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I am a former competitive League player and current coach, theorycrafter, guide
writer and Content Manager for League of Mentoring. For three whole seasons I
focused on my competitive career as a player, before stepping down in order to
pursue a career within coaching and guide writing in 2016. I have achieved the
highest of ranks in Solo Queue, and have got the appropriate skills to educate others
within all roles. I take coaching seriously, and strive to be the best coach possible. I
thoroughly enjoy expanding my repertoire through reading books and articles - many
of which I try my best to transition into educative value for those I coach, be it whole
teams or individual players.
Singapore The Legends Circuit 2016 - Challenger Series ( GN Jungle )
SG Garena Campus League B Division 2016 - C hampion ( CCKSS Head Coach )
SG Garena Campus League A Division 2016 Season 2 - T op 8 ( ITE XD Jungle )
OMEN by HP Singapore Championships 2018 - T op 4 ( J3X eSports Head Coach )
Singapore Legends Series 2018 Spring - T op 4 ( J3X eSports Head Coach )
Globe Conquerors Manila 2018 - Singapore Qualifier - Top 3 ( Impunity Head Coach )
ABL Series Season 5 - Champions ( Skizm eSports Head Coach )
Coached all sorts of players like NA Scouting Grounds and ex-CS players
Twitter | Twitch | Y outube | A
shiary's Discord | S kizm LoL | Ashiary#2708
I decided to make a guide on jungle as one one of the fundamental problem with the
jungle role is the sheer number of people, especially among beginners, who don’t
know how to play it efficiently. I will try my best to include as much detail as I can
into this guide so that I can help aspiring, new and more advanced junglers improve
their play and potentially carry their team.
Role of Jungle
To start things off, in order to be able to jungle well, you have to understand the
basics of laning and the concept of jungling. Many people think that jungling is
comprised of clearing the camps and ganking. This is a false but common belief.
Jungling effectively means that you have to look at the map, understand how the
enemy jungler is pathing and what they are prioritising; then think about which lane
primarily needs your help, which lanes will have the biggest impact on the flow of the
game, which lanes you can pressure easily etc. Understanding the topics that this
guide will cover is essential to being able to play the jungle efficiently.
Many asked me why i picked jungle as my primary role, it’s a very interesting
question as my real life had an impact on my decision regarding which role i decided
to main. I play jungle because I like to help people in real life in various ways, or use
experience and information to help me in my daily life. So jungle fits me well since
it’s all about who can influence the game more effectively, who can better read the
opposing jungler, and lastly, which jungler can help their teammates have an easier
time in lane.
Before you continue here onwards, do remember, this will be a extensive guide and
do take your time to understand each individual part that this guide covers. I will
not be covering itemization or jungle monsters, this is something you pick up with
experience. Everything written in this guide is a general point of view, you should
always seek to adapt to each individual game.
Learning How To Jungle
If you are new to jungling you should try to play champions that don’t fully rely on
micro ability or macro understanding and are relatively easy to clear the jungle with.
Some examples of these champions are Xin Zhao, Trundle and Amumu. Once you
have a better grasp of the Jungle and you feel confident enough, I recommend
playing more difficult champions because these champions often have more tools to
interact with the game and thus, are more rewarding. I suggest this in order to create
an easier learning environment which will help you focus on how to clear efficiently,
understand how pathing works and all the important parts of jungling before
immersing yourself into champions like Nidalee, Shaco and many more that require
commitment and in depth understanding of their uniqueness and how to effectively
jungle with them. For those who don’t know which champions are junglers in League
of Legends or feel they do not want to use any basic champions or have basic
understanding of jungle, I have compiled a list of junglers base on their playstyle and
put them into categories.
Hypercarry ( 5p ) High Eco ( 4p ) Med Eco ( 2p-3p ) Low Eco ( 0-1p )
Take this list with a grain of salt, I only categorize them base on their kit, not how
they are played, I used a point system to determine in what category champions
were placed. 1 point for each damaging ability + scaling and how you build them. Do
experiment with different championse to see which champion you really like. This is
not a tier list.
Types of Junglers
I will be using Herbivore and Carnivore as an example. In league terms, Herbivores
are farm-heavy junglers while Carnivores are gank-heavy junglers. I hope you
understand the way i explain my examples or if you think there’s a better way of
doing this, feel free to let me know.
Herbivorous Junglers
TLDR; You can powerfarm but do not ignore lanes that need help early on if possible,
they are usually easy to gank, if not, showing your presence is good enough to relieve
some pressure or potentially blow a flash. Always take easy ganks if the opportunity
presents itself. Below is a wall of text containing a more detailed explanation if you
want to know more.
First, we will cover herbivore junglers, as their description states, they aim to farm
and scale as soon as possible with item spikes. Champions like Evelynn and
Shyvana are two such examples. Evelynn’s kit doesn’t have a good gap close and her
charm takes too long to proc, she also suffers from pretty low damage in the early
game. However, when she reaches level 6, she gains passive invisibility that can
make up for her early game and should proceed to abuse that invisibility to gain
massive impact in soloq with her ultimate execute as well. Shyvana’s main priority is
to secure dragon, because her passive is built around her doing so, her kit is also
weak at when it comes to ganking without dragon form. This is because any form of
CC will enable the enemy team to easily kite her. Shyvana’s midgame prowess with
Bloodrazor + Frozen Mallet combo is not to be messed with, she can shred both
tanks and carries if given the opportunity to do so.
Here’s a piece of advice; don’t think that just because you are playing a farming
jungler, that you are are allowed to ignore your laners when they require help OR
ganks. Of course you would throw me back a question “But i have weak ganking
abilities and i can’t kill them, so wouldn’t it be a waste of time?” You’re still their
teammate, remember what i said about Role of Jungle? “think about which lane
needs your help most, which lane will have most impact and which lane you can
apply pressure the easiest.” Which means, you can help your teammates by relieving
the pressure if they are in a bad matchup, to show that you are willing to stop
farming to punish any aggressive future moves they make. That will place things like
fear and doubt into the enemy minds, as they know they are prone into getting
ganked if played carelessly. For an instance, in the midlane, a Taliyah wants to push
in the lane against someone like Veigar everytime a new wave come in so she can
abuse her roaming prowess, if you can show up in midlane when taliyah goes
aggressive to do clear the wave, even though your gank potential isn’t the best, your
positioning might be. Take Evelynn for an example; She needs her charm to charge
up, so if you’re coming from the back, you are able to charge up your charm and
potentially gain a kill or at least a flash with the help of veigar’s cage. That’s it for
Herbivore Junglers.
Carnivorous Junglers
TLDR; Carnivore junglers are basically champions who deal good amount of damage
in the early game and have strong mobility. They abuse their early game strengths by
finding fights and applying pressure in order to gain advantage in the early game,
potentially gain kills to snowball the game out of control. This is the total opposite of
a Herbivore jungler.
Carnivore Junglers want to gain early game lead by abusing their early game damage
and mobility. Champions like Lee Sin, Kha’Zix and Elise are prime examples of
Carnivore junglers. I’ll use Elise as an example. She has decent damage, a gap closer
and a stun. She is also pretty mobile because of the way she itemizes for early game
as well. Elise is able to dive champions under turret due to her ability “Rappel” where
you can be untargetable and reset turret aggro after pulling off your entire combo.
The enemy did not manage to use their summoner spells due to chain cc and we
managed to kill before they are able to move. This resulted in snowballed botlane
that went out of control as repeated ganks happened after. What if you are forced to
play with passive lanes? No worries, as I said before, you are threatening even when
ganking for someone like Nasus, Veigar or a passive bot lane as you can pull off
pretty good amount of damage at level 3.
Just remember, you being strong at level 3, doesn’t mean you are able to be cocky
and start forcing fights. Pick your fights carefully, analyze who is close to you, your
escape routes if things go wrong, and where enemy reinforcement can come from.
Also a good thing to note as a Carnivore Jungler is to know who in your team that
you want to snowball to influence the game alongside you. For example; snowballing
a Leblanc would cause the game to speed up as she can deal high amounts of
damage and have high mobility to catch the enemy. This is called ‘Lane Priority’,
which I will cover later in the series.
Recommendations
Disclaimer: This is fully based on my preference and experience on the champions.
I get asked often “what champions do you recommend playing?”, I prefer macro over
micro, so using champions that are easy to pick up is my choice when approaching
jungle. I’ve made a “difficulty tier list”; it tells you the effectiveness of a champion in
that elo without considering the skill level (meaning how strong the champion is in
that elo if played at its peak). This is just based on my experience, take it with a grain
of salt as it will change over time, depending on the patches.
Xin Zhao
Xin Zhao is pretty straightforward as a jungler, he has decent clear in the jungle, he
has good damage and survivability due to his passive (he gets a bunch of hp every 3
hits) so you can guess that he won’t be lacking hp while clearing. Furthermore, he’s
one of the best champs to duel with, your high base damage, both early and
mid-game, combined with Hail of Blades makes him a fearsome fighter and not alot
of junglers are able to go toe to toe with him.
Rammus
Straightforward jungler, good jungler to pick up on to learn gank patterns, and to
show you how threatening a jungler can be. With a decent amount of movement
speed, being able to run through wards and still pull off a gank, he has good
temporary tank stats, and is a nightmare to most ad carries due to his damage return
mechanic.
Warwick
Warwick has the benefit of near infinite jungling from level 1, but lacks effective clear
speed, especially before tiamat. Unlike most meta junglers, he has very
little/conditional mobility in fights and lacks a wall jump, but makes up for it by
having built-in mobility boots on steroids. He is very beginner-friendly, as the
nuances of watching the minimap and your lanes often are covered by sound effects
and large red trails to follow whenever a fight is happening. Due to this high mobility,
Warwick has some of the strongest snowballing in the game, especially given his
role as an off-tank. He executes tower dives with ease, with massive heals when low,
baiting enemies, and damage reduction/cc on demand. He still has outplay potential,
as his movespeed is gated by your ability to dodge damage and the ability to predict
flashes from enemy players.
Rough Concept of Jungle Pathing
This section will touch on how to efficiently path in the jungle.
Junglers need to know how to keep their gold income up as well as ensuring they
keep up in exp throughout the game through farming jungle creeps efficiently. If a
jungler fails at doing this they may quickly become irrelevant to a game as they will
get outscaled by the enemy team. Effective clearing of your jungle is also very
important as every second counts. Being slow with your clear might mean that the
enemy jungler gets to top first and successfully pulls off a gank enabling the enemy
top laner to win the game.
You will have to remember that every camp except buffs and scuttle have 2m 30s
respawn time. You will also have to keep note that the timer only starts to tick when
that entire camp is cleared, for example; killing only the big wolf would not start the
timer and it will remain there for as long as you don’t kill the other 2 wolves. You will
have to try to keep note of your camp respawn timers, as this will allow you to plan
out your pathing and gank routes ahead. It might sound like a lot of work, but I will
promise you that, one day, once you mastered this, it will pay off so much that you’ll
feel stronger in the jungle. One ways of learning this is to type out the timer in your
in-game chat, for an example, you killed gromp at 2m15s , you can type out ‘445G’
which means 4.45 Gromp, but of course, try to keep track of your timers, don't just
type it out for fun. Consistently look at the chat and game timer, look at your lanes
and how to align your pathing to ur gank route as well.
Ganking in League of Legends
A topic that is hard to talk about, this takes experience and abit of knowledge if you
want to pull off successful ganks. I will list out a few of them in order in my opinion.
Wave consideration
First of all you have to look at the lane you are planning to gank. Look at the
champions health/mana bars, and the most important thing is how the wave is set,
the number of minions alive, and how it is going to affect your ganks and if your
laners are able to tank/ignore the minion wave to pull off the gank with you. It’s not
the same ganking a lane with 6-6 minions than ganking a lane where you have 2 ally
minions and 10 enemy minions since early on the game, enemy minions damage has
to be taken into consideration as it could result in a double kill for the enemy laner or
your gank will not succeed.
Gank/Countergank/Farm
After you have considered the two points mentioned above, it is time to gank. You
need to keep in mind that there is always a possibility of getting counterganked or
you and the enemy jungler will cross path whilst you are pathing towards your
intended gank. If you feel that you and your teammate may not be able to take the
2v2, what you can do is counter-gank instead. Why? When your teammate baits all
their cooldown, it’s a risk as he will have to dodge/flash some of the enemy abilities
while you wait for your chance to go in. Another option is to ward up for your laners
and just go back to your jungle and warn your laner that the jungler is near. Of
course, soloq is soloq, they might not listen, so why not spare a few seconds of your
time to sit on the bush to keep them safe and maybe you can get a kill out of it. This
can’t be taught easily, it comes with experience, some variables you have to take
note of are; which champion clears faster/gets the better leash, how he paths, and
how the lane matchup is. Everything is experience, so take your time, push your limit
and see how it goes so you can learn from it.
Timing
Before going in for a gank you should take some time to consider the kit of the
enemy champion and what abilities they may have recently used. If the laner has no
mobility, for an example, Xerath, and he does not have flash, wait until he wastes his
E, then, it's the best moment to gank. Note that summoner spells are very important
to consider when thinking about ganking a lane; if they have no flash, you can
prioritize that lane to have higher chance of getting a kill. Of course, ganking does
not always have to resulted in a kill; burning their flashes, heals or making them
weaker can help your laners feel more confident and play better, you can also come
back to the lane to gank again if the lane setup/positioning and your or your
teammate champs allows it. Just be careful, a reminder that they might have wards
set up after your initial gank, or their jungler may come to countergank. Always try to
keep this in mind, a lane with no summoners, might have their jungler to respond to a
gank that he might anticipate ( this comes with experience, as most junglers think
alike with experience, they likely to try to use the enemy mindset to their advantage
to get themselves a lead ).
Warding spots
Here are the common ward spots vs all kinds of junglers, so choose your ward spots
wisely, as some champions like zac, lee sin, jarvan, kayn, rammus and many more
will be able to make use of their kits in order to avoid some ward spots. You can also
think of where enemy would be most likely be warding, so you are able to choose a
path that avoids those wards. Having vision in the river enables you to spot many
potential ganks both from the jungler and other laners. This vision is a powerful tool
and allows you to communicate vital information to your teammates.
Objectives
After ganking, you may want to consider looking for any possible objectives you may
take. For example; you killed their top laner, both you and your top are still healthy,
you may try to shove the lane, to force a teleport, or shred the turret down, of course,
if both of you are low and you do not know where the jungler is, be cautious while
doing this as you do not want to give them 2 free kills. Successful bot ganks can
often be followed up with taking a dragon. Also a bonus tip, if the dragon is a infernal
drake, and you feel that you and your team is able to secure it easily if you pull a
gank somewhere on the bottom side of the map or mid to control the river, go ahead.
As infernal drake helps a lot. Of course this is not limited to just infernal, experience
is everything, so choose what you feel is best or test the limit of your knowledge to
see if you’re doing things right. You also have to consider smite steals, where enemy
jungler is, whether your topside might be in trouble ( getting dived or lose a turret ), to
see if it’s worth doing the dragon or take their botside turret instead of giving them
the first blood turret. As i said before, experience is the key to this.
Your Limit
You also have to know your champion limitations, sometimes you won’t be able to
2v2 because your dueling potential is weak, or your laner is not strong enough to
fight early and you need to stall a bit, this is maybe the most hard to pin down point
because it is largely based on experience more than theory, it is just hit-and-miss. For
an example, you are kha’zix and ganking for gangplank, and their duo is renekton and
elise, you might not want to fight them as it’s clear who have the better
damage/burst potential and such. So choose your decisions wisely.
These are just basics gank mindset, there is more such as considering who has lane
priority, duo queue synergy. Adapt and include those information into how you want
to approach your gank or jungle.
Cheese Ganks
Cheese ganks are ganks that may or may not work. I do not recommend you to do
any of this unless you fully understand the basics of pathing. The reason is that, after
doing the cheese and failing it, you will be in awkward position and you may not
know how to recover from it, you will also have to predict the enemy junglers pathing
and understand how they think as well. It’s like investing in stocks/shares,
sometimes you get lucky that you earn a jackpot, or most of the time, you lose
everything and don’t know what to do next. This can also help you understand that
some champions are able to do this on the enemy team, so you may save a life by
warning them.
Example of a cheese gank
This cheese is for junglers who have decent gap closer like Camille, Xin Zhao and
Jarvan which don't rely on their 3rd ability for a gank. Mana issue might be a problem
however, so watch out for that. Ganking mid with this means blowing flashes, or at
least crippling the enemy laners laning phase or even getting a kill or forcing them to
early back and lose minions. Doing this means you might have to take your blue
straight away and not wolves so you won't risk you’re blue getting stolen or
contested. Of course, cheesing bot lane is also possible.
Wolves invade, try to get a strong leash from you’re bot lane so you will be there in
time to kill them while they’re doing wolves, but remember to quickly smite the
wolves to steal them away so they won’t heal up from it. You will either be able to
burn their flash or kill them. Also remember you might be at risk of getting collapsed
by enemy mid and bot lane, so beware.
First we have to do Champion Analysis in the game to determine who are the key
factors in the game. This is important as snowballing the correct champion will
enable your team to exert more influence on the game. By doing this, you can
increase your win rate. If you have a good game plan you are able to recognize which
champions on the enemy team are high influence if ahead and take steps to
ensuring that they do not get ahead.
Champion/Matchup Analysis
First we must take a look at our team matchups in order to decide how to best path
against the enemy team or assist your own team snowball/relief pressure.
Team Dynamics
Team Compositions
Blue Side - Fiora, Sejuani, Varus, Ezreal, Lulu
Blue Side team composition seems to have 3 scaling champions, with lulu being able
to boost ezreal/varus/fiora effectiveness and negate assassination while having a
strong splitpusher/duelist and a reliable engage with varus and sejuani. Blue team
looks to force a teamfight while Fiora tries to pressure Garen to call for help and win
in numbers advantage. Able to 5v5 as well, depending who has the most resources
in the team.
Red Side - Garen, Nidalee, Leblanc, Ashe, Bard
Red Side team has only Ashe as a reliable scaling champion while Nidalee, Leblanc,
Garen has strong early-mid game spike. Bard and Ashe are useful for engaging or
disengaging with their ultimates to catch out targets from afar/zone out targets
while Nidalee and Leblanc are able to follow up with their mobility skills. Garen loses
a lot of his meaning as games on and will be most likely be in position to only delay
Fiora from taking down the side lanes.
The moment I finished Red, I ran down to Sejuani blue side and place down a ward,
hoping to meet her when she is doing her gromp or wolves, as I predicted she would
try to full clear and was hoping that i started blue so she could avoid me.
Placed down a ward to confirm that she started blue, proceed to enter jungle to
check every camp as I clear faster than Sejuani so I abused my speed clear to hunt
her down. Sejuani do not have Q at level 2 as well.
Jumped over blue buff and saw her rotating down to wolves, I proceed to abuse the
fact that i have red slow + I am in range to keep auto attacking and wait for her flash
then throw a spear and have 100% kill chance on Sejuani as I have leap and flash.
Killed Sejuani, proceed to clear her wolves. This isn’t the end as I look to abuse my
early game strength, and went to her botside jungle without wasting time on taking
scuttle or my botside camps.
Warded Red and placed a trap in her jungle, knowing that she managed to take her
red buff, I decided to counter jungle her raptors, and take my entire botside jungle as
going anywhere deeper means wasting time as she is near her turret, taking krugs
and has leveled her Q.
Now let’s wrap things up. I successfully took 2 of her camps, while she only
managed to take 4 camps. I have taken total of 10 camps on my first clear before
her wolves and gromp are up again for me to contest. I have a huge level lead that i
can abuse and invade and win any skirmishes with my teammates if they choose to
protect her.
As you can see from my preplanning, I managed to actualize my early game plan, I
was also hoping Sejuani would have a wrong read on my jungle clear so I could gain
a bonus lead by killing her. I will not talk about how I played my mid-game as
mid-game can always be changed depending on what objectives are up and what
you want to prioritized.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Should I cater to my team and pick champions that suits well with them?
Honestly, no. Reason being that even if you pick champion that suits with them, you
have to consider efficiency and comfortability as it affects your performance on the
champion. It’s better to be good at the champions you love, be it meta or off-meta,
and learn all of its mechanics and have a chance at carrying your own team.
Q. How do I practice my early game pathing?
Practice making game plans, as it influences your pathing a lot, a blind jungler will
ruin his own path as he doesn’t know what he wants. Find out what you want,
sooner or later, pathing will come to you naturally, I can not answer this question to
satisfaction as this comes with experience, refer to “The Game Plan” topic.
Q. What do I do when all lanes are pushed?
Don’t panic because you’re prone to getting invaded as well, so keep track of enemy
jungler and take ganks slowly, comes with experience.
Q. What do I do when all of my laners are losing?
Team game honestly, all you can do is to try to execute your plan and adapt, and
hopefully soloq enemy throws along the way.
` Will be updated frequently.