Mundo is an interesting character that's often overlooked in ranked games. He's not considered over powered due to the fact that his biggest survivability is based off healing. Ignite or Executioners calling can cut your healing down quite quickly and you will see good teams counter you if you're a big enough threat. This makes mundo a horrible primary tank. However, he excels as an offtank due to the fact that he has itemless damage: his cleaver at lvl 5 is always a painful thing to be hit with, even for a tank. Burning agony at lvl 5 can play havoc with squishies once you get into them, nicely augmented by sunfire. This leaves him free to build pure tank, without any real need for damage items and still be a viable damage contributor per game.

*Note* Most people seem to think that infect cleaver is a physical ability. It's not. It actually deals magic damage. It's the main reason why I suggest marks of magic pen later in the runes section.

Max infected cleaver first. It's a disgusting harass if you're accurate with it and you should be able to hit about 50% of minion free shots on a 500 movespeed or less character easily with practice. Do remember that it refunds half the health cost on hit. This means nothing by mid game, but accuracy is very important for a healthy mundo under lvl 5. If you can, try to angle your shots to hit minions if they miss champions. Paired with a champion like pant, it makes an early turret dive on a weakened champion viable and doable before anyone in that lane hits lvl 6.

Note: Infected cleaver has an actual range just slightly past where the aiming line ends. Know how far it goes, down to a pixel. Nothing's more amusing than an enemy underestimating your range and getting harassed from under the "safety" of a turret.

Burning agony, very expensive health wise early on, so I tend to use it in emergencies only for its reduction in crowd control. This is the first of mundo's survivability measures. After lvl 15 is when I begin to use it constantly in fights for its AoE damage, not to mention pairing its effects with merc treads makes crowd controls thrown on you fairly laughable.

Masochism for this build is his least useful skill. I grab a level early on because the health cost of burning agony is a little too much for its usefulness at that point. It helps with minion farming and the occasional melee damage you're going to have when you start mixing it up with the enemies. But unlike physical DPS mundos, you're not going to be in melee range of enemies very often unless you're getting the snot beat out of you with crowd control and the like anyway. As such the passive effect of +dmg for -health isn't really useful. My typical game as mundo involves me dealing 1/4 of my total damage via melee, and 3/4 through the magic of infected cleaver/sunfire/burning agony. Do remember to toggle it for minion farming/tower pushing though as it adds a nice amount of damage.

Sadism, ah sadism. Toggle it often, that's about all I can say. Feel free to use it to get to team fights if something's going on mid and you're in a side lane. After you have it at lvl 2 (and spirit visage with its cooldown reduction) it will almost always be up by the time you hit trouble in the team fight. Do note, this ability is great, but it won't save you from alpha damage like Veigar or Garen's sky ****. It's a balance of toggling it too early and too late. For most fights, I'd advise hitting it when you're below 50% hp. It's a good simple rule until you figure out more of how munch you can and can't take in a fight.

*Note* Level 1 of sadism isn't actually that powerful. Especially not since you usually won't have spirit visage at this point anyway. With his healing abilities (Don't forget that lovely passive of 0.3% hp regenerated per second, every second) mundo rarely gets harassed to the point that he has to recall. He can usually just hang back and let his healing do the work. Point being, don't consider the first level of your ult a "Get out of death free" card. Use it like a healing pot, or for when you need a speed boost.

Not much needs to be said here actually. Mundo is weakest before the second level of his ultimate, so you'll want some benefits in there for early game. Movespeed is a helpful one paired with your native crowd control reduction. The base healing just helps him be even better at taking harasses for your probably more squishy lane partner. Another viable option is dodge runes, but because I never go for the nimbleness mastery I don't think it's worth it. As for glyphs, cooldowns. For his ult, and his cleaver. Early game or late game both work, but I prefer early game to give him a slight edge when he's weakest. Magic pen is an obvious choice since cleaver/burning agony/sunfire all benefit immensely from it.

Although the pure defensive tree is nice, the benefit is not wholly realized in mundo because he's not, repeat NOT, a full tank. He will go down if he's targeted continually.

Full offense tree, you want that +5% damage, and the magic pen to synergize with your runes. The AP bonus is nigh on useless since it only affects his burning agony by something like 2 or 3 damage by end game.

The one pick I'd think people might find odd is the total healing choice. There is a significant difference when using it, and it does say "Total health/mana regeneration". Since I've noticed such a big effect, I read that as effecting both his passive AND his ultimate.

Summoner spells are variable, but the one thing I've always thought is that if you're going to use a spell, always upgrade it. Exhaust for it's multi purpose use (defensive, offensive, throw it on any sort of nuke before they start blasting and it reduces their total damage by a minimum of 35%. I have seen that save team fights when a ryze popped up and ult bounced my entire group in a team fight. Popping exhaust on him before that went off got all of my squishy's away with 20% health or so. My other choice is teleport. Movement is not to be underestimated, it lets mundo defend turrets, get back into lane faster (he makes a good solo to compliment a jungler, so you want him back in that lane) etc.

Wait, leviathans? Yup, that's right, I use Leviathans. The thing is, Leviathan is cheap, 1275gp. And a well played tanky mundo won't be taking the full brunt of any enemy burst. That doesn't mean you won't (and late game you should be baiting them into attacking you if possible), why? If you've got a competent tank with you they'll take the pressure off before you get mulched. With the aid of your ult once they've started hitting you, you can usually pull back before things get too serious.

Leviathan's provides bonus health for a cheap cost to mundo. At very worst you should be able to maintain 10-15 stacks, in which case it's an average of +580 health. Not bad, for the cost anyway. Slightly better than a giant's belt. Thing is, as the game progresses, you should be playing carefully, harvesting assists and kills where you can. Suddenly you hit 20 stacks. At this point, feel free to play like an out and out tank. I managed this in one game and dove all five of the enemy against well fed carries. Between my ult and the other tank items my team mopped them while I was dealing AoE and finished the team fight with 1/4 my health left and an ace under my belt.

Merc treads + Spirit visage and the Sunfire will pump your stats up to slightly over 100 in each defense type. Warmogs to empower your healing abilities even more. The final slot I leave open for specifically countering a champion. Thornmail if you're dealing with a powerful physical carry, or Force of Nature if they're magical. If no one in particular threatens you, consider getting a team buffing item like Aegis, another Warmogs to make you stupid hard to kill, or Force of Nature anyway because of it's healing passive which buffs your already powerful healing abilities.

Note about Doran's: The doran's buff/cost increase actually aids both mundo and vladmire early game. Both have powerful inbuilt healing abilities, and I've almost never needed a health pot in either case anyway (before the buff I was actually not bringing one to save cash since I ended up selling them in 90% of the time). As a result, this has buffed both characters starting game compared to the effect on other champions.

*thwack* You're not a tank, until you get your leviathans stacked. If you never get it stacked, that's actually fine. A well played mundo knows his limits and can play within them. It will still provide some decent health at a very affordable price. For people beginning with mundo, aiming for Merc/Sunfire/Warmogs/FoN is an acceptable starting ground until you figure out how much of a beating you can take.

Early Game - Cleaver time!

Beat the **** out of them with that cleaver. Hit with it often enough and it's pretty much a free harass with the healing the new dorans shield provides. People say there's a garen in the bush, but no one can hold a bush against a mundo cleaver assault. If someone's trying to hold the bush against you, be ruthless and force them out. No one can stand a continued assault from a mundo without dodging it. Once you've got your bush, keep moving in it. Move forward, cleaver, move back to avoid blind shot retaliation. When you get your ult, it's not like you're tryn. Your ult at level one is essentially a healing pot and a slight speed boost, treat it as such.

Soloing - This is one thing mundo typically excels at. He makes a great soloer due to his decent harass and inbuilt healing abilities. Play safe, and do your best to harass the champ(s) you're against. Focus on last hitting minions and letting them push you. Especially if they're a vampire healer type. Then use your cleaver to keep the minions just out of your tower range, thereby mostly preventing tower divers from snagging a kill off you early.

Mid game - Farming

Mid game is mostly about farming for this mundo build. Early game was spent harassing the heck out of the enemy, and probably letting your squishy charry get most of the gold from minions since you were haunting the bushes. Hopefully you got an ***it or a kill off that effort. Minions: Cleaver for last hits, masochism for last hits. Teleport to a lane with a nice fat minion wave and burning agony/ult to clear them out and get out of dodge before the enemy team has time to react. Team fights are usually in 2's and 3's at this point, so the team won't miss you too much. Let the main tank do his business and ult or teleport to get in on any action you see developing. Don't forget, your cleaver has a nice slow on it, so use it to slow enemy movement in positioning phase of fights. Not to mention he can take significant chunks off of people's health before the fight actually begins.

Mundo makes a great initiator if he can slow someone, rush in (burning agony on), grab their attention, ult and pull their team (still focusing on you) into your waiting DPS. Don't do this recklessly though at this point. Wait for someone on their team to get out of position. Unless a tank with mass CC is there doing this without immediate relief will get you killed.

Don't forget another of mundo's amazing abilities. With Merc treads, his ult, and burning agony very few champions can outrun mundo while his ult is on. Mixed with cleaver, even ghosters can have trouble getting away. Run them down with burning agony and cleavers. Akali in her smoke bubble? Burn and cleaver her out. You get the idea.

Late Game: Mundo the tank(y) carry

You've been active in team fights, active in farming, but no one considers you a powerhouse at this point. Once you complete your warmogs, probably with 10 or so stacks on your leviathans if you've been careful, it's time to show them mundo's late game. Well played, you should become nigh on invincible in a short fight. Time to start aiming for last hits on kills. At this point, a decent carry will have farmed up a fair bit and have kills already, what you need though is those stacks. Don't kill steal, but it's time to stop feeding kills to traditional carries.

Most likely the enemy team won't be attempting to counter you heavily at this point. You've been fairly docile, mostly just distance harassing and protecting people. All of a sudden you're able to dive into the enemy (with support nearby) and they can't kill you. Make them terrified of waiting for team fights by cleavering any squishy you can get your cleaver through to. If not, hit the tanks. So long as you're beating on them the enemy will be paying more attention to you than other people. When the team fights start, don't mess with the tanky characters. Burn, ult and DIVE straight through them and chase a squishy or two right out of the teamfight. Meanwhile you're mixed up with their tanky/melee types and dealing AoE damage, bonus. They can cut your healing in half all they want, you're still healing 60's and 70's off your ult, have massive damage reduction (due to leviathans, or straight MR/armor from FoN/sunfire/thornmail type items), and your passive/healing stats are still silently at work (albeit at slower efficiency).

You will be important to team fights, you must be frontline at all times. The enemy can't ignore you because you're easily able to kill a squishy. But they can't kill you because you're so heavily tanked and keep your friends nearby in case things go wrong. Unite the team and lead them to victory.

Know your durability. Mundo is easy to pick up (anyone with a little practice can hit that cleaver), but difficult to master due to the nature of his dependency on healing. Always expect to be hit with healing debuffs. Know when burning agony is worth the cost in early game, in late game it's practically free so use it often.

Cleaver on my friends ;)