Why Support Mundo Works
As I said in the podcast (Low Elo Episode 28 - Questions Answered) I finally found out where our beloved Dr. Mundo should go. He does everything that many other non-healing supports can do, and he can actually be relatively powerful without much gold. Here's the skinny on what I've been testing for my now-famous support Mundo.
What's something that supports need to have to be successful? One word- crowd control. Okay, maybe that's two words, but every support in the game has some form of it. Taric has a stun, Janna has a knock up and a slow, Soraka even has a silence, Alistar is a giant cow full of it. One big way a support supports the team in the current League of Legends meta is to apply CC to the enemy champions. Now, if you've ever gone against a support Nunu (which is pretty popular right now, and acceptable in high-level and championship play) then you know what a detriment his spammable ice ball can be to your farming AD-Carry needs.
Now take the annoyance factor from Nunu's ice ball, and multiply it by, let's say (to be conservative) ten million billion. Mundo's cleaver is the very definition of spammable. Much moreso than Nunu's iceball. Also, it does more damage (with a percentage of the enemy's health tacked on) and has a 2 second cooldown.
If you're experienced enough to understand what 'zoning' means during the laning phase, then you know what this one skill is capable of doing IF you can hit it. Heck, even if you CAN'T hit them with it, you still can force them back and zone them out. Hitting it consistently means you are about to feed your AD carry kills.
One skill does not a support make, however, so look at his others. Reduced crowd control from Burning Agony, his W (plus a token amount of damage - unless you go magic pen Mundo, but I have yet to test that as support) and the biggest flat attack damage steriod in the game with Masochism, his E. At level 5, Masochism gives a flat 100 boost to attack damage + .85 per 1% of your health that is missing. At 1% health, Mundo gets a bonus of 184.15 AD.
That amount of damage coming from a support can catch an enemy by surprise. You will get kills. Even though it is not optimal to get "kills" on a support, in almost every game I find myself in a kill or be killed situation, and if I were playing any other support, even tanky ones like Taric, Leona, or Nunu, I have no hope but to run away. With Mundo, you can just murder their face (your results may very, use with caution :)
Last but not-at-all least is the ultimate. Sadism. This is what makes Mundo a sponge, and the ultimate champion to screw with your enemies' minds. With the movespeed buff and heal you can erase all the damage that was done to you. You can make enemy Karthuses rage when their ult fails to kill you, you can get away from four man ganks bottom. It's fabulous.
Here are some tips for using Mundo's ultimate successfully.
1) NEVER FORGET - it costs 20% of your max health to cast - too many Mundo's use the Ulti as an "oh crap" button right after they've taken a bunch of burst damage. Don't do this! You're just helping them kill you!
2) USE it while running away/avoiding damage
3) Use it preemptively as a gank is coming in from your team, then go balls to the wall.
The perfect ganking situation is this- Jungler comes to bot lane (via bushes or through lane) you use your ultimate out of the enemies' vision, then charge in super fast and begin spamming your cleaver. AD carry and jungler catch up and secure the kill.
Of course this can go wrong in a thousand ways, but that's the idea.
Anyway. I am becoming a bigger and bigger believer in the power of support Mundo. If you're tired of the same old support, give him a try. I'm still experimenting with runes, masteries, and builds, but I will be back next week with a few build options, and I would love to hear any feedback you may have.
Compy | tagged league of legends, meta, mundo, support
Reader Comments (2)
Sorry, I have fallen behind in your podcasts, but just recently heard this one and saw the blog on it. In the current meta of 0 cs support, I would say that supportss need to be able to be effective and useful to their team without any items. This can include Buffs, Debuffs, heals, and CC. Since damage typically scale with items, champions like Brand, Ryze, or Mordekaiser are less optimal support champs. CC ultimately is needed on the support when the AD Carry needs extra babysitting during a teamfight because after all, let's face it - AD Carry are the biggest babies of the game. In your section about OPness, every single support champ falls in that category because they can provide so much utility for their team without any items. The Darius top/jungle, or other champs you call OP are really nothing if they had the same lack of items. Can you imagine how much you would laugh at a Darius in a teamfight that ran in with a shurelya's, heart of gold, boots, and maybe an aegis as their items?
Getting back to the topic at hand, yes Mundo definitely falls into a decent support. One other thing supports can do (Nunu actually excels at this) is do some light counterjungling to set back the enemy jungler. If you see the other jungler is heavily reliant on level 6 to gank (WW, Skarner), you can help your team out by stealing the big wraith, big golem, big wolf as much as possible. For nunu with even 1 point in consume he can do this with ease.
Ive recently started playing mundo as a support "coincidentally" cus i lagged and got randomed. I had magic pen runes and i must say the cleavers are nasty. i normally play him ad in the jungle and didnt think magic pen was a viable choice. Now my view on mundo has totally changed. i plyaed over 30 games with him as a support off tank with no aura items. What happens in team fights is i end up sitting in the middle getting ignored and land ever cleaver.