I’ve had another weird streak of losses recently, so I thought it would be good to cover one of the basic concepts that can have huge effect on the outcome of your games. Summoner spell selection can be the difference between a win and a loss, as perfectly illustrated in a Twisted Treeline game the other day.

On opening my team was two tanks and an Annie. I thought we’d be okay, because Annie can actually do quite well on Treeline with good backup. The problem was, she didn’t take Cleanse. With two tanks and Annie, who do you think the other team will pick first? If I remember correctly, our opponents included a Shen and a Warwick. Every fight went just like you’d imagine. Either Warwick would ult Annie or Shen would taunt and she would die, almost instantly. I even asked her at champion select to consider taking Cleanse, but she called me a noob and told me to “just watch.”

Next time you’re struggling for a win, take a look at your team comp and think about who the first target will be. If you’re running on TT, you should definitely take Cleanse. It’s incredibly rare to have a team without a stun, and you’d probably beat those teams anyway, so making the sacrifice for cleanse won’t seem so bad. On the flip side, take a look at the other team’s skills at the loading screen. Note the players with Cleanse or another escape skill like Flash/Ghost and try to focus the others.

A few weeks ago I wasn’t seeing Gragas at all. Even after the buff he was beyond rare, relegated to nearly Katarina levels of nonexistence. Since then, though, he’s shown up more and more often, and since he’s free this week I thought it would be appropriate to run a State of the Hero analysis on the rabble rouser.

Gragas is a very deceiving toon. Most new Gragas players think AP is the best way to go, especially when they see how hard barrels can hit early in the game. Think of those things like a small nuke, though, and you’ll be fine. Attack damage Gragas is much stronger, mostly because of the low cooldown on Body Slam. Think of Gragas like Blitzcrank – plenty of skills to proc Sheen for tower pushing and a nice set of attack skills for laying down some burst damage.

The only time Gragas really has problems is at the end of the game. If you haven’t been playing strong – by strong I mean at least 2:1 for your K/D ratio – you’ll find it hard to blow through an opponent without some help. For the rest of the game, though, Gragas feels just fine. If you have some health regen runes you should find it easy to stay in lane with a little help from your passive.

The one thing I find problematic about Gragas is that it’s almost necessary to have Clarity. Without it you will have serious mana problems if you want your damage to scale relatively quickly. I would love to see a little buff to Drunken Rage, but it already provides so many buffs that it would be hard to justify increasing any one of them without decreasing another.

If you’ve not played Gragas, this a great time to give him a shot. Stick to your lane, pick your fights wisely and you’ll probably have a lot of fun. Who doesn’t want to be a big fat guy throwing around wine barrels for fun?