AMUMU-the Sad Mummy



Have you ever wondered why Amumu is the the first champ to be banned in ranked matches? With this guide I will lead you to the answer! Now if you are asking yourself "Why should I use this guide instead of all the other Amumu guides?" I will reply "Well...this guide not only gives you the deep details on your character and his abilities but also how and when to use each spell to maximize your ganking capabilities and utilize your Crowd control to the fullest!"

Passive - Cursed Touch


Although this passive is easily looked over there is one big debuff that it gives, in order to use it to your full advantage you should at least one hit all of the champions standing in your AoE in order to get the most effectiveness out of it.


Q - Bandage Toss


As a ranged skill shot stun that will pull you to the enemy, this is your main ganking tool. Learn to use it wisely! Bandage toss can be used many different ways including:

• Jumping to and stunning your opponent in order to blow them down with your AoE
• Pulling yourself around the jungle quickly by jumping immediately to the creeps
• Jumping through walls for initiates or retreats

This skill is what makes or breaks you, this is a good Amumu's bread and butter. Try experimenting with it to explore the possibilities.

W-Despair


This is your main damage dealer, a circle of tears that surround Amumu dealing percentage of health in damage!

This skill is the reason that Amumu does not need an AP build. If you are able to get next to your enemy and stay alive, the % health in damage does all of your work for you. Despair is very mana hungry but extremely important to have active while:

• In team fights
• Killing creeps
• Jungling
• In any combat situation

E-Tantrum


MAX THIS SKILL FIRST because the passive reduction of physical damage Tantrum provides is very important. Keep mashing on this skill and you will dominate as a tank.

The CDR each time you are hit is especially useful when jungling, with the idea being that you want to keep smacking the larger foe (ex: Golem, Lizard Elder, etc.) so that the smaller ones keep hitting you to proc the CDR.

R-Curse of the Sad Mummy


This skill turns team fights around. Curse of the Sad Mummy provides a long term massive circular AOE stun that keeps your foes in your AOE W, all the while allowing your team to destroy your enemies. This is one of the best abilities in the game and when paired with Bandage Toss, quite possibly the best initiate too!

Pros

• Great Ganker
• Massive % health AoE damage
• Arguably the best initiate in game
• AoE stun
• Skill shot stun
• Very tanky

Cons

• Squishy early game
• Low-health jungler
• Mana hungry

Flash


Flash provides a jump that is extremely useful for setting up ganks, catching up to team fights, or for escaping.

Smite


Smite is a must when jungling with Amumu. The 500 damage to creeps provided especially in early game is a TON and with a point into Plentiful Bounty the extra gold is just a bonus. Smite is also extremely useful to steal Baron Nashor, Dragon, and any other buffs you want to keep from your enemies.

Possible Alternatives for Smite

Ghost


Use this skill to catch/gank enemies, escape from a nasty situation, or to put you in range of Bandage Toss.

Clarity


If you are not planning on jungling then this is the spell of choice. Amumu is a very mana-hungry champion and this spell gives you a significant amount of mana allowing you to stay in lane much longer.

Cleanse


For those of you who like a little extra CC removal this is for you. Heck, it even takes off Ignite! Cleanse is an amazing, underused spell.

What Not to Get

Exhaust, Ignite, Teleport because you are not a DPS, Mage, or Tanky DPS.
Also, Rally, Revive, Heal, or anything equally as useless.

Build One

is my original build, which takes advantage of Amumu's damage output as well as jungling capabilities. This build gives you plenty of damage while still holding true to your tank&gank-ability.

Build Two

is what I use for ranked games because it gives much more early game survivability as well as making you self sufficient in the jungle without the need for a leash or many returns to the Nexus. With this build I normally only have to 'b' once after the first round through the jungle and after that only for buying items or post team-fights.

9x Greater Mark of Magic Penetration give you 8.55 magic penetration and because Amumu is an ability power champion, these amplifies your damage.

9x Greater Glyph of Ability Power provide enough ability power to make your abilities fairly stron early-game. Together, these provide a total of 9 AP.

9x greater seal of replenishment to help with Amumu's ravishing need for mana. Together, these runes give 3.7 mana/5sec which provides you with enough mana-regen until you are able to build the philosopher's stone.

3x Quintessence of Ability Power add 15 AP, and combined with the glyphs gives you 24 AP at the beginning of the match.

For Build Two I've only changed a couple runes out:

9x Greater Seal of Armor add 13 armor at the start of the game which helps survivability early game jungling.

3x Quintessence of Health add 78 health which also allows for greater survivability early game.

Build One

When it comes to masteries you will do a standard AP tank build of 9/21/0.

In the Offensive Tree you will put 3 points into Archmage's Savvy and 1 point into Plentiful Bounty , follow up with 4 points into Sorcery and 1 point into Archaic Knowledge .

As for the Defensive Tree you will put 3 points into Resistance , 3 points into Hardiness , 3 points into Strength of Spirit , 3 points into Harden Skin , 1 point into Defensive Mastery , 4 points into Veteran's Scars , 3 points into Ardor , 1 point into Tenacity .

For playing Amumu as a tank, the defense tree provides the necessary base to work from. Because the damage Amumu deals is magic, I built into the offensive tree enough to get the extra 15% magic penetration, the extra CDR and AP are bonus.

Build Two

This is an alternate tank build of 1/21/8.

In the Offensive Tree you will put 1 point into Archmage's Savvy .

Again for the Defensive Tree you will put 3 points into Resistance , 3 points into Hardiness , 3 points into Strength of Spirit , 3 points into Harden Skin , 1 point into Defensive Mastery , 4 points into Veteran's Scars , 3 points into Ardor , 1 point into Tenacity .

Now for the Utility Tree you will put 3 points into Perseverence , 1 point into Good Hands , and 4 points into Awareness .

The differences here make leveling much faster which means Amumu's ultimate will be attained quicker, and that is one of the primary tools for ganking.

Following this build, the end product will look like:






Start your build with a Regrowth Pendant and a Health Potion. This will give you enough health regeneration early to help you survive/lane until you port back for your next item.

On your first trip back to base, build the Regrowth Pendant into a philosopher's stone. The Philosopher's Stone gives excellent health and mana regeneration as well as an extra 5 gold per 10 seconds. Try to upgrade the Regrowth Pendant AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to get the most out of its passive.

After finishing the Philosopher's Stone, start building your Mercury's Treads. These boots are the best option for tanking because they give you the speed to catch and hold people in your AoE as well as give you magic resist with 35 tenacity. These boots really help you do your job.

After Merc's Treads comes the Sunfire Aegis. This gives you some nice armor, health, and another bit of AoE damage to on top of Despair. Building the Sunfire Cape is the point games start to turn in your favor because with your items to this point you are generally tanky enough not to die while keeping your AoEs on the enemies. This is also the point at which you can begin to really show off your ganking ability!

Warmog's Armor should be next on the agenda. This item adds massive health and health regeneration into the pot. Also it stacks giving you more health and health-regen per minion and champion kills.

The next item to build after the Warmog's depends on the enemy team. If you are facing a heavy Attack Damage team then the Thornmail is what to get first, and conversely for an Ability Power team the Force of Nature is your primary goal.

Thornmail gives a ton of armor as well as dealing 30% of their normal attacks back on them as magic damage. This item will cause squishy AD carries to think twice about attacking you, because eventually they will kill themselves with their own auto-attacks.

I prefer picking up the Force of Nature over the Banshee's Veil for a few reasons. With this build, I am trying to maximize health-regen, and FoN is one of the best items in the game for this. Also as a tank, the FoN provides much more magic resist to protect your health. The Banshee's Passive is nice, but once you lose the shield you have significantly less Magic Resist then the FoN, reducing your effectiveness in a team fight. I'll build a Banshee's Veil if I'm playing an AD carry or Mage to avoid the initial CC burst and get the hell out of Dodge.

However, if the enemy team is extremely AP heavy, I will pick up a Banshee's Veil instead of the Thornmail.

To finish the build, upgrade the Philosopher's Stone to a Shurelya's Battlesong. The stats provided by this item are excellent for Amumu, and because you already have half the recipe, its really a no-brainer. Shurelya's provides a good amount of both health and mana regen, a decent amount of CDR, as well as giving you an awesome Active.

I will usually keybind Shurelya's active to an easy button (ex. Spacebar), so when I see an enemy running away I just mash that button and then I'm right back into the fight. To set a keybinding you need to use the options menu in game.

After you have these items you will be the Scariest 3 foot crybaby that ever lived!

Frozen Heart


This can be a good replacement for the Thornmail. It has 99 Armor instead of 100 (because you can tell the difference *sarcasm*) as well as 500 mana which is always nice for that mana starved Amumu. In addition, The UNIQUE passive is amazing: Lowers Cooldowns by 20% and an enemy attack speed reduction aura of 20%. With more mana and lower CDR this will allow for more spamming of Amumu's Bandage Toss.

Banshee's Veil


This item is can replace the Thornmail if the opposing team is mainly AP. This stacks more Magic Resist as well as giving you a little more health and mana to work with. The passive blocks one negative spell every 45 seconds which can be really helpful too.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter


This can be used if your team is dominating each team-fight and feel that the only reason why you don't get an Ace if for the few of those babies who keep barely making it out of your reach. This gives a decent amount of both health and AP while slowing foes hit by your spells.

Start at the Blue Golem. Ask for a leash (teammate hits Golem first to attract its aggro then leaves), pop Despair, Smite Golem, and once you get his attention use your Health Potion.

Starting here ensures stong mana regen for early game. As previously mentioned Amumu is very mana hungry and Golem significantly reduces this issue.

Make sure you have used the Health Potion fully before heading to the Dog Camp. Once there, pop Despair again and keep hitting the largest of the three dogs. Once you hit level 2 continue using Tantrum until the dogs are dead.

Next run down to the Banshee's. Position yourself in the middle of them, use Tantrum and immediately activate Despair.

Once the banshees are taken care of, move down to the 2 Golems and fight them in similar fashion.

At this point, you should be fairly low on health and at level 3. Upgrade Tantrum and port back to the Nexus. Buy your Philosopher's Stone and 2 more health potions.

Next, head to the Lizard Elder Camp and fight the 3 lizards the same way. Tantrum in the middle, pop Despair, use a Health Potion, and Smite the lizard elder. Continuously use your health potions.

After destroying the Lizard camp you should be level 4 (or extremely close), so put a point into your Bandage Toss. At this point you will be able to pull off small ganks if your team needs them but be careful, because you are not a badass tank just yet. Idealy, keep running around the jungle and destroying the camps as they respawn.

Once you hit level 6, it becomes prime time for early game ganks!

Make sure you continue jungling while at the same time jumping out to help protect towers, protect teammates, or pull off ganks.

This shows the location of each jungle camp on the map as well as the basic starting route you will be taking (edited by me):

Ganking is the ability to attack an unsuspecting enemy to either kill them or push them back towards their tower. It is usually done from the bushes or from the other side of a wall. This is your most important job in the game aside from tanking. I will describe how with pictures (that I put together in a custom game-I got really lucky with the bots...).

Here we see Amumu setting himself up for a gank on the unsuspecting Soraka bot. Soraka thinks that she has the upper hand on our Annie who running away, but little does Soraka know that Amumu is waiting in the bushes just above her. The important part about ganking as Amumu is knowing how to use the bandage toss. You will need to lead your target because bandage toss's projectile speed is not the fastest in the game. This will take a bit of practice in order to not waste the cooldown.



In the picture below I have used my bandage toss to jump in at the Soraka, saving our Annie and after smacking the Soraka a little I use my Curse of the Sad Mummy to keep her in place while further damaging her with my AoE. This is the primary strategy for ganking and can turn games around very easily. In a team fight this allows your team to kill off one or more of the enemy team while simultaneously protecting your own.



Here I am setting up for a gank on Shen. Even though I don't have my ultimate, this is a favorable 3v2 situation and between my stun, Malphite's slow, and Soraka's silence we will be able to bring down a world of pain. Knowing precisely when to gank comes with practice, and in this case I wanted to wait for Shen to start running back before I leaped in to stun him.



*NOTE: Bandage toss does not make you God, know your fights and don't run stupidly into a lost unneeded team battle thinking you will always have a way out*

It is important to know when to fight or when to run. It is a good idea to always have an escape strategy just in case the ganker becomes the ganked. In this photo I have shown the best possible escape path to use (in this specific situation) in case a member of the other team had come up from behind me.



Here is an example of how to run enemies down. You want to first initiate with them, and let them smack you some while standing in AoE.



Once they decide that they aren't going to win the fight and begin to run, it becomes the perfect time to pop your ultimate and ensure they will not escape.



The best way to traverse your jungle is to use your bandage toss to full effect. This is great for moving around the map quickly to set up for ganks as well as escaping from enemies. In the next 2 pictures you can see Amumu aiming the bandage toss at the best location to attach onto the Dog Camp that lies on the other side of the wall, and pulling himself to them.



Next we see a good example of how being a tanky-ganker has its advantages. Here, both Yi and Sivir are both near full health, chasing our nearly-dead Shen. Little do they know that Amumu is coming in from the top planning on giving our Shen cover for his excape.



After jumping in and stunning Yi, stopping him from using Highlander to its full effectiveness, I use my tantrum to deal some damage and scare Yi away.



I then chase down Sivir trying keeping her in my AoE and mashing on my E. Then I pop my ultimate to make sure that she has no way of getting out.




Ganking can completely turn games around. Hopefully this section has helped further your understanding of Amumu's powerful ganking capabilities.

Zone Control

Knowing what is your space and what is your enemies is important. This video will help give you further knowledge on what is what. Seriously, this separates good from bad LOL players.
Play Video

Map Awareness

You have a mini map on your screen, don't forget to use it. I believe that this fun little video describes this the best.
Play Video

Wards

As a jungler and tank it is generally your job to place wards around the lanes and in the jungle. Your ward placement is key and I feel that in addition to Crowd Control, wards win games. You will notice that as you and your team share the cost for wards they will be a great advantage to you and your team.


Sight Wards

sight ward

These are used to see visible units. Great to assist in map awareness, gank awareness, and where enemies are jungling.


Vision Wards



These see visible and invisible units. These are great to have if the other team has Stealth type characters like Twitch, Shaco, and Evelyn. These are also great wards to use at Baron Nashor, Dragon, and other prime ward areas as to let you kill the other teams already existing wards.

Placement

I have found these places to be the most helpful areas to ward. Not all required but if you are to get the most out of your wards these are the areas they should be placed in. The Vision wards on the ends are best used if the other team has Stealth type characters.





This way it will best utilize each ward to its full effectiveness, giving you cover from ganks as well as setting up for your own ganks.


I recommend this guide if you want further help or knowledge on warding placement.

http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/warding-helper-more-than-your-eyes-can-see-54337

Oracle's Elixir

Gives your Champion stealth detection until they die.

This is a great tool to use for both tanks and junglers. Seeing as you are both, this item is extremely effective on Amumu. This elixir lets your character act as a Vision ward, seeing invisible units and items around the map. This renders enemy stealth characters useless for ganks, thereby protecting your squishies like a good tank should. Oracle's is also helpful in finding those annoying Teemo Mushrooms or dispatching the other teams wards.

*Note: If you die you will lose this so don't go blowing the 400g on the item if you don't plan on surviving long enough to use it!*

Amumu has some major Crowd Control effects as well as supreme gank-ability which make him one of the ultimate characters for team play. Played correctly, he deals plenty of damage and becomes one of the tankiest champions in the game.

With this guide I hope to have shed some insight on how to use Amumu's spells to their full effectiveness for ganking enemies and saving allies.

You become the run-to guy and eventually the other team will be more scared of you than that pesky Vayne you have on your team.

Be wary of when to initiate and when to back off, you don't want to run in guns blazing just to be shut in and shut down. Be careful, play smart, experiment with your bandages, and of course Have fun! I am now and will forever be an Amumu fan, please feel free to hit me up with any questions you have.

Good luck and Good Games