Udyr Build Guide by Bh00

Section 1: Introduction

Hello and welcome to my Udyr guide. I've updated this guide to be consistent with patch 1.0.0.125. Udyr is firstly played as an awesome jungler and secondly an off-tank. He is very flexible and can jungle, lane and build built as a DPS, Tank or off-tank. This guide will show 4 ways of playing Udyr: Tiger Stance, Tanky DPS, Phoenix Stance and Hybrid Style (Phoenix early, Tiger late).



-Awesome jungler
-Does good damage even if built as a tank
-The Primal Udyr skin is epic
-Doesn't have an ult, but rather 4 awesome spammable stances
-Melts faces in late game with Tiger Stance



-Get taken out quickly if they have lots of CC
-Is very mana hungry without golem buff early game
-Doesn't have as much burst early game as champions with ultimates

Section 2: Tiger Stance build.

I take Flash and Smite as my Summoner Spells. Flash is great for ensuring early ganks and useful in escaping and catching people and Smite is for jungling and for killing minions.


Ghost if you have problems with movespeed, but with Trinity Force and Bear Stance it isn't really needed.

Ignite if you can't seem to finish off those people you gank and for champions who rely heavily on health regen or life steal.


Exhaust if you have trouble taking down enemies and your team lacks CC. Also if you see an ad carry on their team which you think you will have trouble with later, then take it.




Monkey's Agility - A passive which makes jungling so much easier. This can stack 3 times and gives you 30% attack speed and 9% dodge chance. Works great with the Nimbleness mastery.

Tiger Stance] - Tiger stance is your main source of DPS. It gives great attack speed and a nice little 1.7x AD boost. You will be using this as your main attacking skill as well as [[Phoenix Stance for the little AD bonus. It only gains power in late game when you've almost finished your build.

Turtle Stance - Turtle stance is an awesome ability because it not only let's you jungle sustainably, but let's you stay useful during teamfights instead of staying back with low health, completely useless. This skill provides some lifesteal and manasteal which is useful for regain what you have lost in ganks by laning for a few seconds.

Bear Stance - Bear stance is more of a utility move. It is useful for ganking, fights, chasing e.t.c. At late game, you pretty much use this ability to run faster across the map and to stun the opposing team in fights.

Phoenix Stance - In the this Tiger Stance build, the only real use for this stance is to provide a little AD bonus when attacking with Tiger Stance.



In the Defensive masteries I take:


Resistance and Hardiness , which give Udyr a little bulk to make jungling and sustainability better. 1 point for 1 armor/defense is a bargain!

Evasion and Nimbleness , which work great with his passive Monkey's Agility and dodge seals.

Harden Skin , which gives a little damage reduction when hit by attacks.

Veteran's Scars , which gives much needed base hp needed for jungling and general survivability.

Ardor , which gives bonus attack speed which isn't really needed in this build, but leads onto;

Tenacity , which reduces incoming damage by 4%. This can be substituted with an extra point into Utility Mastery if you find your red buff runs too quickly.

In the Utility masteries I take:

Good Hands . Good Hands is a better pick than Perseverence because in late game, 6 seconds off your respawn time is a lot better than an extra 4% on health and mana regen.

Perseverence , because there isn't anything else to put it in.

Awareness , because as many of who you jungle know, it is almost impossible to keep up in levels with your team mates if you don't have that extra experience. If you jungle, you need Awareness (pun intended).

Utility Mastery , which increases your buff durations by 15%/30% respectively. Again, a point can be taken out from Tenacity and put into this.


I choose Greater Mark of Desolation because I find that Tiger Stance Udyr needs some armor penetration late game, since many people start stacking armor once you get fed.

ForSeals you can really go for anything, but I find that Greater Seal of Evasion] is the best choice as it stacks great with your passive and [[Nimbleness, but you can go for Greater Seal of Vitality, Greater Seal of Armor or Greater Seal of Scaling Magic Resist.

For Glyphs I go Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist because Udyr's base MR is low. You can choose to get Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction or Greater Glyph of Replenishment.

I choose Greater Quintessence of Desolation for the extra armor penetration which is useful late game, but you can practically go anywhere with Quints. What I suggest is playing a game without quints and find what you had trouble with and get Quints to help with that. Other alternatives may be Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed if you have trouble with ganking or Greater Quintessence of Experience for the extra experience while jungling.


These items listed above are the core items to this build and the core to most of the builds here.



Mercury's Treads - An item which reduces the duration of CC effects on you by 35% and gives you some magic resist which you need a lot.

Wriggle's Lantern - An item specifically made for junglers. Helps in all aspects of jungling, life steal, defence, attack damage and map awareness.

Trinity Force - Deals 1.5x your base damage on your next physical attack when you use an ability. This is great as Udyr's stances have almost no cooldown time at all.

The Bloodthirster - Provides a great deal of attack damage as well as lifesteal.

From here, decide what to get depending on how your team and the opposing team are doing.

*Recommended* Banshee's Veil - If the enemy team are packing a ton of CC and if they have a nuke like Annie or Veigar which rely heavily on spell combos.

*Recommended* Phantom Dancer - If your team is doing well and you need more attack speed and critical strike chance.

Infinity Edge - Equivalent of a Bloodthirster, except it gives less damage and more critical strike chance and damage.

*Recommended* Randuin's Omen - If the enemies have a ****load of movespeed and keep getting away in team fights or just in lane fights.

Warmog's Armor - If you find your health dropping really quickly and you already have quite a bit of armor and magic resist.

Aegis of the Legion - A great item if your team is half squishy and end up dying before they do any real damage.

Guardian Angel - To really need to get this item, you need to be focused first always in teamfights, and have a support or healer in your team.

Thornmail - A nice boost of armor and really hits squishy DPS champions hard.

*Recommended* Atma's Impaler - A great item when bought in combination with Warmog's Armor or by itself.





Start off with a Cloth Armor and 5 Health Potions. Try and start at the double golems nearest to the lane which has your solo laner (unless they have a jungler as well.) If you are blue team and your solo laner is top, then start off at the purple team's double golem.

As soon as the minions spawn, Smite a golem and turn on Turtle Stance. If need be, activate Turtle Stance again once you reach ~200 mana. After you finish them, pop a Health Potion, get a point in Phoenix Stance and move onto the wraiths.

Go into the middle of the camp and activate Phoenix Stance and Turtle Stance straight afterwards. After the blue wraith goes down, use a Health Potion and use Turtle Stance whenever necessary, making sure you save some mana to take down the blue buff golem.

After the wraith camp you should have 200-300 health so pop another Health Potion. Move onto the wolf camp and use Phoenix Stance and Turtle Stance and leave it at that.

By this time Smite should be up and you should be level 3. Put another point into Turtle Stance and attack the blue buff golem. Again initiate with Phoenix Stance and spam Turtle Stance whenever possible. Finish off the golem with Smite, use a Health Potion and move back to the double golems.

Initiate with your Phoenix Stance and Turtle Stance combo. Once you kill the double golems, you should be level 4 and put your point into Phoenix Stance. At this point your Smite should be up, so move along to the red buff lizard.

As always, use your Phoenix Stance and Turtle Stance combo and Smite the lizard as close to 640 hp as possible. Proceed to kill the smaller lizards, use your last Health Potion and move onto the Wraith camp.

Use your Phoenix Stance and Turtle Stance combo and finish off the wraiths. At this point you should be level 5 and should put your skill point into Bear Stance. Now, you should check the lanes to see if there is anyone who is gankable. Generally go for people who are around half health or less and have pushed past the line in this diagram.




After your gank, successful or not, buy your Madred's Razor and possibly your Boots of Speed. Now, you should only jungle some of the time and try and always keep alert for possible targets to gank. Keep getting the neutral minion buffs whenever they run out unless your carry or other teammates want them.



At this point you should be out of the jungle completely except for the odd buffs. You should be in every single team fight that occurs and push a lot. There have been many games that I've had people all over the map pushing by themselves. Someone has to take initiative to organize teams and if no one is, then you should.

At late game, the winner should have already been decided. If you are winning, then make sure that your performance doesn't drop. If you are losing, then lift your game and tell your teammates as well. If it hasn't been decided yet, then just try your best and farm up kills.



In a 1v1 fight or gank, start off by rushing in with Bear Stance, changing over to Phoenix Stance and finishing with Tiger Stance. This will usually finish off an enemy at early or mid game.


Running away, then catch up with Bear Stance and Exhaust them if possible and while they are stunned/slowed/exhausted, use Tiger Stance to finish them.

Dishing out a sizable amount of damage, then change from Bear Stance -> Phoenix Stance -> Tiger Stance to Bear Stance -> Phoenix Stance -> Turtle Stance.



In a team fight, you should always run in 2nd or 3rd and run straight towards their carries. Open up with Bear Stance, then move onto Phoenix Stance, then Tiger Stance and repeat. If you are getting targeted by their carry or DPS, then replace Bear Stance in your attack combo with Turtle Stance.

When taking down building, alternate between Tiger Stance (for the attack speed) and Phoenix Stance (for the attack damage).

For the other situations e.g. When facing tanks or support, just use Tiger Stance and Phoenix Stance, but if they pose a threat, then Tiger Stance and Turtle Stance.



1v1 or Gank - Bear, Phoenix, Tiger

Target running away - Bear, Tiger

Getting targeted in a fight - Bear, Phoenix, Turtle

Attacking in a teamfight - Bear, Phoenix, Tiger

Taking down buildings - Tiger, Phoenix

Other situations - Tiger, Phoenix.

Section 3: DPS build *coming soon*

I take Exhaust and Smite like in the off-tank build because I find Exhaust and red buff usually is enough to get a first gank which benefits Udyr's endgame greatly.

Flash to get away quickly because you are a lot squishier when playing as a DPS champion.

Ignite to finish off people if they use flash or have crazy movespeed e.t.c.

Rally if you think Smite isn't worth it late game.




Monkey's Agility - When you keep switching stances late game, you can reach max attack speed while only having 1 major attack speed item, the Phantom Dancer.

Tiger Stance - The DPS build is based mostly on this skill. It provides a attack speed buff on activation and also as a persistent effect. The extra attack speed allows you to build more damage items rather than spending money on attack speed items. The active effect of Tiger Stance is great for finishing off enemies and is great if used with Ignite

Turtle Stance - This is your jungling ability and damage shielding ability. You shouldn't be using this much except for life-stealing your way back to full health after ganks or fights and running away. This skill should be kept at level 3 as Phoenix Stance is much more useful in this build.

Bear Stance - With the movespeed that Berserker's Greaves, Trinity Force and Phantom Dancer provides, this also boosts that speed and makes you run from one end of the map to the other in around 15 seconds. This skill is great for ganking as the persistent effect is a stun for one second (only possible on the same target every six seconds). With the persistent stuns, slows from Trinity Force and red buff and your crazy movespeed, you should be pretty much floating right next to them, dealing tons of damage. :D What's there not to like?

Phoenix Stance - A great farming ability and an ability which provides attack damage and ability power. Phoenix Stance is such a powerful ability in teamfights as your DPS is so great and the cone of fire will affect a few enemies in front of you every ~2 seconds with max attack speed.

Section 4: Gameplay

Section 5: Conclusion

In conclusion, Udyr is a solid Tanky DPS who can be built many different ways. I hope you enjoyed my guide and that it helped you to play Udyr better. I will update this build regularly and help you to become Udyr, the Epik Tiger, Turtle, Bear, Bird thing.

Section 6: Changelog and Content Coming Soon

8/1/11
-Arranged my guide in Chapters
-Removed Index
-Added picture of Score
-Added Atma's Impaler to 'Other items'

1/1/11
-Fixed up a few mistakes
-Added Summoner Spells to DPS build
-Added Abilities to DPS build
-Added Video to Gameplay section

30/12/10
-Retyped build after deletion

25/12/10
-Release guide



-DPS Udyr
-AS/AP Udyr
-Gameplay Videos