Ymir, The Frostbound Magetank

Hi everyone, I decided to make this guide after having the unfortunate pleasure of playing quite a few games with awful Ymir teammates. So to help build up the skill level of the ymir playerbase in general I decided to make this guide

Pros:
High bade health and durability
Massive area crowd control (wall, freezing, slows) cuts off escapes, makes good initiator
Ultimate scales amazingly well with magical power
High damage with ult and cc make him great in teamfights

Cons:
Slow
Must remain still for three seconds for full ult potential

Frostbite (Passive)

All of Ymir's powers that affect enemies apply a debuff to the enemy called Frostbite. All of Ymir's normal melee strikes against a target afflicted by Frostbite do 50% more damage.

Ice Wall (Skill Key 1)

Ymir summons a wall of ice out of the ground that blocks player movement. Pressing the button again while the wall is active will remove the wall.

Wall Lifetime: 3/4/5/6/7 s.

Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 mana.

Cooldown: 14 s.

Glacial Strike (Skill Key 2)

Ymir smashes his club, doing 90/160/230/300/370 (+60% of your magical power) magical damage to all enemies in front of him, slowing them by 50% for 4 seconds. Applies Frostbite.

Cost: 55/60/65/70/75 mana.

Cooldown: 11 s.

Frost Breath (Skill Key 3)

Ymir uses his breath to freeze enemies in blocks of ice, stunning them for the duration. Applies Frostbite.

Duration: 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 s.

Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 mana.

Cooldown: 18 s.

Shards of Ice (Skill Key 4 - Ultimate)

Ymir begins to freeze the air around him, causing shards of ice to grow on his back. After a 3 second slowing channel, Ymir erupts out of his frozen state, causing shards of ice to do 600/750/900/1050/1200 (+200% of your magical power) magical damage to all enemies in his range. Applies Frostbite.

Cost: 80/90/100/110/120 mana.

Cooldown: 90/85/80/75/70 s.

Start off the game buying level one reinforced boots and three mana potions. This will allow you to remain in lane longer (in order to more easily accumulate wealth and experience) while allowing you to throw out harassing stuns at will to aid your lane partner.

When given the opportunity, go back and purchase level three reinforced boots for increased movement speed, reduced cc effect and more health regen.

Now for the real items:
Start off with a warlock's sash, this allows you to both increase your health mana pool while giving you a nice magical power bonus. When this item is completed you will gain a powerful farming tool at your disposal allowing you to become more powerful simply off creep kills.
Rod of Tahuti is next on your list, purchasing this early allows for a substantial increase in magical power and constant mana regeneration.
From here building a gem of isolatio will further increase you health and mana pools, while increasing magical power.
Build Void Stone next for increased magical power, protection, and the ability to reduce your foes magical protection at close range (for example, ymir' ult)
Finally build a Silverfox Girdle for increased durability and regen.

In truth Ymir is all around a great cc tank character, his combination of his ice wall, slow, freeze and all around tankiness help make him an excellent initiator/CC character. Whether it's to the laning phase or a teamfight Ymir is a forced to be reckoned with due to his CC and high base health alone. However, something that is often overlooked is his Magic Power ratios. In combination with his own CC a mage-tank hybrid Ymir has the potential to let out MASSIVE bursts of damage on his helpless opponents, (200% Magical power Ratio on his ultimate,coupled with the fact that it does 1200 base allows a Magical Power Ymir to do 2000+ damage with this one attack, to multiple targets) this mixed with the available health/magic power items allow him to remain tanky while still doing this damage.

Many of you reading this guide may be asking "but doesn't building Magical Power/health on Ymir leave him with little defense?" and while this may be true in the sense that having little physical protection or magical protection items may seem pitiful on a tank, there are two key factors we must consider.

First: Ymir has high base resistances, while it may not seem like it at first Ymir gains a great deal of armor and magical protection just from the simple act of leveling up, this allows him to have some diversity in his build while still remaining tanky.

Second: This one is critical. It is a psychological phenomenon I see often in Moba's (such as League, Dota, MNC, and Smite) and MMO's that I like to call the health bar effect. The concept behind the health bar effect is simple, when a player scans the battlefield and sees an enemy with a health bar drastically higher than their own they begin to panic. They become demotivated and feel as if the enemy is too far out of their league to attempt fighting on their own, or at the very least not worth the time and effort. In a team fight they will avoid attacking this individual thinking they would take simply too long to kill. This is especially the case in a game such as league of legends or smite, where health is visually represented with tick-marks and the higher the tick mark difference usually represents a vast difference in level or gear. This works to the benefit of magical power Ymir. While in reality his resistances would seem low compared to that of a normal all out tank, psychologically his health bar sets him up to be the last target focused down, making him free to do as he wills.

In a teamfight this works especially to your advantage as you will find that the enemy team will choose to ignore you completely, thinking that as a tank your damage is low and negligible and your only real strength revolves in setting your team up for kills. Surprise. I wonder how many people would be in shock at a glacial spike taking off nearly half a health bar? Or how many would gasp at the fact Ymir's ult, instead of simply taking off a moderate chunk of health, completely wiped out any unfortunate to be caught within it?

This is all accomplished not only due to the damage of Ymir himself, but because of the psychological effect of his health bar. It allows him to experience the best of being both a tank and a mage without any of the weaknesses of either (a tanks normally low damage or a mages squishiness)

Because of this I fully recommend taking a magic-tank Ymir out for a spin, and I hope this guide helps all of those terrible people who always end up on my team, maxing out resistances and wondering why the enemy is killing the carries first instead.