Possessing one of the most unique skill sets in the game, Udyr is not
for everyone.  He lacks any kind of ranged threat or damage.
He has no game-changing ultimate.  He is almost entirely
reliant on jungling to provide ample gold and buffs to make him a
threat. Even with all of these strikes against him, Udyr remains one of
the dominant junglers of League of Legends. He is able to remain at
near full life, and kill relatively quickly. And while he may lack the
ranged capability of other junglers, he can close the gap very quickly
and more importantly, keep it close, unlike a lot of other heroes. When
you pick Udyr, you will bide your time until you can punch people in
the face with raw animal rage. What’s not to like?

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style="font-style: italic;">No fireballs or skill shots
here.  Only martial arts and facebreaking.

Skills

Passive – Monkey’s
Agility : Whenever you change stances, Udyr gains +3% dodge and +10%
attack speed for 5 seconds, stacking up to three times.


Well, in case you didn’t know already,
this is why Udyr jungles with relative ease and good speed. So long as
you keep switching stances, Udyr is tougher to kill and kills faster.
This is one of the best passives in the game since it will always be at
3 stacks when you are engaging people.



Tiger Stance – Udyr’s
attack speed is increased by 35/45/55/65/75% in this stance, and his
attack is split up into 3 quick strikes. Your next attack after
activation does 1.8/2.1/2.4/2.7/3 times your physical damage over 2
seconds as magic damage to the target.


Widely considered his worst stance,
Tiger is not as bad as it is made out to be. Rather, it suffers from a
few glaring problems. One is that it only triggers on hit effects on
the first hit, negating a lot of the ridiculous bonuses it would have.
Despite this, if your Madred’s Razor or Wriggle’s Lantern procs, it
will only do 166 damage instead of the 500 damage, which hurts your
jungling speed somewhat despite the increased attack speed.



The activated attack can do a large
amount of damage with only one good attack item. With a Lantern,
Manamune, and an elixir, Udyr’s Tiger strike will do about 650 magic
damage to a target over 2 seconds and you can trigger it again very
quickly. That’s nothing to laugh at. Rushing at a carry in Bear stance
and then hitting Tiger to land the damage over time hit can make them
panic and back off or, better yet, target you. You want that!



Turtle Stance – Udyr’s
attacks in this stance passively steal life and mana, but cannot
critical strike. Upon activation, Udyr gains a 60/110/160/210/260
damage shield for 5 seconds.



This stance represents part two of why
Udyr is a jungling god. This is one of the best, if not the best tank
skill in the game. You can trigger it like crazy and the damage is
calculated against your shield *after* mitigation. That means if you
build heavy defensive items, you can pretty much ignore towers and dive
into people head on as long as you’re hitting Turtle every time it’s
up. Any time you’re creeping and there aren’t any heroes around you
should be in Turtle Stance filling up your life and mana.



Bear Stance – Udyr’s
attacks in this stance will stun a target for 1 second, but he cannot
stun the same target more than once every 6 seconds (but he can stun
others during this time!). Activating this skill gives Udyr a speed
boost for a few seconds.


Maxed out, this skill gives Udyr 27%
movement for 4 seconds when activated. That’s basically a permanent
Ghost with the Golem buff or some cooldown reduction. Add in the fact
that you can hit Turtle stance in-between Bear stances and you have one
of the best reasons to love Udyr—he’s friggin’ impossible to kill and
can chase anyone down. Once you land that big bear stun, you
immediately switch stances and start laying the hurt down on the
stunned target. If there are multiple heroes around, you need to
consider what will do more for the team.  Is it worth it to
tunnel one target down? Or are you better off staying in bear, bouncing
between targets and laying on random stuns to keep them off your allies
and disrupted?



Phoenix Stance – Every
fourth attack will emit a cone of fire in front of Udyr, dealing
40/80/120/160/200 damage. Activating this stance will emit 5 pulses of
fire rapidly, dealing AoE damage to everyone near Udyr and increase his
attack damage and ability power briefly for that time.



This is the stance for putting the hurt
on groups. If there is a crowd of creeps that needs to be farmed,
Phoenix it up. If there is a big team fight and your team has a way to
keep them in place so you can get in the middle and light yourself on
fire, this is the stance to hit. The earlier you level this stance up
the faster you will clear the jungle out. It’s outstanding for clearing
smaller creep camps in seconds and killing the smaller creeps at the
larger camps without even attacking them directly.

 

No Ultimate – Udyr has
20 skill point options, but you only get 18 over the course of a game.
Inevitably, one skill will not be maxed.



Bear? No way. It’s your mobility skill, your initation, your chasing,
your everything!

Turtle? Hell, no. It’s how you stay alive under heavy burst!

Phoenix? Maybe. The AoE damage is respectable but you can go without it
and leave it at level 3.


Tiger? Maybe. When not maxed out, Tiger is only useful for busting
towers, but it still gets the job done at level 3 for that.



The decision is yours to make, however.

Jungling

Your skill build will generally go:

Phoenix/Turtle/Phoenix/Bear/Phoenix/max turtle and bear/max 3rd skill
you decide on/dump the rest.



It *is* possible to jungle with Tiger though. Tiger is a faster jungler
at first, and Tiger will get you solid burst early on once you pick up
your Madred’s/Wriggles, since those have a decent damage boost on
them.  It’s a little more tedious to farm in Tiger though, and
having your instant minion kills proc for 166 instead of 500 damage is
frustrating to say the least.



Udyr is one of those junglers that is basically forced to start on
Golem or be set back slightly. Buy a cloth armor and 5 health potions,
and immediately get into position in the grass by your Golem. 
You want to be in a position to see if your opposition rushes to your
location to place a sight ward.



If they warded it:

Back off for a second, and start on the wolves nearby, hitting your
stance of choice once during the fight. Start running towards the
wraiths, and evaluate the situation. Do they have heroes in the lanes?
Do they have a jungler, and does he have smite? Hit tab. Does he have
any creep kills yet, or is he waiting to snipe your Golem with Smite as
you’re fighting it? Can you call in someone from the top or bottom lane
to spot for you in the river or grass?

My point is--you need that golem. You might have to take a chance to
get it, if the opportunity arises. But otherwise, keep on trucking
towards those wraiths. If there still isn’t a clear shot, hit a potion,
Smite the blue wraith and hit another stance to work over the remaining
ghosts. Repeat for the Golems, hitting another potion as the first one
ends, and recall.  Now at this point, you have to go for the
Golem or the Lizard. You have an option here.



Did they place the ward
inside the grass, or just at the golem spawn point?

If the answer is the latter, you can take a chance and pull the camp
with Smite from the tall grass. It can reach the little guys, and since
you have a second level at this point, you can kill it much quicker and
efficiently by switching between Turtle and your stance of choice.
Unless they are paying keen attention to that location directly, you
will not show up on the radar and you will take the golem from right
beneath their eyes!

If it’s in the grass, take the Lizard and begin killing the respawning
rotation of Wolves/wraiths/golem. Once your second pass is done, you
can pick up boots and go for Golem regardless of the ward (it’s most
likely gone if the game has gone past the 7 minute mark) and begin
ganking.



...they didn’t do any of
this shit, Stow.

Stand next to the golem. Hit your stance on spawn, hit your potion once
you’re hit, and just go in a big circle of the map.
Golem->Wolves->Wraiths->mini
Golems->Lizard->gank/recall -> repeat is generally
the way to go.

Core Items

Wriggle’s Lantern
– One of the most efficient items in the game, it gives Udyr incredible
lifesteal in Turtle, incredible jungling speed combined with his attack
speed passive, and free wards to cover his ass or keep an eye out in
important areas over the course of the game.



Randuin’s Omen
– Udyr is always in the thick of things. Always chasing someone, always
punching people, always running around on fire… so you might as well
get this to ensure you survive those tower hits, and have an activated
ability to slow them further once you get in there. What’s scarier than
a charging pissed off bear? One that does an AoE slow once he arrives!



Force of
Nature/Banshee’s Veil – Udyr’s Turtle stance is great at
mitigating damage, but you need a solid magic resist item to make it
more manageable with your base shield. Enter these two items. The
former will be better late game when you have a massive pile of HP, and
it’ll enable you to stay in a fight forever between Turtle stance and
your new regen. The latter is good against heroes with powerful
disables, and can ensure you make it to the first target for that
critical BEAR SMASH!



One Sunfire Cape –
Udyr is beefy, but he needs more of a presence in fights. This’ll give
it to him, and makes his phoenix fire look even more ridiculous. The
health is a nice bonus!

Optional/Situational Items

Manamune –
In a world where Udyr wants to go Tiger stance to level 5, and wants to
let his allies get Golem at some point, Udyr loves Manamune. You will
never run out of mana, and over a much shorter time than most heroes,
you will have a gigantic mana pool and great physical damage as a
result.



Black Cleaver –
You will always be auto-attacking someone, and crit is often wasted on
you due to how often you’ll be in Turtle stance or doing a 1/3rd crit
from your Tiger stance. This’ll give you a large amount of damage for
Tiger’s big strike, and soften up anyone you hit for the real physical
carry on your team to rip through in a few shots, or start adding up to
some scary damage from you if you stay focused.

 

Masteries

There is a general consensus that 9 or 10 points in utility is required
to jungle with Udyr, for the longer lasting Lizard buff.  Most
will have you taking 21 defense, taking the reduced neutral damage and
physical damage masteries along the way, and then taking improved
experience and neutral buff duration along the way.



But sometimes you can’t get Lizard, or Golem. Shit happens. If you
don’t want to live your life around a red or blue buff, 8/21/1 provides
some of the fastest jungling you can ask for – with improved smite,
attack speed, and 1 point in improved Ghost or regeneration for chasing
or endurance.

Runes

Dodge yellows are a no-brainer as mana isn’t a problem for Udyr past
the early/mid game.  Scaling magic resistance blues will give
you more of a buffer until you can buy your first big magic resist
item, and the reds are honestly your call. Armor penetration will
benefit you more early, Magic penetration will benefit you more late.
Take Armor penetration if you’re going Tiger or take Magic if you’re
going Phoenix.

Summoner Spells

Smite is a necessary evil. Your other spell is up to you. If you favor
a very gank-heavy playstyle, Exhaust is wonderful on Udyr. Land a bear
stun, exhaust when it’s done, then land another bear stun. Chances are,
that person is dead twice-over. Ghost can give you an edge on runners
that Bear stance alone cannot close the gap on.

Conclusion

Udyr is a beefy tank that excels at jungling and disrupting the enemy
team. When Udyr runs head long at a person after screaming into Bear
stance, that person *will* move/panic.  Much like Garen, he is
capable of doing respectable damage with no real offensive item help.
Focus down your enemy’s squishy carries, but remember that you’re great
at messing with the enemy team trying to do the same as well! When in
doubt, hit Bear stance and punch everyone in the face. A nice little 5
man rotation of bear bitch slaps. Don’t worry guys, Udyr’s got enough
for everyone!