Hi
I am a diamond player in EUNE and been playing this since season 1
I main jungling and my secondary is top or support. I can still do decent mid but not so great ADC.
I finished season 1 unranked (played around 10-20 ranked games and then quit ranked)
In season 2 once i had around 1k wins and 1k loses i went into ranked for good. Ended the season in Gold
Season 3 I ended Plat
Season 4 Diamond
Season 5 Diamond
Season 6 I'll eventually be back in diamond.

Finally updated the guide from season 4 to season 6 because some guy named ZPrince randomly added me to his friends list and was so enthusiastic about this guide and amumu.
Apparently even though it is season 6 and this guide is outdated by like 2 years now, he still was using this guide and really wanted an update.

Pros

+ Usually tanky
+ Can do very good DPS with build 2, but still OK dps even with build 1
+ Massive amount of CC
+ Safe and easy jungle clearing thx to his E
+ Quite easy to learn


Cons

- With build 1 is quite team dependent, only once you mastered Amumu it becomes possible to carry whole teams, even at diamond level.
- Bad damage if built all tank, same problem as nautilus has.
- If built all tank, it is nearly impossible to carry whole team even if your super fed. (least in high elo)
- Missing your Q will mean the difference of winning or losing a teamfight.
- Amumu is easy to counter jungle and is quite defenceless against it.

Cursed Touch This is what makes Amumu deal so much damage with our build. I don't think these build would be half as good with out this.
Bandage Toss Our stun and nuke. If using build number 2, this will do some serious DPS.
But it is a double edged sword, if u miss it, you will lose 50% of your worth. If you don't have your ulti up, then you would lose 100% of your worth if u miss it
Despair With a decent amount of ap, this will chew through even tanks, and baron. With out this u would only be able to kill a squishy adc or apc, but this makes you able to kill anyone squishy or tanky.
Tantrum The passive gives Amumu massive jungle sustain, and active gives great jungle clearing speed, it as also okay in a teamfight
Curse of the Sad Mummy This is what Amumu is known for and with all the magic pen we are getting, this is a nuke against a whole team, PLUS it roots them for 2 whole seconds. Do not be afraid to use it, if it nets a kill it is worth using even against 1 person. Just make sure u don't over kill with it. If you have 3 team mates surrounding 1 support, then just take that 2 extra seconds to kill him instead of using your ulti. But if it was 3 teammates vs a kassadin, use it with out hesitation so he cant escape.

In build 1 we max Tantrum because it is EASYER and faster to clear your jungle. You can not use your Bandage Toss to clear jungle or you will run out of mana. However if you have Skirmisher's Sabre - Runic Echoes you can almost freely use Tantrum and Despair on minions since Skirmisher's Sabre - Runic Echoes gives you a lot of mana back.


In build 2 we max Bandage Toss because we are experienced at amumu, and rarely miss our Bandage Toss. It lowers its cooldown by a lot and makes it into a nuke. Going form 16 secs to 8 seconds cooldown is a big thing. In a prolonged fight this could change the outcome. As a drawback it is slower to clear the jungle. The focus of this build is to jungle less and gank a lot.
Should you fail early game or get counter jungeled and are behind, SWITCH TO BUILD 1 in the middle of the game!

MARKS

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration I believe the only option here.

SEALS

Greater Seal of Armor Great seals for just about any jungeler
Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration If you have serious mana problems this can be an option, once your more experienced you will get better at managing your mana and wont need these.

GLYPHS

Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power Every little bit of AP counts. This is actually a quite big of a boost.
Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist This is viable if you dont have the scaling ap, but you would lose a bit of DPS.
Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction 3 of these will give you 5% CDR by lvl 18. Only spending 3 of your rune slots for 5% is great.

QUINTS

Greater Quintessence of Ability Power Very good early game dps boost
Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed This is also viable if u feel your to slow or dont have the ap quints, but i personally prefer flat ap.

Thunderlord's Decree VS Strength of the Ages .

If you are going for BUILD 1 and mainly plan to get only tank stuff then get Thunderlord's Decree for that little extra dps another 300 hp wont help you.

Though if your going with build 2, Strength of the Ages is amazing. Your jungle item wont give you hp nor will Abyssal or Zhonyas but they do give you resistances. That 300 hp + 45 from the veteran scares makes a HUGE difference. It lets you kind of tank even early game when you are building that AP jungle item.

Ninja Tabi Get these only vs them heavy AD teams.
Mercury's Treads This is what you should get most of the times.
Sorcerer's Shoes If your REALLY confident in your ability to hit your Bandage Toss
and aren't dying, if u can play with these and not die, the damage boost you get is INSANE!
Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk Amazing for just a pure tank item, and has a small sunfire cape in it to make your camp clearing a lot faster. (Remember Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk and Sunfire Aegis DO NOT stack!)
Skirmisher's Sabre - Runic Echoes Gives you a good chunk of AP amazing amount of mana regen and an ok mini luden's ecko ( Skirmisher's Sabre - Runic Echoes and Luden's Tempest DO NOT stack])
Dead Man's Plate Good ammount of health, OK armor and makes your REALLY fast. Great for chasing enemies or getting close enough to do your bandage toss or to pull off a flash ulti and great for running away.
Sunfire Aegis Armor and hp for tankyness and passive for dps, even though the passive isnt nearly as great as it use to be when it was flat 40 dps from lvl 1. now it scales starting at a way lower damage. This is OK but nothing special.
Liandry's Torment Another 15 magic pen, some hp for tankyness, and a passive for more dps
Abyssal Mask Even more magic pen, another +20, that is also for the team. Magic res to be more tanky and some ap.
Zhonya's Hourglass Armor for tankyness, a LOT of ap, and an active to make insane plays. Like diving a tower, late game, when your focused too hard hit the active to get tower off you and the enemys aswell for a bit.
Frozen Heart Excellent armor item. Not only do you get 90 armor, you also get a good cunck of mana that amumu really needs, and insane amount of 20% CDR and a nice passive.
Rylai's Crystal Scepter If you have Liandry's Torment this can synchronize with Liandry's Torment For more dps, but the slow itself is quite useless to amumu. VERY good amount of HP and AP. So this is an item that is good but nothing special for amumu. DO NOT get this item simply because you want the slow, amumus
Bandage Toss has an 8 second cd at level 5, stuns for 1 sec and is a gap closer, plus his ultimate roots everyone for 2 seconds and deals a lot of damage. IF that is not enough for your team to kill the enemy team and for you to stick to the enemy, then you are doing something very wrong. Also because all of amumu skills except his Bandage Toss are aoe, you get a mere 15% slow effect from the item. DO NOT GET THIS ITEM SIMPLY FOR THE SLOW EFFECT, that is the WEAKEST aspect of the item for amumu.
Banshee's Veil If your behind, vs strong AP, then this is the best choice.
Athene's Unholy Grail It gives you high cd , magic res and ap. If your bad at mana managing then this will probably fix it. This is viable but i personally never use this on amumu.
Rod of Ages Totally viable a very good item, Very good ap, HP and mana. But if you get it then get it as your second or max third item.
Lich Bane Great late game item for amumu, switch your Skirmisher's Sabre - Runic Echoes for this when your full build

Things that may seem good but really arent

Guardian Angel Your still a tank and want them to focus you, having GA will make people not want to focus you. (there are some VERY VERY rare extreme cases where this can be good, but unless your diamond+ i wouldn't go for it and if u are diamond+ you will probably know when the moment comes when you need this.)
Warmog's Armor There are a lot of champions that pure health is great on, nautilus, shen, yorick etc. But amumu is not one of them, to amumu this is just eamty hp.
Spirit Visage Like Warmog's Armor great for a lot of champions but not amumu, amumu has nothing to really do with the passive.
Will of the Ancients bit ap but the spell vamp isn't really needed not to talk about 3 of your skills are AOE, aoe skills reduce spell vamp by 67%. In other words if you use an AOE skill you will only life steal 5,5% with this item.
Randuin's Omen This has been nerfed too much IMO, the slow was never really needed and the raw stats just arent that great anymore, dead mans plate is better.
Locket of the Iron SolariIt gives you no magic pen or ap, it is a good item, but i would leave it for a support.
Thornmail I just dont like this item. It basically gives you 100 armor.... and thats it. That reflect dosnt really do much and clearly isnt worth an item slot IMO. AT BEST it will stop an ADCs life steal, but usually they life steal way more then thornmail can do.
Even VS a fed master YI i woulnt get this, because if he is fed, he will beat through that armor like it is nothing anyway, he also deals TRUE damage, and a yi will definitely heal MORE then that armor can ever do to him. Rather get a Frozen heart that gives you 90 armor, a huge 20% cdr and some mana, + the passive. Honestly frozen hearts passive is better then thornmails, because nobody has to FOCUS YOU for it to take effect, it just auto effects the entire enemy team.

If your new to the game or new to Amumu or just plain bad at hitting skill shots, the get Stalker.

The slow from stalker will make it a bit easier to hit you Bandage Toss, but at the same time, if your in range to smite your way in range to hit your Bandage Toss. Bandage Toss Has a longer range then smite.

Skirmishers won't give you any slow, but the damage skirmishers does is WAY beyond what what stalker could ever dream of doing, especially in a prolonged fight. What most people pay not attention to is that skirmisher grants you vision of the enemy so that dman kindred wont just kite the hell out of you if you don't have a ward to put in the brush.
Thirdly the person that you smited deals 20% less damage to you, which makes it great for dueling in your or their jungle. 20% is HUGE it is like you almost get a free Courage for 4 seconds in a 1vs1, sure courage gives 30% damage reduction but 20% is close enough for just a damn smite.

Build 1

If your just starting to learn amumu or this game then follow build 1. You will not carry a game all by yourself but you will likelly not ruin the game for your team as much if you fail. With this build your also far more team dependent, but if you have a strong team then to back you up, you can still carry the game.
This is basically the SAFE build, but not not as effective.

Also choose this build if you got counter jungled or died while ganking, in other words are behind and don't think you will be the one to carry the game.

Build 2

This is for experienced players. You will have A LOT more dps then build 1 but your also squishier, but still a tank.
Maxing your Bandage Toss first will give u low cd on your Bandage Toss already in the early game, and it also makes your Bandage Toss like a nuke, because of all the magic pen you have.
If you miss your Bandage Toss with this build, then your as good as worthless.
It is possible to carry a whole team with this build even at diamond level.

For a jungler movement speed is VERY important which is why we take the movement speed buffs form the mastery pages.

Wanderer and Explorer May not seem much but they add A LOT. Think how many times do you star your gank through the river. Usually the river is warded, so you will just have to be fast enough to run through the ward and still catch the enemy. 3%+flat 15 movement speed is A LOT especially early game when nobody has boots, but it scales very well to late game aswell.

I also highly suggest upgrading you boots with Alacrity very early on, i sometimes do it right after i upgrade boots to lvl 2 straight level 3. Spending 450 gold just to get 20 Movement speed may seem like a waste early, but trust me, it isn't especially if you pick runic ecko that gives you another 10% movement speed boost. Once you finish your dead mans plate, NOTHING will be out running you. They can try to use their flashes or whatever, but you will eventually catch up.

Being fast for amumu is quite vital, because the closer u can get to your target the less of a chance there is that you bandage toss will NOT miss.

Being fast for a JUNGLER in general is important so you will be able to pull off successful ganks and counter ganks. If your a good jungler, with speed like this you will eventually start hearing comments from the enemy team like "OMG amumu is everywhere"
or all 3 lanes keep spamming "OMG stop camping Top/mid/bot", or just the best "REPORT OUR JUNGLER he doesn't gank". In reality their jungler probably does gank, but he just cant keep up with you.

This probably isn't a problem in the lower elos, but the higher you get the more people learn to juke.

Usually when people see u coming for a gank, they start strafing a lot, so when you notice an enemy does that a lot and you can't hit your Q then just keep running STRAIGHT at him, dont blindly shoot your Q. His strafing will slow him down, and with ALL THIS MOVEMENT SPEED, in a few seconds the enemy will will realize, "oh dman he is almost at me". When that happens they will usually run straight as fast as possible and the moment you notice that, hit your Bandage Toss. Now if they don't stop juking, well then you just run up to them almost make an almost blank point Bandage Toss which is quite easy to hit.

In short all you really need is PATIENCE, which i know is 10x harder said then done, because you have to balance the thought that "If i stall to much he will get away, but if i just go for it then i will miss and we get nothing from it anyway".

It is all about magic penetration.
Build 1 has a lot less of it but build 2 really goes all out with it.

Lets take build 2 and do a little calculation.

Amumus passive Cursed Touch gives 15-25+ magic penetration to anyone amumu hits (Teammates benefit from this as well)
Greater Mark of Magic Penetration Another 7,8+ magic pen
Sorcerer's Shoes 15+ magic pen
Liandry's Torment 15+ magic pen
Abyssal Mask 20+ magic pen and not only to yourself but the whole team.

So in total that is 25+8+15+15+20=83 FLAT MAGIC PENETRATION, and 45 of it for your ENTIRE TEAM
An adc or apc wont have 83 magic penetration even at lvl 18 even with runes or masteries.
They would have to buy a magic resistance item to even get about 83, and even if they spend the gold on that, you still remove MOST OF IT.
If they do not build magic resistance you will do more then true damage with your skills, flat magic penetration CAN make people have MINUS magic resistance, in other words when usually they have like 30-50% magic resistance then now you would do like 5-10% more magic damage.

One more thing, u will clear minions waves and jungle minions very fast because you will make the minions go into minus magic resistance.

You are a tank yes, but that does not mean it is okay for you to die.

Lets say it is 40 mins in the game and you jump the enemy team. You stay in the center tanking like crazy and die first because of it. Everything looks okay but the enemy team manages to still ace your team in the end. Ofcourse the rage starts from team seeking who to blame. Now i bet you would be thinking, look i jumped in them all, ultimated 5 guys and we still lost clearly my teams sucks and it is not my fault.

W R O N G!

A tanks job is to tank as much as they can and then ESCAPE with about 5%-10% hp left. If you do that then you are a successful tank. With 5%-10% hp as amumu i could take down an adc late game from full hp to 0 before they even realize what is going on.


If you want to carry games all by yourself, then u have to learn to know your or Amumus limits, and KNOW when to get out so you will survive.