Hello people, and welcome to my Amumu guide. Amumu is a really really great champion, and before you downvote it'd be nice if you would at least try my build's effectiveness in game. Amumu is a great initiator and my build makes him very durable. He is a potent ganker, an underestimated laner, and overall a very strong character, becoming both tanky and having a high damage output with few damage items. While many Amumu players like to jungle with him, I find that a little too slow for my tastes. It also uses a summoner spell slot up, and I really don't feel like I can afford that (At least with my personal playstyle.)

Updated 6/10/12

Pros
Huge Damage if left unchecked
Great at taking damage
Gamechanging ultimate
Great in almost any confrontation
Good staying power in lane
Can stop champions from escaping with a skillshot

Cons
Can be mana-hungry at times early game
Can be harassed easily by champions with long range like Caitlyn
Skillshot can be difficult to land

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Maybe I'm a little biased but I just can't find that many bad things about Amumu

A good passive, keep it in mind in team fights, don't be afraid to auto attack to enable your maximum damage output.


Amazing skill. A skillshot that can be used to stop people from fleeing, gank, initiate, and at a high rank it can be almost spammed for the stun. Save this skill in teamfights for use against champions you need to stop channeling, in particular, Katarina as your Curse of the Sad Mummy will not stop her ultimate from destroying your team.


A great skill in teamfights. It will work wonders against champions like Cho'Gath amd Dr. Mundo. It's basically a madred's in an AoE effect if you obtain the ability power to use it.


A burst skill that lowers its CD everytime you get hit by an autoattack, making it the perfect move to use when next to enemy minions or to farm. It's low mana cost allows you to spam in the laning phase as well as dealing good damage.


To be honest this is one of the best skills in the game. A large damage output coupled with forcing your enemies to be rooted to the ground in an AoE effect make it a huge disruption in positioning and gives your team a huge advantage. I really can't say more than that.

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Leveling your skills after putting one point in Q at lvl 1 should yield: R > E > W > Q

For marks I run Greater Mark of Magic Penetration. There's no question that it really is the best mark choice for this build. Next.

Seals are interchangeable. I find that Greater Seal of Armor are the best mainly for Amumu's ability to harass early game with Tantrum, although you may wish to use Greater Seal of Health or Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration.

Concerning glyphs, I like to run Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist. They outpace Greater Glyph of Magic Resist by level 10, which is when your game presence should really pick up and your magic resistance will most likely not measure up to your armor. We want a well-rounded tank all about and the extra MR will make a difference.

Quintessences are also interchangeable. I prefer Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed because as their name implies they allow me to move quickly, allowing me to position myself late game for Bandage Toss and early games for Tantrum.

I really enjoy running Flash and Ghost for those times when you get 5 man ganked. As Amumu it is entirely in the realm of possibility of escaping these ganks. You use your Curse of the Sad Mummy, Ghost if you need to get to a wall to Flash over, and run back home. This scenario has happened to me many times, and while most champions can fall flat on their faces, Amumu is not one of them.

tldr; You can get out of a ton of hairy situations [a real lifesaver!], as well as being able to position yourself for an easy Curse of the Sad Mummy initiation.



Teleport is good on Amumu also. As Amumu, you are great at killing minions with your aoe damage, and Tantrum that will be spammed when you get hit by the minions. Great for pushing and for defending. Did I mention that Amumu is a great tower defender? Well, he is.



This summoner spell is great on tanks if simply for another CC to keep someone out of a fight [or reduce their damage a lot of they are super fed]. This is especially good in the laning phase or if you are unable to stop powerful channeled abilities.

As for other summoner spells it often depends on the person playing. I would not reccomend:

Heal - There's no point to this. I guess it can be useful early game, but if you ask me it is really only useful to make people towerdive you with burst champions like Kassadin.

Ignite - Useful I guess, but you already do sky-high damage in an AoE. You're supposed to be a tank anyway.

Revive - Eh. Need I say anything else?

Clarity - Well, once you get your Philosopher's Stone and Glacial Shroud you shouldn't be running into mana problems.

When it comes down to it, Amumu's main source of damage is magic. Amumu is also a tank. We build in the offensive tree for the 15% spell penetration which will help a lot late game. We build in the defensive tree so that we can ignore more damage. The utility tree does offer some more mana and mana regen but once you get your Philosopher's Stone mana won't be too much of a problem, and your Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed will outpace the 3% movement speed you get from it.

Skilling Bandage Toss is what I usually do, although Tantrum can be a nice alternative. Grabbing Despair at level 4 can be beneficial as it has a good initial amount of damage to add with everything else. Tantrum is one of your best harassing skills in lane (By doing about 100+ damage every couple of seconds you really wear the enemy down), with the added bonus of being able to ignore a crazy amount of damage from minions when you actually do the harassing. From there you want to increase your damage output so you want to level your Despair. While Bandage Toss is an amazing skill, it's true usefulness comes from a great initiation. And of course level your sexy Curse of the Sad Mummy whenever possible.

Now for the main part. This isn't perfect, but it is an item build that will give you a grazy amount of sustainability in team fights consisting of both magic damage and physical damage. You want to start off with your Regrowth Pendant and a health potion for staying in the lane. When you gather enough gold (About 715), I usually recall to grab my Philosopher's Stone and Boots which both help loads early game, allowing you to spam. This is pretty self-explanatory so far.


This baby is smoking hot. I give you the glacial shroud. With 15% CDR, 425 extra mana and 45 armor you essentially become a skill spammer [mostly Tantrum], also greatly reducing the cooldown on your Curse of the Sad Mummy.


The best boots in the game in my opinion, suitable for almost any champion. Essentially they are MR boots, and who doesn't love MR? But the Tenacity bonus on them makes them even better. With your overwhelming amount of armor already from your Glacial Shroud wouldn't it be nice to balance it out with these smokin hot shoes? I think so.

Our next 3 items are basic components which will increase your tankiness to a new level which will build into your final items. 1 Negatron Cloak and 2 Giant's Belt. Now you may be asking me "Why do we not just build an Abyssal Mask first and then the Sunfire Aegis and then the Rylai's Crystal Scepter like you end up with up top?" Well, it's because fully building into each item individually will not supplement your tankiness. Up until your first Giant's Belt we have no items which give us extra health. Once you gather these items, I generally move onto..


This is some great stuff. You may be wondering why I don't build into Banshee's Veil, the usual popular item? Well, this baby here gives us +57 Magic Resistance over the +50 from Banshee's Veil as well as the bonus 70 ability power and the -20 MR Aura to our enemies. Icing on the cake for tanking, yeah? It'll also help us tons later when we get to the Rylai's Crystal Scepter..


Well there's no reason we shouldn't get this item. Sure, it blows our armor through the roof but since when was that a bad thing? The extra damage also adds a good amount of dps and synergizes well with our Despair. Not much more to say about that other then the good amount of health we get.


Another item, this time the main stat we're getting is the health, although the ability power plays a very good part in why. Amumu's Despair does 2.7% health damage each second at it's maximum rank. It gains another 1% per second for every 150 ability power that Amumu has. When we take the 70 AP from our Abyssal Mask and the 80 AP from this baby we get that extra 1% along with big tanking ability.


Honestly, this item will make our armor even higher and the biggest reason that we even take it is because it comes from our Glacial Shroud. But more CDR, armor, and mana is never a bad thing, is it? If you are facing a magic-heavy team however, it may be more beneficial to skip this item.

But you're probably still wondering "Hey, how could we skip that item? We have no slots left!" Well by now it is definitely in that late game stage where your Philosopher's Stone isn't doing anything more then giving you some extra gold. It's time to sell that baby to make room for...


A great item for a great champion. Your MR still doesn't measure up to your armor, and it'd be nice to have some more health wouldn't it? Well this is your answer for those long painful games. It's not really a necessity at all. But the more the better.

These are items that I've adapted to using in game, as my above setup won't ALWAYS work.

Warmog's Armor - Yeah, this item you may want to build from one of your giant's belts. I don't usually recommend this but sometimes you just need some straight-up health and lots of it, not just some health from a Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Situational, of course.

Abyssal Mask - Yeah, yeah, we got one of these already but if you got a Warmog's Armor then I personally think this could be a better choice then Banshee's Veil as you will reach the ability power that lets you do an extra 1% damage per second with your crying.

Thornmail - Obvious choice against teams filled heavily with AD.

Aegis of the Legion - A great item for Amumu, but one I personally think work better on more hybrid oriented champions.

Force of Nature - Not my favorite item generally but I do see where it could become invaluable against the caster-heavy team.

Athene's Unholy Grail - A wonderful mixture of MR and AP combined with CDR and mana gaining. Wonderful substitution for an MR item or if against a heavy AP team an armor item.

Early Game
In the laning phase your main goal should be to farm. If something is preventing you, then often using your Tantrum can be a good way to grab control of the lane when your enemies get close to you. Enemies with long range like Zilean or Caitlyn are a huge pain to lane against as Amumu and you should just focus on getting enough xp and gold for those Boots and Philosopher's Stone.

Mid Game
This is the teamfight stage (Or the pushing/ganking stage) and it is here where Amumu begins to shine. Using your ult to hold every champion in place that gets caught with it is basically overpowered as your team should be able to go wreck havoc on them. Use Despair when you are in the middle of things and Tantrum whenever it's up and enemies are in range. It makes a difference.

Late Game
Your job is the same as it is in Mid Game. But you're just a lot better at doing it now. You're basically overpowered now. You should be able to 1v1 almost any champ if it's gone well and by the time they realize that they are losing a fight it's often too late since you have amazing chase ability with your Bandage Toss. While 1v1s won't happen often, it's important to realize that you need to maximize your damage output by staying in the middle of things, using your ult to destroy and allow your teammates to destroy everything around you and just be an amazing damage dealer and damage taker.

I've been playing Amumu a while now, and he is one of my favorite tanks. This is obviously a sort of hybrid tank but it's a build that works. And remember, try it before you think about downvoting!

~Crimmage

NOTE: If you have any suggestions or questions please feel free to ask in the comments. I read those. If you actually do comment.