In the recent patch 6.20, Nunu finally received some long needed buffs. While it wasn’t much, it does slowly bring Nunu back up to a decent pick in certain situations. However, his kit in general still leaves a lot to be desired. His kit is very much a relic of the early seasons, in which kits were generally very basic. This has caused Nunu to become a meme in some ways, or as TheOddOne once said: “The point of playing Nunu is making the enemy jungler as useless as you are.” However, in the current state of the game, that’s simply not enough. Through this article, Nunu will be analyzed in order to determine what needs to change about him in order to make him a champion that is better suited for the current state of the game.

Current Kit and Playstyle

Currently, Nunu is a jungler that relies on heavy farming to eventually become a huge tank in the late game. During the early game, Nunu is a capable ganker thanks to his Blood Boil and Ice Blast, as he can continuously slow the enemy and speed up his allies. Along with that, his objective control is incredible thanks to the combination of his Consume and Smite. However, in teamfights, Nunu can mostly be ignored as he lacks any abilities that has a profound effect on a teamfight apart from Absolute Zero. For these reasons, Nunu players rely on counter-jungling in order to slow down the enemy jungler in order to lower their level of relevance as well. Overall Nunu’s current playstyle is very straightforward and times quite boring, because of this Nunu is often forgotten despite his kit being a perfect fit for certain team compositions such as siege compositions.

What’s Good

Nunu as a champion is a great PvE champion. His consume allows him to essentially full a clear the jungle without having to Recall, while his Blood Boil allows him to move around faster than most junglers early on. Along with that, his earlier ganks is decent despite the lack of a hard CC thanks to a constant source of slows and speed ups. In my opinion, these two aspects of his kit allow him to have a strong presence during the early game, even on his own. During the late game, he falls back to a supportive role thanks to his ability to provide a bit of peel for his ADC with Blood Boil and Ice Blast. Overall, Nunu has a clear and distinct role within a team and this allows teams to build either around Nunu’s strengths or simply build a composition that’s core strength is elevated by his kit.

The laugh that triggered all the junglers back in the day (Image courtesy of Riot Games)

What’s Bad
Nunu during the late game becomes a little useless, apart from his ultimate, Nunu’s presence in teamfights is essentially non-existent. Along with his lack of presence in teamfights, his ability to push a lane is horrible as well. Even with his usual build path of Cinderhulk into Iceborn Gauntlet, Nunu is unable to push a lane at a decent speed. Because of this, Nunus that need to push is essentially forced into building Zz’Rot Portal, and even then most meta junglers are still able to push faster than him. Nunu’s dueling potential is non-existent as well as while he’s able to tank a lot of damage in the late game, his abysmal damage output makes him unable to win a one versus one duel. Because of these weaknesses as the game progresses, Nunu becomes progressively more and more useless until he’s only useful for taking objectives such as Baron and Dragons.

How would I change him?

In order to determine what I would change about Nunu, I started by determining what I would keep about Nunu and build around. Through this, I feel that Nunu should keep his early game jungling prowess and be built up from there. In terms of changes there are a few options.

1. Give Nunu a slight damage buff on auto attacks when he’s affected by Blood boil. A small damage buff such as 10/15/20/25/30 (+10% AP) allows Nunu to push at a steady pace when combined with the attack speed buff of Blood Boil, and the small AP ratio will encourage Nunu players to build some AP items for a decent increase in overall damage for a trade-off in survivability. However, this is a lazy fix that doesn’t make Nunu unique and essentially leaves him as a boring champion to play in general.

2. Make Nunu’s Well Fed stacks from Consume slowly give bonus effects to his other basic abilities and his passive as he gets more stacks. An example of this would be that at max stacks Nunu’s passive only takes 3 auto attacks to trigger. This encourages Nunu players to constantly make returns to the jungle in order to stay at a higher power level.

In my opinion, the second option is the best as it allows Nunu to become relevant in teamfights while allowing some counter play through denial of jungle camps. Along with that, Nunu will become fun again based on the bonuses the stacks could apply.

Conclusion

Nunu as a champion has some unique features as a champion, such as his Consume, which allow him to have a huge presence in the jungle due to essentially having a seconds Smite that’s on a much shorter cooldown. However, Nunu as a champion overall has been boring and as one-dimensional as it can get. With either change that was proposed, not only will Nunu further excel at counter jungling in the early game, but he’ll be able to stay relevant throughout the game in some way.

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