Amumu - Jungle of Tears

Introduction

Amumu - The Sad Mummy

First off I did this guide because I fealt like the other Amumu jungle guides that I read, while certainly showing a legit way to play him, were not always that efficient.
This is my first Guide and I will not be able to lead you through every single step when playing Amumu. With this Guide I would like to show my way of playing Amumu und hopefully show one or another Amumu players something new.

If you are totally new to Amumu you should check out great guides like "Amumu - Wrapping up the Jungle" or "Jungamumu,The Mighty Bean". Those really helped me and I agree with alot of things they say.
In this guide I will mostly concentrate on the things that I do not agree on.


To close the Introduction: I know this that I can't cover everything in this guide and I might be mistaken with one or another thing but please tell me what you think in the comments and if you have anything negative, then let it be constructive critisism

Skills

As Amumu you rely on your skills, all the way. As such a Champion it is especially important to know all the detail about exactly those skills. So here is all the detail I found to be relevant.

(Innate): Amumu's attacks reduce the target's magic resistance by 15 / 25 / 35 for 4 seconds. The debuff doesn't stack but it refreshes with every attack.

• No ability in-game will protect the target from the debuff, even if a shield protects the target from getting damaged by Amumu's attacks it will still receive the debuff.
• Amumu's basic attacks will not break spell shields, his passive will apply through the shield.
• The debuff is an On-Hit Effect so it can be dodged or blocked by Aegis Protection.

-> This passive makes Amumus basic attacks alot more useful than you'd think. When fighting Champs go ahead and take the time for that headbutt every 4 seconds.

Amumu tosses a sticky bandage towards a target location, if it contacts an enemy Amumu pulls himself to it and will deal magic damage and stun the target for 1 second.

Cost: 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 / 120 mana
Cooldown: 16 / 14 / 12 / 10 / 8 seconds
Magic Damage: 80 / 140 / 200 / 260 / 320 (+1.0 per ability power)

• Amumu will try to auto attack the target of his Bandage Toss after he has pulled himself to it. This is a good thing in most situations because of his passive.
• Bandage Toss can be used to pull Amumu across ground terrain like barriers and trees. It is great to get to your target jungle creeps quickly if you know where they stand.
• It has a brief channel time (0.2s) upon cast before it activates, after that the stun will be applied and then the magic damage will be dealt.
• It will interrupt channeled abilities so know your enemies Skills! You can save your team by cancelling that Malzahar or Warwick Ulti.
• Bandage Toss will be blocked by spell shields (same for Morganas Black Shield), however, Amumu will still be pulled towards the target.
• It will proc Rylai's Crystal Scepter's 35% slow for 1.5 seconds after it hits a target so this could be a reason to buy a Crystal Scepter.
• The skillshot is able to hit and stun invisible enemy champions, but it won't reveal them. So if you know where that Teemo is, go ahead and harass him with a stun and some AoE. You will not hit Teemo's Noxious Trap!
• It doesn't proc any On-Hit Effects but your headbutt will ;)

When toggled on, any target around a small area around Amumu's will be damaged with magic damage corresponding to a flat amount plus a percentage of the enemies health each second.

Cost: 8 mana per second = alot
Cooldown: 1 second
Radius of AoE: 300
Base Magic Damage: 8 / 12 / 16 / 20 / 24.
Health Drain: 1.5 / 1.8 / 2.1 / 2.4 / 2.7 % (+0.01% per ability power)

• It is immediately activated and deactivated upon toggle and you can toggle it every 1 second so do try to deactivate it if you don't need it. Go easy on your Mana!
• Despair doesn't break spell shields but it will tear on Morganas Black Shield and not her health.
• Despair will proc Rylai's Crystal Scepter's 15% slow for 1.5 seconds after it hits a target. The timer will be refreshed as long as the enemy stays in the Despair Area of Effect. Another reason why you should think about a Crystal Scepter if you have speedy enemies.
• If an invisible enemy is in Despair's Area of Effect, it will receive damage. Yep just stand still Teemo, just stand still...
• If you are silenced while Despair is active, it will remain active. You will be unable to deactivate it until the silence wears off. Activate your Dispair while you are pulling yourself towards the enemy with Bandage Toss.
• Really great combined with your passive!

Amumu takes reduced damage from physical attacks. Each time Amumu is hit by an attack, the cooldown on Tantrum's active is reduced by half a second.
Amumu deals magic damage to surrounding units.

Cost: 50 mana
Radius of AoE: 200
Cooldown: 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 seconds
Damage Reduction: 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10.
Magic Damage: 75 / 100 / 125 / 150 / 175 (+0.5 per ability power)

• I do not know if the dmg reduction is calculated before armor or after. I read both but I guess it comes in before armor because it otherwise would "scale with armor" and be even stronger.
• It has a very brief channel time (0.1s) upon cast before it activates.
• It will damage stealthed units around him when the ability is activated. The "hit" animation will briefly display where the stealthed unit is located allowing Amumu to "see" where they are, although it will not pull them out of stealth. Having fun standing there Teemo?

-> Tantrum is a nice addition to your Dispair and has a neat passive effect. Always take it at lvl 2 after Despair.

Amumu will render every enemy in an area around him unable to move or use basic attacks for 2 seconds, and immediately after this effect begins they will be dealt magic damage.

Radius of AoE: 600
Cost: 100 / 150 / 200 mana
Cooldown: 170 / 150 / 130 seconds
Magic Damage: 150 / 250 / 350 (+1.0 per ability power)

• It has a very brief channel time (0.1s) upon cast before it activates.
• It will break spell shields. The target will not receive damage and won't be rooted. Keep that in mind when the enemies buy Banshee's Veil. Try to have a Teammate trigger the shield first with per example a long range Skillshot (Xerath <3)
• The root is blocked by Black Shield but the target will be dealt magic damage.
• It will not interrupt channeled abilities so use your Bandage Toss for that!
• Fun fact: It will proc Rylai's Crystal Scepter, but the duration of the slow is shorter than the actual root and is unnoticeable. But hey, you have Dispair right?

-> This Ulti can turn many Teamfights around so plan before you initiate. Let your team know that you have your Ult up and that they'll have 2 seconds for mass destruction on the helpless enemy team.
Also try using Flash to get near the enemy, use Curse of the Sad Mummy and after the 2 seconds stun use your bandage toss for a easy hit.

Information from http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com

Summoner Spells

• Getting into a good position for a Bandage Toss and eventually Ulti follow up. It can surprise the enemy.
• Following a fleeing enemy: As Amumu you need to stand ontop of your victim(s). Flash can bring you exactly there
• Great escape mechanism if you drop low and or get focused to hard. Time your escape so you can jump across a wall or into your team and the enemy will probably loose his interest in you.
  
  
  
  In my oppinion a must have for Amumu Jungle, otherwise you won't have the dmg early game and it will help you secure the kill on Dragon, Baron or Buffs if you get ganked or gank yourself.
  
  If you insist you can use Ghost instead of Flash but most of the time a well timed Flash will do the job just as good if not better.

Runes

Please go ahead and try any set of runes that focuses around MPen, Armor, MRes and ev. Health and see what works best for you. I don't have that much IP atm so I can't try it all. This is just what i roll with (=

Masteries

Feel free to use any combination that you feel comfortable with. If you feel like you don't get enough Gold then go more into Utility. If you want more damage go into Attack tree AP. There are so many combinations and it's impossible to proove which one is "ultimatively best".



I can only say this much:

The 15 seconds less waiting for Flash with [[Summoner's Insight] and 10 Gold per Smite (so every 60 seconds) with [[Summoner's Resolve] will both be quite useful.

As Amumu you are a Tank! So I feel like it makes sense to go into the Defensive Masteries. The reduced damage from monsters from Tough Skin is surely good and Bladed Armor helps you with your weak basic attacks early game.

-> Defense Tree = Good Jungle and Tank

I feel like cooldown reduction is very, very important on Amumu (especially late game).
It's a huge difference if you can land your Bandage Toss just once or twice in one teamfight. And it's also nice if you have it up for chasing down any fleeing enemies after the fight. Same with your Ult. You want to have it up in every teamfight. So I try to go for CDR whenever I see an opportunity!

Last thing is movement speed. I feel like that is another very important thing on Amumu. As I mentioned before you need to stand ontop of your enemy to deal your damage and you need to move quick in your jungle and onto lanes for ganks. Normally I take care of the speed with items but you can't go wrong if you have some more from your masteries

Items

Finally the most important part!

I start off with:

Regrowth Pendant: First off you can really need Health Regen at any point and this is an item that you can build into something really smart!
Health Potion: You'll need that after Golem Buff so you can do the whole trip.

First recall:

Philosopher's Stone: Here we know why we got that Regrowth Pendant. Mana Regen, Health Regen and Gold per 5 sec. Most beautiful earlygame item for Amumu. Helps you with jungling, ganking and getting mones for your build!
Health Potion and/or Sight Ward: What ever you feel like you need. I can't tell you what the situation might call for ;)

As soon as possible:

Boots of Speed: You need to move fast. Roam the Jungle and be where ever a Gank calls. You might even get these with the first Recall... The sooner the better.
Boots of Swiftness: Same as above. You need to be fast. You need to outrun your enemies so that your Dispair and Tantrum can do the work. Especially early game you won't have your Bandage Toss up all the time!

Also possible:

Mercury's Treads: Great boots if the enemy team has alot of magic damage and/or CC early game. You'll get movement speed and tankyness plus tenacy in one. You deffinetly won't go wrong with these either.

A must have:

Shurelya's Reverie: Now here our Philosopher's Stone really Pays out! We'll get more of all the good stuff and even some CDR. You can almost see Amumu smile there... oh no he only twitched...

Now if you can have your blue buff and you feel like getting some more gold from your Philosopher's Stone then go for per example Aegis of the Legion or Abyssal Scepter first!
Philosopher's Stone.

Situational (look at what your team needs and what streanth the enemy team has):

Abyssal Scepter: Here we get a beautiful item. Magic resist for tankieness, AP for our Skills and reducing magic resistance in 1000 range (about range of bandage toss) by 20. With passive we have -55 magic resist. Pretty beast.

Aegis of the Legion: A great tank item, whatever the situation. This item is almost a must have on Amumu! It will improve your ganks and team fights with the Passive and you'll have some all round protection.

Thornmail: A great item if any AD Champ is focusing you or if you have to fight against a fed Sion ;). Also good to see the enemy health going down without even doing anything. Only buy this if you are getting targeted by those champs otherwise consider Frozen Heart.

Banshee's Veil: Good item if there's alot of magic damage on the enemy team.

Sunfire Cape: Armor and health with a useful passive doing damage to anyone around you. Can really speed up your jungling and does some damage to enemy champions but isn's of much use late game. Not a must have.

Frozen Heart: Armor, mana and CDR with a passive that can really slow down the kill time of enemy AD carries! Consider building this if you do not get focused and your team has problems.

Those are items that will come in handy in alot of games with Amumu and if you don't know what to buy then you will surely find one of those fir your situation!

This is a very tanky way of building Amumu!

I almost never get a full build with only these items. Very often I will buy other situational items depending on what my team needs and what role I have to play.

You can always go more AP if you like but for that you will be able to find your own items.

Only one more tip:

Rylai's Crystal Scepter: As I said before this item combines perfectly with your Abilities! It slows down every enemy in your dispair which should be about the whole team if you do it right ;) And as if that's not enough it gives you AP and Health. You deffinetly not go wrong with this item as offensive tank (which you are).


You will not see me build massive Health items like Warmog's Armor. The reasoning is farely simple:
A champ with alot of health will not be focused (I know that people with alot of experience will avoid that mistake but come on you don't target the enemy with the most health right away either right?) and as Amumu you do want to get focused at least a little. For the passive I must say that as Amumu you can't count on getting all the kills that are required to fully stack it. So in my oppinion the armor is not worth his cost for Amumu.

If you have any other suggestions let me know (=

Jungling

I would advise you to follow this tutorial:

It's fromStonewall008 who uploads alot of great jungling content!


As he sais in the description you would normally ask someone from your team to leash/pull blue for you. (see "Leashing/Pulling" section in my guide)
I even get some damage on the wolves from my team if possible which leaves you less vounerable to counter jungling.
You should, from the start, only attack the big wolf. Let your Dispair deal with the small ones until you're done with the big one. Same with Blue Buff.



Now because jungling does not always work that smoothly (especially as Amumu who gets counter jungled easily) I copied kind of a FAQ from another guide (Jungamumu,The Mighty Bean) from mobafire which I find pretty good for being so universal. Of course everything depends on the situation but if something happened and you have no clue what to do now try one of the following:

Enemy team ganks me on blue!

Flash away and run to save your azz!(flash after the blue golem wall if you spawned top,or flash after the wall from the top if you spawned down!)

They killed me and took my blue!

Kill some easy neutral monsters,and go back and buy 2 mana pots,np...w8 for the next one,and gank earlier...

They stole my red!

Sad,no more gank!Go top with the solo top guy,and w8 till jungle respawns...

Golems are killed already!

No problem,skip this stage,and go to the brush...

I was in the brush,and they discovered me!

If the laners discovered you,risk your Q and w8 for your team to action,if you don't kill,try middle...

I was in the brush,and an enemy came to gank!

He will come into your brush,Signal your team about that,and in the moment he comes to brush,Q on him!and team will do rest!You only must use your W and E...

After i went the second time with recall base,the jungle didn't appear!

Then gank again or take the place of a champ on his lane!

A mage from my team stole my blue!

Do the same as from they killed me and stole my blue...it is good like this because he can spam his abilities,but it is better for you taking it....

The enemies are on my jungle!

Call your team,and w8 for it,then harras them or kill them,no problem!

The enemy jungler is attacking my red!

What a sanamabich!:D
If he used smite at the beggining,or not at the end in english....,try to steal it with smite when red has 400 hp....
If he didn't use smite...w8 for his hp to deplay a little,then attack him,but careful with the W,don't attack the red,because he is your ally here...
NO PROBLEM!

Some parts of jungle are too powerful for me...:(

Call someone to help you,and please him to pull it and attack a little,then np :D


After you did all those steps....
You won't care about the jungle order
You will always gank
Team will always call you for help

You will work so good with a fed champ from your team....

Warding

Yes you might not get your item build that quickly but it is so very important to know what the enemy team is doing and planning especially as jungler where you will run around in the fog of war and "face-checking" bushes constantly.

Wards win games... Just by standing around... The only other one who can do that is Teemo... No wait!

Now for the placement of Sight Wards

• First of all try to help your teammates avoid getting ganked. If they aren't smart enough themselves then go ahead and put down a ward for your teammate. Giving 75 gold is better than a fed enemy!!!
  
• Put down Wards at your Buffs/at the entrance to your Jungle if you are getting counter jungled. This way you and your team can spot the invader and deal with the threat.
  
• Get Vision Wards if you have stealthed enemy units like Twitch or Evelynn
  
• Put down Wards in the enemy Jungle if your team has pushed the first Towers! This way you can see if the enemy is trying to gank you from the Jungle and you will be able to chase down enemies alot easyer!
  
• Last but most important:

  Ward Dragon and Baron if you think the enemy team is strong enough to take either.

  This way you can gank them while at Dragon/Baron and maybe even steal one or another.

Here some examples for Wards.

But try your own spots. It differs from game to game. You don't always need Wards all over the map! Find out which are the Joke Points in the match and have Wards there.

"So that's all I need to know?"

No... there's soooo much more.

But I can't tell you everything. Every Match in Lol is different! Remember?

So here some tips to be more effective in different situations:

You don't get enough money early in the game

This can easily happen if you get counter Jungled or can't pull off ganks.
The solution is easy: You can stick around with your Philosopher's Stone a bit longer or if you need more gold or already have Shurelya's Reverie get a Heart of Gold. You can even build that into a Randuin's Omen late game.

You are getting focused really hard by the enemy team

Normally this shouldn't happen so bad because the enemy team has the idea of "don't focus the tank" in their heads. If they do focus you alot then my build will not be enough.
-> You will want to determine the main source of damage and do something against it meaning more Armor, Magic Resist, Resilience and so on. If you do it half way smart then the enemy team will waste alot of efford on you.
And if you die after your Ulti anyways then your team is probably going to pick up alot of kills anyways and it's not that bad.

You are not getting focused at all=you standing around useless

normally this won't really happen either. If you initiate with a Bandage Toss and then Ulti the enemy team you will normally take some damage. That's where the tankieness of Amumu and this build comes in handy.
If you feel useless in team fights because you don't have your Ulti up and don't do damage then just buy some more AP items. They're not that hard to find right? And depending on the game you'll find different items useful.

In the end what I'm saying his that my guide is just a middle way. I recommended you the items that I found myself building more and more often because they're just useful in so many situations. Of course there will be games where you will require different items and I encourage you to try out different things!

Special: Leashing/Pulling

So if you do jungle from time to time you will have tried to get your teammates to Leash/Pull a Buff for you (per example the blue Buff). This is a very important thing to a jungler.

First: What is a Leash?

Leashing means that normally your mid laner team mate comes over to your preferred Buff (Golems (blue) or Lizard (red)) and shoots an Ability/ranged basic attack over the wall to attract the creep's "aggro" and then runs back onto his/her lane.

[color=#ffff00]For the Jungler this means that he has some time to attack the creep - while it runs after the mid laner - and take no damage during that period. This lets you do your jungle faster and more efficient.
[/color]

Also one more team mate from the nearest lane (top/bot) can come over. First to keep the enemy team from a potential invasion (enemy team running into your jungle trying to kill you and steal your Buff) and second to do some damage to the Wolves and eventually blue Buff.

This again gives you faster jungling meaning faster ganks which helps your laners!

Yes you can jungle without a Leash and damage on per example Wolves.

But why make your life harder, losing more HP when you could just have the help of your Team?

It's really a win - win situation because your team doesn't loose anything at all, not one single minion! And you, the jungler, will be quicker and safer in his jungle and can come for a gank earlyer.

So this all sounds kind of complicated. Because it is!

Here I have another great video for you. It explains Leashing, damage on wolves and also taking golems as bot lane.

Outro

Once more I'd like to thank all the other people posting guides here on Mobafire, I'd like to thank the Mobafire team for making this possible and to Stonewall008 for making these cool YouTube videos.

Thanks alot to the Guide on making a Guide by jhoijhoi.

It has alot of great info!!!

Special Thanks to Brozita for getting me into LoL and always giving helpful tips and new ideas!