Hello, I am Micler12.I am a great fan of the manbearturtletigerphoenix that we know as udyr.He's a very difficult champion to master, but through time, dedication, observation, and dabating, I have learned much. Lacking an ultimate, he doesn't have an ability that will "tip the scale" in team fights, but this does not make him weak compared to other champions, in fact, he is surprisingly powerful when used the right way. He has amazing chasing potential, and his movement speed with Bear Stance can allow him to move right past the tanks and destroy their squishy backline.

As a warning this build requires jungling and as such, i do not recommend this guide for solo queuing. Imho, i find the solo queue to be filled with belligerent ****s, that have no sense of teamwork, and this guide requires a lot of it to be successful.

Udyr is a champion famed for his high versatility, and his ability to adapt to his enemies. Knowing this, a single build of Udyr is just not reasonable. A cookie-cutter build is not viable either as each game demands that you adapt to your enemies.

Phoenix-Tiger

This is the type of playstyle that I prefer to use. Utilizing Phoenix Stance's extremely potent early-mid game DPS, and high farming/jungling capabilities, you can output very high amounts of DPS throughout early-mid game. However, because phoenix "peaks" out during this time, precautions are made to ensure your DPS is maintained, and even improves as the game get longer. This solution is found in the use of Tiger stance. How this is done, is explained in "Phoenix-Tiger"

Pure Tiger

This build is an late-game oriented build that has a slower jungle, less sustained damage, and more mana hungry early-mid game when compared to Phoenix DPS Soak. However, the damage that this build can deal in late-game can match and surpass that of it's phoenix counterpart. The use of a sheen and eventually trinity force making it possible to deal heavy single target nukes on demand. The ability to pre-load tiger before ganking is what make this build a success during the laning phase. This kind of playstyle is more suited for games where either targets has good escaping capabilities limiting your time to burst a target down or games where you must use hit and run style guerrilla warfare tactics.

Monkey's Agility

Entering a stance grants Udyr 10% attack speed and 3% dodge for 5 seconds. This effect can stack.

A decent passive that becomes more important as the game goes on and you have mana to maintain stacks. It caps at 3 stacks totaling 30% attack speed and 9% dodge bonus.

Tiger Stance

Persistent Effect: Udyr's attack speed is increased by 20/25/30/35/40%.

Activation: Udyr gains an additional 15/20/25/30/35% attack speed for 5 seconds after activating Tiger stance. While active or for 5 second after Activation, Udyr's next attack deals 170% his attack damage plus 30/80/130/180/230 over 2 seconds as magic damage.

Cost
55/50/45/40/35 Mana

The larger part of this skill comes from the activation effect, not the persistent effect. The DoT that this skill can deliver has the potential to be devastating. The facet of this skill that makes it dangerous is pre-loading. You can maintain the on-hit effect of this stance for 5 seconds after changing stance out of it. This can resut in massive spike from 2 consecutive tiger DoTs in close succession.

If you are running Tiger DPS Soak, you should always be maxing this skill. However if you rum Phoenix DPS Soak, it is not always the smartest idea to max this skill. The AD scaling of the skill does not change with rank, and the ATS boost/rank is a pitiful 5/5%.

Turtle Stance

Persistent Effect: Udyr's attacks cannot crit, but he restores 12/14/16/18/20% of his damage as health and 9/10.5/12/13.5/15% of his damage as mana.

Activation: Udyr gains a temporary shield that absorbs 60/100/140/180/220 (+0.5 AP) damage.

Cost
55/50/45/40/35 Mana

One of the biggest things to take note of about the turtle shield is that it IS affected by your resistances, meaning that 220 shield will block 550 damage with a resistance of 150.

As of the 1.0.0.120 patch, the steal from Turtle Stance is no longer based on raw damage before reduction and is now calculated post damage reduction. Consider it lifesteal w/ mana

Bear Stance

Persistent Effect: Udyr mauls his target with such force that they are stunned for 1 second. This effect cannot occur on the same target for 6 seconds.

Activation: Udyr gains 15/18/21/24/27% increased movement speed for 2/2.5/3/3.5/4 seconds.

Cost
55/50/45/40/35 Mana

This is your Swiss Army Knife of stances. Initiation, interruption, chasing, fleeing, this stance has its uses in just about every part of the game. However, it is important to note that movement speed has a soft cap at about 500; this means that any additional movement speed past this point will give diminishing returns. With boots, bear stance will bring you very close to this soft cap, making the use of ghost less effective. It is also important to note that ranking bear stance has no effect on the duration of your stun. The combination of these elements makes maxing bear stance not always the wisest decision.

Phoenix Stance

Persistent Effect: Every fourth attack, Udyr engulfs enemies in front of him in flame, dealing 50/90/130/170/210(+0.25 AP) magic damage.In addition, Udyr's ability power is increased by 16/24/32/40/48 and his attack damage is increased by half of that amount.

Activation: Udyr sends out pulsing waves of fire dealing 15/25/35/45/55 (+0.25 AP) magic damage each second to nearby enemies for 5 seconds.

Cost
55/50/45/40/35 Mana

This stance is rather self-explanatory. The larger part of the DPS of this skill comes from simply staying in this stance. Every third hit releases a burst of AoE damage. Unlike Tiger Stance, Damage comes from being in the stance, not activating the stance.

There is an ongoing debate about which stance is better, Tiger? or Phoenix? The fact of the matter is that the two stances are incomparable. The time where each stance has the strongest effect is different.

Imagine that there is a scale, and that on each side of the scale is a stone. However, each stone weighs differently based on the time of day. During the time that the sun is up, the first stone is heavier, and tips the scale. But, after the noon day heat has passed and the sun starts to set, the moon rises, and the first stone starts to lose its weight. When the moon rises, the second stone starts to gain weight and begins to tip the scale in its favor.

This is an accurate analogy of how tiger and phoenix operate. Phoenix Stance represents the first stone while Tiger Stance represents the second, and the point in the game is represented by the time of day. Yes, based on the analogy, there should be a time when the 2 stances should "weigh" the same, however, this moment is but an instant, and vanishes just as soon as it appears.

Most people think that Tiger and Phoenix are mutually exclusive, that if you decide to use one stance, the other is instantly useless because Tiger scales off AD while phoenix scales off ATS. This assumption is wrong. You must consider the fact that Udyr is an Auto-Attack champion, regardless of playstyle. The best way to increase your AA DPS is to hybridize AD and ATS. This is why Tiger stance has an ATS steroid, and why Phoenix stance has an AP/AD Steroid. Using items of both types will, in the end, be best for your DPS overall.

Udyr CANNOT harass in lane
Udyr CANNOT maintain mana in lane
Udyr CANNOT gank freely in lane
Udyr CAN be harassed easily in lane
Udyr is FORCED into pushing his own lane to maintain mana.

Don't lane in Summoner's Rift, TT is the only exception as to why Udyr should be in lane, this will be explained later.

Learning how to play efficiently with Udyr takes practice. Read as much out of this guide as you want, it can simply point you in the right direction. Experiencing it for yourself is the best way to learn. You will likely lose games when you start to play, but do not be discouraged. You likely fell off your bike a few times when you were learning to ride.

Looking at Udyr's cooldowns and playstyle, he looks like a prime candidate for the use of a Trinity Force. Good news, he is. Bad news, knowing when to get it, takes knowledge and experience.

The Trinity Force has an outstanding effect on Udyr's DPS, there is no doubting that, but some things must be accounted for before you should even think about getting it:

1. Base damage
The bonus damage passive of Trinity force is based on your base damage, nothing else. This essentially means that it is based on your level, as your based damage only increases when you level. Until you have a high enough base damage, other, cheaper, items will be able to do more than the trinity force can.

2. Survivability
Do not EVER ignore getting survivability to finish building a Trinity Force. Without survivability you will not last long enough in team fights to be of any use to your team, meaning you will die quickly, gain no gold and experience, and in the end suspend the completion of the Trinity Force even more.

3. How will building it effect your game?
This is not about imagining having the completed item, but about building the individual pieces. Each piece is rather lackluster until the recipe has been completed, so you must think about what order you are going to build each piece, when you are going to need to fit survivability items in-between (you will, don't ever think otherwise), and how far back will this pull your DPS when compared to other items. Having a strong item for end game is pointless when you just feed the entirety of early-mid game. If you are having a tough game, go without the Trinity force for a while, focus on digging your way out now before it's too late.

Offensive Tree

Anything past the 9 point mark really isn't worth it. The benefits you gain from going any deeper into the tree just don't aid Udyr enough. Havoc's extra 4% damage would be nice, however wasting 12 points for a single bonus doesn't help.

Deadliness- Is it worth it? The bonus to crit chance is the best thing on this tier other than the improved smite. A 2% chance to deal double damage while not in Turtle Stance is rather minuscule, but it can help. By taking offensive mastery points however, you reduce the amount of points you can have in the defensive tree.

Improved Smite - Is it worth it? a single point for an extra 5 gold every time you smite can be handy. You don't need to use it, but its nice to have, if you got a free point or are going for 9 points into offense take a point in this.

Archmage's Savvy- Don't. 1AP/lvl is nothing for udyr, his AP ratios are horrid.

Sorcery- Is it worth it? there are 2 milestone for Udyr as far as CDR is concerned. 17% and 33%. 17% percent will allow Udyr to perma 1 stance to maintain stacks. 33% will allow you to maintain bear speed at all times. Unless you intend on reaching at least the first milestone putting points into this doesnt really help, you gain tiny fractions of a second off, which really has no effect on the game. However, putting the 4 points into this can be worth it for the Archaic Knowledge mastery.

Alacrity-Don't, the benfits gained here can also be gained from ardor in the defensive tree, and almost everyhting in the defensive tree helps Udyr, so no points will be wasted reaching it. In the offensive tree there are a lot of things that are just sub-par for Udyr.

Archaic Knowledge - Is it worth it? This can boost your magic damage, but the effect it has is fairly weak on tanks. For example, if you were fighting a tank with 200MR, you gain 2.7% damage. It's Not much, but it can be worth it for a DPS Soak, the more damage the better.

Sunder- Don't, this is too far down the line to make it worth it for Udyr.

Offensive Mastery - Like sunder, this is too far down the tree to make it worth it.

Defensive Tree

The tankier your intended build, the further down the tree it helps to be.

Resistance- Do, an additional 6 MR is nice for only 3 points, always take this. Udyr could use the extra beef for when he has to run through the tanks.

Hardiness- Do, just like Resistance, 6AR for only 3 points, always take it.

Evasion- Do, has great synergy with your passive, and becomes even better to have if you pick up Nimbleness and use dodge runes, which I recommend.

Defensive Mastery- Do, increases your jungling safety, you may not notice it, but the amount of hp this will save you in the jungle is immense, it can save your more hp than a hp pot in your first clear alone.

Nimbleness- Do, Your passive naturally grants dodge, and you gain an additional 2%. If you put the 4 points into Evasion, always take Nimbleness.

Harden Skin- Is it worth it? Like Defensive Mastery, but by using 3 points you can reduce enemy champion's damage as well, however, 2 damage isnt worth 3 points mot of the time. Harden Skin also calculates before reduction, which can result in no change in damage at all.

Veteran Scars- Do, If you're this deep into the defensive tree, this is a must.

Ardor- Do, if you are this deep into the defensive tree, this will boost your threat level, which Udyr needs.

Tenacity -If you are a tank, this is a must, if you are a DPS Soak, you may prefer the extra 15% buff duration, it's up to you, both are great investments.

Utility Tree

Spatial Accuracy- dont, unused spell

Good Hands- Do, while in an ideal situation you would never die, it is never ideal. Stuff happens, a bad initiation, you got ganked, etc. This will reduce your dead time, so its nice to have.

Perseverance- Don't, For Udyr, this is a deceptive lie. An extra 4% regen sounds amazing, until you factor in Udyr's pitiful regen. your hp5 and mp5 go up by a little more than one, hardly worth the points.

Improved Ghost- Do, Udyr lacks a dash, so he's all about movement speed, having the extra 6% and 1.5sec duration is amazing.

Awareness- Do, this is a necessary mastery for any jungler.

Expanded Mind- Don't, Udyr has a small mana pool, but that issue will be covered with items that offer mana. Udyr's pool is naturally small, 5% won't go far.

Greed- Don't, the amount of gold this thing gives is extremely small. In 45min you gain a whopping 270 gold...

Meditation- Is it worth it? If you intend on going deeper into the Utility tree this is the best place to throw your points. Udyr's mana regen is rather low, so this can help when you are defending a lane where you cant turtle things for mana.

Utility Mastery- Do, If you are a jungler you want at least 1 point in this, 2 if you have the points to do so. an extra 30% buff duration is amazing.

Quickness- Do. you really shouldn't go past this point in the utility tree. However, if you are going this deep, its an excellent investment.

Intelligence- don't. this is too deep into the tree to be worth it

Presence of the Master- Don't, this is too far into the Tree and offers too little unless you are a caster/support.