So the purpose of this guide is to do the expected tanking role, but also to make you into the non-accidental killing tank that everyone loves to get so that two roles are being filled by you. A smart and well coordinated team (though rare) can easily use an initiation by a no threat tank into a free ace when they just wait for the rest of your team to come in for the teamfight.

Fairly basic rune setup, except for those movespeed quints. The reason for those and not health or armor or some such thing is that we want amumu to be as fast as possible. Your damage for just running around a champion is not insignificant, and ideally you're going to be able to just ring around the rosy with anyone trying to get away. So these quints can make all the difference and you're not really giving up a whole lot for them, especially when the amount of items you can get to get armor/health/whatever is going to be much higher than those that increase your speed.

Smite's justa given for our jungling amumu and so is our utility choice for the buff duration and experience. Then the rest into our tanking, don't go for the dodge, because really? 2%? No, besides, that would only make your tantrum still have to be on cd longer.

Smite for jungling, flash for our positioning when we gank and initiate those teamfights.



Ghost won't really be necessary because you'll have some movement speed advantages and your bandage to close any gap.



Clarity is useful on amumu because, go figure, he uses his abilities a lot. But if you use this, you're going to have to be pretty good at that bandage toss, which is definitely vital to playing amumu anyway. Also, we won't really get any mana helping items for a while because it's imperative that you get that sunfire's and force of nature for their bonuses that only a fully built one can provide.

Other summoning spell?
No. But? Just no.

Despair is a must for the best jungling amumu, so it's first so we can take out that golem. The tantrum next is again for our jungling advantages. Third, we need to start working on what makes you the best at ganking, TEAMFIGHTING, and killing champions one on one, bandage toss. I've seen lots of guides do bandage toss last, but that's completely ridiculous. Sure, at level 1 it's cd is 18 seconds long, but with level five and 40% cd rduction (Frozen Heart and blue buff) it's 4.8 seconds, and the actual tossing is part of the cd so by the time you've reached them and they're stunned, you got a little less than 4 seconds til you do it again. Also, it's amumu's "nuke" ability. So once we get level 3 we start our maxing of bandage toss followed by despair for maximum damage output and tantrum last. The damage reduction from tantrum is nice, but unless you're trying to defend your dying nexus from 20 super minions and they're all hitting you, the others are far more worthwhile.

Jungling! Start with the classic cloth armor and pots. Your first trip back, unless you've killed someone early etc., should be boots and more pots.

Amumu needs blue buff, so just get it. I see a bunch of junglers not ask for cover and although it really should be a given that the appropriate lanes give cover, you need to ask for it because you need to know if someone is coming to get you in the start. Sure Amumu can kill golem just fine on his own but that makes him pretty low for anyone who wants to take advantage of easy first blood and pretty much screwing your jungling into impossible. For best jungling beginning, have one of your covers come and hit golem a few times until you can almost smite it and then thank them and get them away before you smite it and take care of its little pissants. The help makes this a very quick buff for you and you can continue on and not get ganked even if there was one or two going for you. The rest of the route is easy, wolves, wraiths, only risk red buff if you got that help with golem so you'll have 3 health pots, be full health, and let your mana rise a little, otherwise golems and then go back and get red and wolves, etc. If their team has no jungler? Woot best scenario; refresh those buffs whenever you need to and just level up as much as possible.

• Ganking

I don't gank with amumu until level 6, except for maybe a lane with a solo on their team against two on yours, otherwise you do no damage yet and your badnage is still on a long ass cooldown so you can't really do a whole lot yet. Once you reach 6, bandage in and ult, flash and ult, run in and ult maybe, you just really need that ult to be very effective at ganking early on. As with any good tank jungler, try to get your carries the kill. Stop crying when they're getting super low and don't tantrum when they're super low. If the enemy is getting away and you don't think your carry can get it, toss the bandage of whatever to do so then so that it at least is received by someone. Also, if the solo lane top is shen/malph/another more tank-like person, when you go to gank, the kill is fair game for either of you. You need it just as bad as any other tank and your items aren't inexpensive either so if it's not a carry, don't worry about who gets it. Naturally, don't blatantly kill steal because that's not ever cool.

By mid game you should have gotten those boots of swiftness and be starting on your sunfire cape. Once you get that sunfire cape, you're able to do the killing part of our tanking. Despair and sunfire makes farming minions waves super quick and easy so getting gold isn't an issue anymore like for most tanks and you're able to do a lot of your damage output now.

The cd on your bandage toss should be much lower now and increasing damage from bandage toss and your despair only makes it better. The bandage toss is the key because when you find a lone champion and you go in, bandage toss out there. They will probably go back a little thinking you're holding them for your team but if they think you're alone, many champions will stay and just try to harass amumu down a little (lolz) this means that you've already lowered their magic resistance with a couple of physical attacks, hit despair while you were being pulled to them and then tantrum them for a decent little bite out of their healthbar. (That toss does some decent damage to carries who aren't getting health so much) You'll be able to tantrum at least a couple of times and that sunfire and despair combo is just trickling their health away. Then they realize, "Maybe I can't take this amumu" and try to run. Good luck trying to run from amumu unless you have a lengthy stun because we have movement speed on them and our instant move-to-their-location stun is up basically every four seconds, when you try to keep track of it and have our cd reduction.

Few things are better than tossing out there, them thinking (for some reason) "it's just amumu" and then they realize you didn't come out just to scare them off and you just cry/bandage someone to death while stunning them every few seconds.

People have said multiple times to me in midgame that they weren't afraid of me anymore because I used the bandage toss to get to them so they thought I didn't have it for at least ten seconds more. Sorry, you stay solo, you die solo.

• Team fights

Naturally you're going to be initiating these. It's just your job and if all is going well, you'll even want to. I like to use flash for team fight initiation because I use the ult, my team comes in and then anyone who needs to channel for their ult, or if kat has jumped in, can be stopped right quick with my bandage toss. And with our short cd? We bandage all we can to stop those champs from retaliating/getting away. Once the bulk is over and those low health champions are running away, you're perfect for chasing them down. Even if you don't have the mana for the toss, your crying and sunfire damage all over them does the trick very quickly, and you're going to catch up with your movement speed and (if you have the mana after the teamfight) your bandage.

Those boots of swiftness are a must first for just their ability to give you the speed to get where you need to go and to chase down low health champions. The sunfire for its much needed health boost and damage over time to go beautifully with your tears, and then force of nature for it's health regen, magic resist, and that wonderful speed boost.

After those, your items should be dependent on what the enemy team comp is. However, if they have a lot of AP champs but their yi is raping your team and has more kills than the other team combined, you need to focus on some armor. So pay attention to who actually turns out to be doing the damage and adjust from there too.

The items for each focus are pretty self explanatory. I will mention that I don't like getting the GA because you're the tank, unless you went in and solo attacked their whole team and killed two of them and now your team comes in when your GA kicks in, you're probably coming back into a situation where you are about to die, so let's focus on what the GA gives us in defense, but moreso.

The second force of nature for the magic resist build, on average, you won't get this far into a game that you've bought all these items, but force of nature gives you hella magic resist and then even more movement speed and health regen that it's just better, even without the passive on it, than any other magic resist item you could get. If you feel that your team could really use the Aegis, then go for that, but if we're focusing on your ability to survive and live for the team, then that is what I would recommend.

It's been brought to my attention that it looks like a lot of kill stealing is happening with amumu, and this is just hilarious. When you've initiated? When you're the one who tracked them down when others couldn't? You're the one doing a shit load of damage every second they're around you and that bandage is nothing to laugh at for the non-tank, you definitely do enough of the damage to any champion that there shouldn't be any argument that you didn't do enough of the work to get it, because you do.