Why Nunu?

With multiple junglers receiving nerfs, Nunu has risen to prominence after his buffs. His mix of strong early pressure, fast clears, and powerful kit makes him a powerhouse in the right hands. As a supportive jungler, his main role is to buff his carries in teamfights and protect his teammates during the laning phase. Nunu carries by proxy. A good Nunu will have snowballed his laners out of control by the end of laning phase. A great Nunu will protect his team's advantage until the destruction of the enemy Nexus.

Strengths:

• Useful when behind, and doesn't need much money to be effective
• Very tanky
• Good early pressure
• Multiple ways to buff his teammates

Weaknesses:

• Poor initiator
• Poor duelist
• No hard CC

Abilities and Summoner Spells

An argument can be made for Ghost instead of Flash, but the benefits of Flash far outweigh the benefits of Ghost. Nunu already has a movement speed buff, and the ability to Flash into Dragon or Baron pit for a steal or Flash over walls to chase an enemy is just too much to give up. You are jungling, so you need Smite. Smite helps you secure objectives, assists your early clear, and lets you buy Smite items.

 Visionary: Passive - Nunu's next ability has no mana cost after 5 Visionary stacks. Each basic attack grants 1 stack of Visionary.

Consume: Active - Nunu commands Willump to take a bite out of the target enemy minion or monster, dealing them true damage and healing himself.

Casting Consume on a large monster grants Nunu a Well Fed stack, granting him 10 out-of-combat bonus movement speed, 2% maximum health, and increased size, stacking up to 5 times for a maximum 50 out-of-combat bonus movement speed and 10% maximum health. Well Fed stacks last for a duration, refreshing with each Consume cast.

 Blood Boil: Active - Nunu grants the target allied champion and himself bonus attack speed and bonus movement speed for 12 seconds.

If Nunu targets himself and an allied champion is within range, he also gains Blood Boil.

 Ice Blast: Active - Nunu throws an ice ball at the target enemy, dealing magic damage, slowing them and reducing their attack speed by 25% for 2 seconds.

 Absolute Zero: Active - Nunu channels for 3 seconds, slowing (initially by 50% but increasing to 95% over the duration) and crippling by 25% all nearby enemies as he does so.

Upon completing the channel (or if interrupted) Nunu deals magic damage to all enemies in the area, reduced to 12.5 - 87.5% based on if and when he was interrupted.

Ability Order

You want to start Q, as it helps you sustain through your first camp and does the most damage to monsters. You will want to skill E at level 2 and W at level 3. From here, you want to put two points in Q until level 6 when you put a point into your ultimate, Absolute Zero. After level 6, you want to max E, then finish maxing Q, then put points into W, putting points into R whenever you can. Putting an early 3 points into Q allows you to clear faster and healthier, while still providing you with the stronger dueling/ganking ability of maxing E after level 6. Your W doesn't become particularly useful until you start teamfighting, so you max it last.

Runes and Masteries

The new mastery changes do not benefit Nunu, as he cannot proc Courage of the Colossus and Strength of the Ages was removed. I choose Grasp of the Undying over Thunderlord's because he builds so much health anyway, giving him larger heals and stronger damage procs off Grasp.

Nunu doesn't really benefit from AP too much, as most of his clear comes from autos and his Consume (the damage of which does not scale off of AP). AD quints help his clear by making his autos hit harder, while the attack speed marks and glyphs to help him to stack his passive faster and further increase the speed his clear. You can also take scaling or flat magic resist glyphs if you so choose, but since the jungle does not do magic damage I feel that I can take the greedier attack speed glyphs. I take armor yellows because I like the better early game more than the better scaling of scaling armor/health.

Core Items

Nunu is a tank, and so should be built accordingly. It is important to look for items that augment your strengths while also covering for your weaknesses. Aside from your core items, Nunu's build is quite flexible. He can build some damage to be a threat, some utility items to help his team be a stronger threat, or pure tank and focus on peeling for his own carries.

Skirmisher's Sabre-Cinderhulk: Red smite allows you to duel better, while also adding some much needed damage to your ganks. Blue smite is redundant because Nunu already has a low cooldown slow. The warding smite is a matter of preference, if you wish to trade some early pressure for more utility for your team. Cinderhulk is helpful because its AoE burn helps your clear and its passive has exceptional synergy with Nunu's Consume passive and Nunu has little synergy with any of the other smite enchantments.

Aegis of the Legion: Provides a decent mix of armor and magic resistance. Very cheap and stat efficient, Aegis can be built into a Locket of the Iron Solari or a Banner of Command. Go Locket if you want to teamfight and shield your teammates, or go Banner if your team plans on skirmishing/picking people off so you can create side wave pressure.

Dead Man's Plate: A solid early armor item, this item is best bought early because of its usefulness in ganking. Since Nunu lacks a dash, the movement speed passive of Dead Man's helps his ganks because he can run faster at the enemy than they can run away.

Mercury Treads: Tenacity is very good for Nunu because, as a tank, he will be soaking crowd control abilities for his carries. You can also switch these out for Ninja Tabi if the enemy has a lot of AD, or Swifties if they have mostly slows.

Situational Items

Guardian Angel: Dual resistances are always nice, especially in the early game when you haven't been able to stack many other tank items yet. A solid early buy because of its cost efficiency and its passive - the earlier you buy it, the more chances you have to utilize its passive.

Spectre's Cowl: A good magic resist pickup if Aegis is not cutting it. Can be built into either a Banshees or a Spirit Visage. Banshees is cheap and provides a good passive to help you initiate fights, while Spirit Visage provides a good mix of health, magic resist, and CDR.

Randuin's Omen: Good mix of armor and health. Has a nice passive that slows attack speed and reduces critical strike damage, while also providing an AoE slow that helps in peeling and catching opponents.

Thornmail: For when you really need armor. Be careful about buying this item too early, as its lack of health provides you with zero protection from magic damage.

Righteous Glory: A very niche item. Sometimes, you have to be the initiator for your team, and since you lack mobility this item helps you get in range for a good Ult or Snowball on an out of position carry.

Liandry's Torment: For when you think your team needs more damage. All of Nunu's damage abilities slow, synergizing with Liandry's passive, and this item deals decent damage regardless of the amount of AP you have because of its percent health damage.

Frozen Heart: A good item against many auto attack reliant champions. While the mana is somewhat wasted on Nunu, the huge amounts of armor, CDR, and useful passive can be worth the wasted mana if bought according to the right enemy composition.

A Case for Tiamat

With the new changes to the jungle, Nunu has trouble clearing the Raptor and Krug camp because he lacks AOE damage before acquiring Cinderhulk. An early Tiamat alleviates this, while also providing more damage, a strong early spike, and incredibly fast clears. Try to build this as early as possible, and then later on you can build it into a Titanic Hydra. This item gives you enough damage to be a threat to the enemy backline while also helping your already fast clears to the point that you should be a full level or two ahead of the enemy jungler at most stages of the game. Building a Tiamat does make you squishier, but experienced Nunus can take advantage of its earlier spikes and stronger clears to snowball the game for himself and his team.

Goals

Nunu's main goal is to protect his lanes and get his team ahead. He should be utilizing his strong early pressure to gank overextended lanes, control the enemy jungler by stealing his camps, frustrating his gank attempts, and securing objectives whenever possible.

Early Game

In the early game, you want to be constantly watching the map and planning for where the enemy jungler will be next. Nunu's ganks are quite deadly if the enemy is overextended at all. He should be constantly ready to assist his laners if/when they are ganked by the enemy jungler, which means he should be mirroring the enemy jungler's movements. If he decides to gank top, take dragon, or make a play bot lane. At the very least, invade constantly, and often-the new Blast Plant assists greatly in escaping an enemy collapse, and Nunu's inherent tankiness and fast clear allows him to move freely around almost any section of the map.

Teamfighting

In teamfights, Nunu should be peeling for his carries. Try to Blood Boil your ADC whenever possible, and use your Snowball to slow down anyone trying to get to your carries. If you build Locket, try to time its use for when you think the enemy will use the majority of their damage (for example, an Amumu or Lucian ult). You can use your ult to divide the enemy frontline from their backline - the tanks can probably ignore the damage, but the squishies certainly cannot. You can also use Absolute Zero to set up your team for their AoE abilities, such as slowing people to keep them in Miss Fortune's Bullet Time.

If you build Titanic and are ahead, you can also dive the enemy carries. Slow them (and their attack speed!) with Snowball, smite them with Skirmisher's Sabre, give them a couple autos, and finish them off with your Absolute Zero. No squishy will survive about 5 seconds of damage from you, and your abilities have decent range so even if you don't kill them your massive presence will zone them form the fight and your team should win the fight.

If you're not particularly ahead, don't dive too hard. You won't be tanky enough to survive the abuse, and you may find yourself being kited into oblivion without the support of your team.

Objectives

Nunu is incredible at securing objectives because of his Consume. At max rank, it does 1000 true damage and has quite a low cooldown. Nobody should steal Dragons from him, and they will have to kill Nunu first if they don't want Baron stolen - Nunu can outsmite almost anyone in the game.

Conclusion

While Nunu may not be a hard carry or "1v9" champion, his incredible utility and powerful kit allow him to carry by proxy. He empowers his teammates, strengthening them as much as he strengthens himself, leading to more teammates with the potential to carry than just one.

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