My poor, sad mummy

I've been an amumu main since... well, forever.

Ever since they lowered his W damage and gave him his new passive, he feels like he just goes further and further downhill.

He doesn't have the tank stats to keep up with other tanks. He doesn't have the damage to keep up with other tanks (lul @ tank damage), or bruisers, or assassins, and he doesn't have the clear speed to compete with any early game champs, nor does he have the scaling to compete with mid/late game champs.

Amumu doesn't have a real "power spike," nor does he have a real "tank spike."

His core build typically consists of , all of which are mediocre for survivability, and pretty lackluster with his kit in terms of damage output.

With the right comp around him, he can really shine through his passive on-hit procs - but your team has to be heavy on AP. With a pretty even damage profile, it seems like his kit is virtually wasted on half of your team.

I remember times where I could gank, and people would flash away from me because my W + E damage was meaningful and threatening. Nowadays, Amumu is largely ignorable and amounts to little more than an ult-bot.

Granted, in bronze and low silver, that ultimate is EXTREMELY effective, because nobody knows how to position in fights. But once you reach mid-silver, gold, high gold (highest I've gotten was plat promos), people don't bunch up like that anymore. Fights happen from many different angles. Its not just a 5v5 death ball anymore.

Now, I'll be the first to say that JUST before the nerfs to his W damage, amumu was pretty broken. His W damage nerfs were not completely unjustified - but I do think he got hit a little hard.

What I propose is to re-work his W to make it so the longer you stand in it, the more damage it does - up to a cap. It would start out doing even less damage than it does now, maybe like .5% or something - but for every tick, it ramps up .5% or something.

So if you stand in his W for 4 seconds, you take .5% of your max health, then 1%, then 1.5%, then 2%, then 2.5% and so forth. Up to a cap of like 4.5% or something, idk. I'm not a game designer. Don't concentrate on the numbers, concentrate on the concept.

The general idea is that it'd be lower to start, but if you hang around, it starts to dump truck you. So you have to make a decision to either figure out a way to get away from him, or turn and fight him. you can't just walk next to amumu all the way down the lane and be like "well I guess i'm taking a rather minuscule and irritating amount of damage right now, but I'm fine because its amumu and there's no way he's gonna kill me, so whatever."

This works because amumu has no real way of sticking to folks unless he builds sub-optimal boots or non-tank items. And Amumu NEEEEEEDS tank items, otherwise he's squishy as hell. His base stats aren't up to par with other tanks. (or at least it feels that way) So he's not just going to 1v1 duel anybody, that's not amumu's thing. But if my positioning is good, I should be rewarded for that. If I get into bot lane for a gank, and I've positioned myself in such a way that they're in my W for 4, 5, 6 seconds... that should mean something. It shouldn't just be an ignorable source of damage that nobody cares about that MIGHT get a kill if someone barely got away.

Beyond his W, everything else feels fine... he just has no real reliable way to deal a threatening amount of damage. He relies entirely on his team following up on a well-timed ultimate. That's it. That's his whole deal. He's an extremely binary champion. Q, R, E, W, Auto whoever you can. That's it. There is no other way to play him. And once you do that, your job is done and you're basically worthless until your ultimate comes off cooldown again.

I really liked the way they re-worked Rammus. They kept his core concept intact while giving him some form of skill expression. They did a similar thing with Xin Zhao, they turned him from a braindead auto-attacking bot into a braindead auto-attacking bot with a nifty new W and a projectile shield. All jokes aside, it added some depth to xin's playstyle that wasn't there before.

I'd really like to see something similar done to my favorite mummy.

In the interim though, he needs some QOL buffs to his W so he can keep pace with other junglers at higher elos. Because right now, he's really only effective in bronze and silver, and since last season I've become a gold player. In my experience so far in Gold, Amumu just doesn't work. People know his trick. And he only has one.