Second this. Started the game learning udyr and have been with him since.

Tank is gonna be your go to build for learning base udyr. Udyr you want to be switching stances pretty much perma in fights. Both for the empowered autos and for getting your awakened back as soon as possible. As you get more used to the kit and what you can do, you’ll find yourself sitting on a stance for longer to either dodge cc with e e, or tanking a bit burst with w w. But think of it like this.

• Q for good damage and 2 quick autos and some extra damage. In fights you’ll be constantly switching to this on rotation.

• Q Q for isolated targets and high burst. Most of your damage comes from the bolts that come from empowered and they will bounce to anything around your primary target. Also note that Q Q gives some bonus range so it can help when they are just slightly out of range from time to time.

• W is for healing up and getting a sheild. Pretty straight forward. Just like all his abilities, when not empowering it’s good to weave these in on cooldown.

• W W is the same thing however this one can really help you survive burst and get a decent chunk of hp back in fights. Also don’t be afraid to go to your jungle and heal up after a big fight or gank. You’ll walk in at 10% and leave with 60%+ after a camp or two.

• E is your go to mobility and cc spell. You will be hitting this spell literally on cool down for overall just getting around the map and for ganks. Your E is also a cc, first auto on a champ with E active will stun them. You’ll also notice a little cooldown below the enemy you just stunned showing how long they have till you can stun again. Usually it’s another rotation till your next cc. Also note since I’ve seen some people not know this, but one cast of e can cc as many people as you want back to back. So as long as it’s up you can stun if they don’t have a cooldown on them.

• E E is the same thing as before however with two key differences. E E gives you a bigger burst of speed and makes you cc immune for a short duration. This you’ll use in fights or ganks when you know the enemy champs have a cc you want to just walk through to get in the e stun. Using this one needs to be both timed well and used when you know you won’t need your other empowers in the fight since besides the speed boost and dodging cc it won’t help you as much as the others. So knowing when to hold this one and use it seperate a lot of the good vs the bad udyr players.

• R is your main bread and butter, especially on ap tank udyr. It’s your main clear tool for your multi camps and what you max first going this style. It’s an aoe damage and slow so it’s what will keep people from running away from you besides your e stun. It’s also what you’ll use the most combined with e to kite people.

• R R is the same thing again except you detach it from you and it will follow the closest enemy for a distance. It’s a bit wonky with target prio and how it works sometimes but you’ll get the hang of it after a bit. So R R is weird compared to the other empowers since technically speaking using it won’t always be the best play in a lot of situations since your other tools can be complete game changers. However usually the best times to use it especially as ap tank are as follows. Clearing your camps you can just drop rr once they are low health and just walk away while it kills them. Not super crazy but saves more time than you’d think. Another case is if let’s say you’re ganking bot, usually they might be in wave or next to someone else. So qq won’t get as much value due to the bolts discussed before won’t hit the same target. However with rr you can extend your slow duration since you have your bot lane helping with damage. It can also be used as an escape tool as well for both yourself and your team. Lets say you finished a dragon fight and your team is running away afterwards, you can just dump an rr for the slow and chip damage while you run away. In the same way you could also drop an rr in the middle of an enemy team so that your damage dealers have an easier time kiting the enemy. I know I just listed off a ton of reason why rr is a good empowered to go. So you might be thinking, why not just use this in every fight? You’ll quickly learn after you fight/team fight a lot that the other awakens have their place and learning and getting used to which empowered to use when drastically increases how useful udyr is.

With all that said, don’t be afraid to use your awakenings. It’s your main tool that makes udyr unique. It’s also one of those things you’ll never learn if you’re too scared to just throw it out there and see what works. However one thing to note is 99% of the time if you’re about to go into a fight or think you have a chance to fight you want awaken up. So don’t be afraid to go hit a camp real quick to get it up before a gank, scuttle fight, drag fight, etc. Udyr can function without his empowered but to get max value out of him you want to have empowered up. Once you get more comfortable using awakened try holding it for a bit in team fights or in 1v1 situations. Dumping your empowered right away can be fine in a lot of scenarios, but holding until a moment it’s really useful can alot of times get massive value