Hello everyone! I'm SR Trogo. I'm just a random player who usually ranks until gold and stops ranking (with an average of 40 rankeds per season including solo and flex), but I play the game daily. I'm not the skilled player type, so I usually play simple yet effective champs like Nunu or Hecarim.

I don't know why I'm doing this, but I felt the need of doing this guide since me and a lot players are able to reach gold, but I see tons of them struggling and even failing to reach that goal. Before you finish this section I want to apologize since I'm not english native, so you may find some hardcore mistakes in my writting.

Now let me introduce one of my mains since the rework he got, Nunu (& Willump).

This pair are junglers with strong objective control and easy ganking, but not the best damage output (unless you charge certain ultimate). I found them to be actually quite enjoyable to play, not only because I love their voicelines, but also their mechanics of engaging with giant snowballs, which is fun to play an effective in the same level.

I could explain how fun to play this duo is, but I will go straight to the pros and cons.

Pros

Cons

Great objective control Good engage Excelent frontlane Effective surprise burst Very few hard counters CC beacon Amazing snowballs

Dependance on teammates Struggles vs teams with too much hard cc Struggles a lot vs some wall makers Good engage, but you aren't Malphite Saddest death ever

I'm not the kind of players who plays one champ whenever he can. Usually I look at the enemy team (what I can see) and what my teammates want to play.

Some of the following situations make me ponder to use Nunu:

We need engage or at least a frontline
The enemy has a low or medium amount of cc
Lanes are easy to gank or because your team has something to stop them (i.e Zyras root) or because I know the gank will be easy (i.e enemies with low mobility or overpushers)
I want to keep the objectives under control (usually versus other early game junglers, who rely on snowballing and then taking drakes, heralds and that kind of stuff)

There are also a few cases where I'm discouraged to play him, which are:

Few engage in our team but they have long range hyper carries and a solid frontline
Versus cc focused teams
When I know I'll face big walls makers (i.e Anivia)
When we already have champs that fit Nunus role, but we lack damage output

RESOLVE

Aftershock is the standard rune for those who don't use predator. It greatly boosts your defenses once you've landed some CC (quite easy for Nunu). It also deals damage after some time, but is not a huge amount, so this is secondary.

Nunu is a great tank, but once you've used your R your damage output is quite low, and you prefer to help your carry to stay alive.

Demolish is also ok, but usually when Nunu is close to towers is for diving or when you've already killed all the enemies. Anyways you can get some early extra gold from turrets, which is always good.

Shield bash doesn't really work since you only get shields when your ultimate is active. And thats a lot of time from shield to shield.

Conditioning boosts the already strong defenses of Nunu.

Second wind works better for laners, and bone plating is not bad, but people doesn't use to try to kill you early on since you have tons of resistances, cc and sustain (unless that enemy is Elise, be careful of the spider queen).

Revitalize makes your sustain even greater. When your are low hp you can easily Q and be back to half hp since your Q and the rune have a bonus when you are low.

Unflinching and overgrowth are both ok runes, but not as amazing are revitalize for Nunu.

SORCERY

Celerity is great for Nunu. You become faster with your passive, W and has a nice sinergy with the next rune, waterwalking.

Nunu spends a lot of time in the river. Ganking with the snowball usually is done from the river, so the extra ms is nice, specially with the celerity rune boosting it, but the real deal is the extra ap you get in there. Nunu is a jungler focused on taking objectives, so getting a rune that boosts your stats when taking dragons, nashors or even the crab is amazing, specially when you have that great scaling in your abilities (a lvl 18 Nunu does 75 additional magic damage with his R only with the waterwalking rune).

For the stats boosts I use to get Adaptative/Armor/Hp because I like the extra tankiness, and I find Nunus passive enough for replacing the almost standard AS stat rune. But I recommend you to try some combinations until you find which one fits your playstyle.

THE USUALS

Core item for Nunu, mainly because you want the dps damage once your skills are on cooldown. You choose skirmisher over stalker because you won't use the slow as well as other champions, but you'll be able to decrease the damage you receive from someone dangerous and at the same time you'll get some extra true damage vs him.

We all know the importance of the boots. The summary for the upgrade is tabi for autoattack focused teams, mercury's for medium or higher level of CC in the enemy team and mobility for heavy gank mode.

Most Nunus choose to build dead man's plate instead of this item as core. I go for the frozen heart because is cheap, adds tons of utility and gives me 20% cdr, which I find very usefull for prolonged early fights. In addtion this item has been recently buffed.

Another core item with strong sinergy with Nunu. It empowers your Q sustain and gives you the precious cdr. Usually ap champs won't be a problem until very late of getting this item.

That I don't use this item as core doesn't mean that I don't use it. I rather go for the plate when I need the extra speed for engaging, because the snowball alone is not enough. The drawback is that you have less control of it, being unable to do certain "drifts" that you can achieve being slower.

The mask is great since it gives you cdr and boosts the magic damage that your enemies receive from you and your allies. It also gives you a little regen when you use abilities (hp) or when you receive damage (mp.)Sooner or later this items is almost always a must.

Usually I go for this item as the 5th slot, 4th if we are hard teamfighting nonstop. You can use it even channeling your R, but since it reduces your damage during 4 seconds and you can channel until 3 seconds I recommend to use it earlier (your ult will also get a greater shield since you'll get more hp for the hp scale).

Really usefull item versus almost every heavy autoattack focused team.Since Nunu is taken down faster from ad dps than ap dps you'll build the thormail more than other items.

Sometimes a 6th item. Liandry's enhances a lot your damage, both burst damage (187 extra damage in a full channeled R plus the other abilities) and dps (% max hp damage, which is great vs tanks).

I don't use to build it, but if you are hardstomping get this and show them who are the snowball kings. The extra ms allows you to go without the dead man's plate as long as you keep the item well stacked.

THE UNUSUALS

You don't use to need this items since there are a lot of nice mr items for Nunu. But if a dps mage like Cassiopeia or Corki is out of control you may be ok building this.

When your teammates don't build heal reduction and you face champs that will unlikely autoattack you like Vladimir, you build this. At least enhances a lot your damage.

When your team struggles to survive to a lot of aoe damage when you engage you get this. Usually you ask nicely your support to buy it if he hasn't done it, but if he refuses someone has to do the job.

Sometimes the enemy has heavy disengage, like Janna's R, and you are the only one with engage and you need to engage in that moment, not wait until your W is ready again. In those cases you build this for the reengage (yeah, reengage, don't use it previously).

This passive helps Nunu to do the jungle faster. It also help to take down towers faster, specially because it buffs you and your faster autoattacker ally (usually the adc). The passive is quite plain and the best tip I can give is to auto a turret for chase or scape since it also buffs your ms.




Your primary sustain, damage and objective control skill. Since it does a lot you max it always. You can secure big objectives with it, even outsmite most junglers until lvl 17, because at max level it deals 980 true damage to monsters. Remember that is better to use consume when you have low hp as it has better healing. It also heals more with nonchampion stuff.




This is your main tool for gank and engage. You build up speed while rolling the snowball and can't be slowed, so you can gank in two ways.

a) You gank with the gigantic snowball: The gank will be faster, but you have very few time until the game forces you to release the ball and you can't change the direction as heavily as you can with lower speeds. Also since you rolled the snowball for a long duration it will deal max damage and knock up for a long time.

b) You gank with a little snowball: You'll be slower, but if they dodge you walking or flashing you can still hit them with some drifts. The damage and knock up will depend of the snowball size.

You choose which one you think will work better, but I can (sorry) garentee that if you do the right choice at least you'll take their flash.

Two other tips that I can give is that releasing the snowball will make it faster than if you just keep rolling it, so it can gain some momentum for the surprise. And the other tip is that really big snowballs have really large hitbox, you can even affect people in the other side of thin walls. Take advantage of this.




You can throw until 3 barrages of snowball. Every barrage will mark the enemy and slow them, and after some time Willump will root the marked foe too close to him.

The most important thing about this ability is that it doesn't cancel your R when Willump explodes the root. What does it mean? It means that you can use your R just before the root explodes and will get some free charge time. Also flashing from the limit of the root doesn't allow you to scape from the R (I've seen so many people flashing once the root is over and still getting bursted by the R). If they flash earlier you can also flash to keep rooting them, what is really effective in teamfight.




Now the big boy and main damage weapon. This R is famous for dealing massive damage and for having a long cast time until it deals max damage. How do you use it? Let's see it.

We start with the traditional sneaky bush ulti. Without a ward they can't see you charging it, they'll just notice a slow affecting their characters, but not vfx around, and then BUM!. Unfortunately this play is so traditional than most people is careful about it. Anyways you can always land one in unexpected bushes (or just zero vison zones like the smoke zones they added this season in top and bot).

As I mentioned before you can also use it in conjuction of your E's root, or plainly when you are surrounded by enemies. Just keep an eye on how much hard cc they have already used, since it will be easier to charge it once they used some of it.

Finally, since the R gives you a shield it can be used to survive damage that would otherwise kill you. Yeah, I know this is an ultimate but there are moments when you can't afford to die (i.e 1000 gold bounties or in the late game, when your death can mean a free Nashor for them).

Don't get mad because they canceled your R. It just means they had to use cc on you instead in your carries, and that's always nice. I do still remember a game where their hard CC was Lee's kick and Zoe's sleep, so Lee was forced to always ult me or I would win the teamfight alone.

PATHING

Nunu doesn't have a special pathing that works for him and not other junglers. He's good at clearing the jungle, no matter which camp, so I recommend you to do standard jungle paths.

Right now those standard paths consist in clearing one side of the jungle and the buff of the other side. Then you choose to keep farming or look for a gank.

The other path is almost the same, but you get the big camp and then you go to the other side and clear it.


GANKING

At first I want to say that if you want to do a lvl 2 gank, it will probably be quite effective. Try to communicate with your teammates earlier, so they know that they'll be ganked at lvl 1 (and champs like Leona can upgrade the E instead of other skills). Do not try to do a lvl 2 gank versus champs like Malzahar pls (study your enemies lol).

Lvl 2 gank covered, now we talk about standard ganks. You are faster than most champs, so you gank better heavily pushed lanes, long lanes and 0 mobility champs. This doesn't mean that you can gank from lane, you are not that fast and you lose the surprise element of flanking. What do we learn from this? That your ganks from river or tribush are insane, but you can't dive people kissing their turret since you are predictable. Don't worry about standard vision since when they can see you you'll already be hitting them with the snowball. But you must take care of deep wards and river wards.

Also you can gank by hidding in the lane bushes and wait until the enemy is close. But Nunu isn't the best champ for this type of gank unless he has R, because the snowball hit will deal few damage and the knock up duration will be as little.

Also known as macro. I'm not going to explain extensively this since this is general knowledge, so you can look for macro guides here or in other sites.

As I said before I'm not a good player. I hardly can play difficult champs like GP with a lot effort, and even with that effort I'm quite mediocre when I compare myself with the high elo players. Being bad at this makes me bad at micro, since I panic a lot when i'm doing complex things under pressure, so I learned the other way of winning. This way is macro, which consist in doing stuff with a purpose.

Have you ever seen the pros always being in the right place in the right momment? Well, this is not luck. They are there because they planned to be there. Most people in low elo goes in mindless frenzy and just kill or they don't move from their lane until the turret is down.

As a jungler you need to be busy always. Your time costs experience and gold, so if you went to gromp and then you use 20 seconds moving from gromp to the completely spawned red side because the wolfs and blue are already done you are losing 20 seconds of gold and experience. If you move to one side of the jungle you are doing it with one purpose. It doesn't matter if the purpose is taking the drake that will spawn in 1 min, or planning to gank one lane, but you must use wisely your time.

When I face low elo junglers (if someone wants to point it, yes, gold is also low elo) I use the get ahead in level and minions because I do this every game. And in the same way I fight when I must fight, or in other words, when after winning the fight you have a clear objective. My average teamfight participation is 65% in my last 6 games, because most of the time the other 35% fights are a coin flip where the winning team can lose the advantage because of the bounty system, but if they win the reward will be a little more gold and experience, maybe two hits to one turret.

If you are like me, 0 skill player, this is the best tip that I can give to you, and I'm sure that after learning some macro you'll see a huge improvement. Nunu is a good champion for learning it, since picking the right fights will make you get huge advantage, and even in lost battles you can still get a chunk of that dragon or herald and keep some of the lost advantage.

Hope you liked it, and if you have some questions or you think that something isn't right just tell me. Good luck in the fields of justice!