New Week Free champions

At 10 a week, I'm starting to get some repeat champions which is interesting. This week's selection is:

Amumu: My current favorite and best jungler (although Hecarim is very close right now). Has amazing ganks. Builds tanky. Fantastic ult with a relatively affordable CD. Slap a Sunfire Cape and Merc Treads on him and he's a little ball of death that's shockingly hard to kill. His skill shot takes some practice. It fires a lot slower than other skill shots. Generally, you want to save it until they flash and then tag them when they think they're safe. I've found playing with him actually helps me plan my angle of attack better because what I want to do is walk out towards him and trap him so he has to flash away. If you're jungling, start Tantrum not despair. It makes you tankier and deals good damage.

Annie: She's an AP Mid I haven't played much of. In the hands of good players, she's brutal because she has a spammable AoE stun. It's not nearly as big as Crescendo but 1.75 second AoE stuns are nothing to sneer at. The trick is, you have to get in a rhythm and count with her. People that are good with TF are likely going to be good with her. Oh yeah. She has a giant killer teddy bear. So that's nice.

Graves: My best ADC by a wide margin. He has a tanky passive, an escape and builds towards Bloodthirster, Black Cleaver which makes him sturdier then the Infinity Edge crowd. Having said that, he has a kind of weak mid game because he's not building non-stop AD like MF or Caitlyn. I like him a lot. Went solo mid with him last night (weird team) and did really well against Ryze. The MR buff for fighting helped me trade efficiently despite his snare mini-combo.

Janna: A very aggressive support. I don't particularly like her as she feels cumbersome. Her cyclone is tricky and her ult is of very limited niche use. That's not to say she isn't useful but I've rarely been impressed by her either when playing with her or against her.

Kayle: She's really fun. She build hybrid and once you get a Nashor's Tooth, Hextech Gunblade and Malady, she's doing a ton of damage and attacking super fast. With the right build, you'll be making a little less than two attacks per second. Each of those attacks will be doing roughly 200 physical damage, 100 magic damage and about two thirds of that in mixed damage to nearby units. Throw on top of that the armor/MR shred from her passive and it's brutal. The trick to getting REALLY good with her is her ult. She makes a teammate invulnerable for 3 seconds. Throw it at the right time and you can absolutely flip a team fight. The wrong time and you make a character who wasn't getting attacked REALLY safe.

Nautilus: Along with Alistar, he's the most CC oriented character in the game. He has a pull, auto-attack based root, pbaoe slow and a chasing aoe knockup / single target stun. The keys to remember with him are don't lead with the pull (lead with your AA to root), throw the ult at the FURTHEST enemy you can hit, and your CDs are really long so be patient with them. When fighting against him, if you see him use a couple abilities quick, that's the time to strike. With max CDR and max ranks, he can get to 6 seconds only on his Q and E and 13 seconds on his W. So strike while the iron's hot.

Ryze: An interesting champion. Ryze is all about spell spamming. You want to rush a tear of the goddess and then go nuts in lane. Farm with spells. Harass with spells. Cast spells for no reason when walking to lane. Anything you can do to get your mana pool up. Ryze tends to build tankier then other AP mids. Primarily this is a result of Rod of the Ages but it's also because his AP comes from his passive so he doesn't need to focus nearly as much on AP items. Rod of the Ages, Void Staff, Rabaddon's, Guardian Angel is a perfectly good build with him.

Udyr: An interesting jungler that I should try again. He's a "stance dancing" character who really only comes into his own in the hands of someone who can do the stance dance while still managing his mana. He also has an alternate build method where he has four skills right from the start and they have 5 ranks. But he can only ever get max ranked in 3 of them. This gives him some versatility in matches but it probably also mean you need to play him a couple times to get a feel.

Viktor: One of the four consensus "broken/unplayable" characters right now (along with Karma, Syndra and Heimerdinger). I haven't seen him played professionally in any match since I've started paying attention. On the other hand, each of the other three has gotten played at least once that I've seen in the last 3 months. Viktor's biggest problem is that he's hamstrung with a passive of questionable value. It gives him a piece of equipment that will eventually scale up (for free) to give +3 AP per level while also granting one ability a bonus. While it looks good on paper, the item is not nearly as good as a normal tier 3 item and so at full build, Viktor will remain weaker. Riot has said they're looking at it but it's a tricky balance situation.

Xin Zhao: Affectionaly known as "Win Now". He's probably the most aggressive top/jungler in the game. If you see a Xin Zhao jungler, assume he's going to be coming after you at level 1 or 2 (or both!). His abilities lend him to diving and punishing players who allow themselves to sit around at half health. He has sustain and a powerful AA steroid with CC if it hits three times. Throw on top that he shreds armor (15%) and you have a scary little package that will harass you for most of the game. He tapers off a bit later in team fights but the 3 hit stun remains a powerful option even in team fights.