With me finally settling into a work routine after uni I've found myself able to play more games and actually write a new article inspired by a recent game.
It was a fairly basic normal draft game with me planning to try out Jayce solo top as I had just got him however that all changed when the enemy team picked one of the stronger top laners: Yorick. Naturally with me never having played Jayce at all and being fairly out of practice in general I didn't really want to lane against Yorick especially if he was a good one, after a brief moment of thought I locked in as this fellow:
uhm... I meant these guys:
The league's first mounted champion (none of that Sejauni stuff) makes a very strong tanky AP top, especially since they cut the cooldown on his consume and the number of attacks needed to charge his passive to attempt to make him better at jungling.
Nunu's strength as a top laner comes from three factors about him:
First off we have consume the ability that gives Nunu stupidly good sustain. A minion only nuke that a) guarantees a last hit and more importantly b) Heals Nunu for 125/180/235/290/345 pretty impressive for a 60 mana skill, though not quite as impressive as its 1.0 AP scaling. Rushing a RoA on top lane Nunu makes you pretty much invincible due to the health and AP.
Next we have Nunu's harassment, anyone who has played against a support Nunu will know how much this skill hurts with little AP not to mention if he has a RoA or AP runes, AP Top Nunu will max this skill as quickly as possible as it is a 6 second cd spammable nuke with again a 1.0 AP ratio and a hefty slow on top of it which stops a typical melee solotop from being able to hit you back.
Finally the other key component of Solotop Nunu, his passive, for every 5 autoattacks nunu's next spell will be completely free, this allows you to spam iceblasts in-between trades and last hits, keeping your opponent at bay as they will mostly have melee harassment and back off after a few iceblasts.
The trick to top lane Nunu is to be a bully, a massive bully to the other person in lane. Your inherent tankiness allows you to run in and autoattack the enemy champions in order to get your passive charged for more harassment.
As mentioned earlier I picked Nunu for a Yorick matchup and I strongly recommend anyone who sees the other team pick Yorick do the same, Yorick's ghouls not only give you something to eat with consume but also give you a nice target to autoattack allowing you to charge up your passive without pushing the lane too far.
Well that's a brief overview of Solotop Nunu, I wont bore you with build details as RoA+Defensive items is pretty standard on him and works very nicely solotop. Have a good one with your Nunu games.
It's good to be back,
Thalric
