Thursday, July 12, 2012

Jungler: Nunu

Nunu recently received a couple of significant buffs, and as a result he is now an incredibly competitive jungler. The buffs may not immediately look like much, but in practice they are complete game changers.

The most important change is the reduction in stacks required for Nunu to get a free spell. Dropping from 7 to 5 is practically a 40% increase in the number of free spells Nunu can fire off. The effect is so large even haphazard play leaves Nunu with plenty of mana for ganks. By removing Nunu's mana issues he can now focus his item build on other attributes.

Dropping the cooldown on Consume smooths out Nunu's early jungling significantly. The rank 1 cooldown lines up extremely nicely with the time spent clearing camps; it always comes off cooldown just before arriving at the next camp. Combined with a significant damage increase at rank 1, Nunu's jungle is now much faster than before. In fact, Nunu now has the fastest level 3 gank I am aware of, reaching the lane with double-buffs no later than 3:00 game time!

Finally, Nunu's ultimate is no longer worthless if interrupted. Even if it is immediately stopped it still does a tenth of its normal damage, and the damage gradient as it progresses is much more forgiving. A half-completed Nunu ult is now much, much more dangerous.

The summation of all these changes makes Nunu an extremely strong jungle pick. His ganks, utility, and jungle control are utterly superb. Jungle Nunu is back, and with a vengeance.

No comments:

Post a Comment