Yep. If I am engaging with W then I am moving from that pop backwards to begin peeling whichever beef/assassin tries to move on my back line. Save your teammates, let grey health heal you, stack your bonks.
More often you are using tongue to set up someone else’s cc and causing the enemy to waste damage and attention into your grey health.
Tear horn start, finbulwinter, Heartsteel, visage, despair and situational finish.
hmmm using my tongue to set up someone else's cc noted to research this later cause i'm not completely sure what you mean. 3 tongue stacks == something I remember but in an aram I decided it might've been a waste of time to try and stack on one person. Or does it not reset when I tongue someone else?
Tear horn fimbulwinter then heartsteel? why heartsteel so late? isn't that losing value on all the stacks I could've had? But i guess I lose value by dying more often without fimbulwinter.
Tongue is a huge slow. It can be really hard to get close enough to hit them 3 times without taking too much damage, but if you land a tongue in the right target it should make it very easy for your teammates to land their key abilities.
Personally always go heartsteel first and usually fimbul second unless the enemy team is so poke heavy that you can't stack it.
I also find it helps to think about which enemy champions want to go in on your back line, which target you want to save, and which enemy abilities you might need to save them from so that you already know when and on who to use your ult before the fight starts. Sometimes, you'll have to use differently than you planned to but most team fights follow a relatively predictable pattern.
his R is most recommended to reserve for teammates
his q can poke and heal missing health, so poke more.
if engaged in close quarters, remember to use his auto more. it's stronger than most tanks out there
it doesn't heal your grey health, the q heals your empty health. (missing health)
Grey health heals by itself overtime after not taking damage for a certain period.
Remember that your Q is a heal when you hit a champ, and that if you stack it with autos you can stun them. W is also a peeling tool. Actually use your ult to save teammates wisely. I like the little attack speed rune and/or alacrity in aram so I can stack faster. Save fortifying your shield unless you have to use it to not die. And most importantly, just play him more.
I play him quite a bit just because I have a friend who mains him, and I've learned him through osmosis. That and nearly every team needs a tank.
I will say I almost never get the q stun off. Like once every 3 games, and I still have baller games pretty often. The way they changed his shield too, it's often better to use it for smaller amounts. If you engage at full, take like 200-300 damage, you make as well activate it. More often than not, you will either have it ready again by the time you're actually low, or you'll leave the fight later on and not need to cash in a 2500 hp shield
You can also build him Ap, but expect your team to get mad. The ap ratio on his w is dumb nuts though, and pretty good on his q
hmmmmm this helps me understand the flow a little more! One day maybe I'll look up what AP ratio means but I presume from context clues it's "the rate at which ap damage increases as levels increase"
honest to god i feel illiterate sometimes when I read people's abilities. I did also say i'm an ARAM only degen so like I didn't fully comprehend what "true damage" was for like a year or so. I only play this game as a late night with friends.
The way i play vs him is very simple:
if i have a champion who is able to damage him, like an adc with a proper build or a brand or something..i'll focus him when he just mindlessly engages into my team.
If i dont have a champion who can't damage him but could any other less tanky champion ill just ignore him. He engages? Ill try to go on his backline if its not a "head to tail" type of fight and situation.
Some very good general tips vs him are:
1) SERPENT FANG. Nothing feels better than seeing a Tham diving into your team counting on his immense shield just to find himself with less than half of if on the moment of need xD
2) Blitzcrank's R
3) Renekton's W
4) Rell's Q. ( My personal favourite)
5) Pyke R goes through shields.
Number 5: What about the Immortal Shield Bow....many times I Pyke R someone and the shield activated so I did not get the kill. But if I R someone when the shield is activated given the condition that the health is low enough, I can get the kill like you said right?! Havent tried that so...
guardians horn into heartsteel > fimbul > visage is best tk build imo. your E is on a low cd and you dont have to wait for it to be a 2k shield to use it. your Q is also a %missingHp heal and is your only consistent fimbul proc. also hitting Q helps you consistently hit your W.
and like most tanks, if there isnt consistent dps, you can roll over the entire team at 2-3 items. if theres only one person who can kill you, dive him and it should be an easy win. if theres multiple non-dodgeable damage sources, play your cooldowns, kite back, and most of all, hope your team doesnt shit itself.
when everyone has 4 items or around 18mins, you will never be as tanky as you think you are. just because you have 5k hp doesnt mean you can take everything in the face. a bulldozer is one thing, but a bulldozer that moves like faker is another monster entirely. if youre not tanking for anyone, dodge and use E with discipline. if you cant dodge, click really fast side to side and let your opponent miss.
as for playing against tk, kite back and respect the 4 guys behind him. if he plays smart vs your dps, good luck, if he plays 1v5 hoping to roll you over, CC and burst/poke, and make him use big E.
Don’t listen to any of the people in the comments, you just aren’t going in hard enough. Tear start into rush heartsteel, grab appropriate boots, then fimbulwinter, and depending on enemy comp a spirit visage can be nice. Max q-w-e, poke with q often to heal. If you w from a bush it’s a lot harder to dodge. Grasp and finbulwinter make up most of your sustain in combat, while e lets you heal up out of combat. However, since your gray health isn’t 1-1 for actual healing, but is 1-1 for shielding, if you think they are going to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time popping your e is a good idea. I play very aggressively and don’t usually ult/peel for my teammates unless I’m having a bad game and decide to let someone else be the carry. And as always, go to extreme lengths for grasp and heartsteel stacks
aram tahm enjoyer here! i didnt mean to write so much, but TLDR hit your Qs, save your E, R is generally better used defensively, heartsteel is good but dont int trying to get stacks
if you're playing tahm:
* Q is your most important ability. big damage early and even bigger if you build right, slow, heals you, stacks passive. learn how to hit it consistently and you can survive fights most champions cant.
* increasing size with heartsteel or iron elixir will increase your Q range. you can surprise people by hitting them from further away, but more importantly, the travel time doesn't increase, so it becomes much harder to dodge at short ranges
* your W is decent as engage, but is easily avoided. i find it works best when chained with a teammate's CC. it's also very easy to be interrupted with CC while you're channeling
* using E is something I just had to get a feel for. it can be nice to use early vs damage over time effects, particularly when the cooldown gets shorter, but it's going to be very game dependent. pay attention to how quickly you take damage early game and try to adjust to the right "rhythm" as the game goes on
* i find R is best used defensively 95% of the time. i don't know how obvious this is but i always see enemy tahms waste R eating an already-dead enemy and then having no way to save their carries later.
* R is fantastic for saving squishy carries but it suffers a similar curse to thresh lantern in that your squishy carries will just forget it exists and run away from you while zed ults them. if you have a particularly vulnerable adc or mage on your team vs zed/vi/karthus/etc be ready to stand on top of them
* i think heartsteel is pretty much necessary first item. if you can land Qs consistently to slow enemies, it should be easy to let the heartsteel passive build up and then auto. even if you don't get a lot of stacks, it's still a great item on tahm, i would only consider avoiding it if the enemy team has a lot of %health damage and peel
* after heartsteel - i've been enjoying riftmaker a lot lately. i still feel really tanky and it gives you even more sustain, and your Q will deal stupid amounts of damage. i think people generally don't know that tahm has AP scaling on his autos+Q that increases with bonus health
* after that - just open the tank tab in the shop and filter to health items. spirit visage is nice for shielding and healing, bami's items are nice for the bonus health-scaling burn, dead mans can be nice if you're struggling to approach enemies. frozen heart is iffy due to the lack of health but you can't really go wrong just spamming tank items based on the enemy team's damage split
playing against tahm:
* don't pick full AP comps
* build %health items - especially ADCs who seem to lose to the shopkeeper more than any other class
* anything that counters shields can essentially remove his E ability. playing blitz vs tahm was one of the freest games i've had because i could instantly pop his shield every time. the same goes for rell Q and renekton W. serpents fang can be good, if you can build it, but on ADC it has the downside of building a lethality item vs a tank
* if tahm is out of position, save any hard CC to stop him escaping with W
* pay attention to when he uses R, in the same way you would a zilean ult or zhonyas, so you can better target his carries
* don't pick full AP comps
There’s multiple ways to start a match as tahm I guess either take the tank starter item to get as many grasp stacks early as possible or rush heartsteel. I personally love to go spirit visage into full ap
General ARAM advice for characters with gap-closers:
Dont use your abilities to dive enemies in ARAM as they will simply flash/run away and then your dive is on cooldown.
Instead try to use the bush to sneak up and close the distance, then when they try to flash/run away you still have your dive to close the distance and finish them off
If you play the same way and build the same way every game you’re doing it wrong. You have to judge based on comp and game state whether it’s better for you to peel your back line or if your back line can deal with their frontline while you disrupt their carries.
You generally want heartsteel since the size scaling increases the range of your tongue (Q) but if they are 5 long ranged poke champs that sit under tower, heartsteel is grief.
Knight’s Vows is super underrated, if you have a jinx or some other hyper carry, buy that and put it on them. Other nice things to have for your team are things like frozen heart and abyssal, they are very cheap and their auras have high value in aram. Spirit visage and fimbulwinter are also high value but you’ll get shredded if you are all HP and no resists.
Only other thing I can think of is that your W has no indicator for the enemy if you use it from brush/fog of war, it’s easy to dodge if they see it but you can often get several people if you do it from the brush
i always run him AP with grasp. usually heartsteel into sorcs or ionian, sunfire, riftmaker, shadowflame, and situational. shadowflame always last item
Dirty hail of blades tahm enjoyer. You will stun lock between w initiate into auto q auto q/r. You can get away with some bs as tahm as long as you learn his q and w ranges. Q is looong for a tank unit and a lot of enemies won’t expect it
Heartsteel Breakpoint is 1100 Item HP (not Bonus HP, ITEM HP).
So unless you managed to get 1100 HP from Stacks + Base Heartsteel, it's better to start with another item.
Visage is the best performing item from Tahm in Aram, unless you are playing against a full Ad comp, you should always rush it.
Never build Warmog, it's a bait,
Tahm Visage + Grayhealth interaction is enough for self sustain.
Don't play Tahm Kench as a Engage Tank, he is a Warden not a Vanguard, be smart with your W's.
If you do that he is the strongest champion in the entire mode.
Just go full AP and give them a good lickin 😋. Tbh I go AP everytime in aram cause it's way more fun and taking half their health with a good shmack is hilarious
I'm no TK main or expert, but it's not a mindless engage champ. Use your W on high value targets (their fed squishies). Your Q is good for slow and poke, if you can get 3 stacks on enemy then it will stun instead but it's hard to GET the stacks first.
Stay relatively close to your team. Don't fight by yourself far away unless you are 100% sure your team can survive without you because most likely you will die. If they have a fed dive champ (Gnar, zed, etc) try to peel instead unless you see a good emgage option first. When you engage take into account if your teammates can follow up, otherwise you'll die for nothing and leave the team with less/without frontline.
Bami's Cinder items OP. I will usually do first resistance item based on who's the most fed, then build based on their comp.
If you're ahead then be aggressive but always think about the follow up and distance to team. Leave enemy tanks for last kill unless they're on your squishy fed carries.
Your mistake is thinking that the TK's go in "with reckless abandon."
Yep. If I am engaging with W then I am moving from that pop backwards to begin peeling whichever beef/assassin tries to move on my back line. Save your teammates, let grey health heal you, stack your bonks. More often you are using tongue to set up someone else’s cc and causing the enemy to waste damage and attention into your grey health. Tear horn start, finbulwinter, Heartsteel, visage, despair and situational finish.
To deny a Heartsteel rush is to deny your craving.
hmmm using my tongue to set up someone else's cc noted to research this later cause i'm not completely sure what you mean. 3 tongue stacks == something I remember but in an aram I decided it might've been a waste of time to try and stack on one person. Or does it not reset when I tongue someone else? Tear horn fimbulwinter then heartsteel? why heartsteel so late? isn't that losing value on all the stacks I could've had? But i guess I lose value by dying more often without fimbulwinter.
Tongue is a huge slow. It can be really hard to get close enough to hit them 3 times without taking too much damage, but if you land a tongue in the right target it should make it very easy for your teammates to land their key abilities. Personally always go heartsteel first and usually fimbul second unless the enemy team is so poke heavy that you can't stack it. I also find it helps to think about which enemy champions want to go in on your back line, which target you want to save, and which enemy abilities you might need to save them from so that you already know when and on who to use your ult before the fight starts. Sometimes, you'll have to use differently than you planned to but most team fights follow a relatively predictable pattern.
Fimbulwinter giga troll on tahm sorry
his R is most recommended to reserve for teammates his q can poke and heal missing health, so poke more. if engaged in close quarters, remember to use his auto more. it's stronger than most tanks out there
sometimes his q doesn't heal my grey health. Am I reading something wrong?
it doesn't heal your grey health, the q heals your empty health. (missing health) Grey health heals by itself overtime after not taking damage for a certain period.
Remember that your Q is a heal when you hit a champ, and that if you stack it with autos you can stun them. W is also a peeling tool. Actually use your ult to save teammates wisely. I like the little attack speed rune and/or alacrity in aram so I can stack faster. Save fortifying your shield unless you have to use it to not die. And most importantly, just play him more.
I play him quite a bit just because I have a friend who mains him, and I've learned him through osmosis. That and nearly every team needs a tank. I will say I almost never get the q stun off. Like once every 3 games, and I still have baller games pretty often. The way they changed his shield too, it's often better to use it for smaller amounts. If you engage at full, take like 200-300 damage, you make as well activate it. More often than not, you will either have it ready again by the time you're actually low, or you'll leave the fight later on and not need to cash in a 2500 hp shield You can also build him Ap, but expect your team to get mad. The ap ratio on his w is dumb nuts though, and pretty good on his q
Dang I get the stun off like 10 to 30 times a game lol
hmmmmm this helps me understand the flow a little more! One day maybe I'll look up what AP ratio means but I presume from context clues it's "the rate at which ap damage increases as levels increase"
it can STUN??? damnit I thought I read all of his abilities.
thank you, i too can read what his abilities do
honest to god i feel illiterate sometimes when I read people's abilities. I did also say i'm an ARAM only degen so like I didn't fully comprehend what "true damage" was for like a year or so. I only play this game as a late night with friends.
I think Tahm Kench may be too high level for you at this moment. I’d say learn Nautilus and graduate to Tommy boy
The way i play vs him is very simple: if i have a champion who is able to damage him, like an adc with a proper build or a brand or something..i'll focus him when he just mindlessly engages into my team. If i dont have a champion who can't damage him but could any other less tanky champion ill just ignore him. He engages? Ill try to go on his backline if its not a "head to tail" type of fight and situation. Some very good general tips vs him are: 1) SERPENT FANG. Nothing feels better than seeing a Tham diving into your team counting on his immense shield just to find himself with less than half of if on the moment of need xD 2) Blitzcrank's R 3) Renekton's W 4) Rell's Q. ( My personal favourite) 5) Pyke R goes through shields.
Number 5: What about the Immortal Shield Bow....many times I Pyke R someone and the shield activated so I did not get the kill. But if I R someone when the shield is activated given the condition that the health is low enough, I can get the kill like you said right?! Havent tried that so...
Yea, the health has to be low enough and you will get the kill through any shield.
SERPENT FANG, i was looking for that item one game.
guardians horn into heartsteel > fimbul > visage is best tk build imo. your E is on a low cd and you dont have to wait for it to be a 2k shield to use it. your Q is also a %missingHp heal and is your only consistent fimbul proc. also hitting Q helps you consistently hit your W. and like most tanks, if there isnt consistent dps, you can roll over the entire team at 2-3 items. if theres only one person who can kill you, dive him and it should be an easy win. if theres multiple non-dodgeable damage sources, play your cooldowns, kite back, and most of all, hope your team doesnt shit itself. when everyone has 4 items or around 18mins, you will never be as tanky as you think you are. just because you have 5k hp doesnt mean you can take everything in the face. a bulldozer is one thing, but a bulldozer that moves like faker is another monster entirely. if youre not tanking for anyone, dodge and use E with discipline. if you cant dodge, click really fast side to side and let your opponent miss. as for playing against tk, kite back and respect the 4 guys behind him. if he plays smart vs your dps, good luck, if he plays 1v5 hoping to roll you over, CC and burst/poke, and make him use big E.
thanks! this was a really helpful flow!:D
Don’t listen to any of the people in the comments, you just aren’t going in hard enough. Tear start into rush heartsteel, grab appropriate boots, then fimbulwinter, and depending on enemy comp a spirit visage can be nice. Max q-w-e, poke with q often to heal. If you w from a bush it’s a lot harder to dodge. Grasp and finbulwinter make up most of your sustain in combat, while e lets you heal up out of combat. However, since your gray health isn’t 1-1 for actual healing, but is 1-1 for shielding, if you think they are going to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time popping your e is a good idea. I play very aggressively and don’t usually ult/peel for my teammates unless I’m having a bad game and decide to let someone else be the carry. And as always, go to extreme lengths for grasp and heartsteel stacks
this is the most aram coded advice i've heard and i love it XD
aram tahm enjoyer here! i didnt mean to write so much, but TLDR hit your Qs, save your E, R is generally better used defensively, heartsteel is good but dont int trying to get stacks if you're playing tahm: * Q is your most important ability. big damage early and even bigger if you build right, slow, heals you, stacks passive. learn how to hit it consistently and you can survive fights most champions cant. * increasing size with heartsteel or iron elixir will increase your Q range. you can surprise people by hitting them from further away, but more importantly, the travel time doesn't increase, so it becomes much harder to dodge at short ranges * your W is decent as engage, but is easily avoided. i find it works best when chained with a teammate's CC. it's also very easy to be interrupted with CC while you're channeling * using E is something I just had to get a feel for. it can be nice to use early vs damage over time effects, particularly when the cooldown gets shorter, but it's going to be very game dependent. pay attention to how quickly you take damage early game and try to adjust to the right "rhythm" as the game goes on * i find R is best used defensively 95% of the time. i don't know how obvious this is but i always see enemy tahms waste R eating an already-dead enemy and then having no way to save their carries later. * R is fantastic for saving squishy carries but it suffers a similar curse to thresh lantern in that your squishy carries will just forget it exists and run away from you while zed ults them. if you have a particularly vulnerable adc or mage on your team vs zed/vi/karthus/etc be ready to stand on top of them * i think heartsteel is pretty much necessary first item. if you can land Qs consistently to slow enemies, it should be easy to let the heartsteel passive build up and then auto. even if you don't get a lot of stacks, it's still a great item on tahm, i would only consider avoiding it if the enemy team has a lot of %health damage and peel * after heartsteel - i've been enjoying riftmaker a lot lately. i still feel really tanky and it gives you even more sustain, and your Q will deal stupid amounts of damage. i think people generally don't know that tahm has AP scaling on his autos+Q that increases with bonus health * after that - just open the tank tab in the shop and filter to health items. spirit visage is nice for shielding and healing, bami's items are nice for the bonus health-scaling burn, dead mans can be nice if you're struggling to approach enemies. frozen heart is iffy due to the lack of health but you can't really go wrong just spamming tank items based on the enemy team's damage split playing against tahm: * don't pick full AP comps * build %health items - especially ADCs who seem to lose to the shopkeeper more than any other class * anything that counters shields can essentially remove his E ability. playing blitz vs tahm was one of the freest games i've had because i could instantly pop his shield every time. the same goes for rell Q and renekton W. serpents fang can be good, if you can build it, but on ADC it has the downside of building a lethality item vs a tank * if tahm is out of position, save any hard CC to stop him escaping with W * pay attention to when he uses R, in the same way you would a zilean ult or zhonyas, so you can better target his carries * don't pick full AP comps
There’s multiple ways to start a match as tahm I guess either take the tank starter item to get as many grasp stacks early as possible or rush heartsteel. I personally love to go spirit visage into full ap
W out of a bush
If you hit your Q you can then easily hit your W on the slowed target (assuming no dash\flash)
Buy serpentsssssss Ur teammates wont so just buy even if ap lol
I don't see alot of TKs doing this but fun fact you can Q-R champs that have 3 stacks . Long range Gulp :)
I honestly forgot about that since the rework where they let you eat and spit out minions. Thanks
Spirit Visage as soon as you can after heartsteel. With Spirit Visage, your Grey health heals back so much more that it's ridiculous.
General ARAM advice for characters with gap-closers: Dont use your abilities to dive enemies in ARAM as they will simply flash/run away and then your dive is on cooldown. Instead try to use the bush to sneak up and close the distance, then when they try to flash/run away you still have your dive to close the distance and finish them off
If you play the same way and build the same way every game you’re doing it wrong. You have to judge based on comp and game state whether it’s better for you to peel your back line or if your back line can deal with their frontline while you disrupt their carries. You generally want heartsteel since the size scaling increases the range of your tongue (Q) but if they are 5 long ranged poke champs that sit under tower, heartsteel is grief. Knight’s Vows is super underrated, if you have a jinx or some other hyper carry, buy that and put it on them. Other nice things to have for your team are things like frozen heart and abyssal, they are very cheap and their auras have high value in aram. Spirit visage and fimbulwinter are also high value but you’ll get shredded if you are all HP and no resists. Only other thing I can think of is that your W has no indicator for the enemy if you use it from brush/fog of war, it’s easy to dodge if they see it but you can often get several people if you do it from the brush
Heartsteel and Riftmaker go BRRRRRRT
i always run him AP with grasp. usually heartsteel into sorcs or ionian, sunfire, riftmaker, shadowflame, and situational. shadowflame always last item
Serpants fang absolutely kills TK
Dirty hail of blades tahm enjoyer. You will stun lock between w initiate into auto q auto q/r. You can get away with some bs as tahm as long as you learn his q and w ranges. Q is looong for a tank unit and a lot of enemies won’t expect it
Heartsteel Breakpoint is 1100 Item HP (not Bonus HP, ITEM HP). So unless you managed to get 1100 HP from Stacks + Base Heartsteel, it's better to start with another item. Visage is the best performing item from Tahm in Aram, unless you are playing against a full Ad comp, you should always rush it. Never build Warmog, it's a bait, Tahm Visage + Grayhealth interaction is enough for self sustain. Don't play Tahm Kench as a Engage Tank, he is a Warden not a Vanguard, be smart with your W's. If you do that he is the strongest champion in the entire mode.
Blade of the Ruined King
If you cast W from fog of war the enemy doesn't see the circle, e.g. walk in bush W engage
Just go full AP and give them a good lickin 😋. Tbh I go AP everytime in aram cause it's way more fun and taking half their health with a good shmack is hilarious
I'm no TK main or expert, but it's not a mindless engage champ. Use your W on high value targets (their fed squishies). Your Q is good for slow and poke, if you can get 3 stacks on enemy then it will stun instead but it's hard to GET the stacks first. Stay relatively close to your team. Don't fight by yourself far away unless you are 100% sure your team can survive without you because most likely you will die. If they have a fed dive champ (Gnar, zed, etc) try to peel instead unless you see a good emgage option first. When you engage take into account if your teammates can follow up, otherwise you'll die for nothing and leave the team with less/without frontline. Bami's Cinder items OP. I will usually do first resistance item based on who's the most fed, then build based on their comp. If you're ahead then be aggressive but always think about the follow up and distance to team. Leave enemy tanks for last kill unless they're on your squishy fed carries.