When you hear the term “Jungle God”, I’m sure Nunu is not the first champion you think of. The champions that usually evoke a sense of dominance in the jungle are the champions like Kindred, Lee Sin, Elise or any other strong ganking jungler. While of course I agree that Nunu does not have stronger ganks than those champions; I don’t believe the term “Jungle God” should be used to describe a champion whose biggest strength is ganking. “Jungle God” should mean exactly that, a God controlling all aspects of the jungle and it is that definition that Nunu fits.

What Nunu offers

Unlike many of the top tier junglers, Nunu does not have incredibly strong jungle clear or ganks. His true strength lies in his objective and map control. While most junglers find success by snowballing lanes, Nunu finds his success through map vision and pressure. Nunu does this by either buying a Sightstone or getting the warding jungle item. This, coupled with Consume's ability to easily secure neutral objectives, makes it really hard for the enemy team to take action against yours. Another interesting thing about Nunu is his jungle clear and ganks aren’t that bad either. While many other junglers can outclass him in one or both of those fields, Nunu is actually fairly okay at both of them. His clear is pretty good if you max Consume, and his ganks are actually pretty scary when he has his ultimate. All of this together makes for one strong jungler that can take over the game in a less than conventional sense.

What Nunu builds

Nunu’s build path is fairly straightforward after his first item. You build mostly tank with your core items being Spirit Visage, Dead Man’s Plate and Zz’Rot Portal. The first item he would build however is a point of much possible debate. The options are Runic Echoes or Cinderhulk and blue smite or warding. While statistically the best choice for this is Cinderhulk with the ward dropper, I heavily contest this. While it is true that Cinderhulk on Nunu has a significantly higher overall win rate than Runic Echoes, I don’t believe it’s because Runic Echoes are worse. I believe it’s because Runic Echoes require more skill to use, but let’s take a look at what they both offer.

Cinderhulk offers Nunu scaling health and a passive AoE burn field. While this does seem very perfect for Nunu, there are a few drawbacks. The first of which is Nunu’s damage isn’t very high. While Nunu isn’t a champion who is trying to deal a bunch of damage, having some damage does help. Cinderhulk for this reason is still very useful because it does offer some damage but it also offers a lot of tankiness. That said, Runic Echoes does give Nunu more damage, though not a lot more compared to Cinderhulk. Now, I may have just made a very good case for Cinderhulk and the win rate for Cinderhulk is better, so why should you build Runic Echoes?

Runic Echoes gives Nunu many other things that he wants. You get extra damage, and this extra damage is actually more significant than Cinderhulk because it’s a burst from the Echoes. Not only that, but it gives AP which scales with most of Nunu’s abilities. The move speed on Runic Echoes is also something to consider. Nunu works very well with movement speed, it allows him to dodge damage and get to priority targets for peeling or diving. Last but not least is the mana restore you get on jungle camps. People think because of Nunu’s passive he doesn’t have mana issues, but this is incorrect. To have enough mana to use your spells in a teamfight you would need to only cast consume and only when your passive is up if you’re using Cinderhulk. With Runic Echoes you more or less can spell spells freely in the jungle, meaning you have an even faster clear speed.

Overall, the tankiness is useful from Cinderhulk but Runic Echoes allows for more room to make map plays and dodge possible skillshots. You get plenty tanky without Cinderhulk so Runic Echoes makes more sense to me. The reason that Cinderhulk has a higher win rate is likely because it is easier to use. Being tankier is just easier to play than dodging the damage instead, but, if you have faith in your reflexes, I believe Runic Echoes is the correct choice.

As for whether or not to go Warding Smite or Blue Smite is another pretty tricky question. The easy answer is go Warding Smite because free wards and Nunu already has slows so there is no need for Blue Smite. This again, however, is something I don’t agree with for several different reasons. I will start with the question “Is it ok to not ward as Nunu jungle?”. No, it is not ok. The entire strength of Nunu comes from keeping tabs on the enemy jungler to reduce their game impact while doing your own thing. So you need wards, but where from. The place I would rather get wards from is from a Sightstone, not Warding Smite and the reason for that is very simple. You win in the long run with a Sightstone.

One of the more recent item additions to League are the upgrades for Sightstones. What this means is you can have a proper item in an item slot and still be able to ward. This can be taken advantage of in a very interesting way. Consider this, have you ever bought a Relic Shield on a jungler? It actually isn’t as bad as you’d think. You get gold over time, so eventually you will make your money back. Not only that, but when you ward for your laners, you can just casually walk up and take some cs and they won’t even feel bad. On the contrary, they might thank you for the small heal. It’s for this reason I choose Sightstone, because you get more wards and more money and that’s not even including the fact that you also get Blue Smite. Blue Smite is actually quite good on Nunu because it doesn’t just slow the enemy down, it speeds you up. You can also stagger your Smite in between your Qs to slow them for a much longer duration.

Nunu’s game plan

As the game starts Nunu mostly wants to focus on staying in the jungle and farming. While farming is definitely the most important thing you can do, ganking is definitely an option if a lane is significantly overextended. Maxing Consume first gives you the fastest clear time as well as helps you secure early Dragons and Rift Heralds by having an absurdly powerful Smite/Consume combo. Once you finish your Runic Echoes, that’s the point you want to start looking at lanes to pressure more. Whichever side of the map you choose to pressure more is where you should look to take objectives, so if you pressure top, take Rift Herald, and if you pressure bot, take dragon.

After your jungle item is complete you want to look towards buying either a Sightstone or Targon’s Brace. The reason you would want to go Targon’s Brace first is for the gold gen it gives you. The sooner you get it, the more gold you get your team in the long run. After either or both are picked up, you want to rush Zz’Rot Portal to push up minion waves and force teamfights or objectives. After that just build tanky items that work well into the enemy's composition (Dead Man’s Plate into AD, Spirit Visage into AP).

Towards late game, you mostly want to look at peeling for your carries. You are just a slow spewing bot at that stage in the game and using that to keep your damage dealers safe is very important. Hopefully you can set up your Zz’Rot Portal to split lanes so that you can take objectives and use your wards to catch enemies out or stop your teammates from getting caught.

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