very early on. And then if you've got a few teammates with a chalice, that extra regen is just amplified by the chalice passive. I know manip used to be a standard starting item on SR (pretty much mandatory on the team). But I think it is undervalued a bit on PG.

one more for those who haven't been lurking these boards for months

personally i've found that if you've got a premade team on voicechat if you all take xp runes andor masteries a teamfight at lvl 6 vs lvl 5 can turn the tide quite dramatically