This guide is for tank Gragas, I find building him as a tank to be a lot more viable than AP (I have yet to test out a DPS Gragas, but I dont think it will be as good as tank)

Gragas can be one of the most durable tanks in the game due to his Drunken Rage reducing damage by 26% at Rank 5.

Runes: Health/perLVL= Red Runes - Dodge= Yellow Runes - Blue= Health/perLVL
(I personally do not know if this is the best bet for runes because I dont have a very good tank page, but this is what I would probably go)

Masteries: 1/21/8 (May change slightly based on what summoner spells you take)

Summoner Spells: I personally use Exhaust/Fort to be a little more useful for your team, exhaust is great for early kills or shutting someone down in a team fight and Fort because you are so far into the Defense tree you might as well.

Clair, Flash, Teleport, Ignite are decent secondary choices as well.

Skill Build:
1. Body Slam
2. Drunken Rage
3. Drunken Rage
4. Body Slam
5. Body Slam
6. Ult
7. Drunken Rage
8-18 Priority Ult > Drunken Rage > Body Slam
I find if you do not get atleast 3 points in Body Slam you move too slow and it deals too little damage.

Item Build: (Feel free to sell Doran's Shield/Heart of Gold when you need to)
1. Doran's Shield(Safest Route), Ruby Crystal, Mana Manipulator (Lane partner is mana dependant)
2. Boots -> Ninja Tabie or Mercury Treads (You decide based on the other team)
3. Heart of Gold
4. Giant's Belt + Mana Manipulator > Soul Shroud
5. Aegis of the Legion
6. Glacial Shroud >Frozen Heart
7. If game is still going on Sunfire Capes or Guardians to finish the last spots
Mostly you are just stacking Auras to support your team ,but when you reach 40% cooldown reduction your drunken rage has a 27sec CD and lasts for 25 sec so it's almost always active and you will be surprised how well you can take hits

Laning: Spam Spam Spam. Use Drunken Rage whenever it is off cooldown and use Body Slam as much as possible to last hit or harrass melee champions. More spam means more HP regen from your passive and Drunken Rage's mana will keep you laning for a
long time.

Using Gragas' Ult: 1. Push people into your tower than body slam the weaken creeps so the tower switches to your target 2. Interrupt Katarina, Nunu, Fiddle, or toss at a twitch to knock him further away or closer to your team 3. Split up the enemies giving your team brief moments to kill the closest/weakest 4. Take down runners 5. Etc many more uses just a few useful ones

Mid: A few teamfights and pushes are just starting. Activate Drunken Rage prior to your team engaging (it lasts 25 sec) with drunken rage active your body slams will do a decent amount of damage. So rush into the enemy team (making sure your team follows) and body slam away, toss your ult in the most effective away if you can.

Late: Drunken Rage is almost always active and you should be able to take a lot of damage! When pushing or defending make sure to go in first spam slam as much as possible and ult efficiently ,but dont be conservative your ult is only a ~35sec cooldown at this point.

Dont be afraid to die! Sometimes being suicidal is the only way to get the enemy to focus Gragas if your life ends up getting 2+ of the enemies killed than it was worth it.

I don't think Gragas is on the same level as some of the other more useful tanks ,but he can be a refreshing change of pace and a b*tch to kill.

I hope this was somewhat helpful and any comments/feedback is appreciated

Great Guide! I didnt get alot of kills but i was really helping out my team and i was tanking a 16-4 yi and a 8-1 tyrand really easy and still living

thanks for the responses and yea I only recommended Doran's becuase it is the easiest item to lane with for Gragas not the most efficient price wise though.

So you're standing around with all this HP and mitigation doing...what, exactly? You don't do much damage or provide any debuffs beyond the short-range slow on Body Slam. Once you've burned your ultimate for the knockback, the enemy has no reason to attack you, and you don't have all that much you can do to them to change the course of the fight.

I mean, you have the auras, but what would you lose by taking the exact same item build and putting it on Blitzcrank? Or Cho'gath? Or any number of other characters?

I don't just get how Gragas could be functional as a tank. An AP build has some promise conceptually, but his abilities just don't give him what a tank needs apart from initiation via his ultimate, which he doesn't need a tank build to utilize at all. I mean, you don't even MENTION Barrel Roll in this guide. How sad is that, that one of his abilities is a total non-factor in the tank role that's supposed to be forced on him?

AP Gragas, unreliable weak skillshot and an OK damaging ult... Tank Gragas has the highest mitigation of any tank in the game except for the 6 seconds Alistar has his ult popped. Body Slam with Drunk Rage activated deals the same damage as a barrel roll with a decent amount of AP as well so the only difference is your trading a more potent ult for Auras, AoE Snare, Survivability, intiating, and making slight use of his high attack damage.
I said right at the bottom there is very little reason to play Tank Gragas ,but very little is better than NO Reason to play AP Gragas

Yeah, Gragas has really high mitigation...but for your mitigation to matter, you need to be drawing fire. I'm not convinced that there's ANY reason for a team to try to focus down a tank-built Gragas first.

At level 18, Body Slam does 315 base damage unbuffed or 354 base damage with maxed Drunken Rage active, being weaker the lower your level is. Barely higher than a 300 damage unbuffed Barrel Roll. That's ignoring armor (isn't base armor usually higher than base magic resist?). If you hit more than one target--even a minion--the damage Body Slam deals immediately falls to the level of totally negligible because damage is split between targets.

Optimistically, you're looking at barely over 200 damage per cast plus a mediocre slow if you're lucky enough to only hit one target, or half that in the more likely scenario in which you hit two or more. Plus your autoattacks, which are also doing maybe 100-ish with poor attack speed. And nothing else. No disables, no major buffs or debuffs, just the lowest damage of anyone on the team. You get totally ignored while the enemy kills the rest of your team, with all the health and mitigation you stacked amounting to nothing.

A tank that can neither draw fire nor punish the enemy for leaving them alive isn't really a tank. If you can get a bunch of AP via a Rod of Ages and Rylai's and whatever else (with cooldown reduction mixed in however you can get it), you at least have 500-ish AoE barrels rolling around, slowing people from range and not having its damage pointlessly divided amongst targets. Either they ignore you anyway, in which case you're still at least doing more damage and slowing than you were with the tank build, or they mistake you for a squishy mage and try to kill you early, in which case the high health and the mitigation from Drunken Brawl will actually mean something and you can pseudo-tank for the other vulnerable mages and carries.

DUDE THIS GUIDE IS FCKN BEAST...TRY IT BEFORE YOU DISS IT...CAUSE I DID..AND I SWEAR EVERY1 THINKS..IMA BEAST WITH GRAGAS and you do alot of dmg..btw...you and your team will be much higher lvl then others bcuz you will be pwning and even if your not. you can push a lane and win the game bcuz they cant kill you..and take 1 good dps with you and yall both kud pwn and win..(this has happen)..so youll be doing a **** ton of dmg on noobs with no items..plus you have to remember hes a SUPPORT dps..so his dps will never be a MAIN ASSET..if you know to work him you can stall until reinforcement..HARASSING..bomb them into your team and there dead..or..BUT YOU GOTTA REMEMBER YOUR DODGING..so you can easily kite with fatty bcuz you can Body Slam dodge run away..Body Slam dodge run away..they will eventually get annoyd..and run away..or fall into there death...BUT THIS GUIDE IS BEAST..PLEASE TRY IT..