My Little Mumu

Today I'm going to be talking about this little chap:

Amumu the Sad Mummy hasn't been getting the same attention he had when I first decided to take the short lived plunge into ranked in Season One. He used to be a very common first pick or instant ban and if he got into a game it was generally a win for his team if the Amumu player was any decent. Nowadays the undead midget doesn't seem to have any love in anyone's eyes but I'm here to analyse if he is still a strong pick or if the community ignoring him is because he is genuinely sub-par.

Looking out over his patch history it is immediately clear that Amumu hasn't been touched much by Riot since his release, a few minor changes such as Curse of the Sad Mummy being instant damage instead of over the duration and the couple of buffs to him should suggest that he became stronger than when he was always banned.

Before we look in further depth as to why Amumu isn't considered the powerhouse he once was let's have a look at his skills:

His passive:Cursed touch reduces the magic resist of anyone he autoattacks by a decent amount for 4 seconds. This is a pretty great skill for 1v1s as most of his damage is magic and helps your team's mage burst down people in teamfights.

Bandage Toss is a pretty great skill: useful for initiation, chasing and CC'ing during teamfights its only downside is its fairly long cooldown (8 seconds at level 5) With long range, a one second stun, decent base damage and a 1.0 AP ratio it is a very useful skill.

 Despair is a great ability for taking jungle buffs, clearing camps and providing constant damage during teamfights, costing only 8 mana a second it is fairly easy to constantly have this up for teamfights and even all the time if you have blue buff. This skill gives a decent dps AoE toggle that deals a percentage of the target's max health per second in addition to base damage. The percentage damage has a low AP scaling.

 Tantrum provides a passive reduction to physical damage taken, making Amumu inherently more tanky by just leveling this skill, it also has an active AoE effect that deals decent damage with good AP scaling (0.5AP ratio). This skill is a strong jungling skill due to the fact each time he is hit the cooldown is reduced by 0.5 seconds allowing Amumu to spam this skill as he clears camps.

 Curse of the Sad Mummy... This skill is a large AoE nuke (with a 1.0 AP ratio) plus root stopping all enemy auto-attacks for 2 seconds. A successfully timed Curse of the Sad Mummy will win a teamfight for you as it effectively immobilizes the enemy team allowing your carry and mage to lay down a lot of damage. The only problem with this skill is ensuring it is off cooldown for every teamfight due to it having a relatively long cooldown.

Due to the AP ratios on Amumu are fairly good it can be tempting for many to build him as a straight mage...don't. Though it could be very effective against teams not prepared for it, against teams with good communication and skills he will be squashed every time going into a team fight. All his skills either have short range or get you close up to the enemy resulting in you being in the middle of the enemy team for the majority of teamfights. I'm not saying don't ever buy AP on Amumu ever, if you already have enough survivability from your items and the enemy team has little magic resist then by all means grab an AP item and go to town.

So overall he still has a strong CC kit that will throw out enough AoE damage to punish anyone who ignores him and his ultimate will secure won teamfights. His poor laning presence is mitigated by the fact he has really strong jungle clears. So... what's wrong with him? One of the answers is that Riot making the jungler easier which had the resulting of bringing out a number of new strong junglers to play. Junglers who's clears are faster, safer and have better invasion and 1v1ing. Though I'm still of the belief that Amumu's clear time is good enough to warrant him being a strong candidate for the jungler role and his ganks ,both pre and post level six, along with his teamfight presence should keep him at the pinnacle of top champions. 

Ah well...another possibly 'sleeper OP' champion I guess.