Return of the King? A look at Consume changes for Jungle Nunu

 

 

Anyone who has played League of Legends in the early pre-season 1 days will remember jungling as an incredibly difficult role. You either played Warwick, Fiddlesticks or Amumu and hoped to get to level 6 as fast as possible and help out the laners. The game loads, and you see a Nunu opponent with Smite. You start to breathe a little harder. Start off at Elder Golem and pray to the gods that Nunu isnt trying to counter jungle you. Reach your jungle camps and the horror! All your camps are stolen, leaving a solitary minion in each camp. As you painfully recover and reach level 3, you see an extremely mobile level 5 Yeti gank the lanes, laughing as he moves in and out of your jungle with impunity. That was the terror of Nunu jungle, arguably the best counter jungler and the first champion to attempt and arguably specialize in counter jungling.

 

Flash foward to Nunu 2013. An empty shell of his former tyrannical self, changes to jungle spawn timers and experience bonuses have neutered the impact of counter jungling and moved Nunu to a support role (or much recently, as an immovable solo top). Recognizing this, Riot has reworked Consume, Nunu’s signature jungling ability, to encourage more Jungle Nunu play as well as discourage his top lane efficiency. But has this buff hit its mark, or does it miss completely? Have a look at the new and improved Consume

 

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Consume  

§  RANGE: 125

§  COOLDOWN: 17 / 15 / 13 / 11 / 9

§  COST: 60 mana

ACTIVE: Nunu commands his yeti to take a bite out of target enemy minion or neutral monster, dealing true damage to it and restoring Nunu's health. Nunu gains a bonus depending on what Willump consumed. Consume does not need to score the killing blow to trigger the bonuses and the individual bonuses stack.

§  TRUE DAMAGE: 600 / 700 / 800 / 900 / 1000

§  HEALTH RESTORED: 90 / 130 / 170 / 210 / 250 (+ 75% AP)

§  BUFF DURATION: 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 / 240

ROUGH ROCK CANDY: Nunu's maximum health and size are increased by 10%.
ORNERY MONSTER TAILS: Nunu's attacks and spells deal magic damage equal to 1% of his maximum health.
SPOOKY MYSTERY MEAT: Nunu gains 15% bonus movement speed for 3 seconds on unit kill.

 

Changes from last patch
Consume ( Q ) now heals for 90/130/170/210/250 + .75 AP down from 125/180/235/290/345 + 1.0 AP

 

At first glance, it looks like a well deserved hit to Top Lane Nunu’s sustain and an interesting buff to Jungle Nunu. At maximum rank, Consume buffs last a whole 4 minutes, which means that with a full jungle clear Nunu gains 10% maximum health, 1% maximum health damage on his spells and attacks and a movespeed buff everytime he kills a unit. Not too shabby if you look at it in a nutshell. The 10% maximum health buff is a definite plus for his jungling since Nunu has the highest base HP in the game, standing at a whopping 2381 at level 18 with 0 items/runes. However, the problems arise when we look at the bigger picture. The Ornery Monster Tails buff can only be gotten if Nunu chomps on the Elder Lizard camp, which only spawns every 6 minutes. Late game,  your AD carry might even take the camp by himself so you might not even have the luxury to get the buff. Not that you would miss it a lot since 1% of 2k HP is only 20 damage and Nunu relies mostly on his utility spells to deal damage rather than his auto attacks. The Spooky Mystery Meat buff looks good on paper but in real game situations, you would find it difficult to actually be in a situation to make use of that 3 second buff (unless you clear an entire creep wave with Absolute Zero and need that extra movespeed to snowball a fleeing champion).

 

So has the changes brought back the Yeti to terrorize the jungle yet again? Not quite. It’s a step in the right direction, with the extra tankiness going a long way to keep Nunu relevant, but the other two buffs don’t really add significantly to Nunu’s kit as a support jungler. With the current jungle meta revolving around tank junglers who bring a lot of crowd control, Nunu’s miniscule single target slow is not enough to overpower other stronger junglers. The Bloodboil buff for your autoattackers is a nice touch, and Absolute Zero is an incredible teamfight slow, but thats about all that Nunu brings to the team currently; a plethora of buffs and mini crowd controls that accentuate your team but doesnt help you carry in any ways.  Riot seems to be tinkering with this idea at the moment so look for a number of changes to Consume in the next few patches, preferably a more significant bonus for chomping on wraiths/wolves and a more significant damage boost from Elder Lizard.

What do you think about Jungle Nunu and the Consume changes?