S3 brought a ton of new options to the table for Nunu and I feel he is now a fully viable mid (in fact he wrecks the whole "ad bruiser mid" meta currently appearing).

Regards,
December

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This is my second guide for League of Legends. My first was a successful guide on how to play Jax. I mained Jax for a pretty long time, but eventually moved on to Nunu & Willump. Why would I go from Jax to Nunu & Willump you ask? This guide will explain it all.

Nunu & Willump is a high-utility champion with one of the best kits in the game. He can be played in ANY lane as ANY role (other than AD Carry). He does best Top lane or Support but jungles very well also.

Why Play Nunu?

There is no reason NOT to play Nunu & Willump! You can literally play Nunu & Willump in every lane without having to worry much about matchups (excluding mid-lane). He is a great top laner, a great jungler, and amazing support. Pick Nunu if you want to be useful to your team throughout the game while retaining the power to pack a huge punch if the enemy makes a mistake.

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Nunu Top Lane:

Nunu top lane works a lot like Gangplank, except you don't run out of mana and have infinite sustain. Your ranged poke is awesome, you have a MoveSpeed/AttackSpeed buff and your Q will keep you alive for ages. I have no idea how many times I've caused Top/Jungle to blow flash chasing me at low health to no avail. Nunu & Willump top lane is really hard to gank effectively and almost impossible to shut down. In teamfights you peel for your AD carry and try to get a Snowball or two on the enemy AD Carry. Be sure to Blood Boil your ADC for some awesome damage. ROLE: AP Tank

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Nunu Jungle:

In the Jungle, Nunu & Willump is a counterjungling machine. Your W gives you solid movespeed to get in and out of the enemy jungle while your Q allows you to quickly steal buffs when combined with Smite. Nunu jungle can't 1v1 some junglers (Xin, Jax, Shyvana), but he can out-jungle them and run away fast! His ganks aren't the greatest, but they're enough to give most laners pause. In teamfights try to stay near your AD and keep them safe. ROLE: Tanky Peeler

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Nunu Mid:

Season 3 was very kind to Nunu mid and gave him some great options. Since your Q, E, and Ult are all HUGE AP scalings, these new cost effective options have made full-ap Nunu a bit more viable than before. If you can get a full ult off, you can literally 1-shot entire teams! ROLE: AP Carry

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Nunu Support:

Support Nunu & Willump is really good! In lane you give your AD perma-move/attackspeed and can peel for them/debuff the enemy ad really well. ROLE: Support

Nunu & Willump's kit is one of the best in the game. He can speed up allies, slow down enemies, and keep himself alive forever. His passive is super useful and synch's well with all of his abilities.


This is Nunu & Willump's passive. It gains charges every time you AUTOATTACK anything, and upon reaching five charges it becomes active. When it's active, your next spell costs 0 mana. This allows for awesome lane/jungle sustain and ranged poke with Ice Blast.


Nunu & Willump's own personal mini-smite. This ability grants Nunu massive sustain in lane and jungle. It scales off of AP as well, making it a rather potent ability Top or Mid lane. Use this ability to secure buff's when smite isn't available.


Blood Boil is an awesome skill. Use this on yourself or an ally to grant some huge attack speed and movespeed. When you use it on an ally, you also gain the full effect so there's no reason not to use it on your AD Carry in teamfights! This ability has some cool tricks that I'll talk about later.


This is Nunu & Willump's ranged poke. It's a 1:1 scaling of your Ability power and gives him some major lane dominance against melee tops and mids. Combine this with his passive and you'll easily push the enemy out of lane.


One of the highest damaging ultimates in the game. AOE Movespeed and Attackspeed slow. A good ult but very easy to counter. This ability forces you to channel for 3 seconds, then explodes for a HUGE amount of damage (2.5:1 ratio of AP, highest scaling ult in the game). During the channel it can be canceled by any form of Hard CC (Stun/Knockup/Pull etc). It can also be cancelled early by the player for slightly less damage.

Bloodboil yourself + ice blast the enemy = YOULL NEVER ESCAPE ME

Your skill sequence will vary depending on lane. We'll talk about each lane individually.

Top:

Top lane your skill order is > > > . The reason behind each one:
Absolute Zero:
Level this skill every time it's up. Its damage is HUGE if you can land the whole ult.
Ice Blast:
This is where most of your damage and your poke comes from top lane. Max this ASAP.
Consume:
As your primary sustain ability, maxing this second helps keep you in lane longer.
Blood Boil:
Max this last. At Rank 1 it gives you some great stats and costs very little mana. Keeping it rank 1 allows your other abilities to scale harder than this one while still keeping the mana cost of this ability low.

Sometimes it's better to max Blood Boil over Consume. Do this when you're winning lane really hard to keep your lead up. Also, if you begin losing lane try leveling Consume and Ice Blast evenly. This will keep your range poke up enough while granting you some obscene sustain.

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Jungle:

Your skill order in the jungle is pretty flexible. While you can technically max anything, it's best to either max Consume or Ice Blast. The reasoning behind this is that Consume will grant you huge sustain and faster jungle speed, but Ice Blast will provide stronger ganks. Blood Boil will allow you to move around the jungle faster and give you good ganks, but just doesn't have the power the other two have for your jungle. Obviously take a point in Absolute Zero whenever it's up.

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Support

As support Nunu & Willump, you'll want to be a carry-buffing, carry-peeling machine. You have two real choices for skill order: Level Ice Blast and Blood Boil equally or you can simply max Ice Blast.
Consume
As Support Nunu you won't get to use this skill much, but it's nice to have a point in this at Level 3 for emergency situations. It helps a ton, but max it last.
Blood Boil
This is your main skill as Support Nunu. It gives your carry a few thousand gold worth of stats right off the bat and helps a lot for fighting during laning phase. You can keep this skill even in level with Ice Blast or you can keep it Level 1, as the stats it provides at level 1 are plenty for laning phase.
Ice Blast
A great skill as support Nunu, use this to help peel for your carry and use it for harass/trades during laning phase. It slows the enemy carries attack speed a lot and helps chase them down or keep the away from your carry.
Absolute Zero
Obviously you'll want to level this whenever you can.

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Mid:

Consume
Gives you hella-lane sustain even at level 1 and scales 1:1 with AP, which means you're very hard to push out of lane.
Blood Boil
Not all that useful for AP Nunu in-lane, but gives your carry tons of stats in teamfights.
Ice Blast
Your damage in lane. With 40% CDR you can spam this thing like no tomorrow dealing some stupid-high damage while you /laugh and eat their face away with snowballs.
Absolute Zero
As full AP Nunu I have literally 1-shot an entire team with Nunu's ult. It wont happen often, but sometimes a team is dumb enough to facecheck a bad bush and then you suddenly win the game.

There is definitely a time and place for each and every one of Nunu's abilities. Managing Nunu & Willump's skillset is extremely important to being successful with Nunu & Willump.


Managing Nunu's passive holds different importance for each lane. For top, you'll want to combine Visionary with Ice Blast for maximum sustained harass in lane. With some AP this combo is extremely effective. Use this skill in the jungle to save more mana on either Ice Blast or Consume. As support you wont get to use this skill much.


Top: Use this skill to keep you in lane when you're suffering heavy harass. Use it to "bait" the enemy into what they think is a close 1v1. Nunu top with Heal+Consume can be a HUGE problem.

Jungle: Sustain/Secure Buffs using this ability.

Support: Only use this when in dire need of some sustain.


Top: After you have 2 Dorans Rings use this on yourself constantly. You can also use this to speed up a Tank Minion when you want to push a lane.

Jungle: Dont use it when you dont have Blue buff, but when you do use it to move around the jungle faster.

Support: Keep your carry buffed throughout laning phase and during teamfights.


Top: Use this for harass and chasing/running from enemies. Jungler ganks? Blood Boil yourself + Ice Blast the enemy with the stun in order to quickly escape.

Jungle: Useful for ganking with good damage on minions.


Use this ability after all the enemy's hard CC has been popped for TONS OF DAMAGE

Runes are really versatile for Nunu & Willump, but a lot of you are thinking "WHY AD REDS??", well I'll explain it all here.

Top:

The reason we're using AD Runes here is because you only have one damaging ability. By relying on the high base damage of Ice Blast and the attack speed bonus of Blood Boil, these AD Runes grants you much more benefit than flat AP runes or Mpen would.

These are your defensive runes. If you wanted to you could substitute the armor seals for MR seals if you know you're up against an AP top lane, but armor seals help a lot when trading near minions.

You wouldn't need any mana regen runes for top lane since you can simply manage your passive.

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Jungle:

These babies are awesome for junglers at the moment because of Machete's 10 true dmg/hit passive. Also, these help Nunu spam abilities by using Visionary.


We'll use these to gank harder and move through our jungle a bit better. Alternatively you could take Greater Quintessence of Gold for the GP10 aspect.

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Support:

With the ambient gold changes in S3, I feel it's not necessary to take Gp10 Seals anymore. Armor Seals and Reds help a lot in laning phase and I only take the Gp10 Quints to enure I can get Sightstone ASAP.

Top:

This is a fairly important mastery for top-lane Nunu, so be sure to grab this by taking 9 in Offense. It helps a lot when the enemy starts stacking MR against you.


NEVER EVER EVER take this mastery on Nunu & Willump top, jungle, OR mid. Your Q will keep you healed plenty and thus reduce this masteries effectiveness. Its just BAD on anything but Support Nunu.


Fantastic for Nunu top lane vs an AD (or even an AP). I typically take this mastery, although if I'm up against something like Rumble I might switch it out for an extra point in Resistance .


I feel this is rather important on Nunu & Willump as I often find myself buying Ninja Tabi.


Point-for-point this is probably the single best mastery in the game. I love it so much (especially on Wukong and Irelia) and you really should take a point here in stead of putting the 3rd one into Legendary Armor .


This mastery is way overrated. It's good, but point-for-point almost every other mastery in the defense tree beats it. I take 2 points, but you might consider taking those 2 points in Juggernaut instead.


Definitely take this mastery if the enemy team has anything that could even be considered a crit-carry. Enemy has a Graves? Take it. Ashe? Take it. Ahri? Meh, why not?... Great 1-point mastery.


Another "meh" mastery. It's worth the point, but if I had to choose between Reinforced Armor or Honor Guard , I'd take the first one.

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Jungle:

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Support:

Nunu & Willump's skillset is pretty versatile, meaning you have lots of viable options for summoners. Below I'll discuss some useful summoners on Nunu & Willump.



Flash is really good on Nunu & Willump. Use it to catch enemies with your perm-slowing Ice Blast or escape with Blood Boil.


Take this on Nunu if the enemy team only has a little CC. As an off-tank, you'll love it when they blow their CC on you trying to peel for their carry. Ghost has a much shorter cooldown than Flash and works well on Nunu & Willump.


Take this if you're jungling. While it may be tempting to take something else since your Consume does so much damage to minions, Smite is still really valuable.


Comboing this ability with Consume top lane can be pretty damn useful. Be sure to use Consume first because it does not apply the Recently Healed debuff. Only take this as a support if you just dont need Exhaust.


Take this if you're top lane against a good duelist like Jax or Xin Zhao. This will help make up for your lack of any real damage around the 10-minute mark.


Take this top against champions like Fiora or Riven. It'll really help tone their damage down a bit early-game and this spell scales really well into late-game. Take this if you are support also.


Teleport is useful on Top-lane Nunu. Use it when your team is already full of combat summoners and you'll be up against a passive lane like Nasus.


Useful for Support Nunu & Willump, but Exhaust is usually a better choice.

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DO NOT TAKE:

As I have said before, Nunu & Willump is a really versatile champion and you can build him in a huge number of ways. Typically you want to stick with an Offtank/AP type build, but building some heavy damage on him can be rewarding as well.

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Core Build:

You should decide on Iceborn or Frozen Heart, typically you dont want to build both (although sometimes you can). Go FHeart if you need more durability.


Core items for Support Nunu.

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Boots:

Use your brain. Typically you'll want Ninja Tabi ( Nunu & Willump isnt weak to CC at all), but vs AP top or 2x AP Comps take Mercury's Treads instead. Take Sorc boots when you're super far ahead of the enemy laner and you want to bully them harder. An early Tabi is generally best for Support.

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Offensive Items:

Gives you some awesome stats that stack well with your base stats. Get this item ASAP top lane.


Pretty great item on Nunu & Willump. Get a Spirit Visage with this item and never die.


Useful when dueling the enemy carry or if you're up against an AP top or AP-heavy team. Don't get it if you dont need the MR.


A very strong item on Nunu & Willump in any aspect, as his Ice Blast slows and Liandry's passive does 2x damage if the target is slowed. It's pretty great.


Gives your damage a huge boost, but lack of survivability makes it a risky purchase on a melee champion like Nunu & Willump.


Useful if the enemy is stacking tons of MR, but has the same problems as Rabadon's Deathcap.


Strong item, but I feel Iceborn Gauntlet does the job better.


You don't need the movespeed much, but it's a nice item to get Midlane or vs AP top.


Holy **** broken item nerf riotpls


It works on Nunu & Willump but I wouldn't recommend it in most situations.


Pretty beast item, but Iceborn Gauntlet seems to just... do it better.


Core item for Top-lane Nunu. It's REALLY strong.


Great item for Support Nunu, but you dont really need it Top or Mid.

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Defensive Items:

Good item but the nerf hit it hard.


AMAZING item on Nunu & Willump. It'd be core if it just gave a bit more HP...


Most cost-effective item in the game. Build it or Iceborn every game unless their ADC is afk or someone else is building it (i.e Ryze or Yorick)


Good item vs heavy AD comps.


Standard item. Get this as your 3rd/4th item. If the enemy team is really heavy on AP, get this and Force of Nature or Force of Nature and Spirit Visage.


Situational, take this if the enemy carry is getting a little too fed.


Great item for jungle Nunu & Willump, great item overall.


Get this if you can afford the loss of HP. Awesome item on Nunu & Willump.


RIP FON 2012


A strange item for Nunu & Willump, but works pretty well vs champions like Diana, Amumu, and Grargas.


Great Anti-AP item.

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Support:

Core item on Support Nunu, no reason not to build it. Cheap stats and awesome active.


Core for Nunu support, helps your tank engage and your ADC kite.


A really cool item with lots of potential, but it's sitting in a strange price-range.


Get this every game unless your Top/Jungle is building it.


If you're doing good build this item after you have some Gp10, Boots, and Shard. If you're behind don't build it, have your top/mid/jungle build it instead.


Good item on Nunu & Willump.


New buffs made this item less of a Support and more of a top-lane item, but it's still not hard to afford. It's a great item if you're ahead.


Really expensive item, not as good on Supports these days.

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Gold Generation Item Discussion:

Philosopher's Stone
While it's fairly good for laning, I dont like building it early.


RIP HOG 2012

Kage's Lucky Pick
Grab one of these immediately after Sightstone


Every time you build this item on Nunu & Willump a kitten gets eaten by a yeti.

Nunu is a counterjungling BEAST. Shyvana and Udyr AINT GOT NUTTIN. But no, seriously, Nunu is awesome at just waltzing into the enemy's jungle and taking what he pleases, Mundo be damned.

Use these charts to determine gank routes and important ward locations.

I hope this guide taught you everything you need to know to start playing one of the funnest champions in the game, Nunu & Willump.

If you liked the guide, how about an Upvote? If not then you should leave me a comment telling me how I can improve!

Thanks again,

December.