Keystone Rune guide: How to use Grasp of the Undying

Grasp of the Undying is a name that strikes fear into the hearts of most players. We all remember when it was the top lane rune. Well now it’s back and looks to be serving a similar purpose. Grab it for your tanks, your bruisers and anyone who has lifesteal already or needs a little extra.

What does it do?

When auto attacking an enemy champion, you steal some of their health, healing yourself in the process. This attack deals bonus damage and also permanently adds to your maximum health pool. This effect has a four second cooldown.

Which runes go well with it?

Grasp of the Undying is for the bruiser tanks or the straight-up bruisers. For those that already have self-healing of any kind, Grasp of the Undying is even better.

Since we’re building this on the bruisy top laners, Demolish is a good choice for quick lane domination. The ability to take a tower quickly, especially on a powerful duelist will make winning games far easier.

Conditioning is a powerful mid game tank rune. Grasp of the Undying should make trading in lane easier, and Conditioning will make survival after 10 minutes far better. Top lane very frequently devolves into a constant farm cycle, meaning you’ll see plenty of minions come and go. Overgrowth will help your late game, keeping you tanky for the entire game.

Domination will be our secondary tree. We’ll specifically be taking Taste of Blood and Ravenous Hunter to make us even tankier and harder to kill.

Who’s it for?

Riot Games

You want to take Grasp of the Undying on champs that have self-heal already, tanky bruisers or tanks who struggle in trades. Grasp can work as a band-aid to fix champions with little to no sustain or it can act as a boon to those with high sustain. This is also the most aggressive of the Resolve Keystones.

You want to take this rune on champions like:

• Poppy
• Shen
• Darius
• Maokai
• Dr. Mundo

Poppy and Shen aren’t really about winning trades in lane. Their job is to survive a fight and CC as many champions as possible. Grasp is great here because it makes their lives easier and keeps them going. Mundo, Maokai and Darius already have incredible lifesteal in their kits, so Grasp just makes them even harder to kill.