Let's Talk Rammus...Why Is He OP?

I'd like for you all to meet Rammus. He's a ninja of few words, and his favorite movie is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. (R.I.P. Paul Walker). He has the HIGHEST win rate of all junglers on the rift, but for some reason people still haven't accepted the fact that he's insanely good...

Let's Talk Rammus

Advantages to Rammus

• Super fast moving ganks; 
• High mobility means more ganks faster; 
• Strong single target CC; 
• High base damage mitigation on skills;
• Damage scales with tankiness; 
• Natural tank, especially against AD carries; 

Disadvantages to Rammus

• "Low" late game damage; 
• No AOE CC; 
• Gap closer can be stopped by creeps; 
• Slow jungle clear speed; 

Rammus' Strengths In the Current Meta

In a meta where even mid laners want to be marksmen and champions like Riven, Nasus, and Jax reign supreme, this heavily armored armadillo can stack full armor and HP. This means that his passive and defensive ball curl bonuses are maximized higher than ever before. 

Not only that, but here are some more points to consider:

1. Champions like Kha'zix, Ahri, Graves, Zed, and Jayce have been nerfed out of popularity; this means he forces flashes with ease against popular champions with low or no escapes; 
2. The current state of homeguard and powerball give him a HUGE amount of ganking and jungling uptime, higher than any jungler. Even if he's unsuccessful and loses a lot of health on a failed gank he doesn't fall behind; and
3. People are trying harder to take down early turrets, but aren't warding to compensate...Rammus excels at taking down overextended targets. Even an ultra-fed marksmen will go down when he's CC'ed for 3 seconds straight.

Common Complaints About Rammus

1. "No Pros Play Rammus"

2. "Rammus is Easily Counter Jungled"

3. "Rammus is Weak Late Game"

1. No Pros Play Rammus 

 

2. Rammus is Easily Counter Jungled

Riot gave everyone in the game a free ward, combine that with a real ward, and your team will be in for an early first blood and a free enemy blue buff. If not, you're down 75 gold...not a big deal. He doesn't have a difficult time staying alive in camps anyway, unless you decided to start with powerball lvl 1 and get taunt level 2 for some obscure reason.

For those of you that say solo queue players probably won't help you, realize this: they probably won't help you ward, but if they see an idiot Lee Sin standing in a warded bush lvl 2 with a blue buff, there's no AP mid who's not willing to leave his lane to get it.

Look at this idiot...

3. Rammus is Weak Late Game

Believe it or not, some junglers aren't meant for dealing damage late game, and are instead used to soak damage and to peel for carries. Luckily, Rammus fits both these roles perfectly. While he might not have the damage to take down a tank by himself, he can easily smash a squishy or catch an enemy off-guard late game with his insane movespeed.

This means that when the 60 second death timers roll around, the first person Rammus catches with his homeguard + boots of mobility combo is going to be the target of a lot of rage. Combined with the fact that his combo is one of the fastest engages from the longest range in the game (okay Nocturne you win this time), the chances of someone getting caught out are pretty darn high.

Possible Future Threats to His OP Status

• Nerfs to any of his abilities or stats; 
• Nerf to homeguard; 
• Shift to higher mobility champions; 
• Double AP meta shift; 
• Higher ward coverage; 
• Stronger counterjunglers; 
• Changes in minion aggro AI;

Conclusions

Just look at this win rate, higher than Taric? Something definitely extraordinary about this champion...