@@vida2559 That doesn't change the fact that you aren't seeing the strategy repeated on other levels of play despite the player being popular specifically for his Taric.
Taric is very fun to play when you're with friends, but atrocious when paired with randoms. There's nothing more frustrating than setting up a good stun or amazing ult then your teammates get out of position or run away, wasting both.
Agreed, the most fun I ever had with Taric was with my old group of friends, both when we were doing cheese strats or just regular play, cause we'd coordinate to at least some degree. But with randoms, it's basically russian roulette with your sanity.
Unsaid problem with Taric is people not fighting along side you. The amount of times I have flash, stunned, ult only to watch my team farm the wave while I die. Taric tanks, heals, and damages. Help him help you.
I had to quit playing support because of stuff like that. No matter how good you are you're ultimately relying on your team to engage with you until you get fed.
@@VergiliosSpatulas Yeah, when I go 10/3 as Morgana on average but have games where I can't get kills until roaming it's definitely not because the adc is scared to fight.
With winter's approach and presence of mind that's not a big problem. Even tear alone makes my life much easier. And the tear stacks from spells affecting allies so it gets fully stacked really quickly.
Having played a lot of taric, the main problem with his current iteration (aside from the fact you don't want to play him with a random adc) is that he's too good in his good situations, and too bad in his bad ones. If you get kited or bursted or go against too much ap then he does barely anything, but if you don't get kited and don't get oneshot you can actually win 2v3s and 2v4s botlane easily if you sequence his abilities properly. Also as a side not it's really funny that with the right rune page (lethal tempo and alacrity) at 2.5 items you can stunlock people.
The biggest problem with Taric is you can't use his R. Even when you press R at the moment you see enemies engage, high chance your adc will die before R land. Use it too early, enemies will fall back and you waste your R.
@@sonnguyen-iv7gv it’s more useful in all in situations like a drag or baron steal, or anticipating a gank you can mitigate quite a bit of dmg but at the least it’s a good scare tactic
@@sonnguyen-iv7gvthis simply isn't tru. combine E and R to make sure it's useful, fight around objectives to ult most of if not ur entire team, and even if u use it early u can prevent the enemy engaging further while u focus a high value target. get creative
Taric's original form was absolutely not helped by how supports worked back then. Back before there were dedicated items to give supports gold, a good 75% of the support's budget was wards, no minion gold, just whatever passive gold and assist bounties you could wring out over the game: you had to rely almost entirely on the value gained by gaining levels to keep your relevance in the mid-late game. Taric, being one of the most item-dependent supports at the time, really did suffer from that.
I’m not sure what game of league uou were playing. Taric was a super good support way back when with original support items. He was so strong due to his point and click stun. That didn’t need items or levels to be strong. Never super popular but the items and gold distribution was not the issue
@@isaakward4393 The problem was that for Taric to be anything more than a stun/aura bot he needed to get up in melee, and he just didn't have the items to be durable enough to do that 90% of the time. Trying to do anything proactive with him was a pretty quick ticket back to the fountain most of the time because he just wasn't durable enough to take advantage of his passive.
@@kevingriffith6011 no support other than Ali or Leona were tanks when supports did not have gold income. My point being taric was in the same boat as other support when gold income was so low for them. His real issue is other tanks did his job just as well or better: IE blitz Ali and Leo.
@@isaakward4393 He ain't wrong. Old Taric with today's support items would actually be really fun to play. Less Mana struggles, his damage being more useful and he can scale into a team fight monster with locket and redemption. He could also be played as an AP top with arcane comet and his old point and click stun. Unhealthy gameplay for sure, but GP gets to do the same so I don't see why it shouldn't be okay.
Yeah, Taric, I think, fills a similar niche to Braum where he is incredibly good into melee brawl comps or strong enablers such as Nilah and Kindred. ( the infamous Kindred R into Taric R is still one of the strongest interactions in the game. All downsides of your ult disappear after all. ) But I think Taric is a counter pick by accident whereas Braum fully leans into it.
as a taric main i have two main issues with him rn: first, the removal of iceborn gauntlet (as the item that gave mana, cdr and the sheen passive), now you need 3 items before you can do anything while before you could just rush iceborn and have enough mana and armor to be of utility for your team. now you need to go for fimblewinter but that's going to be your second item and it just gives you mana and health, no armor nor damage, plus neither tank nor supp mythics give mana anymore. second would be the heal ammount of his q, his q is often more used to weave his aa and lower his cdrs rather than as an actual heal, i usually level up q twice at lvls 3 and 4 so i get a little more health (plus it's overall better) but still the heal isn't good and it consumes too much mana. maybe give him another effect on his heal (a la millio) or reduce the mana cost (or rever the q to 3 charges as it was back then)
I feel like the new Athene's mythic will help you mitigate a lot of that. Now, as a support, you can have more than double mana regen, amped healing and damage while skirmishing, as well as some ap and HP if I remember correctly. Not sure if that will bring Taric to the meta, but I feel like you'll finally have a viable option for him.
You are playing him wrong if you think his Q isn't good. It is the best heal in the game by a lot. You should have 4 points in it by level 12 or 10 if you want to be more efficient with level ups by going 4 E and then 4Q to avoid sitting on 3Q for 2 levels. The 4 point Q heals 2 people for 200 +120% AP + 8% HP. Compare that to Soraka W at rank 5 which is 170 +50% AP. There is also the fact that in team fights you are often healing 3 people with Q for 300 +180% AP +12% HP. I have plenty of games with more healing on Taric than someone else has on Soraka in the same game. Get into a situation where you win a team fight and 3 allies are all at 200 health. What do you normally do? Get one turret or simply reset. What do you do with a Taric? Go take baron and the entire team walks away with full health.
@@apg5216 true. But You need perma bluebuff. His Q is the Best buff/minirework he got since his nerfs. But i think his passive should change to give him extra attack Range on those 2 attacked. You know how hard it si to follow enemies sometimes. He needs an outright minirework for his W when there is no Ally nearby SO his abilities are more impactful. Taric top Main here.
@@integralinsanity1641 Rod of ages with presence of mind is infinite Mana and ghost + boots of swiftness with unflinching and tenacity fixes the kiting problem.
If they have to make him the aspect of the defender, the shield of valoran, what have you, they have to make it an anti carry. He's already pushed in the anti carry way : he is strong when he has to respond to enemy attack.
Aye, and I feel like that's where Vars missed the point. It's not always about having engage, but being able to disengage too. That's what defending is all about, and that's what players with aggressive playstyles often forget.
honestly taric has always been the supports support. he works exceptionaly well with engage supports as an early game follow up enhancer and a late game dive buddy. so praise be taric leona bot the lane that has way to much kill potental at level 2.
I think Taric's rework was great since it gave him a great place as a Jungle pick. I think on support unless you have Kalista, Nilah or Samira he's subpar. In jungle he wins duels into most ad champs and handle most ap champs early.
Old taric was a fine jungler you just wanted an ad opponent so you could go counter jungler 1v1 because taric armor was beautifully insane. I once 3v1d a darius, riven, and zed with old jg taric with just an iceborn guantlet and chain shirt.
Taric really just needs to have a feature that makes it when not tethered he gets something more like his old kit. He was much more of a fighter with support effects than a full support. Imo id genuinely make him a juggernaut warden support. Basically he drops some of his super survival to keep someone else alive. Switch the q and passive, q is now empowered auto that scales off armor and gives 2 hits while reducing cooldowns, spell and auto hit sets off a little burst of healing something like that. Make w cast on self do aoe dmg and shield. E is good. Ult rework entirely, id say make it super tanky stats for everyone not invulnerable, this also increases his meaning it doubles as a dmg boosts since he has armor dmg scaling. If ksante can be a murder tank so can taric. This post brought to you by a 8 season taric jg main.
I think what could make him a little more relevant... keep his ult cd long but lower the activation delay... should be 1.5 or 1.75s rank 3 but they also made him too reliant, its either jungle or supp... and he fits jungle better because he needs gear, he cant live on gimp supp gold
I feel like you've missed the point by comparing him to hard engage supports. Taric is meant to COUNTER those champions. He is counter engage, not engage.
I also think that Taric is so bad right now because Riot is quite honestly scared to buff him too much. I remember a while after his rework him being an insanely good support, sadly his strengths need a lot of coordination by the team (namely E and Ult) making the difference between pro and soloque too big to properly balance.
I think in Jungle he works as a supportive jungler akin to Ivern. Where his goal is to provide for his team. Being able to casually heal up your midlaner between trades is crazy value especially when most champs invading you will lose.
I love taric jungle, and im tired of pretending its a weird oick. Its so good, you can 1v1 quite a few early junglers if they under estimate you, but shine in late game team fights with your team
havent watched the whole video yet but tarics problrm imo is that he only gets a high play rate when there is a strategy where u can abuse his ult like in the yi taric bot or a kindred taric bot
or the dreaded jungle taric when sunfire was still mythic. get that and winter's approach and you can basically never die until your blue hp bar is depleted
i remember playing ad tank Taric back in the days lmfao he was an absolute beast with the health regen ult, ad buff and point and click stun damn, this was a nostalgic one for me
taric since the rework has always wanted a partner with gap closers yet he was always sent to bot with slow adcs, so he searched for the top or jg tp be the actual melee engager he needed. also, another interesting point you didn't touch is how he could fare in top before and after the rework (i used him a lot, rushing gauntlet or thorn mail before and rushing titanic or bramble after) and how there was this time he actually became unironicalu solid in jungle even if it was just one single challenger who played him there, great ganks with w e, the w q to heal your mid while you farm raptors, not being the selected babysitter for you adc so the actual support could pick something with more bite
3 things, because Taric is clearly a strong champion. 1.) Taric is so slow and immobile he has almost no autonomy he can't harass much, roam or push the game state outside of a fight. 2.) His best lane partners are also unpopular as f and volatile in solo queue.. (Draven, Kalista, Nilah etc) 3.) He's very lackluster both with and against the more popular casty / high range ADC's (Caitlyn, Jihn, Kaisa, Ezreal) 4.) His Kit is self countering. His Q requires stumpy auto attack range yet they expect you to be near allies, meanwhile is E encourages you to separate, his R has wayyy to long of a cooldown which leaves his W as the only consistent pressure. Really he would have some autonomy if they would just give him some mobility or perhaps a speed boost if he lands E or Shields with W. Or perhaps a slow with passive. He just has too many traits that are nearly irrelevant without mobility. I would even say they can turn E into a harsh slow that grants mobility to him and an imbued ally and it'd make him more relevant.
I believe there is a general gimmick Players in League do not like, regardless of how Riot tried several times to implement it. That is this tethering or "ally reliant" mechanic, where a Champion's effectiveness relies on an ally's performance too literally. This can be Taric's tethering, Rell is a new support tank who famously flopped and she too has that tether thus losing a stun entirely if without an ally, Braum to some extent he has to leap to allies and relies on them to activate his ice stun, much like Sejuani as well who wants melee champions to help activate her stun. Kalista's ult is famously frustrating for those outside of Pro-play, basically a champion with only 2 abilities if without a teammate. I believe regardless if they want Taric to be enchanter, or tank, they have to allow him to be more independent. No one likes the feeling they can't master their own champion as it relies on another's performance. Its okay to "throw" help onto allies, like enchanters can click on an ally to help with healing, or shielding, whatever. But as you can imagine it doesn't require the Ally to do anything specific that can hinder your own gameplay as that enchanter. Even Rakan, he can dash to and jump off of allies, and he is pretty popular. But even that tiny tiny reliance, ask any Rakan main they will tell you how they hate teammates leaving them to die because they wouldn't step just one step closer to allow the Rakan to dash to safety. Long story short, just like how Rell is getting a mid-scope rework, so too I think Taric can work as an enchanter & tank combo, but they have to move his abilities around let him be more independent.
i love the current taric he is a lot of fun to play, but to say i dont miss the old one would bring shame on me considering i almost one tricked his old version. i had many great times with him and when the rework came out it was bittersweet. on one hand taric got the quality of life adjustments he needed on the other hand it really changed him in a lot of subtle ways. i dont play him as much nowadays but whenever i do i always have a ton of fun both with the current version and by remembering the fun i had with old taric
Good video! I'm a little confused though about what you were saying about old Taric not being used as a support? When he primarily was. And back in the day people would flame me for taking him top against AD bruisers lol. And Nautilus was a jungler in the years of old Taric, players would be flamed for picking Naut as a support back then. Other than that confusion, quality content as usual 👍
I remember going fun build taric in top or mid lane, those were the good old days. While maybe it wasn't 100% optimal, just having that as a viable option was so much fun back then. I kind of miss the less optimal more crazy and creative league back then.
Take this top lane. lethal tempo, start tear -> gauntlet -> manamune -> buy support starting item at 20 min -> Spirt visage -> support item becomes legendary. level 2 combo is E AA AA Q AA AA Q AA AA E.
@@errettfitchett2463 I don't play league anymore but thank you ^^ (I also did try a build like that back a few years ago but it just isn't the same anymore with all the mobility and new mechanics).
I do believe his identity rn fits better as a defensive brawller support, he doesnt really want to engage but its fairly good fighting out when engaged. His only problem there may be the ultimate, I understand that it may be so iconic that they may not want to take it away but problably a better idea may be to give like a 15 to 20% damage reduction onhimself and the person he cast it right at the start, and when it finishes casting it could give like a 1.5s cc inmune while having the dmg reduction either at 25 or 30%, I dont want to say 50% cause with a diver it may be nasty, the only other option i can think of its to share the dmg, on the ult. but it may feel awful on the taric side.
I actually like that it's more skill expressive. Too many champs recently were made to be too easy for too big of a reward, which us is a terrible way to make champs. Taric rework is a product of an era where they had the right mindset - harder to pull off = more rewarding
taric's ult should remain unchanged, it's a tf changing ult if you learn how to time it correctly, it rewards you for using it right. his problem lies in itemization and his q being too bad during early
They could give some utility to make him more usuable in difficult situation. For example, if he consumes 3 Charges of Q at once to heal, all allies healed by him gain bonus Movement speed (the ally bound by W can gain more MS than the unbound ones). Reduce the delay and effect of his R to 2s, but now Taric and his W bound ally gain dmg reduction when the effect is coming.
Honestly I think they really need to change his ult, so much of his power is concentrated into it that they need to take that from the rest of his kit. I'd love to see his heal improved for instance so you could play him as a true heal support, take away some of the downsides of his stacking so you can only ever charge 2 stacks back up from his other abilities but let him charge stacks on ordinary attacks (on champions) perhaps.
As a taric main since i started playing back when spirit guard was the log in, I really miss his old look and feel. The main reason why I played him was cause he was the paladin/ battle cleric I wanted, but then his rework came out and they took all the armor away and forced him to pretty much build one way in one role. It really cracks that ol ruby heart of mine.
I personally feel they just put too much power in his ultimate. His other mechanics are interesting, but his ultimate clearly takes up his entire power budget. It’s the point that he’s basically just a cheese pick at this point for boosting or used for highly specific niche combos for very particular comps. That’s not necessarily bad for the latter. But I think for a champion to be more popular they have to be more consistent. If you are balanced around ult, that ult should feel reliable. Taric has a super op ult, that takes up his power, but you can still use it badly very easily. More importantly than all of that though, his ultimates power depends on your team to utilize it well. People can be dumb and not get in it, run away, or overcommit and go in too early before it goes off. There’s so many variables with his ult that it just doesn’t work. And they can’t really change it either. An AOE invulnerability like you said solo wins team fights if it’s utilized well. You say it a lot in your why everyone plays or why no one plays videos, people value consistency, and Taric is anything but solely because of his ultimate.
Used to play a ton of pre-rework and post-rework Taric. Pre-rework he actually did great as a tank and needed updates in Gold income and Dazzle did not need to be a point-click but a skill shot. Post-rework Taric NEEDS a teammate whose working with him the whole time to make any of his abilities worth it. On top of that his heal now requires him to constantly fight to be worth it but if he's in a fight he runs out of mana instantly. Then they got rid of Iceborn gauntlet which was perfect for him. Now he's just joined at the hip and is too good in a long fight if he has mana and too bad in any other scenario unless you get lucky
the one missing for me is my personal favorite mage back in the days - Xearth. If i say I LOVED him , it will be an understatement. i really miss the old one ..
All of old Taric's abilities did damage somewhat except his Q, the rework reversed that and now only his E can be used for direct combat and that is what killed him for me. I loved the old Taric because he was like a hybrid between melee fighter, support and caster and nowadays his kit devolved to spamming Q and auto attacks which completely changed the flow of his gameplay.
There's something side-splitting funny when you drop his ult in ARAM and try to picture their faces while they try to right-click properly among that ocean of particle effects.
The thing with pre rework taric was that he had a point and click stun, so even if a Yi or whatever got super fed, you could always stop him. After he lost that I tried to play him, but it just wasn't the same.
Yes gworl!!!! He’s my second main, right after Sona! The best answer to engage teams, and hook champs! I find I only struggle with him into heavy damage poke comps and that’s about it to be honest! With a 56% win rate on him as support! For me, the only thing is, I cannot first pick him! He can get countered very easily, and it’s not fun to deal with!
I really enjoy playing taric, is fun playing with a jg friend that has good engage, the main problem early game is that he's extremely mana hungry, so in the early game you are useless, and also, to have good trades you need to be at least lvl 3 to have all your abilities, you rely on buying tear of the godess early because of this. I couldn't play old Taric but he looks fun as hell, i really like the paladin idea in games, it's fun to do damage, but i prefer mixing that with supportive skills that could be buffs or debuffs.
This is what I see from Taric's rework and to the extent with other rework similar to his around that time. Some of Riot's VGU (and to some extent subclass reworks such as mage update) revolved around trying to make modernize the champions (e.g. Warwick, Taric, Sion, Irelia, etc.). This is most commonly done by making them more skill expressive and make them less consistent overall as well as less stat check. For example, old Warwick's ult was a point and click blink but the problem was that it is just that, you have to run into range and click on the champ to suppress them. The reworked Warwick's ult now has a lot more range depending on your movement speed but is no longer point and click and has to be aimed properly otherwise he's in an awkward spot. This is similar to old Taric's e, old Sion's q, and Irelia's e from before a point and click single stun to aoe cc skillshots. In addition Warwick's passive used to heal him all the time regardless of his health but now only starts healing at half health and more when lower like Taric's current q needing to proc off his passive for more health. In other words Riot did succeed in modernizing and fixing the champions' old problems of being stat check champions with little skill expression that point and clicks someone to succeed but that also in turn can make them more problematic in other ways based on the nature of their updated kit (e.g. Irelia and Akali's hypermobility, balancing taric's ult, etc.) as well as being less consistent in their performance.
This video coming our today is hilarious because just an hour ago I was talking to my co worker about reworks and I said Taric is one that I think is more healthy but I found the old version way more fun.
This is a great analysis. Taric is well designed...in a vacuum. He's a really powerful support like you said, arguably as good as it gets in terms of raw utility with that ult...with near perfect play and coordination. Have to consider this one a BIG miss though. Big miss. Sounds like by the time you were deep into league, Taric's role shifted more to a niche top - lane counter pick. Before that though, and to many of us League boomers, Taric occupied a VERY distinct spot within the League of Legends roster. He was THE go to support for new players / those who didn't normally play the role. Of course he had his diehard fans, but Taric was generally the uber simple safe support. While he has some tough matchups in lane, he could generally build more towards mana efficiency early and just peel and sustain in those matchups. Oh and Taric + Graves. The most faceroll duo Q rank climbing combo. Degenerate AF. Point and click stun needed to go for sure, and having two of your skills be multi - purpose "auras" was a bit much. By why take the support Paladin known for his simplicity and turn him into one of the highest skill cap supports in the game, who when played with an uncoordinated team, almost does nothing? New Taric is neat, but feels like he should have just been his own champ. The goals with the Taric rework should have been: -Gut the point and click stun -Maintain approachability -More active playstyle -Transition him into Leagues premier TANKY (but short - ranged) Enchanter Taric has always been an enchanter at heart. I mean ffs he was the games "aurabot" for awhile. We have all of these 200,000,000IQ playmaker supports in modern league, why did what I and many see (along with Soraka) as this games OG supports need to be one of them? Speaking of Soraka, her rework really shines a negative light on Taric's. Raka's rework was an evolution, a modernization that kept the same theme while still feeling like an old classic, to - the - point champion. She does what she always has, but now requires more out of the player and allows for more skill expression. Tarics was closer to a replacement. He's got a ridiculous amount of skill expression, but almost no built in usefulness out of the box. I can't call his rework an absolute failure. Its no Aatrox or Swain (or to a lesser extent Karma because nobody played her) IE: replace something flawed, but unique with something generic that already exists in the game. I would probably put it right behind Akali. Reworks that absolutely improved upon their previous incarnations, but went FAR overboard in upping the difficulty curve and moving away from their dedicated players. If your reworking something simple and degenerate, you want to remove the the degenerate and shift "simple" to "approachable". Old Taric players probably appreciated his simplicity, as I'm sure old Akali players appreciated her simplicity. Those players were COMPLETELY abandoned in the transition. The gold standards for reworks are imo: Fiddlesticks, Warwick, Pantheon and Nunu. These are the same champions, modernized. I consider Sion and Poppy to be big improvements as well but if we're being honest with ourselves, neither of those were reworks. They took those two out back and started from scratch. Fiddlesticks still pops up out of nowhere and scares your entire team to death, and you feel like you're never safe (his new passive really adds to this). Warwick steals life, and hunts low HP enemies, he just does so without being useless for half of the game and has to do more than click on things. Pantheon is still a tough laner who brawls early WITHOUT the point and click spear, and he's not as useless late game, and he can still grand Skyfall at worst possible time, die and throw the game. Nunu still eats minions / monsters, has an ult that's giga powerful but is super easy to mess up, throws snowballs and buffs allies. Again, all of these reworks still feel like the original champion. Yes they are more difficult to learn, especially Fiddle, but the overall "goal" of their kits feels direct while maintaining the same identity they previously had, while making them less degenerate and increasing their room for skill expression. Wow I didn't intend to ramble on. Guess that means it was a great analysis though, because you got the gears in my head spinning!
He has (mostly) not the sustain to survive 2v2 bot lane and at the same time not enought support and utility to provide over other enchanters. What he needs is either a meele matchup in bot (and we don't want Morde to return) or an engage carry, whom are rare and they have better combos of their own. So his best position RN is ironically jungle imho, where he can go through the game without THAT much interaction and later function as a an anti-engage and protection layer for his backline. He still needs gold iE tank items to funcion. And if he didn't need those he would be busted as a jungler. So either nerf his clear speed with a max damage cap against monsters on his passive and buff his utility or shift him towards jungle with more damage against monsters
Unless Taric summons a gem from the sky and he can warp to it to engage hes only going to be a follow up engage support who can hold his own if stuck fighting alone
I think they did a good job on the art and new model. What kills me about new taric is all my abilities scale with different things and I dislike that 😂
Having a point and click stun would probably help a bunch tbh. His new kit is great but getting kited is just so easy with the stun. He requires a lot of teamwork to do good and in a game like this, thats asking for a lot. On comms, he can be amazing at least.
Something worth noting since it didn't come up here: Old Shatter (W) hit like a goddamn truck back before the rework removed it. I could, and did 1v1 anyone else in the game unless they were fed. The base damage was obscene. So yeah, you kinda dropped off a bit after level 9. But thats HALF THE GAME of "If you fight me I will kill you" if you maxed it first. Yeah, like at 9:34 where he double kills folks. His murder potential was obscene. It actually worked really well with his old Ult. Radience giving him a free bloodthirster (essentially) combined with all the armor penetration from Shatter meant you killed people who supports were absolutely not meant to be fighting. When the ult changed for the first time he got even stupider, now having 2 damaging burst abilities. Sure you didn't heal anymore, but you had Q for that, and gaining bonus magic damage mattered sometimes too. Again, you fell off really hard in terms of damage late game so you were just kind of an aura bot at that point.
As a Master Rank Taric Support main, I honestly love where he is at. You just need to learn how he's budgeted early with mana vs enchanted trying to poke, his timing, and the micro spacing at the tip of his E. You can actually punish harder for the enemy walking up to farm than other enchanted. The problem is how committal it is, and most players don't like that risky proposition. Supports with a grab don't count cuz they can do it at a further distance than Taric E and won't get chunked for missing as much. People prefer playing champs with safety, but because of that, they miss out on learning just how powerful Taric can be. You give an ally a Chain Vests (depending on how much Armor stats you have and W upgrades) worth of Armor + Locket and it's passive Armor and Resistance. You will most certainly get your R down if you aren't asleep during lv 6-9. The rest of the stuff is just repeat on the video, but Taric requires patience early and good concept of macroing (roaming when appropriate midgame, knowing to space out ability activation to get the most out of mana dumping with your passive, etc.), and realizing you can indeed initiate plays without having an engager.
They should rework him into an Aura Champion similar to old league of legends support items. Passive can remain the same Q is now larger but can only hold 2 charges, gaining more size with each level. W shield effect should work on everyone E is now longer and larger, longer cast time, and stun duration increases at higher level. (This is mostly to combat tenacity in present day league) No longer synergizes with W R should be the V1 old Taric ult granting everyone rapid regen for a couple of seconds
Taric top is the solution to his current problems. go gauntlet for mythic, manamune for dmg and mana. it's hard to get more gold past that, so you can buy support starting item at 20 min. you can become the 2nd support and use your kit for all sorts of stuff. I tend to get spirit visage as my 3rd and usually final item. At around the end game, the support item will become your 4th legendary. If you take Lethal tempo, you win level 2 against most top laners. the combo is E AA AA Q AA AA Q AA AA E. Have fun yall! With this build, you can play taric and rely on the support to do all those pesky engages Taric struggles with.
You know what's funny, I randomly decided to come back to the game back in 2019 and was kinda cbf learning jungle/top/mid or let alone fucking adc (still my least liked role by a mile), and just kinda went "fill" and became a Taric one trick basically going from silver to plat in under 100 games having a pretty good time no matter the matchup. The champ was never picked nor banned, and it was in a pretty fucked up state back then too, they nerfed some of his necessary runes as well as the mythic season had no great items for him so he was pretty much bottom of the barrel. Nowadays I play entirely different support champs (Senna, Pyke, Swain, etc, much more fun imo) but honestly, gave him a few spins and he seems in a much better place, plus Fimbulwinter, and various other changes makes him less left out like he was back when the Mythic items were still just introduced.
I miss old taric, in my friend group i was given the nickname godric after solo carrying from the botlane in a game that my adc never loaded in. The high point of the match being a 1v3 triple kill vs a MF, Lee Sin, and Alistar.
I loved old Taric and got the majority of my M7 on the old one. "Oh my adc is about to die? Let me E-auto-Q-auto-W-auto-R. Oh look at that, the enemy adc and support are dead. I actually think Taric had a better time solo pre rework because he had some burst damage on his side to help him. Now, he has a single ability for damage and some auto attacks that he needs mana sustain to get any real good use out of. Since they reworked him though, I'd love to get a new paladin character. I will say though, everything outside of the kit makes the rework a net positive.
Havent seen the video yet so im interested to see whats talked about. Taric is cool but his current iteration is just inconsistent, like hes a combat enchanter whos most effective when everyone is fighting all out(in melee). Playing him in lane is godawful bcs hes most effective against an engage support and gets kited too hard otherwise. His abilities are all balanced around him resetting the cd, but the assumption that he always has someone to auto is untrue. His gameplan in lane around seizing control of a bush and playing around hexflash is quite telegraphed and he doesnt usually have the threat to hold vision of that bush without a strong adc, but if u pick a strong adc u dont usually want defensive utility you want offensive utility. If he plays outside bush he just gets poked to death since he has nothing to auto. His ult is great disengage but it doesnt let u take back the fight since people will just run away AND its not instant. (So its worse than renata ult in that it doesnt have catch, and worse than janna bcs ur ally can die before u get it off). Currently he just never has what the team needs. Like what he can do is great, but since his healing is inconsistent he cant match an enchanter for buffing since his e is inconsistent he needs someone else to be the engage and with the current way the game is being played its just not what people want bcs it forces someone else to cover a role support usually takes and you could just pick nautilus and oonga boonga.
Taric is almost always a sleeper strong support. He does what he does and he does it goddamn well regardless of enemy team comp, even if you get rolled in lane you can still be effective if one lane on your team won
I love Taric, but I only pick him when the team has a lot of meele champions. Its so hard to engage with him, and if you mess up you get flamed and called useless. Also with his huge mana costs, picking him into a very pokey lane is a death wish.
I see a flow in your discussion, i consider taric more like a shen or a braum than a nautilus or a malphite, sure braum can use his R to engage but his primary use is counter engaging, and when can use e flash (if you put it this way taric can use e flash as well), but their job is to protect the carry. He is meant to be a situational pick into frontline heavy comps, where you auto the frontline in order to heal your carry and spam your abilities, if you pick him against all ranged champs he will be almost useless (can still impact with a e flash and a well timed r), like how picking poppy against no dashes can feel pretty bad.
Old taric was a hilarious old ap-sion copium char. Iirc e (stun) had a 0.8 ap scaling, w (the aoe) a 0,5 and ult had also 1 coupled with the old deathfire grasp and lich bane you were a fashionable terror. There was nothing funnier than spamming "gems are truly outrageous, they are truly, truly outrageous" while running down the entire enemy team in low elo and blowing everyone up
As a Taric top main he honestly feels closer to a 70/30 to me than a 30/70... The problem with playing him as 30/70 is you actually get less use out of your support side because most your heal potential is locked behind using your passive, which requires you to stick onto a target and tank more damage than an enchanter build would allow The way that I've always played him is more of a bodyguard than a enchanter
Taric's always been one of my favorite Champions since season 2. I stuck with him in my main roster even when Thresh came out and became my favorite champion. The main thing I disagree with in this video is that 1. Taric needed a lot of gold to be relevant, and 2. that there was ever a time people didn't view him as a Support or played him seriously in other lanes (funni AP mid Taric doesnt count). When I started playing, I was told he and Sona were the easiest Support champions to play, so that was my roster for the longest time. A point and click stun was never going to be bad, and he was just kind of tanky by existing, much like Alistar. When I do roll up into ranked on occasion, I still use Taric as my comfort pick because most people make stupid plays in bot lane around silver and gold and Taric is one of the best counter-engage champions in the game. I think his lack of play is less due to his effectiveness and more due to the Anime Main character syndrome of SoloQ and his lack of usage in LCS (for similar reasons, as aggression is more highly valued, whether or not Taric's qualities are strong). However, I do agree with the notion that him having a 50/50 Aggro / Support split and him being utterly reliant on an ally to succeed was a bad way to go about his design. An idea I had awhile back for how I'd enjoy playing current Taric more would be to remove his Heal entirely and replace it with a Damaging AoE knockback. It would be castable during Dazzle and knock them towards it if he was doing so (kinda of like old A.Sol's ult with his outer ring). I'd double this up with a change to his passive, allowing him to store up to 4 charges of Bravado instead of only two. This would serve two purposes. Giving Taric a much more reliable peeling ability for Allies (since his W would duplicate it), and if he were solo laning, this would give him a very strong trading combo and dueling strength (while still remaining immobile and open to outplays). EDIT: Also I noticed you didn't bring up the times new Taric did spike in popularity due to dumb things like funneling gold on Master Yi jungle or the Taric/Sona lane thing. I think that these instances have hurt his perception and thus popularity more than his kit in of itself has. Gives the impression that he can only be good as a shenanigan and will be swiftly nerfed if he's good.
I personal view taric as a anti dive suppport like when someone play nautilus with a agressive adc and i have a scaling adc like kogma or so he is fine but their are so many others you could play in his place how works better because they are easier too fullfill teir role, like renata or jana. More support vidz plz.
For me personally, I stopped playing him because his mana cost is so huge u first have to buy mana items before you can go tanky, there were a couple of mana items but they didnt go well with tarics kit or just as first item in botlane. To be frank, u need to buy unfinished items in order to not run out of mana, to start building tanky items later than enemy tank supp. It means you are less reliable. Or at least the time I used to play lol
theres something funny about taric where he sees more play as a funny undying Q spam autoattacking tank than being a warden
This would actually be viable if they didn't lock the attack speed for his passive.
@@TMFlesh wdym lightrocket is know for doing this in chall
@@amidsid3482 The fact that this is the only place we see it shows that it probably takes a challenger level player to make it work.
@@TMFlesh But he also play against chall players.
@@vida2559 That doesn't change the fact that you aren't seeing the strategy repeated on other levels of play despite the player being popular specifically for his Taric.
Taric is a counter pick when enemies have too many melee I think
A good way to be a strong support
Yea he is super good into champs with backloaded damage as well.
Yup. And he's a really good top land alt if you want to surprise someone
He is good with melee and against melee 😅
I see Taric the same way I see Illaoi. Thy are good if people walk at you and fight you but terrible if people run away or poke you from distance
@@Stocky39 So good in 99% of the cases when it comes to League players? Good enough then, I'd say.
Taric is very fun to play when you're with friends, but atrocious when paired with randoms. There's nothing more frustrating than setting up a good stun or amazing ult then your teammates get out of position or run away, wasting both.
Def fun in jungle or support when you have a melee jungle
Once I quoted so that we could tower dive and my idiot teammates decided to dive after ult ended and give the enemy a free triple
Agreed, the most fun I ever had with Taric was with my old group of friends, both when we were doing cheese strats or just regular play, cause we'd coordinate to at least some degree. But with randoms, it's basically russian roulette with your sanity.
@@ubermaster1 sad truth you can't play him much unless you're carry jungle or on voice coms
Unsaid problem with Taric is people not fighting along side you. The amount of times I have flash, stunned, ult only to watch my team farm the wave while I die.
Taric tanks, heals, and damages. Help him help you.
I had to quit playing support because of stuff like that. No matter how good you are you're ultimately relying on your team to engage with you until you get fed.
@@necromancer6405 Skill issue
@@VergiliosSpatulas Yeah, when I go 10/3 as Morgana on average but have games where I can't get kills until roaming it's definitely not because the adc is scared to fight.
@@necromancer6405 I solved that problem by just picking velkoz and being the carry myself.
@@JunkSync wait till some random overloaded mobility champ oneshots u even tho u land e q w and do everything u can to avoid em lmao
Also another thing that holds back Taric - mana.
That champ is so disgustingly mana hungry, that you can barely make any play at early game.
With winter's approach and presence of mind that's not a big problem. Even tear alone makes my life much easier. And the tear stacks from spells affecting allies so it gets fully stacked really quickly.
running cookies does the trick too, then buy tear first back and you should be good for two all ins before running OOM
@@SURok695 So next time something like Ultimate Spellbug comes, I should go Tear start ? Got it.
Having played a lot of taric, the main problem with his current iteration (aside from the fact you don't want to play him with a random adc) is that he's too good in his good situations, and too bad in his bad ones. If you get kited or bursted or go against too much ap then he does barely anything, but if you don't get kited and don't get oneshot you can actually win 2v3s and 2v4s botlane easily if you sequence his abilities properly. Also as a side not it's really funny that with the right rune page (lethal tempo and alacrity) at 2.5 items you can stunlock people.
We can do that??
Well, time to go for a dumb build idea. I'm just glad my friends are also prone to troll build
Yeah, I love Taric but he really only works well as a counter pick imo.
The biggest problem with Taric is you can't use his R. Even when you press R at the moment you see enemies engage, high chance your adc will die before R land. Use it too early, enemies will fall back and you waste your R.
@@sonnguyen-iv7gv it’s more useful in all in situations like a drag or baron steal, or anticipating a gank you can mitigate quite a bit of dmg but at the least it’s a good scare tactic
@@sonnguyen-iv7gvthis simply isn't tru. combine E and R to make sure it's useful, fight around objectives to ult most of if not ur entire team, and even if u use it early u can prevent the enemy engaging further while u focus a high value target. get creative
Taric's original form was absolutely not helped by how supports worked back then. Back before there were dedicated items to give supports gold, a good 75% of the support's budget was wards, no minion gold, just whatever passive gold and assist bounties you could wring out over the game: you had to rely almost entirely on the value gained by gaining levels to keep your relevance in the mid-late game. Taric, being one of the most item-dependent supports at the time, really did suffer from that.
I’m not sure what game of league uou were playing. Taric was a super good support way back when with original support items. He was so strong due to his point and click stun. That didn’t need items or levels to be strong. Never super popular but the items and gold distribution was not the issue
@@isaakward4393 The problem was that for Taric to be anything more than a stun/aura bot he needed to get up in melee, and he just didn't have the items to be durable enough to do that 90% of the time. Trying to do anything proactive with him was a pretty quick ticket back to the fountain most of the time because he just wasn't durable enough to take advantage of his passive.
@@kevingriffith6011 no support other than Ali or Leona were tanks when supports did not have gold income. My point being taric was in the same boat as other support when gold income was so low for them. His real issue is other tanks did his job just as well or better: IE blitz Ali and Leo.
@@isaakward4393 He ain't wrong. Old Taric with today's support items would actually be really fun to play.
Less Mana struggles, his damage being more useful and he can scale into a team fight monster with locket and redemption.
He could also be played as an AP top with arcane comet and his old point and click stun. Unhealthy gameplay for sure, but GP gets to do the same so I don't see why it shouldn't be okay.
He was super strong against melee with his insane free armor
Yeah, Taric, I think, fills a similar niche to Braum where he is incredibly good into melee brawl comps or strong enablers such as Nilah and Kindred. ( the infamous Kindred R into Taric R is still one of the strongest interactions in the game. All downsides of your ult disappear after all. )
But I think Taric is a counter pick by accident whereas Braum fully leans into it.
I actually love how taric doesn’t play like any other support because he isn’t designed for the same game as the other supports lol
as a taric main i have two main issues with him rn: first, the removal of iceborn gauntlet (as the item that gave mana, cdr and the sheen passive), now you need 3 items before you can do anything while before you could just rush iceborn and have enough mana and armor to be of utility for your team. now you need to go for fimblewinter but that's going to be your second item and it just gives you mana and health, no armor nor damage, plus neither tank nor supp mythics give mana anymore. second would be the heal ammount of his q, his q is often more used to weave his aa and lower his cdrs rather than as an actual heal, i usually level up q twice at lvls 3 and 4 so i get a little more health (plus it's overall better) but still the heal isn't good and it consumes too much mana. maybe give him another effect on his heal (a la millio) or reduce the mana cost (or rever the q to 3 charges as it was back then)
TRUEEE Q_ Q RIP US TARIC MAINS
I feel like the new Athene's mythic will help you mitigate a lot of that. Now, as a support, you can have more than double mana regen, amped healing and damage while skirmishing, as well as some ap and HP if I remember correctly. Not sure if that will bring Taric to the meta, but I feel like you'll finally have a viable option for him.
You are playing him wrong if you think his Q isn't good. It is the best heal in the game by a lot. You should have 4 points in it by level 12 or 10 if you want to be more efficient with level ups by going 4 E and then 4Q to avoid sitting on 3Q for 2 levels. The 4 point Q heals 2 people for 200 +120% AP + 8% HP. Compare that to Soraka W at rank 5 which is 170 +50% AP. There is also the fact that in team fights you are often healing 3 people with Q for 300 +180% AP +12% HP. I have plenty of games with more healing on Taric than someone else has on Soraka in the same game.
Get into a situation where you win a team fight and 3 allies are all at 200 health. What do you normally do? Get one turret or simply reset. What do you do with a Taric? Go take baron and the entire team walks away with full health.
@@apg5216 true. But You need perma bluebuff. His Q is the Best buff/minirework he got since his nerfs. But i think his passive should change to give him extra attack Range on those 2 attacked. You know how hard it si to follow enemies sometimes. He needs an outright minirework for his W when there is no Ally nearby SO his abilities are more impactful. Taric top Main here.
@@integralinsanity1641 Rod of ages with presence of mind is infinite Mana and ghost + boots of swiftness with unflinching and tenacity fixes the kiting problem.
Man, old Taric top against an AD top was so much fun.
If they have to make him the aspect of the defender, the shield of valoran, what have you, they have to make it an anti carry.
He's already pushed in the anti carry way : he is strong when he has to respond to enemy attack.
Aye, and I feel like that's where Vars missed the point. It's not always about having engage, but being able to disengage too. That's what defending is all about, and that's what players with aggressive playstyles often forget.
honestly taric has always been the supports support. he works exceptionaly well with engage supports as an early game follow up enhancer and a late game dive buddy. so praise be taric leona bot the lane that has way to much kill potental at level 2.
TARIC MY MAN
ULTRA CHAD OF LEAGUE
Knight-Paladin of League, fabulous and tanky
That last analogy was beautiful, "the most amazing pizza you'll ever taste in your entire life... in a sushi restaurant." Truly Outrageous.
I think Taric's rework was great since it gave him a great place as a Jungle pick. I think on support unless you have Kalista, Nilah or Samira he's subpar. In jungle he wins duels into most ad champs and handle most ap champs early.
Old taric was a fine jungler you just wanted an ad opponent so you could go counter jungler 1v1 because taric armor was beautifully insane. I once 3v1d a darius, riven, and zed with old jg taric with just an iceborn guantlet and chain shirt.
Feels weird seeing these ancient versions of league and having splash art for characters like Garen still be the same one he still has
Taric really just needs to have a feature that makes it when not tethered he gets something more like his old kit.
He was much more of a fighter with support effects than a full support.
Imo id genuinely make him a juggernaut warden support. Basically he drops some of his super survival to keep someone else alive. Switch the q and passive, q is now empowered auto that scales off armor and gives 2 hits while reducing cooldowns, spell and auto hit sets off a little burst of healing something like that. Make w cast on self do aoe dmg and shield. E is good. Ult rework entirely, id say make it super tanky stats for everyone not invulnerable, this also increases his meaning it doubles as a dmg boosts since he has armor dmg scaling.
If ksante can be a murder tank so can taric.
This post brought to you by a 8 season taric jg main.
I think what could make him a little more relevant... keep his ult cd long but lower the activation delay... should be 1.5 or 1.75s rank 3 but they also made him too reliant, its either jungle or supp... and he fits jungle better because he needs gear, he cant live on gimp supp gold
hes good top lane in some cases too, if the enemy top isnt an op split pusher then u can roam and make good plays.
I feel like you've missed the point by comparing him to hard engage supports. Taric is meant to COUNTER those champions. He is counter engage, not engage.
I got Taric to M7 by strictly playing him top with press the attack.. The good days
I also think that Taric is so bad right now because Riot is quite honestly scared to buff him too much. I remember a while after his rework him being an insanely good support, sadly his strengths need a lot of coordination by the team (namely E and Ult) making the difference between pro and soloque too big to properly balance.
I think in Jungle he works as a supportive jungler akin to Ivern. Where his goal is to provide for his team. Being able to casually heal up your midlaner between trades is crazy value especially when most champs invading you will lose.
I love taric jungle, and im tired of pretending its a weird oick. Its so good, you can 1v1 quite a few early junglers if they under estimate you, but shine in late game team fights with your team
6:36 my man didnt have to shit on tryndamere like that 😭
really want to see more about the classes and subclasses vids. miss those alot. realized we haven't gotten a catcher in a long time.
havent watched the whole video yet but tarics problrm imo is that he only gets a high play rate when there is a strategy where u can abuse his ult like in the yi taric bot or a kindred taric bot
or the dreaded jungle taric when sunfire was still mythic. get that and winter's approach and you can basically never die until your blue hp bar is depleted
Oh wow didn’t watch the video to comment something that would be said a 1000 times. Way to be different
BROOOO HE RECEIVED LIKE 5 NERFS BECAUSE OF FUCKING YIIII
i remember playing ad tank Taric back in the days lmfao
he was an absolute beast with the health regen ult, ad buff and point and click stun
damn, this was a nostalgic one for me
ADCs before: Who is Taric
ADCs now: Who is Taric
taric since the rework has always wanted a partner with gap closers yet he was always sent to bot with slow adcs, so he searched for the top or jg tp be the actual melee engager he needed.
also, another interesting point you didn't touch is how he could fare in top before and after the rework (i used him a lot, rushing gauntlet or thorn mail before and rushing titanic or bramble after) and how there was this time he actually became unironicalu solid in jungle even if it was just one single challenger who played him there, great ganks with w e, the w q to heal your mid while you farm raptors, not being the selected babysitter for you adc so the actual support could pick something with more bite
Amazing video as usual, gave me more insight about the old taric since i never had the pleasure of playing him
Turn Taric into a transformative champ where he his abilities can act as tank or enchanter like a support jayce
3 things, because Taric is clearly a strong champion.
1.) Taric is so slow and immobile he has almost no autonomy he can't harass much, roam or push the game state outside of a fight.
2.) His best lane partners are also unpopular as f and volatile in solo queue.. (Draven, Kalista, Nilah etc)
3.) He's very lackluster both with and against the more popular casty / high range ADC's (Caitlyn, Jihn, Kaisa, Ezreal)
4.) His Kit is self countering. His Q requires stumpy auto attack range yet they expect you to be near allies, meanwhile is E encourages you to separate, his R has wayyy to long of a cooldown which leaves his W as the only consistent pressure.
Really he would have some autonomy if they would just give him some mobility or perhaps a speed boost if he lands E or Shields with W. Or perhaps a slow with passive. He just has too many traits that are nearly irrelevant without mobility. I would even say they can turn E into a harsh slow that grants mobility to him and an imbued ally and it'd make him more relevant.
I was so disappointed for not mentioning ap assassin taric.
I believe there is a general gimmick Players in League do not like, regardless of how Riot tried several times to implement it.
That is this tethering or "ally reliant" mechanic, where a Champion's effectiveness relies on an ally's performance too literally. This can be Taric's tethering, Rell is a new support tank who famously flopped and she too has that tether thus losing a stun entirely if without an ally, Braum to some extent he has to leap to allies and relies on them to activate his ice stun, much like Sejuani as well who wants melee champions to help activate her stun. Kalista's ult is famously frustrating for those outside of Pro-play, basically a champion with only 2 abilities if without a teammate.
I believe regardless if they want Taric to be enchanter, or tank, they have to allow him to be more independent. No one likes the feeling they can't master their own champion as it relies on another's performance. Its okay to "throw" help onto allies, like enchanters can click on an ally to help with healing, or shielding, whatever. But as you can imagine it doesn't require the Ally to do anything specific that can hinder your own gameplay as that enchanter. Even Rakan, he can dash to and jump off of allies, and he is pretty popular. But even that tiny tiny reliance, ask any Rakan main they will tell you how they hate teammates leaving them to die because they wouldn't step just one step closer to allow the Rakan to dash to safety.
Long story short, just like how Rell is getting a mid-scope rework, so too I think Taric can work as an enchanter & tank combo, but they have to move his abilities around let him be more independent.
I hope they use this to make a really great Paladin for the MMO
i love the current taric he is a lot of fun to play, but to say i dont miss the old one would bring shame on me considering i almost one tricked his old version. i had many great times with him and when the rework came out it was bittersweet. on one hand taric got the quality of life adjustments he needed on the other hand it really changed him in a lot of subtle ways. i dont play him as much nowadays but whenever i do i always have a ton of fun both with the current version and by remembering the fun i had with old taric
Good video!
I'm a little confused though about what you were saying about old Taric not being used as a support? When he primarily was. And back in the day people would flame me for taking him top against AD bruisers lol. And Nautilus was a jungler in the years of old Taric, players would be flamed for picking Naut as a support back then.
Other than that confusion, quality content as usual 👍
I remember going fun build taric in top or mid lane, those were the good old days. While maybe it wasn't 100% optimal, just having that as a viable option was so much fun back then. I kind of miss the less optimal more crazy and creative league back then.
Take this top lane.
lethal tempo, start tear -> gauntlet -> manamune -> buy support starting item at 20 min -> Spirt visage -> support item becomes legendary. level 2 combo is E AA AA Q AA AA Q AA AA E.
@@errettfitchett2463 I don't play league anymore but thank you ^^
(I also did try a build like that back a few years ago but it just isn't the same anymore with all the mobility and new mechanics).
yes vars!! eat ‘em up! can’t wait to see videos on the next item rework 🩷
I do believe his identity rn fits better as a defensive brawller support, he doesnt really want to engage but its fairly good fighting out when engaged. His only problem there may be the ultimate, I understand that it may be so iconic that they may not want to take it away but problably a better idea may be to give like a 15 to 20% damage reduction onhimself and the person he cast it right at the start, and when it finishes casting it could give like a 1.5s cc inmune while having the dmg reduction either at 25 or 30%, I dont want to say 50% cause with a diver it may be nasty, the only other option i can think of its to share the dmg, on the ult. but it may feel awful on the taric side.
I actually like that it's more skill expressive. Too many champs recently were made to be too easy for too big of a reward, which us is a terrible way to make champs. Taric rework is a product of an era where they had the right mindset - harder to pull off = more rewarding
taric's ult should remain unchanged, it's a tf changing ult if you learn how to time it correctly, it rewards you for using it right. his problem lies in itemization and his q being too bad during early
They could give some utility to make him more usuable in difficult situation. For example, if he consumes 3 Charges of Q at once to heal, all allies healed by him gain bonus Movement speed (the ally bound by W can gain more MS than the unbound ones). Reduce the delay and effect of his R to 2s, but now Taric and his W bound ally gain dmg reduction when the effect is coming.
Honestly I think they really need to change his ult, so much of his power is concentrated into it that they need to take that from the rest of his kit. I'd love to see his heal improved for instance so you could play him as a true heal support, take away some of the downsides of his stacking so you can only ever charge 2 stacks back up from his other abilities but let him charge stacks on ordinary attacks (on champions) perhaps.
As a taric main since i started playing back when spirit guard was the log in, I really miss his old look and feel. The main reason why I played him was cause he was the paladin/ battle cleric I wanted, but then his rework came out and they took all the armor away and forced him to pretty much build one way in one role. It really cracks that ol ruby heart of mine.
Taric isn't a support, he is a jungler but people doesn't know and they will never know
I personally feel they just put too much power in his ultimate. His other mechanics are interesting, but his ultimate clearly takes up his entire power budget. It’s the point that he’s basically just a cheese pick at this point for boosting or used for highly specific niche combos for very particular comps.
That’s not necessarily bad for the latter. But I think for a champion to be more popular they have to be more consistent. If you are balanced around ult, that ult should feel reliable. Taric has a super op ult, that takes up his power, but you can still use it badly very easily.
More importantly than all of that though, his ultimates power depends on your team to utilize it well. People can be dumb and not get in it, run away, or overcommit and go in too early before it goes off. There’s so many variables with his ult that it just doesn’t work.
And they can’t really change it either. An AOE invulnerability like you said solo wins team fights if it’s utilized well.
You say it a lot in your why everyone plays or why no one plays videos, people value consistency, and Taric is anything but solely because of his ultimate.
I LOVE the KH music in the backgroud
Used to play a ton of pre-rework and post-rework Taric. Pre-rework he actually did great as a tank and needed updates in Gold income and Dazzle did not need to be a point-click but a skill shot. Post-rework Taric NEEDS a teammate whose working with him the whole time to make any of his abilities worth it. On top of that his heal now requires him to constantly fight to be worth it but if he's in a fight he runs out of mana instantly. Then they got rid of Iceborn gauntlet which was perfect for him. Now he's just joined at the hip and is too good in a long fight if he has mana and too bad in any other scenario unless you get lucky
the one missing for me is my personal favorite mage back in the days - Xearth. If i say I LOVED him , it will be an understatement. i really miss the old one ..
All of old Taric's abilities did damage somewhat except his Q, the rework reversed that and now only his E can be used for direct combat and that is what killed him for me. I loved the old Taric because he was like a hybrid between melee fighter, support and caster and nowadays his kit devolved to spamming Q and auto attacks which completely changed the flow of his gameplay.
There's something side-splitting funny when you drop his ult in ARAM and try to picture their faces while they try to right-click properly among that ocean of particle effects.
The thing with pre rework taric was that he had a point and click stun, so even if a Yi or whatever got super fed, you could always stop him.
After he lost that I tried to play him, but it just wasn't the same.
14:58 that analogy whas perfect :^V
Say what you want about Taric, but he ain't weak. The new mana tank item made him even better.
As i'm writting this, taric has 54%+ wr on plat+
Yes gworl!!!! He’s my second main, right after Sona! The best answer to engage teams, and hook champs! I find I only struggle with him into heavy damage poke comps and that’s about it to be honest! With a 56% win rate on him as support! For me, the only thing is, I cannot first pick him! He can get countered very easily, and it’s not fun to deal with!
I miss old taric so much, along with old graves…videos like this make me so sad
I really enjoy playing taric, is fun playing with a jg friend that has good engage, the main problem early game is that he's extremely mana hungry, so in the early game you are useless, and also, to have good trades you need to be at least lvl 3 to have all your abilities, you rely on buying tear of the godess early because of this. I couldn't play old Taric but he looks fun as hell, i really like the paladin idea in games, it's fun to do damage, but i prefer mixing that with supportive skills that could be buffs or debuffs.
Always love the kingdom hearts background music
Most of the problems with taric are the problems of the wardens subclass
that KH soundtrack... I started tearing up all of a sudden and then i realized why . 😂
This is what I see from Taric's rework and to the extent with other rework similar to his around that time. Some of Riot's VGU (and to some extent subclass reworks such as mage update) revolved around trying to make modernize the champions (e.g. Warwick, Taric, Sion, Irelia, etc.). This is most commonly done by making them more skill expressive and make them less consistent overall as well as less stat check.
For example, old Warwick's ult was a point and click blink but the problem was that it is just that, you have to run into range and click on the champ to suppress them. The reworked Warwick's ult now has a lot more range depending on your movement speed but is no longer point and click and has to be aimed properly otherwise he's in an awkward spot. This is similar to old Taric's e, old Sion's q, and Irelia's e from before a point and click single stun to aoe cc skillshots. In addition Warwick's passive used to heal him all the time regardless of his health but now only starts healing at half health and more when lower like Taric's current q needing to proc off his passive for more health.
In other words Riot did succeed in modernizing and fixing the champions' old problems of being stat check champions with little skill expression that point and clicks someone to succeed but that also in turn can make them more problematic in other ways based on the nature of their updated kit (e.g. Irelia and Akali's hypermobility, balancing taric's ult, etc.) as well as being less consistent in their performance.
This video coming our today is hilarious because just an hour ago I was talking to my co worker about reworks and I said Taric is one that I think is more healthy but I found the old version way more fun.
You obviously haven't played the new version as a mana+tank build on top lane
This is a great analysis. Taric is well designed...in a vacuum. He's a really powerful support like you said, arguably as good as it gets in terms of raw utility with that ult...with near perfect play and coordination.
Have to consider this one a BIG miss though. Big miss.
Sounds like by the time you were deep into league, Taric's role shifted more to a niche top - lane counter pick. Before that though, and to many of us League boomers, Taric occupied a VERY distinct spot within the League of Legends roster. He was THE go to support for new players / those who didn't normally play the role. Of course he had his diehard fans, but Taric was generally the uber simple safe support. While he has some tough matchups in lane, he could generally build more towards mana efficiency early and just peel and sustain in those matchups.
Oh and Taric + Graves. The most faceroll duo Q rank climbing combo. Degenerate AF.
Point and click stun needed to go for sure, and having two of your skills be multi - purpose "auras" was a bit much.
By why take the support Paladin known for his simplicity and turn him into one of the highest skill cap supports in the game, who when played with an uncoordinated team, almost does nothing? New Taric is neat, but feels like he should have just been his own champ.
The goals with the Taric rework should have been:
-Gut the point and click stun
-Maintain approachability
-More active playstyle
-Transition him into Leagues premier TANKY (but short - ranged) Enchanter
Taric has always been an enchanter at heart. I mean ffs he was the games "aurabot" for awhile. We have all of these 200,000,000IQ playmaker supports in modern league, why did what I and many see (along with Soraka) as this games OG supports need to be one of them?
Speaking of Soraka, her rework really shines a negative light on Taric's. Raka's rework was an evolution, a modernization that kept the same theme while still feeling like an old classic, to - the - point champion. She does what she always has, but now requires more out of the player and allows for more skill expression. Tarics was closer to a replacement. He's got a ridiculous amount of skill expression, but almost no built in usefulness out of the box.
I can't call his rework an absolute failure. Its no Aatrox or Swain (or to a lesser extent Karma because nobody played her) IE: replace something flawed, but unique with something generic that already exists in the game. I would probably put it right behind Akali. Reworks that absolutely improved upon their previous incarnations, but went FAR overboard in upping the difficulty curve and moving away from their dedicated players.
If your reworking something simple and degenerate, you want to remove the the degenerate and shift "simple" to "approachable". Old Taric players probably appreciated his simplicity, as I'm sure old Akali players appreciated her simplicity. Those players were COMPLETELY abandoned in the transition.
The gold standards for reworks are imo: Fiddlesticks, Warwick, Pantheon and Nunu. These are the same champions, modernized. I consider Sion and Poppy to be big improvements as well but if we're being honest with ourselves, neither of those were reworks. They took those two out back and started from scratch.
Fiddlesticks still pops up out of nowhere and scares your entire team to death, and you feel like you're never safe (his new passive really adds to this).
Warwick steals life, and hunts low HP enemies, he just does so without being useless for half of the game and has to do more than click on things.
Pantheon is still a tough laner who brawls early WITHOUT the point and click spear, and he's not as useless late game, and he can still grand Skyfall at worst possible time, die and throw the game.
Nunu still eats minions / monsters, has an ult that's giga powerful but is super easy to mess up, throws snowballs and buffs allies.
Again, all of these reworks still feel like the original champion. Yes they are more difficult to learn, especially Fiddle, but the overall "goal" of their kits feels direct while maintaining the same identity they previously had, while making them less degenerate and increasing their room for skill expression.
Wow I didn't intend to ramble on. Guess that means it was a great analysis though, because you got the gears in my head spinning!
He has (mostly) not the sustain to survive 2v2 bot lane and at the same time not enought support and utility to provide over other enchanters. What he needs is either a meele matchup in bot (and we don't want Morde to return) or an engage carry, whom are rare and they have better combos of their own. So his best position RN is ironically jungle imho, where he can go through the game without THAT much interaction and later function as a an anti-engage and protection layer for his backline. He still needs gold iE tank items to funcion. And if he didn't need those he would be busted as a jungler. So either nerf his clear speed with a max damage cap against monsters on his passive and buff his utility or shift him towards jungle with more damage against monsters
Unless Taric summons a gem from the sky and he can warp to it to engage hes only going to be a follow up engage support who can hold his own if stuck fighting alone
I think they did a good job on the art and new model. What kills me about new taric is all my abilities scale with different things and I dislike that 😂
Having a point and click stun would probably help a bunch tbh. His new kit is great but getting kited is just so easy with the stun. He requires a lot of teamwork to do good and in a game like this, thats asking for a lot. On comms, he can be amazing at least.
Something worth noting since it didn't come up here: Old Shatter (W) hit like a goddamn truck back before the rework removed it. I could, and did 1v1 anyone else in the game unless they were fed. The base damage was obscene. So yeah, you kinda dropped off a bit after level 9. But thats HALF THE GAME of "If you fight me I will kill you" if you maxed it first. Yeah, like at 9:34 where he double kills folks. His murder potential was obscene.
It actually worked really well with his old Ult. Radience giving him a free bloodthirster (essentially) combined with all the armor penetration from Shatter meant you killed people who supports were absolutely not meant to be fighting. When the ult changed for the first time he got even stupider, now having 2 damaging burst abilities. Sure you didn't heal anymore, but you had Q for that, and gaining bonus magic damage mattered sometimes too. Again, you fell off really hard in terms of damage late game so you were just kind of an aura bot at that point.
Love the kingdom hearts music in the background!
As a Master Rank Taric Support main, I honestly love where he is at. You just need to learn how he's budgeted early with mana vs enchanted trying to poke, his timing, and the micro spacing at the tip of his E. You can actually punish harder for the enemy walking up to farm than other enchanted. The problem is how committal it is, and most players don't like that risky proposition. Supports with a grab don't count cuz they can do it at a further distance than Taric E and won't get chunked for missing as much.
People prefer playing champs with safety, but because of that, they miss out on learning just how powerful Taric can be. You give an ally a Chain Vests (depending on how much Armor stats you have and W upgrades) worth of Armor + Locket and it's passive Armor and Resistance. You will most certainly get your R down if you aren't asleep during lv 6-9.
The rest of the stuff is just repeat on the video, but Taric requires patience early and good concept of macroing (roaming when appropriate midgame, knowing to space out ability activation to get the most out of mana dumping with your passive, etc.), and realizing you can indeed initiate plays without having an engager.
They should rework him into an Aura Champion similar to old league of legends support items.
Passive can remain the same
Q is now larger but can only hold 2 charges, gaining more size with each level.
W shield effect should work on everyone
E is now longer and larger, longer cast time, and stun duration increases at higher level. (This is mostly to combat tenacity in present day league) No longer synergizes with W
R should be the V1 old Taric ult granting everyone rapid regen for a couple of seconds
Love the KH soundtrack along with the content!
Taric top is the solution to his current problems. go gauntlet for mythic, manamune for dmg and mana. it's hard to get more gold past that, so you can buy support starting item at 20 min. you can become the 2nd support and use your kit for all sorts of stuff. I tend to get spirit visage as my 3rd and usually final item. At around the end game, the support item will become your 4th legendary. If you take Lethal tempo, you win level 2 against most top laners. the combo is E AA AA Q AA AA Q AA AA E. Have fun yall! With this build, you can play taric and rely on the support to do all those pesky engages Taric struggles with.
jungle is better than top imo but both are viable
essence reaver
Old taric was my first penta kill as i am still trying to play him as a bruiser
Playing Taric into a Leona or Nautilus is truly one of the most glorious feeling the is
You know what's funny, I randomly decided to come back to the game back in 2019 and was kinda cbf learning jungle/top/mid or let alone fucking adc (still my least liked role by a mile), and just kinda went "fill" and became a Taric one trick basically going from silver to plat in under 100 games having a pretty good time no matter the matchup. The champ was never picked nor banned, and it was in a pretty fucked up state back then too, they nerfed some of his necessary runes as well as the mythic season had no great items for him so he was pretty much bottom of the barrel. Nowadays I play entirely different support champs (Senna, Pyke, Swain, etc, much more fun imo) but honestly, gave him a few spins and he seems in a much better place, plus Fimbulwinter, and various other changes makes him less left out like he was back when the Mythic items were still just introduced.
I used to go Taric tank mid with old taric, I loved the old one :c
I remember taric top lane was terrifying.
I miss old taric, in my friend group i was given the nickname godric after solo carrying from the botlane in a game that my adc never loaded in. The high point of the match being a 1v3 triple kill vs a MF, Lee Sin, and Alistar.
I loved old Taric and got the majority of my M7 on the old one. "Oh my adc is about to die? Let me E-auto-Q-auto-W-auto-R. Oh look at that, the enemy adc and support are dead. I actually think Taric had a better time solo pre rework because he had some burst damage on his side to help him. Now, he has a single ability for damage and some auto attacks that he needs mana sustain to get any real good use out of. Since they reworked him though, I'd love to get a new paladin character. I will say though, everything outside of the kit makes the rework a net positive.
Havent seen the video yet so im interested to see whats talked about. Taric is cool but his current iteration is just inconsistent, like hes a combat enchanter whos most effective when everyone is fighting all out(in melee). Playing him in lane is godawful bcs hes most effective against an engage support and gets kited too hard otherwise. His abilities are all balanced around him resetting the cd, but the assumption that he always has someone to auto is untrue. His gameplan in lane around seizing control of a bush and playing around hexflash is quite telegraphed and he doesnt usually have the threat to hold vision of that bush without a strong adc, but if u pick a strong adc u dont usually want defensive utility you want offensive utility. If he plays outside bush he just gets poked to death since he has nothing to auto. His ult is great disengage but it doesnt let u take back the fight since people will just run away AND its not instant. (So its worse than renata ult in that it doesnt have catch, and worse than janna bcs ur ally can die before u get it off). Currently he just never has what the team needs. Like what he can do is great, but since his healing is inconsistent he cant match an enchanter for buffing since his e is inconsistent he needs someone else to be the engage and with the current way the game is being played its just not what people want bcs it forces someone else to cover a role support usually takes and you could just pick nautilus and oonga boonga.
omg I love the idea as old taric
So bow I have to go to sushi places to try their pizza? Damn what a time to live in.
Taric is almost always a sleeper strong support. He does what he does and he does it goddamn well regardless of enemy team comp, even if you get rolled in lane you can still be effective if one lane on your team won
i played the old taric jung/ top a lot. it was great
Back in my day Taric was known as: MARATHON TARIC
I love Taric, but I only pick him when the team has a lot of meele champions. Its so hard to engage with him, and if you mess up you get flamed and called useless. Also with his huge mana costs, picking him into a very pokey lane is a death wish.
They could gave him have some sort toggle bettwen defensive and ofensive skills. So they could work well enough without him doing too much.
I see a flow in your discussion, i consider taric more like a shen or a braum than a nautilus or a malphite, sure braum can use his R to engage but his primary use is counter engaging, and when can use e flash (if you put it this way taric can use e flash as well), but their job is to protect the carry. He is meant to be a situational pick into frontline heavy comps, where you auto the frontline in order to heal your carry and spam your abilities, if you pick him against all ranged champs he will be almost useless (can still impact with a e flash and a well timed r), like how picking poppy against no dashes can feel pretty bad.
Ah yes, I remember current Taric ultimate where your team either will never engage or spread out for no reason after you cast it.
Old taric was a hilarious old ap-sion copium char. Iirc e (stun) had a 0.8 ap scaling, w (the aoe) a 0,5 and ult had also 1 coupled with the old deathfire grasp and lich bane you were a fashionable terror. There was nothing funnier than spamming "gems are truly outrageous, they are truly, truly outrageous" while running down the entire enemy team in low elo and blowing everyone up
Taric was so busted before he got reworked lol i spent days playing him before the patch.
As a Taric top main he honestly feels closer to a 70/30 to me than a 30/70... The problem with playing him as 30/70 is you actually get less use out of your support side because most your heal potential is locked behind using your passive, which requires you to stick onto a target and tank more damage than an enchanter build would allow
The way that I've always played him is more of a bodyguard than a enchanter
4:12 Surprised you didn’t mention sona heal used to be aoe instead of the single-target it is today.
Taric's always been one of my favorite Champions since season 2. I stuck with him in my main roster even when Thresh came out and became my favorite champion.
The main thing I disagree with in this video is that 1. Taric needed a lot of gold to be relevant, and 2. that there was ever a time people didn't view him as a Support or played him seriously in other lanes (funni AP mid Taric doesnt count).
When I started playing, I was told he and Sona were the easiest Support champions to play, so that was my roster for the longest time. A point and click stun was never going to be bad, and he was just kind of tanky by existing, much like Alistar.
When I do roll up into ranked on occasion, I still use Taric as my comfort pick because most people make stupid plays in bot lane around silver and gold and Taric is one of the best counter-engage champions in the game. I think his lack of play is less due to his effectiveness and more due to the Anime Main character syndrome of SoloQ and his lack of usage in LCS (for similar reasons, as aggression is more highly valued, whether or not Taric's qualities are strong).
However, I do agree with the notion that him having a 50/50 Aggro / Support split and him being utterly reliant on an ally to succeed was a bad way to go about his design. An idea I had awhile back for how I'd enjoy playing current Taric more would be to remove his Heal entirely and replace it with a Damaging AoE knockback. It would be castable during Dazzle and knock them towards it if he was doing so (kinda of like old A.Sol's ult with his outer ring).
I'd double this up with a change to his passive, allowing him to store up to 4 charges of Bravado instead of only two. This would serve two purposes. Giving Taric a much more reliable peeling ability for Allies (since his W would duplicate it), and if he were solo laning, this would give him a very strong trading combo and dueling strength (while still remaining immobile and open to outplays).
EDIT: Also I noticed you didn't bring up the times new Taric did spike in popularity due to dumb things like funneling gold on Master Yi jungle or the Taric/Sona lane thing. I think that these instances have hurt his perception and thus popularity more than his kit in of itself has. Gives the impression that he can only be good as a shenanigan and will be swiftly nerfed if he's good.
FINALLY YOU MDE A VIDEO FOR MY ONE TRICK.
I personal view taric as a anti dive suppport like when someone play nautilus with a agressive adc and i have a scaling adc like kogma or so he is fine but their are so many others you could play in his place how works better because they are easier too fullfill teir role, like renata or jana. More support vidz plz.
I miss old pizza feet taric. I made it to gold for the first time ever maining him right before the rework.
I miss old Taric… first champ I mained. I’d still play him if he hadn’t been reworked
Best moment is playing Ashe with taric bot (assuming you're duoing), if they get hit once they're never moving again xD
To the point of Taric being terrible engage, he's actually incredible anti-engage.
But that's mid at best for his role. If you want anti engage just grab janna
For me personally, I stopped playing him because his mana cost is so huge u first have to buy mana items before you can go tanky, there were a couple of mana items but they didnt go well with tarics kit or just as first item in botlane. To be frank, u need to buy unfinished items in order to not run out of mana, to start building tanky items later than enemy tank supp. It means you are less reliable. Or at least the time I used to play lol
Old Kayle was sorta a Paladin as well.