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Amumu Build Guide by

-AMUMU- An In-Depth Guide to a Versatile Jungler

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16 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author Adm Jackbar

Amumu Build Guide By Updated on

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Smite

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Ability Order

Amumu Passive Ability

Season 3 changes are going to turn Amumu on his head. From the initial info coming out of Beta and fellow theorycrafters, Amumu will be undergoing some huge changes in terms of current meta Masteries, Rune viability and Item build. While personal commitments will limit how quickly I can update the guide, I'll endeavor to keep it as up to date and in depth as possible.

An Important Foreword - This guide is written with respect to 5v5 on Summoners Rift. While the effectiveness of the strategies and builds listed in this guide may or may not be any different in alternate game modes, they are not tested for and should not be relied on in alternate game modes. ~ Jackbar

Amumu In Context; An Overview

Amumu is a jungle champion with great utility for any team. Recently he's been a common ban in low/mid ELO games and draft pick, mainly due to his providing a large area of effect stun which is often the deciding factor in a team fight. His jungle clear times are better than average, due to the AoE and combination. His can be used to pull him through walls, cutting time from his jungle and also safely checking if a buff has been stolen.

In general gameplay, current meta calls for an Jungle, AP mid, AD Bruiser top, Support bottom (Usually negligible magic damage) and and AD Carry bottom lane.

Due to the dominance of physical damage (Attack Damage based champions have the greater percent of the Jungle, , and being the only notable AP jungles.) Enemy teams are usually quicker to build Armor than Magic resist items, meaning Amumu's damage can be underestimated.

Amumu fills the first and often underestimated role of Jungler. While it is possible to support and also solo top lane as , his potential gank power and utility is not used by the team, and due to his unpredictable last hitting abilities, gaining CS with competition is more difficult and one can find themselves being outfarmed very early.
Jungling with allows the team to take advantage of his AoE farming in jungle, his powerful ganking abilities and mobility through jungle for warding purposes and counter-jungling.

As this guide progresses, I will provide more in depth analysis of individual game elements and Amumu's strengths and weaknesses. I'm Admiral Jackbar, bringing you AMUMU - An In-Depth.

Summoner Spells

SUMMONER SPELLS

The summoner spells I most frequently use on are and .

The rationale behind is obvious.
Early game it enables whomever is jungling to clear much faster, ensure buffs aren't accidentally taken by a teammate during leashing and occasionally smite-stealing during counter-jungling, also with the point in you gain an extra 10gp every time you use it. Mid game, it can be used to kill dragon, ensure your team gets the kill on dragon should you be attacked while taking it and obviously, for buff control. Late game, for the same use as dragon control and also for the added use of smite stealing .
In short YOU SHOULD NEVER JUNGLE WITHOUT SMITE. IT IS INCREDIBLY VALUABLE THROUGHOUT THE GAME TO BOTH YOU AND YOUR TEAM

is an exceptional summoner spell with many uses. As a gap closer, escape tool, getting in to position for and for one of the most satisfying tricks up the sleeve of - the Baron Steal. I'll cover this later.
It's important to note that Flash is not the be-all-and-end-all of summoner spells. can quite easily and effectively utilise other spells.

Optional Summoner Spells

Pro's

Shutdown for AD Carries in Teamfights

Useable for offense and defense Con's

Useless for escaping multiple enemies

Offensive use void if you have

SPACE

Pro's

Taking opportunistic ganks

Useful escape tool Con's

Chase usage void if you have

Inferior utility to

SPACE

Pro's

Useful offensive tool for ganks

Secure kills under towers

Severly reduces effectiveness of &

Con's

Leaves Amumu without a utility or escape tool.

The use of summoner spells other than Flash, Exhaust, Ignite, Ghost and Smite on is not recommended, however situational usage may be required, this guide and it's author(s) do not advise, nor provide advice for anyone using them.

Runes

For the first release of this guide, I will only be using one build. In future more tried and tested builds will be added, but on first release, with formatting and overall content, referring to more than one build is a hassle. ~ Jackbar

RUNES

These are the runes I use for my first, most often played Amumu Jungle build.

First off is 9x and 3x

Magic Penetration is vital on Amumu to ensure he does his full damage. Since my build doesn't allow for any Magic Penetration Items like or , the 15 MPen provided by runes makes you hit hard, even through their Magic Resist items. It's also complemented by your passive and mid game to make sure that even against a team building heavy Magic Resist, you can still deal massive AoE damage.

Next is my 9x

Neutral creeps deal physical damage. To minimise the damage you take during your clear, especially early game - and to provide good early game defense against the AD carry, taking flat armor seals is my choice. While they fall off late game, you get the stats you need early game which is when is at his most vulnerable.

Finally I use 9x

Due to the odd scaling of 's (+1% per 100 AP, therefore; +1% on 101 AP, +1 on 201 AP etc.) having 11 extra AP allows you to trigger based off your first 90 AP, and every sequential 100 AP bonus. While these are very often switched out for other useful runes such as , and , My most common build is using 9 AP Glyphs. The damage, particularly in jungle clear times is quite noticeable and it ups your damage just a little to allow delay building AP items.

Masteries

10 bonus gold on every use, since is mandatory on jungle, it is a must have.

Magic resist and tier filler. If the enemy team is AD heavy, swap it to Before the match starts.

and make you slightly more survivable in Jungle, also speeds up your early clear times.

is only chosen over because it builds into Veterans Scars, 30 HP from the start means a lot and is very hard to give up.

is both tier filler and a slight reduction in all damage. 2 damage doesn't sound like very much, but combined with , and it equates to 11.5 off every hit from Jungle creeps or minions. That's considerable.

Scaling Cooldowns. Easily the best choice in this tier, 8% cooldown reduction on ultimate by end game is considerable.

is fairly self explanatory. Reduced damage based on a percentile rather than flat amount means the more damage you take, the more you reduce.

gives you 3% more HP and a massively useful 10% reduction on all CC. Combine that with Tenacity from and it means you take the shortest possible duration of all CC from every source. Extremely useful.

is a great choice for a mana hungry champion like , also serves as tier filler.

Summoners Insight is for Flash cooldown and tier filler. If you're not using , put this point into either or so you at least get some usage from it.

because Amumu uses a lot of mana, regen is very useful.

as a Jungle it's pretty important to know where the enemy is. You should buy at least 2 sight wards every time you go b. and extra 5% isn't huge, but it's useful.

Obviously, 20% extra duration of buffs on a jungle is very useful. This is the main reason we chose the Utility tree over the offensive tree for Jungle .

Items

The first release of this guide will focus on the AP Offtank variant of Amumu. After formatting and content has been finalised for the first build, I will begin adding other roles and the subsequent builds designed for them to truly make this an In-depth guide. Until then, doing so creates unnecessary hassle for me, formatting wise. Thankyou for the your patience. ~ Jackbar

As a jungler, you don't have the constant minion waves to farm, theres the risk of counter-jungles taking your camps, plus ganking puts you out of farm for a good deal of the time. That is why the first item you get is Philosopher's Stone. We get this after the first sweep of jungle. Go b with 700 or so gold, purchase the Philosopher's Stone, and if possible, a Sight Ward.

Philosophers stone is a GP10, meaning Gold Per 10 (seconds, giving you an extra 5 gold every 10 seconds. It costs 800gp, meaning you don't actually break even until 27 minutes after you purchase it, but unlike most items if you sell it after that point you're actually making a profit, and any time over 27 minutes you hold on to it is generating profit.

The boots we get are , for the Tenacity mainly - combined with in our Defense mastery tree, from early on in the game will take the lowest possible CC and disable duration from every source. This is essential to ensure you can hit with and .

Next, you build a , the flat health and armor are obvious benefits, but the additional AoE magic damage is a huge help. It is the only purely tank item in this build, but it has a painful passive - from this point on can comfortably solo the Dragon (provided he has blue buff).

Following you should assess the enemy team composition. If they have more AP damage, or are building Magic Resist, you should build a first.
If they have more AD damage or someone with massive burst damage such as , or you need the slow to ensure kills when ganking - build .

After building either a or , Build the other. They are both necessary and hugely beneficial to you.

Breaking it down, Rylai's Crystal Scepter gives Flat HP, Ability Power and an AoE Slow which triggers on all of your skills. If someone runs through your Despair pool while chasing a teammate, they'll be slowed. It also means you can effectively chase even without an item like Boots of Swiftness against faster champions.

Abyssal Mask gives you Flat Magic Resist, Ability Power and an AoE Magic Resist lowering debuff. All champions within a 600 unit area of you (Roughly half your Ultimate's range) have 20 less Magic Resist. Not only does this benefit you, but also greatly benefits your mid lane during team fights and ganks.

By this stage of the game you are probably being focused heavily during team fights because of your crowd control. A useful item which is underestimated on Amumu is Zhona's Hourglass.

Flat armor and 100 AP (Which from before, we know triggers an extra 1% on our Despair) are great, but when combined with the invincibility passive makes this item amazing.
While Zhona's active is triggered, you still deal damage from the AoE of both Sunfire Aegis and Despair, by this stage in the game, your W is dealing 5.7% of their HP every second. For three seconds, that damage is equal to 17.1% + 24 base damage from Despair and 105 (35x3) damage from Sunfire Aegis all while you are completely un-targetable and immune to damage.

Should the game ever get to this point, and you are complete build, sell your Philosopher's Stone and buy a . Dealing more than 1000 damage with your ultimate (which is considered a CC move) is something that takes a lot of people by surprise.

Jungling As Amumu - A Walkthrough

I made this video as a temporary example. While the commentary is terrible and unscripted, it's still a pretty standardised example of Amumu's early game. When I have more time I'll update with a better quality video. ~ Jackbar

JUNGLING AMUMU

Your first items should be a and a . Buy these and head straight to blue buff. is completely dependant on to clear the jungle efficiently, because of this fact many teams will try to invade and steal his buff. It is important to tell your team to group up around blue and protect you and the buff from enemy invades.

Sometimes, Offense is the best defense. When playing Amumu, having your team invade the enemy blue can catch them off guard, just make sure to level up Bandage Toss first so that your team can make use of the stun - and when your team takes the Golem, Smite it just before death to ensure you get the kill (Level 1 Smite does 445 damage. You can watch the bar in the top right corner to time this)

If your team chose to defend your blue and you are not invaded, put the point into and use it, basic attacks and an early smite to down the blue buff. Put the 2nd level skill point into

Why Tantrum over Despair?? Because of the damage reduction, Tantrum makes the jungle deal less damage. At rank 2 it is also more efficient against neutral creeps than Despair.

Next, head to wolves, clear them out. Always keep your Despair active while fighting the Neutral creeps, basic attack the big wolf/big wraith/big golem and let your Despair and Tantrum take care of the rest. After you've taken wolves, head to wraiths. Clear them out again and head towards red buff.

Check that both bushes are clear of the enemy trying to gank/smite steal (Shown in the video)
When you've checked that you're safe, initiate. Use as soon as it's off cooldown and kill the red buff. Put the third point into . By now you should need to use your - Pop it and run back to wolves.

Second wolves should spawn as soon as you arrive. Kill them, head back to wraiths and level up. Put a point into so that you can now effectively gank. Check the map to see if anyone is being pushed in lane or any enemies are caught out of position.

Even if mid lane isn't pushed, it's often worth pressuring them at this point in hope they'll burn their Flash or Health pots to escape. Make sure to ping the target before you initiate. If you gank a lane when your teammate isn't ready you can end up feeding them a kill.

If every lane is ok and you can safely jungle, head up to red buff bush. Wait here for a second until is nearly off cooldown, then through the wall, smiting the big golem for an extra 10 gold before you .
This jungle route provides the optimal early game gold for , allowing him to get Philosopher's Stone and on his first back. If you ganked a lane and scored a kill or assist, buy at least one ward.

MAP AWARENESS

Map awareness is something that cannot be taught in any guide, no matter how well written. It is something that comes with experience in the game, practice and making a lot of mistakes in the process. As the jungle, your lane is the entire map. You should constantly check to see if anyone is missing from lane, if any lanes are being pushed, if anyone is overextended, OoM (Out of Mana) or if someone has the enemy jungle heading their way. This is your job.

In the following section, I will be covering one of the most important aspects of jungling. Wards are not just for the support. While it is their job to ward dragon and bottom lane, it is up to you to keep the rest of the lanes well aware of who is where and when. The most OP item in the game is , so why not spend a few hundred gold on them?

Warding

As a jungler, you are in a much better position to ward early game than your teammates who are in lanes. Because of this, your warding is vital for the laning phase.

PANGLOT'S WARDING GUIDE

This comprehensive guide on warding is an excellent resource. I recommend reading it if you are new to warding, or just as a refresher. Thanks to Panglot for the guide

Friend and Foe - Skillset Synergy and Counterpicks

FRIENDS

The following is a list of champions who have good synergy with [Amumu] in game. Their skillsets and abilities in team fights allow them to make full use of

Nunu's Ultimate can be devastating if he channels it for the full duration. Since enemies entangled by cannot stun him or escape it's range, good timing with the two ultimate's can demolish a 5v5 teamfight. He also gains the bonus from your

and if well timed can be an amazing way for Pantheon to enter the team fight and score some high damage. His couples well with your to ensure the high priority targets remain stunned.

The biggest problem with is that experienced opponents know to spread out and avoid the damage. Enemies trapped by can't move, therefore it allows Pyroclasm to hit all 5 times and maximise the damage. He also gains the bonus from your

Placing her on you before you initiate, and activating and just as your ultimate effect ends, she can hit multiple targets while also placing enemies in perfect positioning to be hit by and . She also gains the bonus from your

His and are deadly to enemy mages. A smart Blitzcrank will get into position and use the stun from your ultimate to demolish their mage.

With the refresh on-kill of , a well timed ultimate can set him up for a Penta-kill. Since he is often targeted by enemy CC so that he can't and kill the AD carries or squishy back line champions, a 2 second window of opportunity is usually more than enough to let him wreak havoc.

FOES

The following is a list of champions who disrupt your ability to play . Their skillsets and abilities in team fights make it difficult for you and your team to take full advantage of .

Due to his he can knock back your team and prevent them from taking advantage of the stun. He also has a huge range in lane, meaning he is often difficult to gank.

For the same reason as , her ability can knock back your team and prevent them from taking advantage of the stun. Her makes it difficult to chase her down in lane too.

Late Game, her knockback can completely ruin your attempted ultimate. A good will wait until you've activated , so that the knockback hit puts you behind your casters and you then have no way of quickly covering the ground back into the fight.

is very similar to Buster Shot, however it can be even more dangerous, as the distance it launches you is even further and a if you are your teams only tank, you are put in a very vulnerable position. A good will activate Dragon's Rage the same way described in Tristana's advice.

While Alistar's has much shorter range than the knockback of Lee Sin and Tristana, a well timed attack can still severely disrupt your initiate.

This section will be constantly updated with more synergy and counter advice on champions when I have time or discover them as it may be. Feel free to message me with advice for this section, but provide logical and well documented rationale otherwise I'll most likely ignore you. eg. "If u use anivias ultimate in amumus ultimate it hits them more" ~ Jackbar

Teamfights - Turning The Tables with Amumu

Amumu is one of the strongest initiators in the game. Especially in standoff situations, such as a 5v5 at baron.

- Many unskilled Amumu's will use this to enter a team fight, usually followed immediately by their ultimate.
This is bad and wrong. No other way to put it.

Teamfights are often decided in about 10 seconds. If your team aren't in proper range to take advantage of the 2 seconds of immobile squishy right-click fodder then you've wasted your entire skillset.

To play effectively you must know when to activate , and when you activate your bandage toss.

I will put this into simple rules.

RULE 1: NEVER INITIATE WITH BANDAGE TOSS
-I know it's an easy gap closer and a stun, but no decent team will have squishies within range of it, even in a standoff situation. Stunning the tank and leaving it on cooldown for when the enemy activates her ultimate or flash/quickdraw's his way into your backline and starts chunking down your squishies is just a waste of the ability.

Flash is a great alternative for bandage toss. Similar gap closing with much less wasted utility. Also, if you build you can effectively into position.

RULE 2: DON'T USE YOUR ULTIMATE RIGHT AWAY
-Another big mistake I see is Amumu rushing in and stunning everyone with his ultimate. Sure, you got 5 people with your cc, but no one on your team was there to follow it up and you wasted its potential. Time your ultimate to disrupt the enemies combos, particularly against enemies with similar CC, such as or a 's Hemoplague or ' Spirit Fire.

You can also (and should also, if your team is losing) use your ultimate defensively, to save any teammates being focused and allow them to fall back a to safety

RULE 3: ALWAYS STAY IN THE FIGHT
-"But Jackbar", you might say, "I should be focusing down the AD Carry"
Yes you should be, but you do so with your CC and incidental W/E damage. You do not need to waste the damage from your W and potential E hits on chasing a squishy out of the fight while that Darius and Alistar wreck your backline. You should stay in the very middle of the fight as much as possible, hitting as many people as possible with W and E.

It's also important to note that, while you may not be the only tank, you are definitely the scariest. A teamfight without Amumu isn't nearly as terrifying as a teamfight with Amumu. They fear you, so stay in sight.
To paraphrase Sun Tzu; "If they should fear you, Let them fear you in the open and shake at the knees" In other words, people make stupid mistakes (shake at the knees) when they're worried about the Amumu who is still holding his ultimate (Rule #1)

How To Counter Amumu

Also also coming soon. In the meantime, refer to the counterpick section of Friend and Foe. ~ Jackbar

Change Log, Credits and Authors Notes

10/9/2012 - First update, added the first version of Jungle Amumu Video Guide. Note I use the UK day/date/year. Written section and minor bbcoding fixes (Thanks to JungleKing for pointing those out.)

11/9/2012 - Added warding and first update to Friend and Foe - Skillset Synergy and Counterpicks. Minor bbcoding issues in Jungling resolved and the two spelling errors in the Items section were fixed. HUGE thankyou to Panglot for his ward guide. It's an excellent resource and covers everything I needed to say.

15/11/2012 - Added team fight section, "Three Rules" and some minor spelling errors.

Credit to Jhoijhoi for her dividers and help with BBCoding. Her guide is here