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Taric is a wonderful support character. At first glance, he may seem like a tank, and he can pull it off reasonably well, but tanking is not his forte.

Passive: Gemcraft- Every melee hit gives you 7% of the damage back in mana.

Q: Imbue- heals you and your target, does double if you target yourself. Scales ~.9 with AP.

W: Shatter- Gives you a +armor aura and an active to sacrifice the aura for large AoE damage and armor pen against targets. Scales ~.7 with AP.

E: Dazzle- Does damage and stuns based on range (farther away = more stun less damage) Scales 1:1 with AP.

R: Radiance- Constantly drains mana in return for a huge AD boost to all allies and huge regen for you (think Mundo ult level). Scales ~.3 with AP.


His two best sets are aurabitch Taric (which won't be covered yet) and AP/healer Taric. The latter is my personal favorite, so I'll start the guide with him.

At a Glance

Skills:
1: Q or E
2: W
3: The other of lvl 1.
4: W or Q
5: W
6: R
7: whichever you didn't get at 4.
8: W
9: W
10: Q
11: R
12: Q
13: Q
14: E
15: E
16: R
17: E
18: E

Items:
Mekai's Pendant
Chalice of Harmony
Mercury's Treads (or Ninja Tabi)
Catalyst
Rod of Ages
Stinger
Nashor's Tooth
Zhonya's Ring/Archangel's Staff/Rod of Ages


Opening: Always buy Mekai pendant first. Taric absolutely requires Chalice of Harmony on every build other than aurabitch. I usually don't spend the extra yet, in favor of having great returns on my first trip back, but you can grab a HP pot if you like. For your first skill, choose E if you have a high damage hero like Yi (with Wuju) and want an early gank, otherwise choose W. Get Q at level 2 regardless. At this point, you should be able to keep yourself and your lane mate at near full health constantly. Keep auto attacking (ideally let your lanemate last hit off of you) to keep your mana up whenever possible. At level 3, get whichever you did not get at level 1. Now until the midgame, whenever one of your opponents gets in range of E, stun him then shatter him. This "Shatterbombing" chips away at the HP of your enemies, allowing you to set up ganks and push easier. At 4, choose between W and Q depending on if you're pushing or getting pushed back respectively. From then on, finish W, finish Q, then finish E getting R whenever possible.

Midgame: Due to your excellent healing and mana regen (while attacking) you shouldn't have to go back until 6-7, at which time you should finish chalice and grab Merc treads (unless they have overwhelming numbers of physical damage (Think Yi + TF + Trist) in which case grab Tabi. Once you get Chalice, you can constantly spam your spells because combined with your passive, you shouldn't run OOM unless you're channeling your ult for extended periods. You should then begin organizing tower pushes centered around your ult. Once you hit ~11, you should be tanking the towers even if you have another tank on the team, due to your ult + self heal being able to keep you up easily. Use Shatter to push back large creep waves, Dazzle to punish over-aggressive heroes and cancel channels (like Kat's ult), and Imbue to top off all your teammates during a push. Your job is not to get stacked, but to keep everyone healed, kill towers, and hold enemies at bay. Grab Catalyst/RoA as soon as possible (I usually finish it around lvl 13) to get some much needed HP and AP.

Late game: Late game you should stay with your team, keep everyone healed and Ult during every team battle and tower push. Late game items are usually Nashor's Tooth (CDR and AS help heal quite a bit) and Zhonya's Ring/Archangels. I've also been experimenting with stacking 2 RoAs and a Nashor's to some success.