Greetings, I'm Cupkek.

I'm an eclectic, casual League of Legends player on the NA server. I play pretty much all roles, but particularly enjoy Jungle.

With update 4.20 to Summoner's Rift and the Jungle, a lot of jungle champions have fallen out of favor while others have rocketed up to the top. Nunu has always been a great champion for counterjungling and obliterating squishy carry types.

If you're looking for a tanky champion that can troll and generally render the enemy jungler completely useless, then Nunu is the jungler for you!

"Satan of the Jungle", also known as Nunu, is a champion focused around quickly and effectively clearing jungle camps. Particularly those belonging to the enemy jungler.

Nunu's abilities are centered around neutral objective control, buffing allies and dishing out heavy magic damage and slows to enemies. Nunu excels in many builds ranging from tank to AP bruiser to flat out AP. This is thanks to his abilities having ridiculously high base damage, high AP ratios, low cooldowns, situational sustain and innate tankiness.

You should play Nunu if:
- You like being a total ******* without running the risk of being banned
- The enemy team is running an auto-attack based
- The enemy jungler is running Devourer
- Your team is auto-attack based

You should NOT play Nunu if:
- You like complex champions with OP kits
- You want to be super mobile
- You're not confident in your abilities as a player
- You're a good person

No changes as of the creation of this guide.

PROS

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- Stupidly fast camp clears
- High base damage
- High AP ratios
- High jungle sustain
- Easy to learn and master
- Reliable point-and-click abilities
- Low cooldowns
- Hard counters most auto-attack based champions
- Synergizes with auto-attack based champions

CONS

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- No hard cc
- No escapes
- VERY basic kit
- Doesn't scale well late game
- Priority target for cc during ult

PASSIVE - Visionary

Every 5 auto attacks, Nunu can cast his next ability for free.

A very simple passive, but quite useful. It helps conserve mana while farming (and stealing) jungle camps. This is also a great option for when you're out of mana, provided you can get the 5 auto attacks in.





Q - Consume

Nunu takes a bite out of target minion or monster, dealing a massive amount of true damage to it and healing himself in the process. In addition, Nunu receives a temporary buff whose duration and effect depend on the rank of Consume and which kind of jungle monster has been consumed.

Buffs:

- Consuming a Blue Sentinel, Red Brambleback or their smaller counterparts will grant Nunu a buff that increases his size and maximum HP by 10%

- Consuming a Rift Scuttler, Crimson Raptor, Greater Murk Wolf or their smaller counterparts will grant Nunu a buff that increases his movement speed by 15% for 3 seconds after he kills a unit.

- Consuming an Ancient Krug, Gromp, Dragon or the Baron Nashor will grant Nunu a buff that makes each auto attack deal 1% of Nunu's maximum health as magic damage to the target on-hit.






W - Blood Boil

Nunu increases the movement and attack speeds of an allied unit or champion as well as himself. If cast on Nunu, blood boil will also affect the closest nearby allied champion.

This ability is great for buffing your ADC or other auto-attack reliant champions.






E - Ice Blast

Nunu hurls an ice ball at his target, dealing heavy damage while also slowing the victim's movement speed and attack speed. This is your main damage ability and is an excellent permaslow device.






R - Absolute Zero

Nunu begins channeling for 3 seconds, slowing all units in the affected area by 50% and slowing their attack speed by 25%. After 3 seconds, Nunu deals massive damage to all units within the affected area. If the channel is interrupted, a smaller percentage of the damage will be dealt, depending on the amount of time spent channeling, instead.

This ability can absolutely annihilate champions that have not built Magic Resist. Sporting the highest base damage as well as the highest AP ratio of any single ability in the game, it is a gamechanging ultimate ability. Due to its large channel time and window of vulnerability, it requires good timing and awareness to use to full effect.

---Quintessences---

Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed is the only way to go in my opinion. The reason for this is that it means your passive will be proc'd quicker, allowing free casting and preventing you from becoming mana starved. Also, it's great for dishing out damage via Consume's Krug or Gromp buff.

---Marks---

Greater Mark of Attack Speed is the only way to go. See reasoning above.

---Seals---

Even the great and powerful Nunu needs Greater Seal of Armor to survive the jungle and early physical harassment from the enemy jungler. These are a must have.

---Glyphs---

So here's where it gets tricky... I choose to run a combination of 6x Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reductions and 3x Greater Glyph of Armor. I like having quite a bit of CDR early so that I can clear enemy camps quicker via Consume and spam my Ice Blast more frequently, should I encounter the enemy jungler. As for the armor, it helps increase your jungle up-time. I typically choose not to throw MR glyphs into the mix strictly because Spirit Visage is a core item.

Playing Nunu & Willump is about 95% making judgement calls and awareness while being about 5% technical and mechanical skill.


The devastating jungling force of Nunu & Willump isn't meant to be played by everyone. While Nunu has a very simple and straightforward kit, he'll require you to think with 3 separate mentalities.

Those mentalities are:

1. "What can I do to be a complete jerkface to the enemy team?"
2. "What can I do to completely f*ck over the enemy jungler and make him want to quit?"
3. "What can I steal?"


So, let's break down these mentalities.


- "What can I do to be a complete jerkface to the enemy team?"

This is the simplest mentality but also the most important. Try to identify the 'dumb' or 'weak' player on the enemy team. Every team has one. Here's a big hint, they're the one who will complain in /all chat that you're camping his lane when you gank and kill him twice in a row.

If there's an easy to kill player, kill him over and over and over again. It doesn't matter if he's crying that you're camping his lane and that there's no honor in that. You're f*cking Nunu & Willump, it's your job to be an unkillable pain-in-the-bum, you have no honor!

The more you camp and kill someone, the less relevant, and by extension the less of a threat, they're going to be during the late game. That's good for you, because you're not a hypercarry.

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- "What can I do to completely f*ck over the enemy jungler and make him want to quit?"

This is where the 95% judgement call playstyle comes in. The whole point of picking Nunu is to passive-aggressively or aggressively set the enemy jungler behind. This is especially effective against junglers with really bad early game sustain (see: Amumu, Wukong, Vi, Sejuani, Evelynn, etc).

Your main priority as Nunu is to keep the opponents' jungler heading back to base constantly or unable to keep up with his (and your) team by stealing all valuable monsters in his jungle when he's not paying attention. There are two ways to keep your jungler behind. If you can do both at the same time, you've become a Nunu God.

---Counter Jungling---

Counter Jungling comes in 2 different types, passive-aggressive and aggressive.

- Passive-aggressive Counter Jungling is where you take your opponent's monster camp (say, Ancient Krug) while they're at a different camp or at their base. The goal and effect of this is to steal a large portion of gold and experience from your opponent, as well as any beneficial effects the camp might give them while ALSO messing with their camp clear timer (explained later).

- Aggressive Counter Jungling is where you muscle your way into the camp your opponent is currently at, steal the big monster and either attack and force your opponent to leave with nothing or haul *** out of there, leaving your opponent in the dust wondering what just happened. The goal and effect is to not only steal gold and experience from your opponent but demoralize them. If there isn't a "F*CK YOU NUNU!" in /all chat within 10 seconds after, you didn't do it well enough.

Nunu is stupidly good at both of these. A good Nunu player with a Tracker's Knife knows exactly when they can take an enemy camp and possibly ambush the enemy jungler for an easy kill. This leads us to the final part of the mentality, Ambush.

Commonly executed in Aggressive Counter Jungling, ambushing the enemy jungler is the easiest way to make your opponent's game feel like total sh*t and start making them play on tilt. It's easiest for me to ambush the enemy jungler at their red buff because the nearby brush allows me to sneak in, smite steal the big monster from stealth and engage the low HP opponent while they're still trying to figure out what happened. Your goal with ambushing the enemy jungler is to not only steal their camp, but deal enough damage to kill them or at least force them into heading back to base.

If you can manage to either get a kill or force a recall on your opponent, you'll not only be ahead in gold and experience, but you'll have even more time to steal his camps and set him even FURTHER behind then he already was! Ooooh, that's just SO evil!

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- "What can I steal?"

This is the big enchilada. Knowing when and what you can steal from your opponent is key to victory with Nunu. The new Tracker's Knife helps us accomplish that quite easily.

"Awareness is the key to victory!" - Jarvan IV

Knowing where your opponents' jungler is and what he's capable of is crucial to the success of your mission as Nunu & Willump. Is he at red buff camp being a complete dope and blowing smite on it way too early? Good, punish him for it, take the camp and huck an Ice Blast at him to scare him away or kill him.

Once he's run off, leave just 1 little monster in the camp available for your opponent to kill. This stalls out the camp spawn timer until he kills the little guy, limiting his potential experience and gold income even further. I see lots of bad Nunu players out there taking the entire camp. While yes, it does set your opponent back by taking the whole camp, it's even more productive to leave 1 monster so they have to wait the full minute for the camp to respawn IN ADDITION to the time wasted until they happened upon the camp.

For buff camps, feel free to take the entire camp so that you get the timer instead of your opponent so that you may take the camp again and again and again. <3 Nunu & Willump <3

--- Diagram Key ---

Red Numbering - Smite camp
Orange Line - Route
Green Check - Engage enemy champion/Gank
Red Line - Enemy Jungler Route
Green Numbering - Jungler Camp Route

This is my standard Nunu jungle route. I start with Gromp, take my Blue buff, kill scuttle crab in the river and make my way towards the enemy's Red buff camp to ambush the enemy jungler.

From there, you have a few choices;

1. You're most likely there earlier than your opponent so you can set up a ward on Red buff camp and take your opponent's Ancient Krug while you wait for the enemy jungler to show up at Red.

2. You can go ahead and take Red buff uncontested, take his Ancient Krug and then head back to your jungle.

3. Ward Red buff camp and /Dance your stupid yeti dance in the brush next to the camp and wait for enemy jungle to come along.

Here's a diagram as to what your thought process should be when you're trying to steal Red buff:
If you successfully steal your opponent's red as well as kill him, you'll be miles ahead of him and can continue to ravage his jungle in order to keep him behind. Keep in mind to use Consume frequently on every kind of monster camp. It'll keep you topped up on health and refresh your buffs as needed.

Ganking with Nunu & Willump is very easy and surprisingly reliable.

The typical method is this: Ping that you're ganking -> Walk into lane BEHIND your victim -> Spam Ice Blast off cooldown -> Auto-Attack in between Ice Blasts -> Successfully kill victim.

The slow on your Ice Blast will give your laners time to catch up and start wailing on your intended target until they burn flash or die.

Post 6 the ganks become 100% more lethal, as you can throw Absolute Zero into the mix for a potential 1 or 2 hit KO. Just make sure that your victim has used any stuns, interrupts, silences or knock-up/asides before using it. Don't bother using it against Riven, it never works.

You can also use Absolute Zero as a hidden nuke. Throw a Vision Ward down in a bush you're sitting in, wait for an enemy to come along and watch as they panic when 3/4 of their health bar disappears. ;)

Here is one of Nunu's weaknesses, teamfighting.

Nunu's player vs player abilities are limited to auto-attacks, Ice Blast and Absolute Zero, since you can't use Consume on Champions.

As such, knowing when and where to use Absolute Zero is crucial to being a great Nunu. Ice Blast can pretty much be spammed on somewhat squishy targets for reliable heavy damage, so it doesn't take much skill.

Before a teamfight, use Bloodboil on your ADC to give them the movement speed they need to avoid incoming assassins as well as a lot of attack speed to help them do their job. Once your team has engaged or has been engaged upon, keep track of the crowd control abilities that have been used by the enemy team.

Once the hard cc that can stop your Absolute Zero has been burnt, walk in and start channeling. If the enemy team doesn't back out in time, they'll be hit for crippling amounts of damage. If their ADC is in the area, they'll be rendered completely useless by the attack speed slow.

If you're playing as a full tank, use Absolute Zero as a sort of 'taunt' for the enemy team. If they don't kill you or cc you, they take a freight train of damage, meaning that for the duration that you're channeling, you become the highest priority target. Absolute Zero also makes for good zoning and peeling, as any squishy assassin or carry will be forced to abandon their mission for fear of being killed by it.

Thank you for taking the time to read up on Nunu.

I highly encourage people to learn how to play him as he teaches valuable skills required for other champions and is a very effective and fun to play little hellraiser.

I hope to see many more Satan-spawn on the Rift!