What does it mean to be Based? To be Based is to do as one wishes, without heed for the qualms of the meek. This singular word is enough to sumrise the nature of Udyr. He does what he wants. The conventional wisdom does not apply to him. He cares not for this concept of "meta" that the confused masses cling to for some false notion of proficiency. Those who cling to the so called "meta" are not so Superb in their performance at the League as they would think, they merely copy the common trends of their peers, without exercising any true discernment of their own. The meta is what gatekeeps the average player from achieving excellence, relegating them to intermediate mediocrity. In truth the "meta" as it stands, is a collection of bad ideas. To achieve excellence one must surpass the meta and become Ultra-meta, which is to be above the meta. Udyr breaks any rule that he finds to be obstructive, choosing instead to follow his own Law. So far as the jungle is concerned, Udyr IS the Law.

One day all the the little forest critters, and all the trees, and even the bushes, all held congress, and chose to elect Udyr as the Sheriff of Naughtyham Forest. The single resident to take issue with this decision was the Baron Nashor; however, he chose not to lodge any complaint, for fear of angering Udyr. Ever since, Udyr has taken it upon himself to patrol both sides of the forest, culling the surplus population, and brutally maiming any unwelcome tresspasser upon his turf. Study this guide well, and you may learn the ways of Udyr, and in doing so, become Based.

It is a common misconception that Lee Sin is the "king" of the jungle. This is simply absurd. The Jungle has no king. The jungle is the public property of the jungle, and Udyr is the sheriff of that property. There are no taxes in Udyr's domian. The Denizens of the Jungle barter with each other freely. Lee may clear the jungle faster than Udyr, he may try to gank you before Udyr bothers to, but if Lee sin ever encounters Udyr in his Jungle, his best option is to try and run away. It doesn't even matter if Lee is a couple levels ahead of Udyr, because Udyr doesn't care about Lee Sin's burst damage. Udyr Tanks it like a turtle and then proceeds to claw Lee's face off and ram him down when Lee realizes that he didn't actually want to find out and tries to flee. Udyr leaves nothing but a bloody, mangled, decomposing corpse for the jungle to feast upon.

Acheiving Totall Domination over the enemy as Udyr is a simple matter if you know how to build him properly and maintain the right mindset. With the Right runes and Itemization Udyr will have Virtually no weaknesses, and be able to assert his dominance over any would be champion foolish enough to oppose him. There are surely those of you who doubt this statement. Those who say that he can be easily kited have never experienced the true potential of the Sheriff in Hot Pursuit. Those who overlook his potential because he has no ultimate, fail to understand that this is beneficial. Rather than having to wait for the availability of his ultimate, Udyr remains at peak performance at all times. Those who say that he does not scale well into lategame fail to realize that he does not need to scale, as he remains an indomitable threat at every stage of the game.

To become one with Udyr you must be at ease with yourself. The waters of your mind must be calm, and flow effortlessly through the most natural path of least resistance. There are three paths one can follow in the pursuit of victory. The path on the right is favored by the chimpanzee. The chimp is impulsive, and proactive to a fault, responding to anxiety with agression, and pursuing immediate gratification, without consideration for its final destination. Because of these faults, the chimpanzee chooses a needlessly tretcherous path, in the greedy persuit of a single bannan tree, within its immediate gaze.(It didn't look at the map).

The left path is taken by the gorilla. Long does it contemplate its decision. Responding to anxiety with hesitation, he overthinks his query, doubting his own intuition. Rather than choosing the direct path to his destination, he chooses a path of needless complexity, often because he wishes to follow in the traditions of other gorillas that have tread the same "meta" path before him. By the time the gorilla arrives at his destination, the fruits of his efforts will have been picked clean by those who chose the middle way of greatest expedience.

Udyr's fighting styles emulate the beasts which he has fostered spiritual kinship with, but at heart, Udyr is an orangutan. The orangutan feels at peace when confronted with this decision at the crossroads. He is not distracted by the bannana tree in the distance, and with calm vigilence, observes the map. He does not hesitate to take the middle way, for like the orangutan, the middle way is balanced. The orangutan's reward for his decision is not a mere bannana tree, but a garden of delights. Become one with your inner orangutan and you to can be the sheriff of Naughtyham Forest.

Play Video

Berfore getting into the details of how to make and play a proper Udyr build, I want to establish that this guide is primarily targeting you gorillas out there. As I have alluded to previously the average chimpanzee does not like to read. If the riley chimps lack the attention span to read a map, then I should not expect them to read an actually depth guide that is not padded with dozens of redundant pictures and hyperlinks to matterial which is already posted at the beginning of the guide, though they may be drawn in by the humour. Nothing against chimps, they just need to calm down and pay attention. I'm not saying that your guide is made for chimps just because it has pictures, its just that some of them are compensating for a lack of substance.

Because most gorillas have already read multiple guides, I am not going to cover the most basic of skills, such as Jungle clearing and ward placement. You don't need a guide for something like that anyway, its just common sense. If you don't have it, then you need to find that orangutan energy within yourself.

Lethality has to be the single most overrated stat in this game. It bewilders me to see so many cracked up chimps stacking lethality on their builds when it is not the least bit cost effective. If an enemy beefcake stacks 100 armor on top of his base 100 AV at level 18, then the 25% reduction from Black Cleaver will reduce that AV rating by 50, this is roughly the equivalent of three lethality items. The 35-40% peneration of Lord Dominik's Regards, or Mortal Reminder, will negate 70-80 armor under the same circumstances, which is almost the equivalent to a fully stacked leathality build. All it takes to counter the lethality of a 3000g legendary is a 300g Cloth Armor. STOP prioritizing lethality in your builds over stats that your champion actually needs so that you can stop feeding shutdown gold to people who know how to deal with a glass-cannon.

This first build is meant to counter the naysayers who doubt the viability of the ever Based Udyr while claiming that he is easy to kite. When sheriff Udyr decides that you don't belong in his jungle, he sets himself upon the task of running you down relentlessly. By late game the only safe place for trespassers, will be their nexus spawn.

The runes we equip in preperation for our patrol operations are taken from the Resolve line, because they synergize with Udyr's innate capabilities, and the Domination line, because they provide added utility for his task of patrolling Naughtyham forest. When Udyr Patrols the Jungle he looks for any tresspasser or opportunity to pursue. Using the Oracle Lens, Udyr reveals enemy wards and purges them. Because Udyr was prudent enough to take the Zombie Ward rune the wards are replaced by wards of his own. There is no good reason why anyone should take Eyeball Collection instead of zombie ward or Ghost Poro, as both provide the same stat buff while also providing added utility that eyeball collection lacks entirely. Even without the minor stat buff I would preffer the the ghost/zombie wards. The only rational I see for taking eyeball collector when ghost poro is an option is that you can't be bothered to throw down a few wards.

Sheriff Udyr will be maxxing out Wilding Claw first and foremost for this build. I tyipically don't bother ganking until at least level four so I get two levels of Claws and a level each in Iron Mantle and Blazing Stampede. You can throw an early level into Wingborne Storm if you want the AoE to help clear certain jungle camps, but you really don't have to. Because this Udyr build is focused on making him a speed demon I suggest maxxing Blazing Stampede second, but you can of course add more points into Iron mantle early on if you want.

When the game starts, Sheriff Udyr buys the Mosstomper Seedling and a Health Potion. Udyr really doesn't need the seedling's help to clear the jungle, but chooses to take it anyway because it will buff his Smite spell, allowing him to secure epic monster buffs that the enemy team would like to take for themselves. It provides a shield as well as tenacity and slow resistance that make it more diffiuclt for Udyr's prey to escape from him. It would be dandy if you could upgrade this into something more viable for lategame perfomance but I can't ignore that smite buff.

When Udyr sees that an enemy has overextended in its lane by playing too agressively or farming too quickly, he moves to flank the agressor, making sure to signal to his comrade that he is on his way to the lane before pinging his adversary to signal that he is initiating the gank. A well executed gank or anassisted lane intervention is apt to go well for Udyr because his stun will proc Aftershock, granting added resistances and bonus damage that will allow him to claw down his prey even faster. If such an opportunty is not immediately available to Udyr then he will proceed to the other half of the jungle to cull its population and hunt the enemy jungler. When sheriff Udyr inevitably succeeds in hunting his quary he gains a bounty hunter stack for Relentless Hunter that provides additional movement speed while he is roaming his jungle. You can use Treasure Hunter if you want, its not a big deal. Ultimate Hunter applies to his Bridge Between ability, but the cooldown on it at max level is only twenty seconds, so I don't bother.

When Sheriff Udyr returns to base he starts building his first Legendary item. I like to get Boots on my first back, but may not depending on how much Udyr has saved up. At the very least Udyr wants to buy boots and Tiamat, but if he has enough, then he will buy the complete Ravenous Hydra, even if he has to delay buying the boots. If Udyr has enough spare change then he will buy a ward or two. The Hydra is a good pick for added sustain and AoE for clearing jungle camps, with an active ability that provides a little extra burst when you need it.

Sheriff Udyr does not return to buy from the merchant again untill he can afford tier two boots and his next big Item. Thanks to the Ravenous Hydra, Udyr has no problems sustaining himself indefinitly, despite not adding more points to Iron Mantle. When He returns he buys Boots of Swiftness and Dead Man's Plate. When these Items are combined with his rune selection and Mosstomper he gainst sixty to eighty percent slow resistance. He also has 430 movement speed that is boosted to 861 by awakened stampede at max level and 1078 if you also pop Ghost. Make note of the fact that awakened stampede grants immunity to immobilization. With Dead Man's plate and maximum stacks of Relentless Hunter, Udyr's out of combat movement speed is 520. If we apply the same abilities as before then this peaks at 1277. You can't escape Sheriff Udyr when he is in hot pursuit.

The Next two Picks for this Hot Pursuit build are chosen largely because I find them amusing. You can take liberties with them depending on your preference and situation. Sterak's Gage provides 20 tenacity, which stacks with the other build options to provide 75 total tenacity, meaning that if you do get hit by a stun or root then it won't last very long. it also provides Udyr with 65 bonus AD at level 18 and an emergency shield of 774 when boosted by Revitalize. After building Sterak's you can then build Eclipse for a big damage boost and another shield proc. This gives Hot pursuit Udyr four differnt shield abilities in total, each of which will proc the shield bash rune when acivated for some extra resistances and damage. After finishing the build you can buy an Iron Elixer to make Udyr that much more swole. If you feel the need for more armor penetration then you can swap in Black Cleaver or Mortal Reminder

(I am aware that you can make this build even faster by swapping in Hexplate and Ghostblade but at a certain point the extra MS becomes redundant, go ahead and run it if you want to meme on them, and yes according to the wiki Hexplate will proc when casting Awakened Spirit).

This build is meant to display the immense damage potential of Udyr. To achieve this potential Udyr will Step out of the Jungle for awhile and play in a lane. Most people will say that Udyr should only be played in the top lane. But Udyr does what he wants. You can play him in any lane. For this example we will be using top lane as it is a more common selection. Udyr takes the same resolve runes as he does for hot pursuit with the exception of Demolish, which he takes instead of Shield Bash. Since he will be spending more time in lane, he will be taking Legend: Bloodline and Last Stand from the precision tree. This way he has extra sustain despite not building lifesteal items, and extra damage after tanking a nuclear combo from a caster or getting worn down in a teamfight.

For summoners he selects Ignite and Teleport. Ignite allows him to shut down enemy healing capabilities mid fight, and secure kills in the early game when tower diving isn't a good option. Teleport Allows Udyr to make major plays across the map without neglecting his own lane. Flash, ghost, and Exhaust are also viable options depending on the circumstances of the match.

Udyr's Ability order for this build will again prioritize Wildling Claw, as we will be juicing up its capabilities to absurd proportions. We will then be alternating between Iron Mantle and blazing stampede, though the exact order you level them in doesn't matter that much. You can take a point in Wingborne storm if you think you can get something out of its 15 percent slow at level one. You can do without it entirely if you want, having the fourth ability to cycle through isn't a big deal. your dps from Wildling Claws is all you need to bring the pain to your enemies.

What you need to understand about Udyr is that he is a sheriff, as such he does not enjoy having to take up traffic duty in one of the lanes.(I doubt that any beat cop does) For this reason Udyr preffers to end the laning phase early, and while it persists, preffers only to work the job part time. To achieve his goals Udyr once again defies the conventions of "the meta" by making a build so destructive that even the towers of Summoners Rift will come to fear him.

For his initial purchases Udyr chooses boots and health potions for added mobility and early game sustain, should he need it. Being able to throw hands with his opponent, then chase him for a takedown, then proceed to shove the lane so that his adversary loses farm without having to port back, is important to Udyr. This is because once Udyr has accomplished this feat, he can then proceed to execute an epic gamer move called proxy farming as soon as possible. For those of you who may be unaware, proxy farming is when you intercept the oncoming wave of creeps behind your opponents tower and farm them. Once the next wave is cleared, Udyr can pull another epic gamer move and leave the lane entirely to farm the other half of his turf, and maybe kill the enemy jungler. He can then return to proxy farming when the next wave arrives if he is not preoccupied with more pressing matters.

Now you may think to yourself that this sounds far too risky to execute against a competent team, and that you would surely be ganked. You might be right, if Udyr was a chimp, but he isn't. Being an orangutan in spirit, Udyr has intuitively calculated that his odds of surviving a ganking attempt are in his favor. If top lane Garen for example, should take issue with this strategy, then he will have to be taught the same lesson that Udyr already taught him in front of his Tower, only this time his corpse will be on the other side. If jungle Nocturne for example were to also take issue with this strategy, and believe himself to have some rightful claim to Udyr's turf, he may well attempt to gank Udyr. This is why Udyr chooses to be proactive and search for Nocturn while placing wards in the forest to monitor his activity. Even if Udyr cannot yet kill both adversaries at once, he may yet be able to defeat them in detail, keeping in mind that the longer they chase him the more farm they lose.

If mid lane Malzahar should also decide to take issue with Udyr's strategy, then Udyr may choose to return to top lane and bully Garen, or perhaps proxy farm mid lane while they are out searching for him in the top side of the jungle, before moving to the bottom side of the jungle. (proxy farming another lane can be beneficial for your team depending on the circumstances) If none of them baught boots then they will have a very difficult time trying to catch Udyr. There are those who percieve this strategy as being somehow cheesy or insulting. Garen finds it about as infuriating as he does Shaco. It is not Udyr's fault if Garen cannot stop him from farming as efficiently as he can. There is no reason to take offense. Just as Garen fails to Identify the simple solution to dealing with Shaco, he fails to see the simple solution to dealing with a proxy farmer. I'm not going to tell you what it is. I want you to make like an orangutan and figure it out on your own by taking a deep breath and rubbing two neurites together.

Eventually Udyr will decide that it is time to return to base and purchase more Items to make him even more difficult to deal with. His first picks are the boots of swiftness and the Iceborn Gauntlet. These Items will make him even more difficult to pursue and escape, while also making it even easier to kill Garen, who now feels the need to fall back to his tower upon your arrival. Udyr will respond to this by ignoring him and continuing to proxy farm, but that tower won't be able to keep him at bay for long.

Udyrs next purchase is the Hullbreaker, because its first unique passive ablility allows him to rapidly demolish towers. It also has an ability that gives the siege minions a resistance boost, but that isn't a big deal. If it gave the whole goon squad a little boost then that would be something, but the towers deal true damage so resistances aren't really a factor. Depending on how damaged the front tower already is, Udyr can potentially just ignore Garen and smash it down while Garen keeps trying to cut him with what might as well be a butter knife at this point. Udyr can then kill Garen again before proceeding to the next tower. If Nocturn tries to interveen then he too shall perish. Udyr is not going to stop pushing that lane until three to five enemy gamers arrive to chase him through the jungle again.

The next two purchases for the pain train build are Titanic Hydra and Eclipse. These weapons along with Hullbreaker all heavily synergize with Udyr's Wilding Claws, as they deal percentage of max health physical damage in addition to a substantial bonus AD increase. With the full build completed Udyr's Wilding Claws will deal 56.6% maximum health physical damage with two strikes in addition to their already substantial flat AD. Even post mitigation this is more burst damage than Vayne could ever hope to achieve with her silver bolts.(unless she went full crit) Udyr can also activate his Hydra for even more percent damage, and if the battle lasts long enough for Udyr to get a fifth hit in, the Hullbreaker will deal an additional 3.5% max health damage, though it is unlcear as to wether this is based on your opponenets health or your own. I would usually presume the former but it deals 7% to towers, and I would not think that they would have it scale off of a towers HP.

With the pain train build complete The game will not last much longer. Udyr can go about knocking down each of his opponent's towers, one by one, or group up with his team to force the pain train directly towrds the enemy nexus without pause. By the end of the match, Gare Bear will be the one who is scared of walking into a bush, for fear that Udyr will be waiting for him. Every time he hears a bush rustling in the wind, he will remmember the day that he underestimated the pain train...

I remmember the old Udyr, back before the rework. His phoenix stance seemed so underwhelming in comparison to his tiger stance. Now here we are all these years later and the phoenix equivalent now has added utility, but remains underwhelming in comparison to Udyr's claws. I have just finished demonstrating why wilding claws are so much stronger with the pain train. That being said I decided to make a viable if not quite so broken build that explits the untility of the Wingborn Storm. You won't mealt a beefcake in five seconds with this build, but you will be a force to be reckoned with, especially in a teamfight.

For Runes Udyr will be switching out Demolish in the Resolve line for Font of Life, as well as swapping Revitalize for Overgrowth. He Will also be usung Celerity and Gathering Storm from the sorcery tree because they are thematically appropriate. In regards to level progression, you can actually start by maxxing out wilding claws as they will be more effective in your early game altercations, then switch into maxxing out Windborn Storm as you build AP. You don't have to do it this way but it can help you dominate the laning phase early on.

As usual Udyr begins with boots and potions, before buying his first Legendary. For this build it will be Heartsteel. This will give him a massive boost of health and sustain along with a ranged poke from one of its passives. The next pick will be the Sunfire Aegis because it synergizes with the AoE of Wingborn Storm, as well as the second passive of Heartsteel. As Udyr increases in size, so to will the AoE of the Sunfire Aegis. You will now be able to somehow both burn and freeze your opponents simultaniously. After this you can buy Rylai's Crystal Scepter So that your mobile blizzard can be even colder and slow your opponents by a total of sixty percent.

Rather than deleting beefcakes in about four seconds and rushing down towers, Udyr is choosing to play the long game, with a build that grinds down his foes in a nigh inescapable vortex of icy-hot pain, becoming a storm of such immensity that the enemy team cannot help but bear witness to his approach.

The Final two Items are Riftmaker and Liandry's Torment, both of which increase Udyr's damage the longer he stays in combat, with Riftmaker providing omnivamp and bonus AP based on his bonus health, of which he has a great deal of. Top it all off with an Elixir of Iron for some added girth and the build is complete. When Udyr enters into a teamfight, all surrounding adversaries will be consumed in a BURNING BLIZZARD, with one unlucky victim becoming the focus of his immediate attention. Udyr's victim is assailed by his wilding claws in the midst of the chaos. Even without Item scaling the claws are undeniably brutal. Udyr can even recast wilding claws with awakened spirit to call down lightening upon his foes, as if Being maimed by a giant beast in the middle of BURNING BLIZZARD was not a bad enough.

At Level 18 Udyr has base health of 2228 according to the wiki. Witht he complete build minus the elixir Udyr's total health without factoring in the Heartsteel passive due to its variablility is 4608. With the full build the Heartsteel passive will deal 629PD and provide 12% of that value as permenent extra health, in this case 76HP. This ability can proc again after a thirty second cooldown per target, meaning that it can be used repeatedly against multiple targets. With only the bonus HP from Heartsteel and Sunfire taken into account the damage done is 236PD while granting 28HP. It is not stated wether the bonus HP is based on pre or post mitigation damage but either way it is a far more significant bonus than you would get from Grasp of the Undying. To account for the bonus HP from this item by lategame, I shall simply round up Udyr's total health to 5000.

Riftmaker will Grant 55AP based on Udyr's bonus health. When combined with the AP provided from his other Items and Gathering Storm at fourty minutes, Udyr's total AP is 380. This means that Udyr's Wingborne Storm will deal 122MDps for 4 seconds when activated, with his next two attacks dealing 144MD each to anyone caught in the AoE. It can then be unleashed, causing the storm to follow Udyr's target and deal 3.7% of Max health MD per second for 4s. This is decent enough for an AoE with a 60% slow thanks to Reylei's, but you can see why I suggested maxxing out Wilding Claws first as despite not building any AD they still do 16% of max health in two hits. The Sunfire Aegis provides an addittional 64AoE MD which then scales upto 118 over six seconds when factoring the percent bonuses from Riftmaker and Liandry's. Liandry's will also deal 1% max health MDps.

You can then cast Awakened Wilding Claws to summon a total of twelved lightening strikes onto nearby targets dealing 6% max health MD, If there is only one target available then that means this will do 72% of their total health after having already hit them with the 16% from the first cast of Wilding Claws. Even on AP Udyr Wilding Claws are more powerful than Wingborne Storm. I would say go figure but I just did. So there you have it, Udyr is so lowkey overpowered that they only way you could bomb while playing him is if you have no idea how to. I'm wondering if Riot has actually been calculating these numbers beforehand or if they are just guesstimating everything. Those claws are more fearsome than when I used them in season five. I like what they did with the rework, but the numbers need some serious adjustment.

Udyr has no true counters. Simple as. He is simply too powerful, and even if the Wilding claws weren't as overtuned as they are then you still shouldn't have any serious problems with other champions if you simply play like an orangutan. If you are having trouble dealing with a particular champion then it is not the fault of Udyr, it is far more likely that there is a skill issue on your end. Either you didn't build him properly, or you don't know how to play against a certain set of abilities. You could also just be chimping out.

Take Tryndamere for example. I have never once had trouble dealing with Tryndamere as Udyr, and yet I see the despair of those who say that they cannot defeat him. Amusingly enough, I have encountered Tryndameres who thought that they could murder the Sheriff as soon as they encountered him because of these unfounded complaints. I don't mind the free kill. First and foremost, don't build Udyr like you think he is supposed to be a ranged dps glasscannon. It does not make sense. He has so much attack speed in his kit that he doesn't need any more. His Wilding claws scale with flat bonus AD to deal additonal % damage as well, so you really don't need to be building AS rather than HP or AD. Udyr can dish out more DPS than any champion can handle despite remaining too tanky for other champions to burst down. Don't try to beat Tryndamere by building like him. Just let Udyr be himself. you should also be sure to stomp that Tryndamere into the ground early on so that he doesn't get a chance to farm. If he pops off because you let him farm your team for twenty minutes then it's as much your fault as it is theirs.

Another Champion that I hear people whine about is Jax. His burst really isnt that bad unless he gets fed, not compared to wilding claws at least. Just like people who don't know how to play Master Yi, these people don't seem to understand that you can work around his little spin dodge ability. Just stop attacking him and use your Mantle shield to tank the hit and then claw him to death. Udyr is a natural beefcake, build him like one.

As for synergies, it doesn't really matter. Udyr is Based. He doesn't need help from his team to excel, but he will gladly give it to them. Just as long as they don't whine too much.