Pros:
-Game changing ultimate
-%hp damage scales into lategame
-Fast jungle clear
-Good burst and lockdown for ganks with Q max

Cons:
-Easily counterjungled early
-Ultimate does not stop abilities from being cast
-Hard to find the right engage without flash (Q is a skillshot and can be missed or blocked by front line)

Smite is 100% mandatory because it allows you to secure buffs and objectives like baron/dragon. It also is really hard to clear the jungle effectively in the early game without smite.

Flash is just the best spell for making plays and escaping bad situations. Amumu doesn't gain too much from ghost, so I don't see anyone running that. He's about burst and lockdown, and flash helps him reposition the best for those plays. A ghosted amumu is very telagraphed and gives plenty of time for the enemy to react.

E is generally what we're going to max first. There are a lot of reasons for this. It's your highest waveclear in lanes, fastest clear in the jungle and safest clear in the jungle due to reduced damage taken. This makes you win most extended fights in 2v2's while in the middle of creeps, something fairly unique to most champions in the game where they normally wouldn't want to fight in a creep wave.

W is more sustained damage and scales the best into lategame, which is why we max it last. Early game the %hp doesn't really mean that much when no one has much hp. I take Q second since it's a good amount of base damage to add to your combo and the cooldown goes down on an important CC ability which means you can get multiple Q's off a lot easier in a fight.

CURSED TOUCH
This is one of the most underrated and overpowered parts of amumu's kit. At level 1 amumu can shred 15 magic resist just by auto attacking you. This is why early magic pen items are incredibly powerful snowball buys on amumu. This does scale well into even the lategame as taking 35 magic resist off of a carry is still a really huge amount. I'm actually surprised the numbers are this high and this hasn't gotten nerfed.

BANDAGE TOSS
Amumu's Q is the longest range skillshot stun in the game that's not an ultimate. And with 40% cdr it can be around a 5 second cd. This ability is what I typically max first as it has the highest base damage and the cd goes down with rank considerably.

DESPAIR
This ability is one of the main reasons amumu has always been a relevant jungler throughout any changes riot tries to make to the jungle. No matter what happens to the jungle monsters, amumu's % damage just scales with the jungle anyways and makes his clear time absurd.

TANTRUM
Tantrum does a lot of things for you. Because of the decreasing cooldown on getting auto'd, this increases your clear time by quite a bit. It also helps your sustain in the jungle because of the passive giving you more durability against monsters.

A small note about this ability is it makes amumu deceptively strong when fighting inside creeps. Often you want to fight with creep advantage in league, but with Amumu it can be totally different. When the enemy has stacked a huge creep wave (as long as you're not too squishy or behind) fighting in creeps gives you way more E's and makes you a very powerful duelist.

CURSE OF THE SAD MUMMY
This ability will make or break your games. It's also a little unique in that the cc is labeled an entaglement. This means that enemies while snared cannot move or attack. This is incredibly good vs champions that rely on auto attacks. Keep in mind however that enemies can still cast spells.

Overall you want to try to hit as many champions with this ability as possible. Often this is best set up by a bandage toss, but depending on the skill level of your opponents that does give quite a bit of time to react to you getting your ult off. Always be aware of when you have flash up or not. As a flash ult into a bandage toss on a key target is a much more reliable means of cc with much less counterplay available to your opponent.

Initial clear/pre-6

It's fairly predictable for amumu to start at blue. But you definitely don't have to. In fact, one of the easiest ways to avoid counter jungling in soloq is just to start red. 90% of counterjungling on the first clear happens when the stronger jungler invades the red buff after the usually mana dependent weaker early game jungler started blue. Amumu doesn't need blue to clear the initial camps and you should be fine on mana till then, though you should be pretty low by the time you're done with blue.

Amumu's clear is also fairly fast because of W and E and it only gets better the rest of the game as his damage scales with the jungle. If you think you might get counterjungled it could be a smart idea to be very cautious about approaching your buff and try to safely ward the bush with your yellow trinket.

Generally Amumu has decent sustain in the jungle, so after completing your initial 2 buffs and 1 camp you should be able to go through your jungle and power farm a full clear if you want. Or you can look for gank opportunities. But be careful about showing up as a level 3 amumu against stronger early skirmish junglers that could be showing up to the same place.


Level 6/ganking

This is where you can really look to make plays. I generally won't look for more than 1 or 2 ganks pre 6 and just try to power farm to this point. Once you get 6, and if you're like me you were greedy and took the second blue, then you should look to go gank the most gankable lane. Making a decision on who to gank is all game knowledge. Sometimes it seems really easy because someone is plainly overextended, but that's not always the whole story.

It's always dangerous to go gank a lane when your laner is significantly weaker than the enemy laner. Remember that the enemy jungler has the same information as you and could be waiting anywhere. If your top laner is half hp and a level down against a really scary fb riven, I don't think I would just go gank that lane normally unless I was pretty sure the enemy jungler wasn't there. If the enemy jungler is just waiting to countergank you're most likely going to lose that trade really badly. Even then you have to be careful about how you gank and respect that the riven still has kill potential on both of you. This however, does not apply the same way to dives. If it looks like top lane is going to get dived (somewhat just comes from game experience and knowledge) then you can go wait in the wings for them to dive and most likely pick up a kill or two because you now have the tower on your side and it's easy to lock champions down under it.

Also think about what lanes are gankable even when even. Sometimes players are just overextended and everyone can be gankable when they're not respecting your presence. However, if I have a nidalee solo lane, I'm most likely not going to gank that lane unless they're pushed up with no wards. However if I have a thresh/jinx bot lane you can bet I'm going to be looking to make plays down there. Thresh specifically because of his lantern (but just any cc in general) makes ganking a lot easier. The laners can start fighting as you're approaching and bait the enemy into using abilities or moving forward when they otherwise wouldn't. This makes it easy to just walk into lane and pull off ganks at any time.

As a final note, be careful about ganking when your ult is down. Again, this is situational like everything. But for obvious reasons, you're a lot weaker when your ult is down. Unless you see a good opportunity, then mostly try to powerfarm through this period and always be thinking (even before your ult comes up) where you're going to be when it is up. Managing your ult cooldown is important and if you have easy ganks in a certain lane you should be walking there as your ult is getting close to coming back up.

Dragon fights

You would think that Amumu would be god at midgame dragon fights because of his ult. But in this earlier stage of the game (unless you're snowballed with lots of damage) this is only the strongest way to fight over objectives in combination with lots of burst damage follow up - essentially a wombo combo. However, the real picks that dominate dragon fights are more tanky bruisers that have consistent aoe damage over time like Shyvanna,Renekton and Rumble. This doesn't mean that other comps built around aoe or resets or whatever can't win dragon fights when played correctly. But in spread out chaotic long fights (basically soloq) these champs tend to dominate more than an amumu who's basically still a cc bot with little damage at this point unless fed.

That being said, you might have some of these champions on your team and if you do you should definitely look to force a dragon fight if you think you can land a good ult. Remember though that turning is usually better than finishing (standing in the pit usually gets your whole team killed), but everything is situational to each game.


When ahead

Vision is the biggest key to snowballing games. Don't forget wards and other vision trinkets.The improved sweeper is important because of the oracles component/cd/duration. Being ahead is all about snowballing your objectives and towers. If you have a dragon, make sure you record the timer and keep up on it. Dragon is an insane amount of gold over the course of a game and into the mid-late game now. Place wards in the enemy jungle and catch them in between lane rotations and contest their buffs. It's generally very easy to catch someone making a mistake in soloq and being caught out. Take every advantage that's available to you. Tier 1 towers are easy enough to snowball by sieging and just rotating with an advantage. But tier 2's generally need a bit more coordination with vision and picks unless your team is specifically very siege heavy with lots of poke.


When behind

The best thing to do here is simple. Don't take unnecessary risks. Get down safe wards in your jungle and wait for the enemy team to make mistakes. It's soloq, they will throw. You just have to wait. Even when you're ahead, it's extremely hard to dive into an amumu team.

Another good thing to keep in mind here is that it's 95% of the time a bad idea to build damage on a champion like amumu when you're behind. If you haven't snowballed, don't keep building your magic pen. Start getting tanky enough to go in get your abilities off and maybe survive to get another bandage toss off. The only time building a little damage would be good is maybe if your mid and top are both low damage tanks and your team needs you desperately to do damage. Even then it's going to be rough going since you're behind.

In some cases, when behind by a little it can be a good idea to contest dragons. This is highly dependent on teamcomp and positioning of the enemy team. For instance, if the enemy team is clumping near the dragon pit and you can get a 3 man+ ulti off with good follow up, then that could be a play to turn the game around. If however the enemy team is just plainly stronger I would strongly caution against contesting something and losing more than just the dragon which you will probably lose anyways.

Amumu is an incredible lategame champion. He becomes a very effective duelist, even against high hp bruisers (something that separates him from basically every other disabler/initiator tank like Nautilus and Maokai.This is mostly due to his %hp damage on W. This is only accentuated further if you bought items that made you tanky and also add to your damage like
Sunfire Cape and Thornmail.

You always have a chance to win by fighting the right teamfight as Amumu because of how potent your ult can be. If you're behind try to fight on tower. Even if the team has good dive it can be really hard to dive through amumu ult. Hopefully your team has good waveclear to force the enemy team to dive and to stall out the game effectively. If not, just watch for key targets being out of position. Landing a position on someone in the backline can chain cc them for a free 100 to 0 making it an easy fight.

A great way to make plays and win the game is also to fight over baron. If you're behind and you can get to baron while the enemy team is trying to finish it, this is one of the best situations you could hope for. Baron applies a pretty insane debuff that amplifies magic damage by quite a bit to anyone taking baron damage. Getting an amumu ult on a clumped team taking baron damage can singehandedly turn a game and will most likely lead to a very one sided fight in your favor.

Janna,Zyra,Nami
All these champs have incredible counter inititiation and/or just reset fights. Amumu's ult is not a stun and does not stop abilities from being cast. Janna is especially safe as she basically resets the fight except you no longer have ult. Zyra and Nami are more actual initiations that counter yours and keep your team from following up correctly. It can be very hard and you should be cautious about engaging into these champions. It's probably worth landing your bandage on them if you can if you believe you can 100 to 0 them before using any abilities.

Soraka,Lulu
These champions have single target cc's that prevent you from casting. This is especially annoying when you bandage into their team and then get silenced or polymorphed for the next 2.5 seconds. If you're behind enough this can even last long enough for you to die. Or you can take so much free damage before getting your combo off that it makes you have to base (since their team probably re-positioned to make your ult not hit the targets you wanted.

Trundle,Veigar,Vi
These are champs that make you incredibly squishy when trying to go into a fight or just flat out blow you up themselves like veigar. If Trundle ults you he becomes a monster and makes you incredibly squishy. This is very frustrating to play against and honestly there's not much counterplay. The counterplay is trundle has no waveclear and relies on mana, so you try to abuse him early.

Olaf,Alistar,Morgana
These are champions that are probably the closest thing to a direct counter by negating your cc entirely.

Olaf is a monster bruiser. Mid-late game he will be extremely tanky and have good damage and insane chasing potential. It's nigh impossible to kite someone who can't be cc'd and you have to find a way to wait out the duration of his ultimate while surviving. Depending on comp and the mobility of your backline, it may be worth it to blow your ult on him (assuming you get multiple other people in it as well) just to force him to blow his ult a little early.

Alistar is the ultimate form of counter engage to hard cc. Generally when you initiate, everyone will funnel in behind you way too clumped. This sets up alistar for a perfect headbutt-pulverize combo after using his ult to cleanse your cc. This keeps your team from following up on your ult with damage and effectively trades your ultimate cooldown for his W-Q which will be up again in about 10 seconds.

Morgana is a counter that relies more on the skill and timing of the player. But when played well is absolutely devastating because she can choose which target is cc immune. This makes landing a Q on a key target or getting an ult off on a squishy target in general incredibly hard. You will probably need help trying to bait this cd out. If the morgana player is good it's really hard to outplay this.

Thanks for reading and I hope this helps you learn to play Amumu. If you have any ideas on how to make the guide better or any feedback at all, please let me know in the comments!