Wild Rift Nunu & Willump build guide: Best runes, items, tips and more

Patch 2.4 of League of Legends: Wild Rift brought lots of changes around its metagame, with the introduction of its champion ban system, a new Wild Pass with exclusive rewards, and four new champions.

The first of these arrived with the Rise of the Sentinels event, with the good looking, high flying Akshan making his way into the Rift, while a mysterious character from the Shadow Isles emerged to take over the world, with the addition of the Chain Warden, Thresh.

As part of the new Frost and Flame event, the Rift is now prepared for the debut of a pair of good friends coming right from the icy Freljord. So this time, we will introduce you to the little Nunu and his magical yeti Willump, the last of the champions available in patch 2.4 together with the vengeful Brand.

Nunu & Willump’s active and passive abilities

With their passive, Call of the Freljord, Nunu increases the attack speed and movement speed of Willump and a nearby ally and causes Willump's basic attacks to damage enemies around the target.

Let's move on to their active skills:

• Consume: Willump takes a bite out of a minion, monster, or enemy champion, dealing damage and healing himself.
• Biggest Snowball Ever!: Willump creates a snowball that grows in size and speed as he rolls it. The snowball damages and knocks up enemies.
• Snowball Barrage: Nunu throws multiple snowballs that damage enemies. When he's finished, Willump roots any champions or large monsters that were hit by a snowball.
• Ultimate - Absolute Zero: Nunu & Willump create a powerful blizzard in an area that slows enemies and deals massive damage at the end.

Runes and spells recommended for Nunu & Willump

The abilities and mobility of this peculiar duo allow them to be quite unpredictable, as many of their attacks are based on immobilizing, slowing and exploding the enemy in various ways, making them a dangerous enemy to face in the jungle and ambushes.

• Aftershock: Immobilizing an enemy champion grants additional armour and magic resistance, as well as unleashing a barrage of magic damage to nearby enemies.
• Weakness: Impairing the movement of enemy champions marks them for 5 seconds. While marked they take 5% increased damage.
• Hunter - Titan: Grants bonus health and tenacity with unique takedowns.
• Mastermind: Deals bonus damage to epic monsters and turrets, making her blazingly fast to take out targets.

In addition, you can also pick either Triumph or Brutal as your second rune to increase your damage input, and also Bone Plating or Adaptive Carapace for your third slot to be a little tankier.

Being exclusively a jungle, her options are more than obvious when choosing her spells:

• Flash: This allows you to have more offensive options when entering combat, in addition to serving as an escape tool.
• Smite: The Jungler's default spell. You can use its blue variation to slow down enemies and ensure kills, or its red variation in the case of going against jungles with a good offence.

The best items for Nunu & Willump

As for the objects for the Boy and his Yeti, it will be necessary to find a balance between offence and defence, providing them with a lot of resistance for individual and team battles, and always focusing on the mid and late game:

• Sunfire Aegis: Grants 500 HP, 15 Ability Haste, and its Immolate passive deals magic damage to nearby enemies. This effect can be stacked as you attack more enemies.
• Dead Man’s Plate: Grants 225 HP, 50 Armour, and whenever you move, it will build Momentum granting a max of 50 Move Speed at 100 stacks. The attacks you hit will expend all Momentum to deal bonus magic damage equal to the number of stacks.
• Spirit Visage: Increases 350 Max Health, 100% Health Regen, 45 Magic Resistance, and 10 Ability Haste. Plus, it also increases all healing, regen, and drain effects on yourself by 30%.

While his key items are well defined, you will have two options to nurture his defence, whether you want to focus on increasing your physical or magical defence, but feel free to combine both types of items for special occasions.

• Physical Defense: Plated Steelcaps with Glorious or Gargoyle Enchant, Thornmail, and Frozen Heart or Randuin’s Omen.
• Magic Defense: Mercury’s Treads with Glorious or Gargoyle Enchant, Force of Nature, and Abyssal Mask or Warmog’s Armor.

Tips for Nunu & Willump’s playstyle

Since the release of their long-awaited rework in 2018, Nunu & Willump have become one of the most indispensable elements within the jungle pool, thanks to both their flexibility when rotating between lanes, as well as their ease of cleaning monster camps with their freezing abilities.

From the beginning of the game, try to use your Biggest Snowball to ambush and advance through the jungle and towards the enemies. Besides, this snowball will be effective to clean much of the monster camps faster, allowing you to do different kinds of routes that could be harder to complete with other characters.

As you transition into the mid-game and the snow war begins, your W will become your entry permit to engage against any opponent, as this will stick them in the air for a brief moment. Once you start the fight, use your Consume to take a portion of the enemy’s HP and also summon your Snowball Barrage, to start slowing them immediately.

Whether the situation gets complicated, or the opponents are about to fall but want to escape, activate your Absolute Zero to charge their powerful ultimate. Your allies can take advantage of this to strike hard at your enemies, giving you the chance to make the final blow with your freezing explosion.

Also, in case you want to focus on doing the neutral objectives such as the drakes and the Baron, Nunu & Willump will be perfect for these tasks, thanks to their great resilience, healing capabilities, and fast attacks.

To finish this guide, we must suggest you learn to control their snowball, as it can go out of control if you don’t look around you for other enemies or walls, so take care of your surroundings to use this tool as best as you possibly can.

• Read more: Wild Rift Wild Pass Season 2: Release date, rewards, price, missions and more

Don't forget to check out more champion guides, as well as new updates through our Wild Rift dedicated section.