Hi there. Miffed Sheep here, and I'm happy to say that this is my first guide. I will post it with the preface that: I have not been in ranked play, I'm not a phenomenal player, and I can't properly jungle with Udyr, or just about any character. It's easy to say that I'm a noob. That being said, though, I've constantly had a strong performance with this build, and highly recommend it for those trying to at least learn Udyr and get a feel for his skills and play style.


Oh, and my apologies if this isn't exactly pretty. If someone wants to take the time to weave together the coding for things like Icons or general formatting, feel free to do so. Kindness begets kindness

For this build I focus on a strong early game laning phase.
Seals: With flat armor, your early game presence against most champs top lane is lowered greatly.
Glyphs: Scaling magic resist to complement the MR items you'll receive later on, setting you at a nice and cozy 150-170 MR.
Marks: Attack speed to help time last hits and increase the effectiveness of the combination of Tiger Stance, Pheonix Stance, and his wonderful passive. This also increase the rate at which you regain mana and health from attacking minions by increasing the amount you attack overall.

Quints: Armor Pen quints allow a stronger early game ability to harass, mitigating enough armor, and percentage at that, to make your attacks ones you'd want to avoid. The one movespeed quint gives you the ability to chase, early game, unparallelled. Staring with boots, grabbing bear stance at 3/4, the extra 3% from your mastery choice, and ghost + this rune allows you to reach the soft cap of 500 quite easily.

While most people, seeing a 9/0/21 Udyr, think it to be ridiculous to place that many points into utility, usually focusing more on either the offensive or defensive tree. Though this set up is in place to allow your Summoner Spells always to be up when you really need them to be, and seeing as without flash you have limited gap closers, the combination of a ghost +bear into a stun, a preloaded tiger, popping tiger again, hitting pheonix, then exhausting and doing it all over again, assures that you'll kill any given target.

Starting with Boots of Speed + 3 Health Pots gives you enough sustain and speed to dominate your lane early game. Playing champs like Vayne, Rammus, and Teemo, one learns to apreciate what immense speed can do for you. The three health pots + turtle can easily keep you in lane until later levels. (On one occasion being forced to blue pill at level 12, with the upwards of 4k gold through 4 ganks and farming, as well as gold over time, of course.)

Wriggles is built first, though finishing boots quickly can help you if you're having a hard time in lane, as it gives you lifesteal, armor, damage, but most importantly a free ward. Playing solo, or duo, top it is terribly important to have access to wards, and this allows you to have a recurring ward every three minutes.

Aegis allows you to deal out more damage, even if it is slight, and gives you a wonderful amount of durability. As well as this, the utility it brings to team fights is irreplaceable. We've all seen threads on why Aegis is amazing, and here is simply another playing attesting to this.

At this point you are TANKY. Every defensive item from this point is simply gravy.

Trinity force. This item, amazing on most tanky DPS characters. The actual order in which you aquire the items are really up to personal preference. Phage first, increases your overall tankyness, and gives you a form of minor CC outside of Exhaust and Bear Stance. Zeal first allows you to be more of a threat in one on one situations, increasing your ability to gank, and giving you crit chance. An early Sheen, too, increases your one on one and tower busting capabilities. Sheen procs are wonderful on Udyr, as stance dancing increases your damage output drastically. I assure you that not many champs hit as hard as Udyr with a preloaded Tiger, Bear Stun, Pheonix, three hits, Tiger. All with 'double' hits inbetween through sheen procs.

Warmogs allows you to stay tanky throughout the game, and gives fuel to Atma's when it's finally completed. All around wonderful item.

Atma's impaler is just icing on the proverbial cake. Giving more crit chance, increased overall damage, and armor makes Udyr a force to be reckoned with.

This skill sequence aims at giving you a terribly strong early game.

One thing worth noting, which I have just recently figured out, is that pre-loading tiger can last for an increased amount of time if you simply stay in tiger stance. Meaning, that if you start the game, hit tiger at your nexus, and keep an eye on Udyr's hands, you'll notice he has little glowing spikey-claw-things on his hands. When these are seen, your next attack will inflict the DOT on Tiger Stance. This being said, an early game rush to lane, or jungle, can land you in a one on one situation where you're able to melt another champion through your DOT's and increased attack speed via Tiger and Marks. And in the case of team fights, early on, the amount of damage you put out can easily scare someone out of pursuing a low HP ally.

Phenoix stance, your most important mid game stance, is wonderful for clearing waves of minons as well as putting out solid and significant damage in team fights.

Bear stance is my favorite Udyr stance, as movespeed makes him in my eyes. The massive amount of utility one gets from this stance is enough to call it a tad OP.

Turtle stance pops skillshots all day. Use that sheild to your advantage, and don't be afraid to just kind of throw it on to clear a minion wave. More often then not, you'll leave with a significantly higher amount of health and mana that you came in with.

Ghost + Exhaust. More movespeed, and more, absolutely wonderful, teamfight utility.

Alternatives: Ignite and Flash. Ignite allows your early game presence to be absolutely unmatched, usually replacing Ghost, though leaves you weak in terms of escape or chasing skills. The combination of these skills almost always guarantees a kill in one on one situations, though ignites ability to kill drops off significantly at later levels. Flash is just an amazing summoner spell all together, and a flash over a wall + bear stance can get you out of just about any situation.

You are beefy. Tanky. Big. This has been said a lot in the guide, but only to hammer home the idea that you can really take some damage. But, that being said, DO NOT INITIATE IF YOU HAVE A DEDICATED TANK. You are not invincible, and are a lot more important to your team alive. Generally speaking though, you are usually the second man in, hopefully following a Malph Ult or Alistar combo, and from there you simply wreck. Target their carries, stun their channels, be a player the other team will absolutely hate by the end of the match. For if you're not a general ***, being hated is a wonderful first time experience.

Save your teammates, stun chasers, intercept Skillshots with your shield, and try your best to be the last one out of the fight. If you die, it's worth it if your team survives.

I am not very good at the game, and this build and playstyle has given me a string of wins in public 5v5 matches. So try it out, if you want to try Udyr, and enjoy yourself. He's a challenging and fun champion to play, and there is a real sense of satisfaction when you can hit scores along the lines of 19/2/28. Feel free to criticize the guide, just don't be mean about it.