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Recommended Items
Runes: Current
1
2
3
Resolve
Sorcery
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+10-180 Bonus Health
Spells:
1
2
Spells
Flash
Mosstomper Smite
Items
Champion Build Guide
Table of contents
Why Tank Galio? |
Pros and Cons |
Runes |
Items |
Abilities |
Pathing/Gameplan |
Ganking |
Conclusion |
Why Tank Galio?
About me
| ||
My name is Porjn. I am a jungle/support main and a gold player, but I mainly focus on normal games. I main Zac and Galio and prefer tanky champs that provide a lot of cc and utility to their team. I currently have 100's of games on Galio jungle and have been developing my off-meta build for years. I average a 50-60% wr as of now and I'm finding even more success with my newer builds, so I believe over time this will be viable in lower elos. | ||
Why Tank Galio?
| ||
Galio is one of my favourite champs. I first started playing him support, so early-on I was playing a tanky/bruiser build on him. I noticed his MR scalings and anti-mage capabilities and thought that he could be an excellent counter to AP heavy teams, similar to Rammus against AD teams. Over my many games on the pick and developing the build he is just as effective into mixed damage teams and an off-tank build is best on him. I will explain my rune and item choices as well as builds, pathing and ganking in my chapters below. |
Pros and Cons
Pros
|
Cons
| |
Anti-AP ProwessGalio is what I would call an MR version of Rammus, due to the fact he scales with MR. This makes him a solid choice into high magic damage teams because both his damage and resistances scale with MR, doubling the value of each MR gained and making him an absolute unit into high AP teams.Insane Support CapabilitiesGalio is an incredibly selfless, supportive tank. He has many tools in his kit to help him eat as much damage as he can, take aggro from enemies and peel your carries.Anti-CarryGalio is one of the most effective Anti-Carries in the game in my opinion. An Anti-Carry is a subgroup of champions that specialize on hindering typical carry champs from carrying and tearing through your team. Galio's taunt is the reason he is so incredible at this job, if it is followed up with an e he can keep a priority target out of the fight for 2.25 seconds while your team is melting them.Reliable CCGalio has really reliable CC in teamfights with his taunt and knockup. Two to three enemy champs can consistently be Taunted for 1.5 seconds every teamfight and if you position well, 4-5 man taunts can happen frequently. |
Slow/Unhealthy ClearGalio Jungle has some pretty terrible clear, especially early game before Bami's Cinder and/or Fated Ashes. He can farm without a leash but farms significantly slower than meta junglers (If a leash is offered, take it).Item/Early ReliantIf you cannot afford Bami's Cinder and/or Fated Ashes and Boots by first back, you will be significantly weaker than if you can. Galio needs Bami's Cinder and/or Fated Ashes as soon as possible to make farming tolerable.Awkward UltimateGalios ultimate Hero's Entrance can be extremely awkward to use effectively, because of its long cast time enemies usually have a long time to leave and get to safety. It is important to use this Ultimate very strategically so that enemies have to stay in its AoE or that they lose something like an objective/kill or farm by leaving. Keep in mind, it is better to use your ultimate after someone has been cc'd inside the AoE.Bad At DragonsGalio lacks sustain in his kit which can make taking dragons difficult, especially early. Galio needs A LOT of help from his ADC and sup to kill them early, so don't go trying to solo it. |
Runes
Aftershock Runes
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Aftershock
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Shield bash
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Aftershock is a standard rune for Galio, the resistances and mitigation it provides helps him survive dangerous engages and along with Shield of Durand %dmg reduction it makes him very tanky. | Shield Bash gives Galio resistances throughout the entire game due to his passive shield, this helps while clearing and during fights as it makes him even less prone to burst. | ||
Conditioning
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Overgrowth
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This rune provides some more resistances for mid-game fights and skirmishes, it helps you stack resistances for fights in the mid-late game. | With Galios health scalings Overgrowth is a helpful rune to make the most out of the shield, %dmg mitigation and built resistances. | ||
Transcendence
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Gathering Storm
| ||
Transcendence is an incredible rune for Galio, the haste it provides is great, especially when Riot keeps removing haste from tank items. It also has a passive that shortens cooldowns after takedowns which is really helpful for Galio in teamfights. | Since I play a majority Tank/Bruiser playstyle I often don't get to build much AP. Galio's AP scalings are too good to ignore, so any opportunity to get AP through runes is helpful. | ||
Guardian Runes
| |||
Guardian
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Font of Life
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Guardian is definitely not a rune associated with junglers but I have found it quite effective, it provides extra safety in ganks and when used with your ultimate Hero's Entrance, it can change the tides of any teamfight. | Font of Life allows Galio to support his team even further, healing his squishies based off your max health after you immobilize or slow enemies. | ||
Conditioning
|
Overgrowth
| ||
This rune provides some more resistances for mid-game fights and skirmishes, it helps you stack resistances for fights in the mid-late game. | With Galios health scalings Overgrowth is a helpful rune to make the most out of the shield, %dmg mitigation and built resistances. | ||
Zombie Ward
|
Ultimate Hunter
| ||
Zombie ward works really well with oracle lens and Galio passive atk speed, it allows you to further support your team with vision. Zombie ward gives extra ap for each ward zombified, so over the game it can help. | Galios ult cd is abysmally long, this rune saves you by lowering its cd and giving you more options. Galio's clear isn't great, this rune allows his ult to be up more often for counter-ganks and can be a lifesaver. Relentless Hunter is another option for manoeuvering around the map quickly, paired well with Gustwalker Hatchling. | ||
Dark Harvest Runes
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Dark Harvest
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Cheap shot
| ||
Dark harvest is a decent option for a full ap build, it has high burst potential and can snowball into the mid-late game. | Cheap shot is a nice option for extra damage in tank builds, if your build is more ap focused Taste of Blood or Sudden Impact is recommended. | ||
Eyeball Collection
|
Ultimate Hunter
| ||
Pretty standard rune choice, could be swapped with Zombie Ward but eyeball collection is just simpler and the extra adaptive stats it gives are helpful. | Galios ult cd is abysmally long, this rune saves you by lowering its cd and giving you more options. Since Galio's clear isn't great, this rune allows his ult to be up more often for counter-ganks and can be a lifesaver. Relentless Hunter is another option for manoeuvering around the map quickly, paired well with Gustwalker Hatchling. | ||
Triumph
|
Legend: Haste
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Triumph is one of my favourite runes of all, it increases gold, survivability and gives you a healthier clear by allowing you to leave successful ganks with more health. Absorb Life is another option for healthier clearing but not entirely necessary. | This rune is a nice new addition to the Precision tree, Galio is a champ that greatly benefits from haste so this rune works well on him. | ||
Glacial Augment Runes
| |||
Glacial Augment
|
Hextech Flashtraption
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Glacial is an extremely powerful keystone for Galio in my opinion, Galio has some incredibly strong lockdown and Glacial improves this even further while supporting his team with reduced damage. | This is an incredibly helpful rune on Galio, one which I never expected to use on him. This rune increases your gank options and can be an extremely effective way to catch players off guard with different gank angles. | ||
Triple Tonic
|
Cosmic Insight
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Triple Tonic is a handy rune that can help Galio with skirmishing, farming. It can also help if falling behind due to the point in skill the rune provides. | This increases your gank power by making sure your flash is up really frequently, between flashes and hexflashes I can gank a lane and have a flash or hexflash available every time. This rune also reduces the item cooldown on Item Cooldowns, which can be helpful in certain builds. Approach Velocity is valid depending on team comp, and I am yet to test Jack of all Trades builds but it could prove to be fruitful in losing matchups. | ||
Triumph
|
Legend: Haste
| ||
Triumph is one of my favourite runes of all, it increases gold, survivability and gives you a healthier clear by allowing you to leave successful ganks with more health. Absorb Life is another option for healthier clearing, but not entirely necessary. | This rune is a nice new addition to the Precision tree, Galio is a champ that greatly benefits from haste so this rune works well on him. |
Items
Many items synergize well with Galio as he is a mage, a tank and a tank support. While I feel many items can be built, I will explain why my most common built items synergize well with Galio in this play style and when to build these items. | ||
Must Buy
| ||
Fated Ashes was an absolute game changer for AP champs with slower clears like Galio, this item speeds up your clear and allows you to clear while staying healthy. Make sure to upgrade this into Liandry's Torment if the enemy team has high hp. | ||
Bami's Cinder is extremely helpful for clearing, although it is certainly slower than Fated Ashes. It provides HP and AH which are nice stats and can be built into Sunfire Aegis or Hollow Radiance depending on comp. | ||
Armour
| ||
This is a solid item if you are building some HP. If you are looking to upgrade Bami's Cinder and are facing a majority AD team, this is a solid option. | ||
This will be Galios main antiheal item every game, galios cc can proc the antiheal with ease and its thorn damage works well with Galio. It also has one of the cheaper antiheal components with Bramble Vest at 800 gold. The item overall has some great armour and health stats to buff up your Shield of Durand passive shield as it scales with health. Build this item into teams with healing and auto attack based champions. | ||
With the current power of crit damage in the game, Randuins is a solid option to reduce damage taken from crit users. | ||
Frozen heart is a cheaper alternative to Randuin's Omen with a solid passive that reduces damage taken from enemy attacks. | ||
This is a highly conditional item, if you are in a game with tanks or low damage melee enemies this item can be an excellent way to increase survivability. | ||
This is a mixed resistance item, it can help you survive longer in fights and funnily enough acts similar to Conqueror on Galio considering that he deals increased damage based on his MR. | ||
Zhonya's is a commonly built item on many mages and Galio is not an exception, the ap and armour this item gives are good and its passive Stasis effect can be really clutch for baiting enemies or dodging major ultimates like Miss Fortune's Ultimate Bullet Time for example. | ||
Magic Resist
| ||
This is a solid item if you are building some HP. If you are looking to upgrade Bami's Cinder and are facing a majority AP team, this is a solid option. | ||
This is a cheap MR option for Galio. It reduces the MR of nearby enemies, which can be helpful if you have an AP heavy team comp. | ||
This is an item I build on Galio quite frequently, move speed is very helpful on Galio to help make most use out of his Shield of Durand. While channelling Shield of Durand you take reduced magic damage which allows you to stack up the item passive while taking as little damage as possible, giving you move speed and increased MR for the fight. | ||
This is a mixed resistance item, it can help you survive longer in fights and funnily enough acts similar to Conqueror on Galio considering that he deals increased damage based on his MR. | ||
This is an item I build less frequently as it is quite situational. It can be helpful into cc chaining teams, as its passive can throw them off and will force them to use more resources to stop you. | ||
AP
| ||
If you are looking to upgrade Fated Ashes this is your option, rush it into high HP teams, Blackfire Torch is an option but the mana is wasted on Jungle. | ||
Riftmaker is great on Galio, the stats are quite good. The omnivamp and HP/AP conversion on this item is excellent. | ||
Cosmic drive is a decent item on Galio. He likes the stats it provides, and the move speed is helpful. | ||
Supportive
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Knight's Vow is a handy item, its stats are good for the price and it is insanely helpful for keeping priority teammates alive and healthy while healing yourself. | ||
Locket is a handy item for supporting your team when facing high burst enemy comps, it can provide a lot of value to the team if you are bunched up. It's cheap and has decent stats too. | ||
Shurelya's is a nice option when facing into high range/high mobility teams, Galio can struggle engaging into these teams and this item can help him and his team force plays that wouldn't be possible otherwise. | ||
Boots
| ||
These boots are great into high AD champs. These boots reduce all incoming attack damage by 8% which can really improve your survivability. This anti-AD damage is increased significantly when paired with Frozen Heart or Randuin's Omen. | ||
These boots are great into teams with long duration cc abilities (excluding airbornes) as it gives you 30% tenacity (which reduces the duration of cc and slows rather than the effectiveness of slows as Boots of Swiftness do). | ||
These boots give higher move speed than other boots, which is helpful for tanks and melee characters. The move speed increase can help secure your taunt Shield of Durand and reduces the effectiveness of slows by 25% which can be effective into a team with slows. | ||
Ionian boots are a good option if you are lacking AH in your build and don't have a particular need for the other boots, the summoner spell haste is helpful to keep up Flash/ Ghost and Smite. |
Abilities
Tips | |
P:Colossal Smash
| |
Galios passive is one of his main consistent sources of damage between his abilities cooldowns. It does AoE damage which helps jungle clear and it scales with MR similar to Shield of Durand which is an excellent way to do more damage while getting more tanky from MR items, instantly increasing the value for any piece of MR you buy. | |
Q:Winds of War
| |
Galios Q ability Winds of War, this is galios main damaging ability and farming tool. When using this ability try to use it on a stationary or CC'd target so you get full value of its max health magic damage. It is best to use it after a fully charged Shield of Durand because it has the longest stun timer in your kit. | |
W:Shield of Durand
| |
This is your main teamfighting ability on Galio, it provides a lot of tankiness and cc. This ability has one of Galios most diverse set of scalings since it scales with Ap, Health and MR. While channelling this ability, at max rank it will reduce your incoming magic damage by 45% base and incoming physical damage by 22.5% base. Later on in games depending on how you itemize can increase this by a large amount, making him incredibly tanky in teamfights. Its passive magic shield scales with health, the ratio increasing to 13,5% health from 7.5% as it increases in level. Having a high passive shield increases the effectiveness of your ultimate ability Hero's Entrance, due to the passive shield being shared to all in its radius. | |
E:Justice Punch
| |
This is Galios only gap closing ability (which it is not very good at doing), It can be used before or after Shield of Durand taunt but make sure if you are cc'ing them that it is in the AoE of q Winds of War. This ability is good engage when coming out of bushes to surprise enemies. It is important that if you use it first, make sure you use the cc time to position for an inescapable Shield of Durand taunt. | |
R:Hero's Entrance
| |
Galio's ultimate ability has a lot of potential to win teamfights, save your teammates or begin counterattacks. If all 9 other players are in its area of effect, all enemies will receive damage, get knocked up for 0.75 seconds and all teammates will gain your Shield of Durand passive magic shield. This alone makes this ultimate threatening, unfortunately it has a very long cast time and most enemies will run out of its area of effect before this happens. It is important this ability is used in situations where the enemy lose something by leaving (like an objective or kill) or where they are forced to stay in its radius. |
Pathing/Gameplan
Blue Side (Bottom Left Spawn)
| ||
With Leash
|
Without Leash
|
Red Buff - Krugs (Smite) - Raptors
You have some options from here:(In all cases consider the laners matchup and gank set-up!) In a Flash and Hextech Flashtraption build look for a flash over the raptor or mid wall for an early mid gank. In a Ghost or standard build you can look for a gank on either mid or bot-lane. Depending on the time taken you can go for scuttle crab or continue your clear, keep in mind the enemy junglers position as it is likely they have stolen your jungle. Continue farming as normal:
Wolves - Blue Buff (Smite or hold for scuttle crab) - Gromp
|
Red Buff (Smite) - Krugs - Raptors
Or
Raptors - Red Buff (Smite) - Krugs
In case of first clear:Follow the options given on the 'With Leash' section. In case of second clear: Look for a gank on bot-lane after this clear, only take this clear path if bot-lane has a strong lvl2-3 and can snowball if ganked. Depending on the time taken you can go for scuttle crab or continue your clear, keep in mind the enemy junglers position as it is likely they have stolen your jungle. Continue farming as normal:
Wolves - Blue Buff (Smite or hold for scuttle crab) - Gromp
|
Red Side (Top Right Spawn)
| ||
With Leash
|
Without Leash
|
Blue Buff - Gromp (Smite) - Wolves
You have some options from here:(In all cases consider the laners matchup and gank set-up!) In a Flash and Hextech Flashtraption build, move to raptors and either farm them or look for a flash over the raptor or mid wall for an early mid gank. In a Ghost or standard build you can look for a gank on either mid or bot-lane. Depending on the time taken you can go for scuttle crab or continue your clear, keep in mind the enemy junglers position as it is likely they have stolen your jungle. Continue farming as normal:
Raptors - Red Buff (Smite or hold for scuttle crab) - Krugs
|
Red Buff (Smite) - Krugs - Raptors
Or
Raptors - Red Buff (Smite) - Krugs
In case of first clear:Follow the options given on the 'With Leash' section. In case of second clear: Look for a gank on top-lane after this clear, only take this clear path if top-lane has a strong lvl2-3 and can snowball if ganked. Depending on the time taken you can go for scuttle crab or continue your clear, keep in mind the enemy junglers position as it is likely they have stolen your jungle. Continue farming as normal:
Wolves - Blue Buff (Smite or hold for scuttle crab) - Gromp
Or
Wolves - Blue Buff (Smite or hold for scuttle crab) - Gromp
|
Game Plan
| ||
Early Game
|
Mid-Late Game
|
Look to go for safe ganks and be weary of invades and the enemy jungler. Killing the drake on your own is not an option so look for a kill bot or mid-lane before attempting it. I'd recommend playing around grubs more as it can be cleared solo by Galio through his Aoe damage and passive resets. Try to build into Fated Ashes and Bami's Cinder as soon as possible. |
Look for picks on out-positioned enemies and continue farming while looking for opportunities to use Hero's Entrance. Begin thinking strategically about what items to build, if building out of Fated Ashes or Bami's Cinder isn't an option that's fine. Build around what your team needs and what will make you strongest into the enemy team. |
Caution
| ||
Keep in mind that at all times you are in risk of an invade or your farm being stolen, in case of an invade try to bait the enemy jungler deeper into the jungle and cc them until your nearest laner can help. If your farm is stolen try to gank or take some of the enemies camps to try make back the missing gold and xp. |
Ganking
How does Galio even gank?Typically, it is much easier when lane is pushed up to your teammates tower and if they have some reliable gank set-up but Galios cc alone can be enough to help your teammate kill the enemy. | ||
| ||
Ghosting early to reduce enemies time to react is good, try to abuse fog of war while passing too. When approaching the enemies try position yourself so they can not avoid your taunt even with a flash. This is an example of how to block an enemies path so not even a flash can help them, into most adc's it will force them to give up and tank the taunt or run back into your bot lane and their cc. | ||
| ||
Flashing/hexflashing over a wall into a Justice Punch, Colossal Smash, Shield of Durand into a Winds of War does the trick when you're assisted by a teammate. Don't be afraid to flash/hexflash into every gank, the runes have this in mind and it is an integral part to getting successful ganks. | ||
Where to use hex flash? (OUTDATED - UPDATING SOON)Here are some common spots that can be used on both sides of the map. It is important to learn how to use these spots affectively, learning these spots will guarantee kills every game. | ||
Conclusion
Is Galio jungle a troll pick?
In my opinion the pick shows some promise, this seasons jungle changes have made clearing healthier and his passive changes have increased his ability to take dragons and especially void grubs.
Thanks to all who view this guide and have taken the time to read, I appreciate all discussion and comments. Hopefully as a group we can make this pick more viable and potentially one day one person will pop up in a HappyChimeNoises video, but I will admit that is ambitious. If anyone has any information regarding heavier AP focused builds that they would like for me to add to the guide leave a comment here or on the Galio Mains Discord and I will try to update to make the guide as soon as possible.
Thanks also to Hexeria who has linked me in his guide, helped with crafting recommended builds and for the revival of the Galio Mains Discord which inspired me to update my guide.
Note: I'm currently experimenting with other potential builds and will update my guide/matchups with the seperate builds in mind when I am happy with whatever else I come up with. As of now i have the majority of the runes I use in the guide but I will continue to update and develop the builds and runes. Sorry for any rough edges in the guide (It's hard to keep these things updated) :)
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