Amumu Build Guide by NinjaNick95

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Season 3 Jungle Amumu - Offtank/AP

Last updated on January 2, 2013

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Offtank/AP (Cheat Sheet)

Champion Build: Amumu

Recommended Runes + Notes

Starting Items

15 Minute Seraph's + Notes

Adapted Season 2 + Notes

Ability Sequence

Masteries

Offense: 0

Defense: 9

Utility: 21

Guide Table of Contents

Introduction

Pros/Cons

Season 3: What you Need to Know

Ability Breakdown

Runes

Masteries

Builds/Skill Sequence

Alternative Items

Summoner Spells

Teamfights

Pictures Using These Builds

Thanks and Changelog

Introduction

Hey guys, NinjaNick95 here, back with my brand new, updated Amumu guide for Season 3!
These builds are all more powerful and more effective than my previous Season 2 build. If you did well with it then please, try out these builds and watch your performance skyrocket.

I hope you can all learn some valuable information about jungling with Amumu :)
Please remember to comment, upvote, and send me pictures of stats!

Here is the link to the old Season 2 Guide, in case anyone has any interest.

Amumu is currently the champion with one of thebhighest win/loss ratio in ranked games*, because of his ability to dominate teamfights and make powerful ganks while jungling. I highly recommend him to anyone looking to try jungling, as he is easy to learn, yet hard to master. Check out the video above and even other guides for tips!

*Changes on a daily basis, check here.

Pros/Cons

Powerful Pros

Huge AoE damage and a gap-closer
Naturally tanky
Deals mainly magic damage instead of physical (MR doesn't scale with level on most champions)
Cries on your enemies
Passive damage reduction
Great teamfight capabilities
Great CC
Powerful ganks with Bandage Toss, Curse of the Sad Mummy, and Flash
A wide variety of powerful, viable builds

Critical Cons

Needs to be up close to be effective
Lots of MR shuts down his damage
Squishy early game
Is extremely dependent on Bluebuff without Tear of the Goddess
Slow if you don't take MS masteries.

Season 3: What you Need to Know

Concerning

This has been a really controversial new item for junglers. Many people say that it discourages jungle flexibility, and I have to partially agree. The increased strength of the jungle monsters makes starting with
an absolute no-no. This could be pulled off in Season 2, but no longer :( However, we also need to remember that it's meant to increase jungling performance during the very early game only. What this means is:

Do not make upgrading it a priority.
Rushing the upgrades puts you behind badly in terms of useful gold invested and stats.
You may be better off selling the thing after your second or third clear or first few successful ganks. This way, you can free up the gold and put it into your core build!

Basically, what this amounts to is: Be sure not to overvalue ! It is a starting item, and a starting item only.

Jungle Changes

Amumu does admirably well in the new jungle. Unlike most, he does not require a leash for the first clear, assuming you plan on going back before ganking. You'll need to use a at blue, but once you've finished that, everything else can be cleared with no issue. As a side note, the wolves do noticeably less damage now, because their critical hit ratios were reduced (thank goodness).

I take the same route used in Season 2:
Blue -> Wolves -> Wraiths -> Golems -> Red -> Wraiths -> Wolves -> Back -> Gank
This will give you ~720 gold to spend when you shop, and level 4 for . Having someone guard your blue is still very important.

Ability Breakdown

Bandage Toss

Bandage Toss is arguably 's best skill aside from his ultimate. This skill has a massive variety of uses, which makes it crucial that you are able to time and hit these very often, as it is his only skillshot.

Basic Uses:

Initiating a teamfight, usually followed by Curse of the Sad Mummy
Initiating a gank
Catching an escaping opponent
Stopping a channeled ability such as Death Lotus or Requiem

Advanced Uses:

Travelling though walls to jungle and take dragon quickly without being seen
Escaping jungle ganks by throwing it towards a camp (usually through a wall)
Catching opponents through walls when visible or on a predictable path

Click here to see a bunch of photos with some examples!

Despair

Despair is 's sustained damage and tank shredder. It deals a combination of flat and percentage damage (based on max health) making it invaluable in any fight. There are no real 'basic' or 'advanced' uses for this; if you're fighting, you should have it on. It does a lot of damage when allowed to run for extended periods of time, especially once we have a lot of AP.

We can also use this ability to gain stacks on a very quickly, allowing for
a as early as the 15-minute mark.

Tantrum

Tantrum contributes to 's sustained damage in fights and makes him more durable while ganking and jungling. Its passive is extremely strong, once you have a bit of armor it can completely negate damage from regular minions and even some camps. Ever been finished off by a group of minions? It won't happen with . Keep in mind that getting autoattacked reduces its cooldown, so being the center of attention lets you dish out more damage in shorter periods of time.

To use it effectively, use whenever it's up and as soon as it's up in fights or while jungling. It doubles as a great last-hitting tool in lane.

Curse of the Sad Mummy

's ultimate, and what an ultimate it is. When you build with a bit of AP, this is a point-blank nuke with a crazy long snare attached to it. You can deal well over 1000 damage if you use it in the middle of a teamfight - pressing 'R' has never won a teamfight quicker. However, it has a variety of other uses besides teamfights.

Basic Uses:

Initiating a teamfight, usually following
Bandage Toss or Flash
Securing a kill during a gank
Catching an escaping opponent (works amazingly well for catching
champions in bushes or in stealth such
as Akali with her Twilight Shroud)

Advanced Uses:

Saving a teammate who is being chased
Shutting down counterganks or punishing tower dives

Runes

To me, many of the Runes I give Amumu are pretty common-sense oriented, but I will explain both reasons and alternatives.

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration

These runes really are irreplaceable. Armor penetration has little benefit on Amumu, unlike most junglers. Since the vast majority of your damage is magic, you should really be using these. I don't really see any alternative.

I have also seen people taking because of the addition of . Do not do this! They are worthless late game, and magic pen. will increases your damage to both monsters and champions.

Greater Glyph of Ability Power

I choose these for the little bit of extra damage while jungling and going for early ganks. Many people choose , but since you won't be taking very much magic damage during the early game (until you gank mid, at least), I think the AP is more important than the MR.

Greater Seal of Armor

Extra armor while jungling is invaluable. You really need these, especially since we have to start with
and we're losing the armor bonus from .

Greater Quintessence of Gold

Probably the most unorthodox rune in my build, I use these to negate the need for a gold item such as
. When combined with all 4 ranks of , they act as a gold item from start to finish, for free. Very worth it in my opinion. Alternatives include and
for extra tankiness early game.

These may be changed if the 'Jungle Starvation' issue is addressed. As of now though, these runes are extremely important and will boost your income by a fair amount.

Masteries

Looking at the new Mastery trees, most of the jungle-relevant masteries are in the Utility tree, rather than the Defense tree. In fact, quite a few of the mid-tier defensive masteries only benefit lanes, such as and . Since gives us more than the effect of those two combined, I see no reason to go so far into the Defense tree.

Defensive Masteries

- 10 bonus gold on Smite use. It gives us 20 extra gold during our first clear alone and is well worth the 1 point it costs.

- Extra health is always good, and it leads into , which I believe to be a very important early game Mastery.

- 30 bonus health is a lot early game. 30 + 24 from means you'll have 54 more health when you go for your first gank than you would have had otherwise.

- Still has great synergy with , and is now the only mastery that reduces damage taken from jungle monsters. This makes it much more valuable.

- Not the best Mastery, but for one point you can clear camps a little quicker. I take this simply because it has the best value for our 1 remaining point.

Defensive Masteries I Don't Take

- This is a big deal. 6 bonus armor means a lot to us early game, but quite frankly, we can't spare the points for it. The 3 points it takes to receive the full benefit go into 4% CDR and 3% Movement Speed. Also, in every build we buy a very early , second only to when rushing .

- The only reason I don't take this is because we can take in the Utility tree, which provides a stronger effect which scales with maximum MP.

Utility Masteries

- Reduced cooldown on .

- Still very important even though it doesn't work in-combat. Allows for faster clearing as well as faster gank initiation.

- Further reduces the cooldowns of and . If you aren't using Flash, you should probably invest these points somewhere else.

- Reduced cooldown on items like and .

- Absolutely necessary, lengthens the duration of bluebuff.

- Still needed at the moment, but may not be if Riot increases jungle revenue due to the 'Jungle Starvation' issue. Substitute Gp10 item when paired with 3 .

- Better than because it scales with maximum MP.

- 6% CDR for 3 points, which is much more efficient than .

- An excellent capstone that Amumu loves. It helps you keep up while chasing enemies to deal damage with and , and helps cut your clear time.

Utility Masteries I Don't Take

- Seems like an obvious choice for Amumu, but really solves any mana issues that you may have. If you aren't buying Tear, you might want this.

- Again, has us covered in terms of max MP. is a much better choice anyways.

- Barely noticeable on Amumu because 3 out of 4 of his abilities are AoE. Would grant 1.5% spellvamp on and for 3 points. A wasteful investment.

- A nice perk, but by no means necessary. Our points are stretched rather thin as it is, so we can't afford to take pure luxury masteries like this one.

Builds/Skill Sequence

Off-tank/AP

Ability Sequence
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18

The focus of the Off-tank-AP build is sustained damage. , , and all work together to increase the amount of sustained damage you can do to multiple opponents at the same time.

To complement that, is maxed second, after . It has good scaling (in both AP and per rank), and will contribute more to teamfights than does.

Why don't we buy ?

In my opinion, Liandry's is a great item overall, but a noob trap on . It absolutely requires Rylai's to be effective, and every ability Amumu has is AoE (besides ), meaning you would only be burning 5% of their current health, not 10%. If it was maximum health, then maybe it would be viable. As it is though, it doesn't output the damage it needs to to be worth the gold.

Alternative Items

Defensive

- Adds some additional utility and CC to the build. The active can be used to start a gank, slow down an escaping opponent, or even save a teammate from someone chasing them! It also gives 5% movement speed, which Amumu loves and is hard to come by.

- This item has potential against teams that have a lot of physical damage because of the 60 armor it gives. The slow is also stronger than Rylai's - but not constant, either. The additional AP helps your damage output, and the MP pairs well with .

- An excellent item when enemies that rely on Attack Speed have gotten fed. Some examples would be and . The MP can also help out if you're in fights fairly often, and 20% CDR is nothing to laugh at.

- So good it needs to be listed twice. Since Force of Nature has been removed, this is probably the best item to counter AP carries. It gives 60 MR to you, and 30 to all of your allies. Also has a bit of health and armor for extra durability.

Offensive

- Just a couple successful ganks can make a huge difference with a Mejai's. If the enemy team lacks reliable escapes, consider buying this early. It will add to your snowball, and therefore your ability to carry your team.

- Good initiating burst with a strong secondary effect. Can be very lethal combined with Mejai's.

- A pretty cheap item for the stats it gives. 20% CDR is great for spamming and chopping the cooldown on .

Summoner Spells

is necessary for a jungler such as , you'll have trouble clearing without it.

I favor over because you can Flash into a , , or escape or chase over a wall if you need to. As you'll be sticking to your enemies long enough that you shouldn't need as much. But, if you favor it over , go for it.

can also be great for top-lane ganks especially. If you think your top lane might have issues, consider taking it. Ignite and Exhaust are pretty interchangeable, to be honest. Take whichever you're more comfortable/experienced with if you're not taking .

Teamfights

Your role in teamfights is to initiate. No matter the build you chose, you dive in with or
, CC the entire team with , and lock down their carries. Autoattack them and spam until they're forced to retreat! Without them in the picture, your team is much more likely to win.

Don't forget to use 's active! Depending on how much MP you have, it can give a shield that protects you from 400-600 damage. However, remember not to use it while the enemy is still snared by your ultimate! To get the most use out of it, wait until you start being focused. The longer you can take hits, the longer the rest of your team doesn't have to! This takes practice, but once you have the timing down, you will destroy the enemy team every time.

If you're confident in your abilities, you can also purposely save the shield until your health is very low. If an enemy backs off after igniting you, guess what? You throw the shield up, and you live. Annoying Darius stacks his bleeds on you? No problem, just shield it. You can also use it to block a large portion of damage from his ultimate, among other things.

Pictures Using These Builds

Off-Tank/AP

Spoiler: Click to view

Pure AP

Spoiler: Click to view

Thanks and Changelog

Thank you very much for reading through my guide, it means a lot :) If you liked it and learned something from it, please remember to upvote the guide! If you didn't like it quite as much, please, leave a comment and tell me what I can do to improve it! Thanks again :)

If you wish to provide me with a picture, please leave it in the comments and use a image host such as puush or imgur, both of which are free of charge and normally don't take old pictures down.

Spoiler: Click to view

A big thank-you to jhoijhoi for her guide and separators!

Guide Discussion (15)

The Sad Mummy

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