One Minute Freight Train Mundo

Disclaimer: Not a beginner guide. Not even a particularly fantastic guide. This guide is just Mundo grabbing some core items, frosting it with some exquisite damage, and playing aggressively, which requires good combat senses and knowing when to give and take. Also realize that Mundo is underpowered on Summoner's Rift (although he was recently buffed--his ultimate is mo betta and his cleave returns health on hit). He is of course an insane god of destruction on TT, you'll have much better luck there. Nevertheless, this guide is for Summoner's Rift, because fuck it. Sometimes you'll get outcomped and nothing can be done, but when you're money, baby...das money.

Why to play Mundo

    * His Cleaver is the most funtacular skillshot in the game. The squishy sound will fill you with glee every time it hits. On the EU servers they don't have that cleaver sound/blood particle effect, because they are godless Hollow Earth Nazi fascists.
    * His ult + no mana costs = stay on the field forever. Unlike other champs, Mundo cannot be forced to return to base for any reason, he is completely outside the regular resource system.
    * Mundo has a great movement animation. You're basically this big purple bobblehead berserker waggling across the map smacking things with a rusty cleaver.
    * Just plain sassier than a lot of other champions. Mundo will never be broken, or OP, or cheap, he's just gonna keep being cool as hell. If you die to Mundo, by God, it's because Mundo done killed you, and no stars or planets intervened to make it any other way. 

What You Need

For damage, you want attack speed and crit, due to Mundo's natural super-high attack damage from Masochism. A splash of crit boosts your damage by ridiculous. You also want a certain amount of tank factor, especially MR, due to magic damage being the highest source of burst (which removes you from the teamfight before you can deal your damage).

Summoner Spells

    * Ignite and Ghost if you play real crazy. Cleanse/Flash instead of Ignite is very legit because getting out a cc storm will let you live to use your ult and return to battle. Some combination of the above spells depending on what you see on the enemy team. Flash and Ghost is a deeply forgiving pairing for the beginning melee player. 

Cleaver

    * Never stop throwing.
    * Use as a cheap bush detection radar (it makes that squishy sound!). 

Skill Order

Prioritize Cleaver and Masochism and get 1 point in Burning Agony. Burning Agony is useful but early game the health drain is a liability under focused fire. Know when to turn off or on.

Item Build (As always, build prescriptively, not dogmatically. A good rule of thumb: If you have trouble living, focus on a tank item. If the enemy has trouble dying, focus on attack items.)

Early items:

    * Doran's Shield
    * Spirit Visage (an early visage gets you more ult, more often, and minimizes early magic damage. Mundo hates magic damage.)
    * Avarice Blade
    * Heart of Gold
    * Boots --> Merc Treads (unless it's like 5 Yis) 

Then:

    * Ghostblade (this is, to my mind, the definitive offensive Mundo item. Splash of crit, penetration, movespeed, attack speed, and cdr. Everything he needs.)
    * Randuins (Why is this so good on Mundo? Because you take a master kiter and add a move and attackspeed debuff to attackers. Nasty.)
    * Starks
    * Force of Nature against a magic heavy team
    * When in doubt buy more tank items. Starks and Ghostblade are all the damage you need, to be honest. 


The End Result

By now we are pushing 350-400 attack damage with Masochism. With Ghost, Ghostblade, and Mundo's ultimate, our movement should be approaching 600. With Merc Treads and Burning Agony, we experience little effect from most disables. We have lifesteal, MR, crits, aspeed, cooldown reduction, armor, HP, regen, movespeed, we're ballin' baby.

This Is What Happens

Mundo sees the enemy. Some tactical shit happens between now and the next part, maybe something related to your team, maybe something like knowing when to engage (Mundo doesn't like to jump in and eat a bunch of nukes, make the tank do that first). Mundo hits Ghost and Ghostblade then initiates with a cleaver. By this time he is punching an enemy to death. You should now have Burning Agony and Masochism activated. Keep them activated until everyone is dead. Alternate between Cleaver and melee as you plow through the enemy team. Like you're dancing. Cleave, whack, cleave, whack, cleave, whack, whack whack cleave. If you get burst down and Mundo is in danger of death, you glide out of combat with your fantastic CC reduction, then activate your ult. Now you go back into battle and finish killing anyone you didn't get the first time around. Thanks to your ult, you're still moving at a snappy pace. Mundo's ult is the whole point of Mundo, mechanically. He has no mana costs and with this build you have your ult up every <40 seconds, meaning the only reason you ever have to return to base is to spend 3000 gold on more items to beat the shit out of people with.

Now I want to be real with you here. This is a pretty basic guide, pretty simple item build, right. You could build him a lot of different ways and still get a good result. That's not the point. I want to impart a basic truth about Mundo, an almost religious truth. The truth is, Mundo is a state of mind.

I want you to realize that Mundo is not a champion that benefits from OP bullshit abilities, or something innate, mechanical, or materialistic. Don't come looking here for something you won't find. If you're weak in real life, if you're simpering, milquetoasty, and lack inner passion and fire, it probably won't work out. It's all about head space. You see, Mundo wants you to get mad. Mundo wants you to share his psychology. How can I describe it? All I know is that when I play Mundo, I kill everything I see. I would kill my own team if the game allowed it. Whenever I get a kill, I make a sound like some bilious ogre puking up his own tongue. The only sound my team hears over Vent from me is a phlegmatic grunt to punctuate the death of another enemy. Mundo is for aggressive, bestial, bloody-minded people and if you are not one of them, or if you cannot become one of them temporarily, don't even bother.

When I say anger, I do not mean earthly anger, like any of you could possess. I refer to divine wrath. Not so much anger as inevitable, blind justice. You must become a force that sees the enemy and pushes them back with all the efficiency and impartiality of a muscle-bound purple bulldozer. You are not an animal. Far from it. Do not believe what they say about Mundo's wild mind. You are a construction vehicle and all those little people running around in mid are the screaming rubble that you are pushing back to the edge of the screen. You see the enemy's item shop? That item shop is a pit into which you are delivering a load of Annies, Ezraels, Shens, Ashes, whatever. You are Charon of the Bulldozer, you are the humble gardener with your wheelbarrow and you pluck up little radishes with wailing heads and put them in your wheelbarrow and take them to the appointed place.

Summary

You move insanely fast, do incredibly damage, and can zoom around killing people. Congratulations, you are the hero of the beach.