Ever since Patch 8.2, Nunu has seen a great deal of success in solo queue. His reworked Blood Boil provides a whole new dimension to his kit, and its raw power has sparked a lot of interest in the champion. The main focus has been centered on pairing him up with other champions that use attack speed and ability power to great effect, such as Azir. Another hot topic in the League of Legends scene has been the 'new' Banner of Command, with the recent ‘buff-fix’ to empowered Siege Minions. For Banner of Command, the main strategic angle has been to stack its buff with the Hand of Baron buff for astronomical damage to towers. However, this stacking has been removed as of Patch 8.5, and it will be interesting to see how popular Banner of Command remains.

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The strategy I am about to discuss is playing Nunu with Banner of Command; however, it has nothing to do with a champion pairing such as Azir/Nunu, nor anything to do with recently removed Banner/Baron stacking. This is a simple strategy that I think has been effective for a while, even before the ‘buff-fix’ of Patch 8.4, but thanks to it is now immensely stronger. The idea is simple: use Blood Boil and Banner of Command on a siege minion for unparalleled tower DPS, and gain control of the map by rushing down the outer turrets. This is a strategy unique to Nunu, and the gap between tower DPS from an early Banner on him vs. other champions has skyrocketed. Read on to learn the math behind this powerful siege strategy, and how you can implement it in your own games!

Siege Minion Math

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The siege minion, commonly referred to as the "cannon minion", is an incredible target for Blood Boil when sieging. Siege minions have an incredibly high attack speed of 1 right off the bat. Moreover, its total attack speed appears to be entirely base attack speed, as it gets fully multiplied by Blood Boil. Note that attack speed boosts such as Blood Boil only multiply the base attack speed of their target, which on most champions is around only .625 (much lower!) This means that with Visionary and Rank 5 Blood Boil (a '6th' rank), Nunu multiplies the siege minion’s attack speed by 1.5, simply giving it a total of 1.5 attack speed.

Let's move on to siege minion attack damage. Referring to the image above, note that siege minions start the game with 39.5 AD. This means that a first wave siege minion (lowest AD value) buffed by Banner of Command ordinarily does 139.5 DPS, and with Blood Boil it jumps up to 209 DPS - a whopping 70 DPS increase at minimum for this combination. This is the DPS increase you receive for the purpose of a siege minion attacking other minions, which have 0 resistances. Towers on the other hand have 55 armor and magic resist, but its DPS increase to the tower is actually even higher.

Recall now that prior to patch 8.4, buffing a minion with Banner of Command actually was not actually causing it to do any of its listed extra AD in damage to the tower. In fact, minions buffed with Banner of Command are considered 'empowered' and are supposed to do double damage to the tower. So, how much damage does a Bannered-and-Blood Boiled siege minion do to those poor towers? What is its tower DPS, and what is the increase gained by adding Blood Boil to a Bannered siege minion?

Well, all we have to do is multiple our previous DPS by 2 (due to the 'empowered' effect) and by .65 due to the tower's armor. So, we get 209.25 * 2 * .65 = 272 DPS. Dividing by 1.5, we can see that Blood Boil is bumping up the siege minion's damage from 181 to 272, which is a 90 dps increase due to Bloodboil. Moreover, this DPS increase is very hard for champions to match, although it may happen in certain situations. Let look at ADCs, for instance (one of the primary siege roles in the game).

First off, the items built by ADCs do not help that much, since they invest a lot of their gold into critical strikes and bonus attack speed. These are great stats for DPS in general, but critical strikes do not work against towers and bonus attack speed is not affected by Blood Boil. Moreover, let's look at the stats required to keep up with a siege minion. Recall that Blood Boiling a first-wave siege minion results in a 90 DPS increase to the tower. Suppose you are a character with a middling base attack speed of .625 (such as Nunu himself!) Then, with Blood Boil active, you gain + .625 * .5 = .31 attack speed. You need to get at least an extra 90 dps to the tower out of Blood Boil to be a worthy target, so the following equation must be true: .31 * (your damage) * .65 >= 90. Thus, your nominal tower damage needs to be >= 446; most champions, to my knowledge, do not even come close to that.

Finally, what is really astonishing is that this colossal siege engine can easily be unleashed as early as 8 minutes into the game, or 13 with rank 5 Blood Boil. But enough with the math! Read on to find out how you can easily make use of this powerful siege engine in your own games.

Blood Boil & Banner in Action

Let’s say that you’re ready to hop into the action and want to get this incredible siege strategy online ASAP. When you take Nunu to the jungle, you can acquire enough gold for a Banner of Command by doing two clears of all your camps (including your buffs, excluding scuttle crabs.) In order to do this, you should start with Hunter’s Machete and Rejuvenation Bead, and upgrade the bead into Raptor Cloak when you have a chance to base. Thanks to his innate jungle-clearing power with Consume, Nunu does not need a jungle item - or any extra damage/sustain - in order to clear all of his camps with time to spare. If you are power-farming and just go for two full-clears ASAP, you can buy your Banner of Command around 8 minutes into the game!

You won't be able to siege with 5 ranks in Blood Boil just yet - this happens around 13 minutes into the game - but do not underestimate the power of an 8-minute Banner of Command. At this stage in the game, laners usually have only item components, and will have a very hard time dealing with a Bannered-up siege minion (remember that it is incredibly tanky and immune to magic damage!) A little lane priority will go a long way here, and an untimely recall can easily lead into a free tower, so be sure to analyze and monitor the state of your lanes in order to find your best play. All other things being equally, I find bottom lane is the easiest to grab an early tower with, and I think this is for a few reasons. The lane is long, meaning you can build up a bigger wave, you have 2 champions to hit the tower with, and bot laners typically do not take teleport, which makes getting poked out is even more devastating for them.

Let's flesh out the rest of the setup. For skill order, I recommend starting Q - E - Q - W and then maxing W for sieging power. This makes your first clear quick and healthy, and E gives you some flexibility for ganks or interacting with the enemy jungler before you hit level 4. For runes, I take Guardian, Demolish, Conditioning, Revitalize, Minion Dematerializer, and Perfect Timing. I take Minion Dematerializer currently in conjunction with Relic Shield, which lets me quickly push in waves and heal my allies when going for early towers. Relic Shield is also an efficient item which lets me get wards, which is something I have been experimenting with since the removal of both Sightstone/Ruby Sightstone and Tracker’s Knife. Perfect Timing often lets me stay and get a tower without fear of eating a powerful ultimate or CC and Demolish of course speeds up the process even more! The other choices are pretty common, efficient choices for Nunu as a champion generally, so I won’t comment on them further here.

For items, I think you can be quite flexible, but my current path is Banner of Command → Targon’s Brace → Boots of Mobility → Cinderhulk → Locket of the Iron Solari → ZZ’Rot Portal. However, I would say that the only essential feature of this build is the early Banner of Command, and even the timing has flexibility. If you feel that there are other objectives you want to accomplish (certain items, ganks, counter-jungle routes, etc.) you can probably fit those in just fine and still get your Banner of Command quite early, due to its low cost. Another thing to be aware of is that as the game goes on, camp clearing does feel a bit sluggish until you get Bami’s Cinder/Cinderhulk and max out your Q, but I often stay competitive in farm thanks to CS from Banner of Command.

Of course, this is just one possible strategy for utilizing Nunu’s fantastic synergy with Banner of Command. For those of you looking for a ready-to-go way to utilize the synergy I presented in the math section, I think you will find following the playstyle outlined here to be effective and extremely fun. Of course, there may be better variations available; if you see some opportunity for improvement or adaptation, go for it and let me know how it went!

That's all for now. Happy sieging!

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