Nunu's New Kit (Theory)

In the new trailer for Nunu, we can see all abilities and his passive being used (Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaaJbFxpfyE ), so, as Nunu is one of my favorite champions, I wanted to take some guesses at which abilities are which, the specifics of what they do, and give my thoughts on what appears to be the new kit.

Passive: At 1:07 in the trailer, we see a little wisp of power going from Nunu to Ashe, which I can only assume is a trigger of his passive, being a reworked version of his old W, Blood Boil. Why I imagine this is on his passive is because the other 4 abilities that we can clearly see him using and can tell exactly what they are in the trailer could only occupy the 4 ability slots, unless his reworked Consume is now his passive, triggering on his first basic attack on a cooldown, but I find it hard to imagine that they'd take the control out of this as it is something that is very iconic to Nunu.

Q: Consume: I imagine they kept Consume on his Q for the reasons stated above, though it is possible that they moved it to being on his passive, being an empowered basic attack that triggers on a cooldown. I would imagine that it has the same use as the old Consume, however, we also see him using it on enemy champions, which probably deals far less damage than it does to minions and monsters, and deals it as magic instead of true. This probably replaced the Feed the Yeti passive.

W: Snowball Roll: Starting at 0:52, we see Nunu rolling around a giant snowball as a ganking tool, which gets bigger and bigger as Nunu stays near it. It seems to give him movement speed, though it's possible that he can move away from the snowball to release it to roll on its own, though it doesn't get bigger if he does. As it increases in size, it increases in damage, and eventually leads into a stun after it gets big enough. He also uses this to move all the way from top lane to middle lane at once, which is incredibly powerful if this is true.

E: Ice Blast: I was honestly hoping that Ice Blast would be made into an area of effect skillshot with a 3-hit passive to stun instead of slow, but this doesn't appear to be the case, as at 0:48, we see Nunu using it to throw snowballs at enemy champions. It seems to target an area of effect around him, throwing a volley of 3 snowballs at the first nearby enemy, then at a second after a delay, and then exploding for a stun or root (looking at the animation around the Trundle, I would guess a root) and some damage, and slowing with the volley hits by the animation on the ground below the Trundle.

R: Absolute Zero: Riot said that this, as well as Consume, was an iconic ability to Nunu and wouldn't change much. We see him use it at 1:16 and it seems to be identical to the current Absolute Zero. I just wonder if you could start the new Ice Blast, then Absolute Zero, and get off the root in an area of effect around you during the ultimate, trapping enemies inside.

As one final thing before we get into my opinions, if you stay until the very end of the trailer, you find that THEY KEPT THE NUNU BOT LAUGH!!!! YES!!!!

Anyway, so, I really enjoy playing the current iteration of Nunu and I have been excited to get my hands on the rework for a while. It certainly looks fun and I think I'm going to enjoy playing the rework quite a bit.

The one big thing I have to say is that, if Consume is now on his passive and what I guessed would be his passive is actually an active ability, I won't be very happy with that. I definitely would prefer to have a tool as important to Nunu's jungling style as Consume being the activated ability. Consume now working on enemy champions is certainly interesting, and it's a nice extra combat tool that I'd certainly take over the on-hit damage of Feed the Yeti.

The snowball roll does look like it might be a bit on the strong side with that high mobility, though I'd imagine that, while we don't see it, there's an indication at the end of the line where it's going to that will forewarn enemies and make it a less powerful ganking tool than we see it in the trailer.

The new Ice Blast is far better than I thought it would be. I was hoping for a simple AoE skillshot, something like a Karthus Q, with a 3-hit passive to stun, but what I got was certainly better than that and I think it's going to be a far better ability overall. I also love that they kept his ultimate completely intact, as it is certainly his most iconic ability.

I have to wonder if they're going to try to make Nunu still playable as both tank and AP or if he's going to be designed to be a mage jungler and that's it. I personally prefer tank Nunu with the current iteration, as a full channeled ultimate can still deal over 1k damage and you can still be somewhat threatening, but you're also incredibly difficult to kill. Overall, I really love how the Nunu rework looks from the trailer and I'm excited to finally get my hands on this thing in the next couple of days on the PBE.

The final thing I wanted to talk about was lore. Necrit did a video talking about the lore of Nunu, which has already been released. Nunu is a young boy searching for his mother who was taken in by the Frostguard (Lissandra and the Watchers) and questioned about his mother's songs. He remembered one that allowed him to control the last yeti, who was guarding what Necrit guesses was a world rune, and in doing so, he absorbed the power of the rune. You can read the full lore story here: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/champion/nunu/ or watch the video linked above of Necrit reading it for you, like I did. His story is certainly interesting, and if the boy really is infused with the power of a world rune that lets him control the yeti, he is likely one of the more powerful champions in League from a lore perspective now. The World Runes are basically the things that hold the world of Runeterra together, and Ryze would say that one of them being in the hands of a child is far too risky. But I don't think so. Kid just wants to have fun with his yeti and find his mom.