Powerful Pros

• Huge AoE damage and a gap-closer
• Naturally tanky
• Deals mainly magic damage instead of physical (MR doesn't scale with level on most champions)
• Cries on your enemies
• Passive damage reduction
• Great teamfight capabilities
• Great CC
• Powerful ganks with Bandage Toss, Curse of the Sad Mummy, and Flash
• A wide variety of powerful, viable builds

Critical Cons

• Needs to be up close to be effective
• Lots of MR shuts down his damage
• Squishy early game
• Is extremely dependent on Bluebuff without Tear of the Goddess
• Slow if you don't take MS masteries.

• Do not make upgrading it a priority.
• Rushing the upgrades puts you behind badly in terms of useful gold invested and stats.
• You may be better off selling the thing after your second or third clear or first few successful ganks. This way, you can free up the gold and put it into your core build!

To me, many of the Runes I give Amumu are pretty common-sense oriented, but I will explain both reasons and alternatives.

Summoner's Resolve - 10 bonus gold on Smite use. It gives us 20 extra gold during our first clear alone and is well worth the 1 point it costs.

Durability - Extra health is always good, and it leads into Veteran's Scars , which I believe to be a very important early game Mastery.

Veteran's Scars - 30 bonus health is a lot early game. 30 + 24 from Durability means you'll have 54 more health when you go for your first gank than you would have had otherwise.

Tough Skin - Still has great synergy with Tantrum, and is now the only mastery that reduces damage taken from jungle monsters. This makes it much more valuable.

Bladed Armor - Not the best Mastery, but for one point you can clear camps a little quicker. I take this simply because it has the best value for our 1 remaining point.


Hardiness - This is a big deal. 6 bonus armor means a lot to us early game, but quite frankly, we can't spare the points for it. The 3 points it takes to receive the full benefit go into 4% CDR and 3% Movement Speed. Also, in every build we buy a very early Chain Vest, second only to Tear of the Goddess when rushing Seraph's Embrace.

Perseverance - The only reason I don't take this is because we can take Strength of Spirit in the Utility tree, which provides a stronger effect which scales with maximum MP.


Summoner's Insight - Reduced cooldown on Flash.

Wanderer - Still very important even though it doesn't work in-combat. Allows for faster clearing as well as faster gank initiation.

Mastermind - Further reduces the cooldowns of Smite and Flash. If you aren't using Flash, you should probably invest these points somewhere else.

Artificer - Reduced cooldown on items like Seraph's Embrace and Twin Shadows.

Runic Affinity - Absolutely necessary, lengthens the duration of bluebuff.

Greed - Still needed at the moment, but may not be if Riot increases jungle revenue due to the 'Jungle Starvation' issue. Substitute Gp10 item when paired with 3 Greater Quintessence of Gold.

Strength of Spirit - Better than Perseverance because it scales with maximum MP.

Intelligence - 6% CDR for 3 points, which is much more efficient than Sorcery.

Nimble - An excellent capstone that Amumu loves. It helps you keep up while chasing enemies to deal damage with Despair and Tantrum, and helps cut your clear time.


Meditation - Seems like an obvious choice for Amumu, but Tear of the Goddess really solves any mana issues that you may have. If you aren't buying Tear, you might want this.

Expanded Mind - Again, Tear of the Goddess has us covered in terms of max MP. Mastermind is a much better choice anyways.

Vampirism - Barely noticeable on Amumu because 3 out of 4 of his abilities are AoE. Would grant 1.5% spellvamp on Despair and Tantrum for 3 points. A wasteful investment.

Awareness - A nice perk, but by no means necessary. Our points are stretched rather thin as it is, so we can't afford to take pure luxury masteries like this one.

Twin Shadows - Adds some additional utility and CC to the build. The active can be used to start a gank, slow down an escaping opponent, or even save a teammate from someone chasing them! It also gives 5% movement speed, which Amumu loves and is hard to come by.

Iceborn Gauntlet - This item has potential against teams that have a lot of physical damage because of the 60 armor it gives. The slow is also stronger than Rylai's - but not constant, either. The additional AP helps your damage output, and the MP pairs well with Seraph's Embrace.

Frozen Heart - An excellent item when enemies that rely on Attack Speed have gotten fed. Some examples would be Kog'Maw and Xin Zhao. The MP can also help out if you're in fights fairly often, and 20% CDR is nothing to laugh at.

Runic Bulwark - So good it needs to be listed twice. Since Force of Nature has been removed, this is probably the best item to counter AP carries. It gives 60 MR to you, and 30 to all of your allies. Also has a bit of health and armor for extra durability.




Mejai's Soulstealer - Just a couple successful ganks can make a huge difference with a Mejai's. If the enemy team lacks reliable escapes, consider buying this early. It will add to your snowball, and therefore your ability to carry your team.

Deathfire Grasp - Good initiating burst with a strong secondary effect. Can be very lethal combined with Mejai's.

Morellonomicon - A pretty cheap item for the stats it gives. 20% CDR is great for spamming Tantrum and chopping the cooldown on Curse of the Sad Mummy.

Smite is necessary for a jungler such as Amumu, you'll have trouble clearing without it.

I favor Flash over Ignite because you can Flash into a Curse of the Sad Mummy, Bandage Toss, or escape or chase over a wall if you need to. As Amumu you'll be sticking to your enemies long enough that you shouldn't need Ignite as much. But, if you favor it over Flash, go for it.

Exhaust can also be great for top-lane ganks especially. If you think your top lane might have issues, consider taking it. Ignite and Exhaust are pretty interchangeable, to be honest. Take whichever you're more comfortable/experienced with if you're not taking Flash.

Thank you very much for reading through my guide, it means a lot :) If you liked it and learned something from it, please remember to upvote the guide! If you didn't like it quite as much, please, leave a comment and tell me what I can do to improve it! Thanks again :)

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A big thank-you to jhoijhoi for her guide and separators!