+1

Kinda nice guide, well explained, but i still think, that Philosopher's Stone is better item to rush first.
But it depends all on you, and your runes and teammates..

I started jungling at level 25 I think and it was iffy taking Blue even with leashes at times with Cloth Armor and 5 pots. (that was also back when I started with Despair, which does less to The Ancient Golem than Tantrum at low levels) When I switched to starting with Tantrum and Regrowth pendant my jungle time got faster (didn't have to wait for pots to finish healing before initiating the next camp), and my ganks got a lot better because I was hitting level 4, 6, and 12 much faster since you won't have to go back nearly as much with the slow, steady health regen of Regrowth Pendant. With the recent jungle patches though it's gotten super easy to just stroll through the jungle killing creeps while you're at full health most of the time due to the healing sigil added to small camps. I think you could probably jungle with Regrowth Pendant and heal without Runes and just the first 9 defensive masteries. I'll try it on my smurf account when I get it to level 9 and report back with my results.

A good friend of mine actually starts with Philosopher's Stone, and it seems to work quite well for him. I prefer the huge regen and MR from Force of Nature to Shurelya's Battlesong or Eleisa's Miracle when getting into late game personally, but neither of those items are bad for Amumu, and Philo Stone pays for itself quick enough; you may have to tweak the late game build to give you more Magic Resist though ( Lich Bane instead of Archangel's Staff replacing Tear of the Goddess with Sheen until your AP exceeds your AD would probably be solid with either of the items that build from Philosopher's Stone.)

I'm still only summoner level 19 but seem to do pretty well with the basic amumu setup of Magic Pen/ArP/MR/Fort runes and starting with 5 pots and a cloth armor. I'm gonna try out your build. I like some of the things mentioned and i completely understand your reasoning, but as mentioned, it's not going to work for everyone. I wanna try out the growth pendent and single pot idea. One question, why not turn that growth pendent into a philosopher's stone?
I'm at work right now, but i'll try some of this out when i get home and even play a friend's lvl 30 account if need be (since this method may be a less friendly to me). Afterwards, I'll let you know how i feel about it and rate from there. Good job at least wanting to put a guide together, i see ppl talking badly about builds but never tried it themselves.

First of all i would like to know how you know that amumu gets banned in 400 elo?
second amumus jungle ain't slow, or maybe 3:45 is slow?
and third there is multiple of ways to recover as amumu even if you blue gets stolen, especially when u start with a regrowth pendant

I originally started out using Despair for that reason, but I found that it's too slow killing the small lizards, even if I tag them with MR shred using my basic attack. I was finishing Blue with maybe 50-150 health depending on my leash and it was just really disconcerting for me; I got ganked by a few aggressive Nocturnes and Lee Sins on my first pass through the jungle and decided to try a different route. Especially since The Ancient Golem spawns with pretty small health (less than 2000) the percentage damage output per second isn't a whole lot compared to Tantrum's DPS when you're taking aggro from 3 creeps at once. The reduced damage is also incredibly helpful for the first couple levels, especially stacked with my masteries and some decent base armor. Despair really shines midgame and lategame when you have your Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Frozen Heart slowing your enemies' retreat and it can just tick away at them while you chase. With Tantrum I usually finish Blue with 250-350 health and still have my heal, so I can stay in the jungle until my blue runs out or survive almost any counterjungle gank (a good shaco's still a threat with those friggin' boxes :I)

I apologize for not saying it properly the first time: I meant how does your jungle route work, not what is it. Normally people take Despair first, because the percentage damage is more effective on the Blue Golem than Tantrum does. Is there a benefit to this? Do you have to do it like that because you take a regrowth pendant, instead of a cloth armor?

Honestly, I've been giving it thought and I think that probably 9 times out of 10 Frozen Heart belongs in this build. I went ahead and added it in. I've been using it since I first started Jungling (back when I still started Cloth Armor and five pots) and it's always treated me well. I just stopped using it once I started getting Regrowth Pendant as my first item because my build gets congested trying to finish Frozen Heart and Rylai's Crystal Scepter with only a couple item slots, but I think the benefit of Frozen Heart is enough to justify it.

great name for the guide lol

I have been wrecked by a few Damage dealing mummys, so i get where you are coming from, but I have to ask you this, you say Frozen Heart is situation, I would say that its a must because it gives you that beefy-ness, it also gives you more mana so you can keep on fighting, plus it helps you pull of your game changing ulti faster, which is priceless.

but I will say this, I am glad to see you defending your build :)

Glad not everybody hates my build XD

Frozen Heart's a great fallback item for Amumu. Every stat it buffs is a stat that Amumu really capitalizes on well. That said, I think its usefulness is somewhat situational, so it's on the list of items to fill that 6th item slot. I made this guide more to get people thinking about how they can build Amumu without Randuin's Omen and Sunfire Aegis, which are great items if you want to be truly tanky but don't complement Amumu very well (I use them religiously on Leona and Malphite though). I'd love to see people do their own take one this more aggressive AP off-tank Amumu, so if you come up with any small changes to the item build that work better for you, let me know.

The Masteries are still definitely a work in progress. I had the weirdest masteries ever (12/8/10) for season 1 and they worked beautifully, but the same distribution is now total garbage so I have to come up with something else that still facilitates my aggro-tank playstyle with the new masteries.

First off thank you for the detailed and constructive criticism. This is my first build so it's definitely pretty rough, and I appreciate people being understanding of the fact that I'm looking to improve it. :)

I think in ranked play, especially high ELO, you can count on your carries being good enough that you can build true tank Amumu and make it worthwhile. I used to build Amumu as a Tank and whenever my carries sucked and couldn't capitalize on my initiates and CC we lost, which was way too much at level 25-29 (when I started Jungling) and still happens a lot in Normal games, especially Blind Pick (it also happens in draft pick and since I have no ELO, ranked games as well for me). For a while I started building full AP and just carrying which is fun if your team is a bunch of tanks with no damage output but doesn't work for serious play. I've found that my build (half-tank, half-AP; you've got 3.5k health, 200 MR, and a bunch of physical damage reduction with just 5 items) works much better for me than full tank because it means that I can 1v1 in addition to being a damage threat in a team fight, allowing me to pin and take out an enemy team's carries quickly rather than just being a meatshield and hoping I can CC better than the enemy team's Alistar or Cho'Gath.

Redoing the way I have my wards presented in this guide is definitely going to be a priority for upcoming edits, but it'll take a while for me to get that done effectively.

I have my jungle route listed. See the chapter titled "Jungle Path". I don't take red myself; usually I wait until I'm ready to gank bottom/top (whichever one's close to red for me), have the AD carry in lane take red (if there's not one solo top, I can usually count on one being mid), start working it down and have them come over to last hit it. Then I gank the lane and re-clear the small creep camps.

Once you have Tear of the Goddess, Amumu's suddenly a LOT less dependent on Blue. Until that's finished you're going to want to take it though, and let your teammates have Red Buff instead (which you really don't benefit a lot from with .65~ attack speed. If you have people on your team that need it, coordinate with your teammates to gank the enemy jungler when they go for blue and steal it. Right after ganking the nearby lane is a great time because you can usually count on not being counterganked, especially if your mid is pushing at the time. AP Carries in lane shouldn't be as dependent on blue as Amumu is early game because his base stats simply don't give him the mana or regen to facilitate a fast jungle otherwise. The CDR also really helps early game. I'll edit to clarify all that soon because I would agree that when you can afford to, giving a higher damage AP carry blue can really make more difference in a teamfight, especially if you build some CDR for yourself.

I was testing these masteries last night and running the numbers and yeah; the spellvamp's pretty trivial. (only 1% for AoE which is most of Amumu's magic damage, so you get maybe 1 or 2 health per tick of Despair depending on what you're fighting and 2-4 per target hit by tantrum. That's only maybe 10 health per second at best so I think I could definitely reassign those points in spellvamp to something more useful. The Experience buffs and CDR are really what I feel makes it worthwhile to spec into utility though. Beating mid to level 6 is always a great way to get an early start on ganks. The Experience buffs in utility used to come before the Buff Duration mastery so it was always a no-brainer to get them with the old masteries. I'm still having trouble fully weighing the pros and cons of a lot of the new masteries. I think I'll likely keep it 0/9/21, but I may move a few things around, such as the 3 points in spellvamp.

It's true; I've played very little ranked and I'm aware that that's a pretty glaring flaw in my ability to make a good guide for ranked play. Do you think I should just remove the ranked bit and add an (unranked) tag until I have a few more ranked games under my belt? I wouldn't disagree if anyone feels that way.

As for Jungle speed, Amumu's actually really fast as a jungler, at least compared to other AP Junglers I've played. I only do the AP Jungler thing because one of my main guys I play with is beastly with AD Jungle. I've done Nocturne, Olaf, and a couple other AD Junglers and I just can't compete with him.

I used to have a LOT of trouble with getting ganked or interrupted at blue. I haven't had that problem since I started scouting the river before taking blue and always try to have top and mid lane ready to cover my escape and countergank if the enemy team comes to gank me.

Missing Bandage toss does generally translate to a lost gank, so don't miss. If you don't feel like you can hit with it (too many minions, they're moving around too much) just come around behind them and start hitting them with W, E, and basic attacks. When they start running towards their tower, it's usually pretty easy to hit with that Q and secure the kill. Once you get your ult you can even just Q a minion and drop that and usually still get 2 kills or assists out of a well timed gank on bottom.