The Rise Of The Moustache: Braum's Dominance In The Bot Lane

There has been a dent in the power of the Holy Trinity of supports (Thresh, Janna and Alistar) lately, by a hero the people really needed. Characterized by his magnificent moustache and undying love for the most awesome creatures of Runeterra, Poros, Braum has been taking over support duties the past few weeks and has proven to be an extremely powerful support.

Butterfly effect

The rediscovery of Braum has been long in the making and could be traced back quite a long time ago. It all started with the desperate search for  a counter to pre-nerf Azir, bulldozing over the mid lane without any chance of being held back. After some experimenting time, it became obvious that champions such as Varus and Jayce were the best fits to take on the Emperor of Shurima. After some nerfs hit the self-proclaimed king of mid lane, the aforementioned  became the newest terrors of most mid laners and thus the search began to stop them in their tracks, eventually leading to the discovery of the best known Poro-lover from the rift, Braum.

With the use of his Unbreakable, Braum turned out to be the most effective and most powerful answer to the reign of terror from long range poke champions and was still able to provide a tremendous amount of crowd control with a very versatile skillset.

Image courtesy of karamlik

Pro play

With the former god amongst supports, Alistar, receiving a small nerf to his Headbutt and Janna becoming less popular, it became clear that Braum would be the new highly contested support pick. Proving this point, during both the European and North American LCS finals, Braum was considered ban worthy for certain teams and some players put on an impressive show when their team managed to pick the champion of the Poros, most notably Counter Logic Gaming's Zaqueri "Aphromoo" Black and over in Europe newcomer Origen with their support player Alfonso "Mithy" Aguirre Rodriguez. Nonetheless the fervent LCS watcher will definitely still remember how Cloud 9's Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi and his Corki managed to pull of an amazing turnaround on Team Liquid's Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin and his Vayne with the help of an amazing Braum combo in an initially lost fight.

On top of that, Braum has shown to be a great counter to teams running a hard engage team composition as he is able to reset a big part of the team fight with the use of Glacial Fissure and occasionally a Winter's Bite on top of that to make sure your team is in full control of the fight.

 

Tips & Tricks

Before jumping onto the Rift and trying to master the man with the amazing moustache, here are some tips that might get u a long way.

-When playing as Braum, your focus in the early game should be to get into a position where it is possible to get off the 4 attack rotation on Concussive Blows, of course with the help of your AD carry and a neatly timed auto attack into Winter's Bite the possibility of this happening is very high, especially when playing with a Lucian (and the use of his passive, Lightslinger) or an Ezreal (Ezreal's Mystic Shot applies a stack of Concussive Blows), making him one of the most preferred AD carries to pair up with Braum.

-When transitioning into the mid game, try looking for skirmishes near chokepoints in the river, most preferably the choke point near the Banana Bush. Braum is extremely strong when the enemy is forced to cluster together in a small area. With Glacial Fissure, Braum can manipulate the entire area around the chokepoint into a favourable environment for his allied team and leaves the enemy struggling ,desperately trying to get out of there.

-If you are trying to get either forward or retreat as fast as possible, another way besides using Stand behind me as a gap closer is activating your Unbreakable. On top of the damage reduction gained when using the shield, there is an additional 10% bonus movement speed acquired with the activation of the above mentioned.

Image courtesy of Wacalac

Final Note

If for some reason your support is not comfortable playing Braum or he is simply not available, bear in mind that another way to counter poke is Soraka. However, Soraka is extremely weak when it comes to hard engages and will mostly instantly die when an opponent is able to get to her as she has little to no abilities to defend herself. But when playing a siege composition or trying to hold off a siege composition, Soraka might be a perfect fit. Besides the obvious counter to poke and siege compositions (hard engage), trying to out sustain and waiting for the opportune moment to initiate the fight might be your second best option.

 

Thank you for reading and best of luck on Summoners Rift!

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