Nunu & Willump

Nunu is an objective and utility jungler. Consume devours a minion or a monster for heavy damage and returns health, which gives him a clear with no attrition and, more importantly, an unofficial second Smite on dragon and Baron. Ice Blast hits at range and slows hard, so his ganks land even against an opponent who saw him coming.

Blood Boil targets an ally as well as himself and turns a carry who is already ahead into an unsolvable problem. On the other side of the ledger, he has almost no damage of his own outside his ultimate and loses most of the jungle duels on this roster. He's a champion who plays for other people. If you want a personal kill count, look elsewhere.

Objective control is his whole argument. Between Smite and Consume you can steal a dragon with a margin nobody else has, and force the enemy team to never start an objective without vision on you. Add a fast, potion-free camp clear, high base movement speed, and a slow that makes every gank connect.

The problem is everything else. He doesn't win an honest jungle duel, he has no real lockdown, and Absolute Zero is a stationary channel that the first stun in the game cancels. Ice Blast burns mana quickly if you treat it as a poke tool. And an enemy team that keeps vision in your jungle sharply reduces how much you can actually steal from them.

Your first jungle pass should be a full one. Consume returns enough health to chain camps without going home, so don't waste that time. Aim for an early back for your jungle item, then set river vision before you even think about a gank.

When you do gank, come from the side where the slow hurts most, which means from behind or across the flank, never straight down the river. Fire Ice Blast the moment your target commits to a minion, not before, because slow them early and they simply walk out. And lean on the Visionary passive, which makes an ability free after a run of attacks, so you don't arrive in a lane with an empty mana bar.

The first real spike is Absolute Zero, less for the damage than for what it forces. The slow applied during the channel shuts down an entire retreat even if you get interrupted. A Nunu who fires his ultimate into a jungle skirmish often changes the result while dealing nothing at all.

After that you scale through utility items, not ratios. Rylai's Crystal Scepter makes every hit permanent, Spirit of the Ancient Golem covers his early fragility. Your real spike, though, is the first contested dragon: that's where you convert the kit into a team advantage, and an enemy team that loses two objectives to you stops daring to start them at all.

Blood Boil is your most important decision in any fight. Put it on whichever carry has the most items, right at the opening, and recast it the second it comes back. It isn't glamorous, it's what wins you games: a carry with surplus attack and movement speed survives a whole fight.

Spend Ice Blast on whoever is trying to reach that carry, not on whoever is lowest. As for Absolute Zero, forget the fantasy of detonating it in the middle of five people. Cast it from behind a wall, out of a brush, or immediately after your team lands a lockdown. Even cancelled, the slow it applies while channelling is worth the mana.