Braum is nearly always next to his allies, making Guardian an easy keystone to proc. You both gain a shield, and movement speed when either of you take damage - while Guardian is off cooldown. This is a very good defensive tool, or you can use it to turn a fight around in your favor.

Font of Life offers a small heal when damaging enemies you have impaired with your CC. Braum's kit offers a slow, knock-up and stun, making this rune easy to proc, and offering your allies some extra sustain.

Bone Plating generally speaks for itself, you are the target most of the time due to being in melee range, and in poke matchups such as Morgana, Brand and Xerath, the damage reduction on extra abilities used on yourself is invaluable for surviving, as well as all the aoe damage in teamfights. One ability having reduced damage could be the difference between life or death.

You are granted extra tenacity and slow resistance with Unflinching, increased to 30% at 30% maximum hp or lower. Braum is a frontline tank, and with the burst damage in the game, it won't be hard to end up at 30% hp, so we need to be able to escape quickly.

Even though Braum may be tanky with the Resolve treeline and his high defensive base stats, he is still a melee champion, and against poke match-ups, Total Biscuit of Everlasting Will helps increase your sustain. His mana pool isn't as gratuitous as others and the biscuits also restore 10% of your missing mana, and also increase your mana cap permanently by 50 per biscuit consumed, or sold.

Cosmic Insight reduces the cooldown of everything in your set-up, and adds an extra 5% CDR to your max CDR, meaning you can have higher up time on your engage tools, disengage tools, items you buy, and summoners.

-OR- -OR

Boots of Mobility > MOVEMENT SPEED Very good at helping you roam, ward, and engage. Mercury's Treads > TENACITY If the enemy team has a lot of CC, or a lot of AP damage, you can trade Mobi's out for these. They offer +25 magic resist, along with reducing the effect of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds and immobilizes by 30%. Plated Steelcaps > ARMOR If the enemy team has a lot of physical damage threats, and you're the primary front line, or need some extra survivability, Plated Steelcaps's are the way to go, offering 20 armor, and reducing incoming basic attacks by 12%.

Zeke's Convergence > SURVIVABILITY/UTILITY/SUSTAIN Zeke's is a fantastic item on Braum as it offers armor, magic resist, ability haste and an extra 250 mana. When immobilize an enemy, they receive bonus magic damage from your chosen allies basic attacks on-hit and abilities - increasing damage output for quicker kills.

Redemption > CDR/HP+MANA REGEN/SUSTAIN Redemption offers an aoe heal in an area, adding a health sustain for his allies that Braum's kit lacks. It also offers HP and Mana regen, meaning you can stay in the fights longer, recall less, and you can help out even while dead.

Locket of the Iron Solari > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN With Locket of the Iron Solari, you gain 30 armor and 30 magic resist, increasing your overall tankiness, while providing a shield to your allies upon use - and you also provide nearby allies 5 bonus armor and magic resist. It also empowers other legendary items to increase passive bonus resistances by 2.

Knight's Vow > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN/CDR You gain extra HP, 40 armor and 10% AH with this item, 35% bonus movement speed when your chosen ally is below 50% hp. If your ally is nearby, you redirect 15% of the damage they take, to yourself (increasing their survivability]. Usually a core item to take vs physical damage.

Mikael's Crucible > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/UTILITY A good pick when facing an enemy team with hard CC that you need to Cleanse on allies, such as Impale, Dark Binding, Cocoon etc and grants your ally a small heal. Increases your Mana and HP regeneration, while granting you 40 magic resist.

Randuin's Omen > SURVIVABILITY/UTILITY Extra armor, and a massive amount of health are the staple stats Braum wants as a tank vs physical champions. You reduce incoming damage from all attacks by 5 per 1k health, capped at 40% of the attacks damage, and you can activate the item to slow enemies for 99% and reduce their attack and critical strike damage by 10&20% for 4 seconds, making this a great item vs heavy AD reliant teams.

Gargoyle Stoneplate > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN/UTILITY When in teamfights or skirmishes, this item increases your armor and magic resist by 40, overall great stats for a tank. As a tank primarily, the active, which increases your size and health, keeps you alive longer. It reduces your damage, but during mid-late game, you're going to be wanting to frontline or peeling for your team, not focusing on dealing damage.

Frozen Heart > SURVIVABILITY/CDR A fantastic item if you're up vs a lot of quick hitting, physical damage champions. You gain 80 armor, and you reduce the attack speed of enemies by 15% within 1000 units. It can easily help shut down an ADC such as Vayne, hindering her attack speed, and protecting you longer. It has the same damage reduction passive as Randuin's Omen, so it's best to take one or the other.

At level 1, you generally want to level your Winter's Bite, it can slow enemies from an engage,
or potentially secure a level 1 kill if your team invades.
If worst comes to worst and you get caught in an invade, but an ally is near, you could take Stand Behind Me to escape - but this is not ideal.

You want to try and harass the enemies away from taking CS, from a safe distance, your Winter's Bite is your main poking tool. You can proc your passive this way, and if you have an aggressive ADC, you may be able to find easy stuns on the enemies, and potentially a kill if your jungler comes to gank.

You can use Unbreakable to soak damage from your ADC, or to soak a skill shot such as Ezreal's Mystic Shot, which means an early trade is going to be in your favor, as neither you or your ADC will have taken damage from the enemies abilities. You can use Stand Behind Me as an escape tool, or a engage tool, jumping onto allied minions as a gap closer to throw out a Winter's Bite or to get in melee range for Concussive Blows. If you're vs a squishy, mage support, if you engage on them after their CC tools such as a Light Binding or Grasping Roots, you should easily be able to burn a Flash, or secure a kill if they have already used their escape.

You want Control Wards around your bottom brushes to be aware of any impeding ganks coming, and to deny the enemies any vision of where your jungler or you, may be.

Once you get your first back, hopefully with at least one or two kills under your belt, you want to be looking to buy Mobility Boots for the roaming potential - if you choose to take this route, and you also want to make a start on your core items. You can set up kills for your midlaner and get them ahead, along with your ADC.

Proccing your Runesteel Spaulders, you'll want to be focusing the cannon minions as priority, then melee minions, and lastly ranged.



Outside of laning phase, you're going to want to be setting up a lot of wards around objectives, such as Baron Nashor and the drakes. If your team is ahead, and it is safe to do so, you can set up deep vision in the enemies jungle, allowing yourself and your team to get important picks, that allow you to take the previously mentioned objectives.

As tanky as Braum is, you generally want to be around your team as much as you can, especially late game, where warding alone can get you caught out and potentially lose the game in a 4v5 teamfight.

During teamfights, you have multiple options to be aware of, and general you have up to 4 roles to fill.
[*] Peeling - If the enemy team has multiple assassins, or backline divers such as Renekton, you want to stick to your ADC and peel him from these damage threats. This is mostly what you'll be focusing on doing, with the great CC and peel built into your kit.

[*] Engage - You might be the only engager on your team, hopefully not, but sometimes this happens! At this point, you'll want to be catching out enemies and starting fights in your favor, with a huge 3 - 4 man knock-up Glacial Fissure, or a Concussive Blows stun onto a major target.

[*] CC - This kind of falls in line with being a peeler, slowing and stunning enemies that get in range of your team, or push to your backline which you need to peel.

The main thing to be aware of, is making sure your teams threats stay alive, while removing, or zoning, the enemy teams threats.

Control Ward's are a staple part of any support, both to deny your enemies vision, and to provide your team extra vision. You should make sure to buy one at least every time you back, preferably to have 2 on you at all times.

I hope you enjoyed, and learned enough from my Braum guide, to play him as well as the pro's.

If you enjoyed my guide, you can check out my other guides here, in which I've covered more styles of supports, incase you want to branch out on supports such as mages ( Zyra, Lulu etc!).

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