Taric is still a very good support, just more situational than he used to be.  If your opposition goes mainly AD, his value is good.  If you've all got characters that scale with AP, his value jumps even further.  35 AP and AD is nothing to scoff at, play a bursty ADC that has some AP scaling, and you've got a pretty dominant lane with high sustain that can take a bit of harass before pouncing on someone to dish everything out at once.

I would not recommend first picking Taric in solo.  Odds are you'll get an AP heavy team with a tard ADC that picks one of the all AD champs that only get half the benefit, instead of say Tristana or Miss Fortune.  When the circumstances are right, he's fantastic.

Eh, I don't think that WW is particularly counterable if you know what you are doing.

I mean, how many junglers are going to do more than WW if fed regardless of counters?  You are basically looking at Hecarim and nobody else (Jax doesn't count because he is too risky - any competent counterjungler can completely take him out).  I'll give you that I should probably know how to play Hecarim, but the fundamental problem is that there just aren't many junglers that scale with gold.  That's just how Riot has decided to balance jungle - make them strong for having no gold, but weakly scaling with gold.

Nullifying WW ult with Lulu ult isn't all that devastating to WW late game (it just does suck in lane).  You still probably got a second of suppressing in by the time Lulu reacts and everything, and you are still on top of their carry even after being knocked out of the suppress.  WW not getting full value out of his ult isn't that devastating late, especially if you force the other team to buy relatively low efficiency items like Mercurial.

Now the fact that WW isn't a real 1st-in initiator is a problem, but the list of first in initiators who jungle and can carry is once again limited to Hecarim and not much else.

I think Taric is good in solo queue.  He is my second highest win % champion after WW historically.

In lane, he is probably one of the most general supports.  He doesn't require a certain style - he is effective defensively or offensively, and the aura is always really useful.  So I play him because he is almost always a very strong laning choice.

Now he does fall of late against many comps.  I'll definitely give you that there are a lot of other supports that are stronger in teamfights right now.  But in a meta that is very favorable to ADCs right now, I think that its worth taking Taric in an environment where you don't know what you are going to get from your lanemate since he gives you a great chance of doing as well as possible in lane.  If you do know what you are going to get from your lanemate (both in terms of pick and in terms of playstyle), there will be better choices probably.

Basically, I think that he is strong in solo queue because of his flexibility in lane, but he isn't what I would take in organized play.

I'll also grant you that I might be biased for Taric because junglers love Tarics in lane (he is so good for ganks with the short cooldown, non skillshot stun).

But I would say that the stats back me up - Taric is one of the most played supports and has one of the highest win rates as a support.  He is actually more played than Lulu, at a much higher winrate.  Granted that is skewed due to low ELO (since he is so easy to play).  But even in say Plat, his pick and win rate is basically the same as Lulu (pick rate slightly lower, win rate the same or a bit higher).

So yeah, you are probably right on Taric in terms of organized play or even a duo queued bot lane, but in solo queue I think he is very solid.

"Deep pool" is not a winning strategy for moving up in solo queue.  Go look at high elo people, and you are going to see a lot of players who specialize in a few champions.  That's the most general winning strategy - take a smallish set of champions that cover all situations you are going to see and learn them really well.

I don't really care enough about ranked to train up in other roles that much.  Plus, I'd probably train up mid again, but thats our most congested role given the people we play with.  The freest role is probably top, but I hate top.

I don't really play enough games to keep up on the FotM treadmill effectively for ranked.  It takes me 25 games or so to work up a champion into ranked shape, and given how much I play, that just takes too long given the nerf cycle.  Also, jungle is the most banned position, so trying to play FotM is difficult since you will be banned out a lot.

I also think that you vastly overestimate how OP those champions are.  A lot of those champions are more "easy to play" than truly OP.  I'll give you that Zac is very strong right now, but I don't really want a non carry jungler for ranked right now.

Just some quick stats on taric, janna, nami, and sona for instance.  Data from past 30 days for ranked only.

• Janna for the past 30 days has about an 18% pick rate in ranked with a 54% win rate
• Sona - 22% pick rate with 53% win rate
• Taric for the past 30 days has about a 10% pick rate with a 50% win rate. 
• Nami has about a 17% pick rate with a 49.5% win rate.

Thing with stats like these is getting that a single percentage point does mean a bit considering the sample size.  If we are talking 4 percentage points, its worth considering other options as something is going on.

re: karl's comments directed towards me - I think you explained yourself and I get where you are coming from. 

I think you miss the boat on some opportunities to use strong characters before they become BAN THAT GUY.  You explain why you miss those opportunities, but I don't think you and I will see eye to eye re: "OP" champs.  I see win rate percentages and get very interested in why such and such is dominating.  Then I often attempt to emulate that style and see if it works for me. 

i disagree with a lot of what is being said here. Support is the best way to carry yourself to plat. (which is why i suspect i was forgotten in the OP).

In silver/low gold support is basically completely an un-contested position. That means you can play your best role 80-90% of the time. Bad ADCs are rampant in these brackets and if you abuse the strong supports and strategies (eg, Red Pot Ignite Sona) you can completely take advantage of them. If you look at what DotA2 pros who have switched to LoL this is exactly what they do to climb through the early ranks of ranked while still getting used to the game. 

While a support ban typically takes one out of the six (usually one support is obscenely OP every patch) every other support is basically never banned and rarely contested so you don't have to worry about "shit they took Ahri/Kass/Caitlyn/Zac/Shen".

Now, if you are with a group of friends who repeatably and consistently defer a particular position to you over and over and over again for weeks/months, then it's a lot easier to carry with another role that gets more gold. Because you get really good at that role. (#Cow). i think that we are a bit of an exception rather than a rule when it comes to that. 

I meant that in more of a way that a fed WW isn't going to bring enough to the table on a bad team, because I realize that he scales extremely well and having a fed WW on a competent team is a beautiful thing.  Even though tanky/utility junglers like J4 and Naut don't scale as well as WW later, if they're doing well they can force feed kills pre-6 better and can cause enough disruption during a mid game teamfight, that they have a lot more possibility to turn things around for a bad team IMO.

It's not just Lulu's ult that ruins WW's day.  When he's a squirrel, he's not Qing and if he's not Qing he's not healing.  And he has to run through her Q slow to get to someone to heal off.  And if it's not Lulu, it's Janna doing the same damn things pretty much.  Or Fiddle putting the fear into him for 3 seconds.  I'm not saying he's not a good champ (specially when you play him!), I'm just saying that he's not a jungler that can be counted on to carry the game every time he gets fed since there is so much that can be used to deal with him.

Historically.  Were most of these games played back when Taric was already the God Tier support, and then Riot buffed him right before the patch where they nerfed him?  Your recent win % from the last month with Taric isn't as high as your historic, but it's too small of a sample size to really draw any concrete conclusions.

Let me tell you where Taric stands with other players right now at Gold/Plat for the last month, which is where I assume you want to get to:

Pick Rate - 3.35% Win Rate - 51.5%

A good win rate but he's the 8th most popular support and his pick % is a big drop off from the popular supports.  5th most popular is at 11% for instance, then 7.5, then 5, then... Taric.

So what I take away from these stats is that people tend to do well with Taric, but only pick him when there is a reason to like team comp synergy or lane counters (Go on and grab me Blitz, I dares yah!) or whatever.  If you're always picking him every time you support, you're going to run into a lot of unfavorable matchups I think.  The two most popular supports right now (Sona and Janna) soft and hard counter him respectively, according to the stats I looked up anyway.

Quick, name junglers that can be counted on to carry if they get fed.  The only jungler you could claim is much better than WW is Hecarim.  Riot has "balanced" junglers by making it so that pretty much no standard jungler scales well with gold.  So while WW might not dominate every time he gets fed, he sure as hell does more than fed J4 or Naut or Shyvana or Udyr etc.

Don't know where you are grabbing those stats from, but in August, Taric pick rates are over 8% in plat and over 10% in gold according to Lolking.  He is reasonably heavily played with a winrate over 50%.  That means in terms of pickrate he is in the same tier as a Lulu (behind the Nami/Janna/Sona tier) at a pretty good winrate.

This is completely not true in silver.  Support starts to become somewhat better in gold.

In silver, you can get your ADC fed all you want, but there are consistent enough positioning problems that it doesn't matter.  Its still a crapshoot on whether or not they can position themselves in a teamfight, and if they can't, you are going to lose no matter how strong your laning phase is.  In gold you can start to count on your ADC to not get insta blown up in teamfights, so support is better.

There's a reason that it took Thunder 500 games to get to gold maining support despite the fact that he is a very good support.  I mean, there are a lot of people who we play that are higher ranked than Thunder but are much lesser players (some of them feed pretty much every in house...).  But they got higher in solo queue because they don't main support.

dat hedgehog

This is how I have had success on getting into plat. 

I had some personality/attitude problems earlier this season that kept me out of plat. I would get on tilt after losing a few games and continue to play crappy the rest of the night. This would result in instead of losing 1-2 games in a row I would lose 6-10 games in a row.

After looking at my losses more closely I came up with this philosophy:

1. The game was lost because of something I did.  
2. The game was completely unwinnable for various reasons (teammates, trolling, disconnecting)

If I misplayed I would look at the mistakes I made and try to fix them and get over it. I distinctly remember one game I played as grag. I missed 5-6 ults straight. COMPLETELY missed. If I hit a few of those we would of won team fights and won the game.

On the other hand there are games that are just impossible to win and you need to move on and not dwell on them. Games where you have a twisted fate mid on your team that thought it was a great idea to play him for the first time against a Kassadin. Or you have teammates that decide it would be fun to go annie support with a kogmaw. These type of situations you have no control over and you just have to move on to the next game.

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The other side of my success has been playing champions I like and knowing there strengths and weakness.

Brand is bad versus AD Bruiser mids but Gragas dominates them. I also have rune pages and builds that I use versus specific champions. If I am facing a fizz (god forbid) I take barrier. If I am against a Zed I rush zhonyas. If I am against a swain I build Morello's. etc... etc... You need to know your match ups SPECIFICALLY for your champion. 

I can also jungle very well. So having a back up roll is also important. I have had a lot of success with udyr (7-3), mao (10-6), and hecarim (6-4).

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The final thing that I have done differently in the past few month is avoid doing Baron in ranked unless you are losing.

I find if you are winning a game that if you try to do baron and the opposing team steals you have put yourself in a position to throw the game. Its best to leave baron alone unless there is a glaringly obvious chance to take it.  

So I guess in short: 

1. Play what you like and know what you are doing with that champion
2. Try to have a positive attitude all the time
3. Don't do baron 


One quick note on jungling in ranked:

I find it very risky to do invades..... You are basically relying on your teammates to help you without the use of voice chat. This is a very dangerous thing. Numerous times I have watched junglers die when invading because the other team wards and spots him invading. It can be very rewarding but if you want to win games I think it is better to play safe and just gank lanes and stay in your own jungle.  

well... risk/reward.  I'm pretty comfortable running certain types of invades... not always the direct go for kill/steal, but more the steal a buff to put the jungler behind.  That's often easy to pull off imo... the problem is with your mid giving away what you did.  I don't take the time to tell a dude to go wide when he enters lane, etc.  For me anyway, more often than not, invades work... but I'm talking about me making the initial call.  I always let the jungler make the call (eg someone else calls invade, I immediately say in chat - something along the lines of - what does our jungler think?). 

I was talking more about counter jungling. I guess my use of the word invade might of thrown you off. 

So anyway I guess my comment about jungling and counter jungling in ranked play should of sounded more like this.

I find it to risky to counter invade in a ranked game because relying on your teammates to help if you get caught is risky. 

Tracking for some of my recent adventures in ranked at gold I.

• 1st game at gold 1 - I'm 2nd to last pick.  The people in my lobby are trolling the crap out of each other.  Like nonstop mouth running.  I say adc/jungle/support... I think someone saw that sometime in between yelling at some guy for bad performance in the previous game.  Anyway, I end up running support.  I perform well as does everyone else on the team.  It was a pretty clear arse whooping... even better considering I thought it was going to be a mess from the get go with trolling.  We had a fiddle top.  Anyway, pretty easy game
• game 2 - I end up duo'd with hunny.  He had just been promoted to gold III and lost 3 matches in a row (eg no idea when you can get demoted exactly, but certainly felt like he needed a win).  Anyway, he runs top and I run jungle.  He actually does great as riven and we end up crushing.  Fairly easy game.  Hunny was doing the best early/mid while bot was kind of so so.  We had an idiotic lucian/blitz combo and our blitz certainly appeared to be a very special fellow.  That said, we still crushed it.  I went shyvana.  Did my new build on her which is to build tabi/spirit (one that gives tenacity), then go into botrk/frozen mallet.  Anyway, another easy win
• game 3 - problem game.  This whole game was a bit of a cluster.  First, we had an outright terrible, outright troll.  Hunny requests top.  This guy sasses him in the lobby, says that he is awful (referring to himself actually) and that he needs to be carried.  So, the guy takes chogath top and feeds all game long.  I doubt it was intentional, but the guy was an asshole.  Muted him immediately after the lobby knowing he was going to offer zero to the team.  Well, things get better.  I'm 1st or 2nd pick and take lucian.  Then we get someone that apparently believes support cassandra is a thing.  So, I end up with a no cc (outside of level 6) support that is good at bursting down champs.  Well, lucian is kind of shite at bursting down champs early... so even as a novelty act, its freaking stupid from the get go as early kills are unlikely, though zoning/denying is viable.  My lane goes to absolute hell at some early moment due to a gank and my support and I get killed by the adc.  Then, my jungler, with no one on the enemy team low, decides to wander in and gives the adc another free kill.  Continuing on, hunny runs trist out of mid.  He did well enough, but our comp relied on a useless chogath for hard cc.  Anyway, game was a loss
• game 4 - last ranked game at gold I for the night - we try to setup and get hunny top and me adc.  Someone higher in the pick order wasn't on board, so I went support for hunny.  The enemy team had a nidalee support.  Hunny managed to get hit by about 80% of her spears early/mid... I don't believe I'm exaggerating here.  Anyway, not being able to stand behind creeps cost us early laning strength.

And then the game after that, we duo in a normal.  I get to play adc so I'm happy.  Hunny, so impressed by the nidalee that ruined his fun bot lane, decided to go nidalee as my support to ruin my fun.  So, 2 games ruined by awful supports for the night.  I don't mind folks trying out this or that, but hunny trying out something apparently means its ok to do incredibly retarded things (he flash engaged a full hit power ad and support, having no dmg of his own and me being quite far away at one point.  Absolutely hate it when people waste my time... get more annoyed when they do it after failing to perform in ranked (eg wasting my time twice in a row).  So, pacov gets a little grouchy, but moves along.  I then played some with hunny and my pal schyster.  That game went how I thought it would.  Then once more with just my pal schyster.  I have him run support and I go lucian adc.  We destroy.  One guy on my team loses his mind because I continue to split push and take objectives for the team.  Pretty sure we were grouped with MUCH lower elo folks... was nice for me after a few frustrating games to have a cake walk anyway.

Now first of all, thank you for saying nice things about my supporting skills but I'm not a good example of why support is not a good role to play at low elos.  A variety of other factors lead to my trials and tribulations playing ranked.

What happened was that I got to Silver I in placements playing support while duoing with Hedgie.  Things started going wrong when I played on my own and lost two games in a row (which was before they changed the League System, so that was enough to demote me to Silver II) because other people wanted to play support.  It was at this time that I found out that being your friends Support Bitch for 1000 games in a row causes your solo laning skills to suffer.

Instead of playing some Normal games by myself to get the other roles dialed in enough to be serviceable when I played them, I stopped playing support unless I had to and tried to become good at every other role while playing Ranked.  I wouldn't even try and dial in one role/champ at a time, I'd sometimes just randomly jump role to role, and would hardly play the same one multiple times in a row which is IMO how you get better.  This was not a good idea and I ended up in Silver IV eventually from my stubbornly playing roles I was bad at, as well as violating every one of Cow's Commandments.

- Played A LOT of Top Jayce.  This will go under Karl's Kommandments, because you were right all along; He's not a good fit for most comps and I was one of those guys who won lane and lost game over and over and over with him.

- Had 0 leadership skills.  My team wanted to throw a won game by doing Baron, I was fine with that.

- Played way too much on tilt.  Started working a bunch of overtime and dating a girl who lives 2 hours away and shares internet with 17 neighbors, so when I had alone time at my own place I'd go on Ranked binges.  Let's just say I'm not an asset to my team when I've been playing for 10 hours in a row...

- If you check my Lolking, you'll see I've got a 0% win with Mordekaiser in Ranked.  I don't know how to play him, and I don't know why I would.  In fact, I actually know how to play Swain who counters the same people and fulfills a similar role on a team.  Yes Cow, I'm that asshole who used to try to learn to play new champs in Ranked.

So how did I get from Silver IV to Gold?  During all this stupidity, I found out that I'm actually a decent Jungler and ADC and these became my fallback roles.  I also had gotten my solo lane skill to a level where it wasn't an auto loss if I had to play Top or Mid.

Thing is, playing support might not get you out of Silver as quickly as playing Mid but you have more impact on games than most people realize IF you play the role well.  One team has a guy who volunteered for Support and has offensive support runes and defensive runes and GP10 runes and can play multiple support champs depending on the lane and team comp... and the other team has some guy playing the only support he plays when he HAS to play the role, which team has the advantage?  Or worse, one team has a support player using a champ that you play when you don't actually want to be a support like Support Lux or Killsteal Support Nidalee?

IMO, suport is the Jayce of the roles;  A lot of people think they're better than they really are.  When you're support, it's so easy to blame mistakes on your ADC or think that "You're just a support" so your team losing fights has nothing to do with you building shitty items or being out of position and you don't have a lot of "Hmmm... why is my enemy laner 40 CS ahead of me?" reality checks to force you to improve your play.  

If you're actually good at the role, you've usually giving your team a significant advantage by taking an unpopular role and playing it well.

So... if we were putting a guide together re: the best ways to gain elo...

1.  Play really well in multiple roles consistently

/thread

If we were tackling the question from a more practical angle, then...

1. Abuse flavor of month champs (you need to pick up on trends quickly, practice the play style, and get the champ/role in game).  FotM can be discovered either by a keen eye on patch notes, reddit, or a combination of stats (ban rate/win rate/pick rate - all at higher elos).  Even FotM requires skill, so you often need to really learn how to play the champ, etc. No "OP" champ guarantees a win.
2. Practice and be good at a minimum of 2 roles.  Pro players can play adc every day - we cannot.  Being an expert at exactly 1 role is bad unless you can guarantee you get that role every game... which you cannot.  I personally recommend knowing all roles but being good at least 3 of them.

Actually - re: other points, I'm not sure where we have a consensus.  Hedgie seems to believe that you can carry at bronze/silver maining support I think.  I disagree here and think that those levels in particular require you to play carries to consistently move up. 

I tend to think duo queuing at lower levels is a good way to boost on up provided you can play complimentary roles. 

smeh.. out of time...