The jungle is one of the most dynamic and knowledge driven roles in LoL. You need to not only have a firm understanding of your own role, but also all of the other lanes and matchups so that you can properly assess where you need to be. It is the only role in the game that I can comfortably say you need to be competent at in order to get better overall: jungling forces you to actively evaluate objectives at every point in the game in order to maximize your impact on the game, a skill that carries over to every other role.
This is meant to be more of an overview and explanation instead of an actual guide, mostly because in order to jungle you need to be able to think for yourself. I can lay out the basics, but only experience can actually make you a better jungler and player.
The Basics
Jungling serves two roles. First, it takes advantage of a sizable amount of gold and experience that would otherwise go wasted, enabling a team with a jungler to have 4 fully farmed characters instead of just 3. In addition, jungling also serves to protect and utilize the two buffs in the game, Red and Blue. Your secondary role as a jungle is to maintain map control. Your job is to ensure that half of the map is a no go zone for the enemy team (provided they don’t have vision of you).
Of course, there are more camps in the jungle besides the buff camps. Wolves, wraiths, and mini golems are your main source of income. Just like laning, your goal should always be to maximize the amount of farm that you get. There are two general paths in the jungle: wolves>blue>wriaths>minigols/red>red/minigols>wraiths>wolves and wraiths>red>gank. Of course, neither route is set in stone. There are many times that doing blue then ganking at level 2 is an excellent option, and there are many times that there will be no immediate ganks available after you do red and it will be best for you to go back and kill a camp before attempting to gank. But typically, those are the 2 most common routes that we see.
Part of the reason for 2 distinct routes is the manner in which you should act with each buff. Blue is the farming buff. The mana and CDR makes spamming abilities very easy, and many junglers see drastic clear differences between having and not having blue. Red, on the other hand, is the ganking buff. The ability to proc slows on autoattacks is invaluable for converting ganks into kills. Given the popularity of Flash, Heal, mobile and/or tanky champions in lane, many times the only way you are going to be able to get a kill is by having Red buff up. The difference between what the two buffs enables you to do is very important. Of course, there will be times when you have perfect gank opportunities with Blue or none with Red (after all, Blue does make ganking easier by allowing you to do it more often). But don’t perform a level 1 Red route with the goal of staying in the jungle and farming.
The other 2 camps in the game are Dragon and Baron. The majority of the jungler's job midgame is to secure an advantage that allows his team to Dragon. The global gold it gives can be a huge advantage to whichever team is able to grab the kill.
There are a few ways to secure Dragon. The first is to simply sneak it: just solo it or duo it when the other team doesn’t have vision. It’s risky, but the payoff is quite large. Lee Sin, Warwick, and Fiddlesticks (with Blue) are among champions who are capable of soloing Dragon when they are level 5 or 6, so if you are in a game against them make sure to place an early ward to prevent this.
The slightly safer route is to wait until the enemy team is outnumbered around Dragon and move as a team in order to kill it. This can happen if one of the enemy lanes has to go back, dies, or if the enemy jungle is top lane. Typically, this occurs later in the game, when mid is ~level 8, and bottom lane and the jungle are ~6-7. Remember, Dragon has an AS debuff and deals a lot of damage, so make sure that you are healthy enough after the fight to attempt Dragon. There is no feeling worse than trying to kill Dragon only to have an enemy run in and kill you and the rest of your team because you are all too low from tanking Dragon.
The final way to secure Dragon is to try to force a fight. This means you know your team is stronger, so you attempt to make the enemy teamfight you so that you can exert your dominance, pick up a few kills, and also grab Dragon.
Baron is the raid boss of LoL. Big, hard to kill, hits like a truck. Most of the time you will need your entire team to help kill it; it gives 300 gold and a very nice global buff if your team kills it. Everyone on the team has the responsibility to make sure that baron is warded from when it spawns at 15 minutes on. Top, mid, and jungle share the responsibility early, while everyone on your team should be ready to buy and drop a ward late game in order to grant vision.
The upshot of Baron and Dragon is the importance of Smite. You need Smite. Never jungle without it, even if your champion doesnt "need" it to jungle. It makes clearing faster, and last hitting Baron or Dragon with Smite is often the difference between winning and losing the game.
It is also very helpful to type out the respawns of buffs, Baron, and Dragon into the chat so that your team is capable of moving as soon as they respawn. Buffs respawn 5 minutes after they are killed, Dragon 6, and Baron 7 (baron buff also lasts for 4 minutes, so 3 minutes after it wears off it will spawn again- useful to know if you forget when it was killed).
Learning To Jungle
In my opinion, the best champion to learn to jungle with is Warwick. Why WW? His passive makes it very unlikely to die in the jungle, which is certainly a benefit. But mostly, WW is the perfect champion to learn to jungle with because of how thoroughly mediocre his jungling is. His early ganks are pretty poor, his clear speed is pretty poor, but he is SAFE. This means that he is the perfect baseline. Everyone you play after WW will be better at 1 of the first 2 aspects, but likely much less safe. As you learn more about what it takes to jungle and the style you like to play (farming heavily or ganking heavily) you will have a very good baseline to compare too.
Runes
Runes are highly dependent on the individual jungle, however there are a few consistencies across the spectrum of junglers. Flat armor yellows and magic resistance per level blues are used on 99% of the jungles in the game. Blues can be substituted for attack speed and CDR on some champions, but in general, if you want to be able to jungle, pick those up.
The other slots are a bit more variable. Most jungles tend to use some combination or attack speed and armor pen in the red slot, while a fewer number will run flat AD.
The quintessence slot is much more varied. Movement speed, armor pen, attack speed, flat ap, and armor are all used by different junglers.
If you are interested in creating a rune page for jungles, invest in armor yellows and mr/lvl blues first. From there, look at the champion threads for whatever champions you feel you will play the most and buy those runes. Pretty much every set will be useful, if not even optimal, on more than one jungler, so you shouldn’t feel too worried about having to constantly buy runes.
Masteries
Much like runes, masteries are champ specific. But it doesn’t hurt to at least discuss what is good and what isn’t as you look to optimize your jungling. There are three basic routes to take- 21-9-0, 0-21-9, and 21-0-9. I run 21-9 on autoattackers and characters who I want to turn into carries late game, Gangplank, Lee Sin, Nocturne, ect whereas the 0-21-9 (or slight variations of it) is aimed more at characters who I am aiming to build very tanky and soak up damage like Skarner, Amumu, Shyvana, and Maokai. 21-0-9 is for buff dependent gankers like Jax and Shaco. Now, when I go 21-9 I chose to pick up bladed armor instead of health, but each are equally acceptable. I personally like the bladed armor points because that path allows me to grab flat resists and it does a very good job of reducing minion damage. But again, its personal preference. The 9 in utility in the 0-21-9 and 21-0-9 is similarly open for interpretation. You can exchange expanded mind for good hands on manaless champs, or change swiftness for meditation if you feel you need more mana regen. Once again, experiment to see what works best for the character you are playing, check the champ threads, ect. There really is no hard and fast rule.
Also: be sure that if you are running a character like GP with flash instead of exhaust, switch a point out of summoners wrath and into Butcher.
Items
The standard jungle opening used to be cloth armor and 5 health pots. This is no longer the case. Minions don’t hit as hard, and you don’t need the regen. Nowadays, the three general openings are boots+3, regrowth, and vamp scepter. Boots and vamp scepter are great for those champs who want a wriggles (boots being more aggressive, vamp more for farming) while regrowth is intended for a fast philo stone, then usually heart of gold. Of those openings, boots+3 is the safest because it gives the most regen, and movespeed in the case someone invades you, while vamp scepter is the riskiest because taking damage from any source outside of minions can spell doom for your attempts at clearing the jungle.
If you REALLY feel uncomfortable in the jungle, you can still go cloth+5, but it is really a crutch at this point and you should work to get rid of that as soon as possible. After that, the 2 typical cores for jungles are wriggles lantern or philo stone and heart of gold. Check champ guides on TL for more detailed build information or ask in the GD thread.
Routes
Already went over above, but typically if you are just starting out I recommend doing a wolves-blue-wraiths-minigols-red-wraiths-wolves route. Hit wolves first, then ask your teammates to deal damage to the wolves while you attack them, being sure to make sure that your teammates dont steal any of the last hits. Then have one of your teammates pull blue before they go to lane. Use your smite at blue and red. Always be looking at the minimap. If there are good gank opportunities, by all means break off the route and go gank. After the final wolves, go back to base and buy items and heal. Then go back to farming and looking for gank opportunities.
Actually Jungling
So now that we have all the basics out of the way, time to actually step into a hypothetical game: if you chose to learn with WW, good for you (especially since the rest of this section is being written from the perspective that you DID actually take my advise). For WW, I run 21-9-0, with runes being 8 attack speed and 1 armor pen red, 9 armor yellows, 9 mr/lvl blues, and 3 armor pen quints, flash smite for summoners. Open boots+3 and start with w. Go to your wolves, having your teammates guard your blue and the entrance to your jungle so that you can run in case the enemy team comes. At 1:35 press w. Then start hitting wolves as soon as they start. Then go to blue. W should be up around the time it spawns. Kill it, grab q. Use pots as you start to lose health (probably around wraiths and red). As for leveling abilities, I like to go WQE, R>Q>W>E. Build your Wriggles and upgrade your boots to Mercury Treads, then build a Heart of Gold, build a Spirit Visage next (starting with the Kindlegem), then a Wits End, then finish Randuins Omen. As a final item, build a Madreds Bloodrazor.
As you clear the jungle, be on the lookout for ganks. Lanes that are pushed to your tower are always good options, as it gives you a longer period of time to hit the enemy before they reach the safety of their tower. Also make sure that dragon is warded for your team. Keep 1 eye on the minimap at all times so that you are ready to react in case any one of your teammates need your help. Remember that you are the most powerful force on your team simply because you can be anywhere that your team needs. Use that to your advantage to help kill and defend towers, as well as secure dragons.
Once you hit 6 your ganks are incredibly strong. Look for opportunities, but make sure that you don’t stop farming. Remember that your main goal is to take advantage of the farm in the jungle. Kills are flashy, but they make up less in wasted time than you would think.
As you play more and more jungle, you will get better at recognizing opportunities, as well as how you can better adjust your build to take advantage of the enemy team. There is a link to the Warwick champion thread at the end of this thread, go there to learn more about WW.
Part 2: Champs, Roles, Ganking, And Warding
Who Should I Jungle?
The typical role of the modern jungle is to get decently tanky, then isolate the enemy carry in teamfights so that their damage is forced to hit you instead of the higher damage dealing members of your team. This is typically done in 2 different ways, depending on the character and build you chose to go.
Carries tend to build to fulfill the role of tanky dps: running around attacking and killing enemy carries while not dying. Basically, your goal is to build enough defense to survive the enemy team beating on you long enough to kill high prority targets. Lee Sin, GP, Shaco, Nocturne all tend to fit this mold. These jungles tend to build items like Atmog’s, Ghostblade, Wits End, and Wriggle’s Lantern: items that give a mix of durability and damage.
Support tanks rely on crowd control to draw threat and shut down enemy carries. These jungles rely less on their own damage and more on their ability to get into the enemy team and hold high priority targets in place long enough for the rest of your team to kill them. Maokai, Amumu, and Rammus all fall into this group. The typical opening for these junglers is a philosophers stone and heart of gold to try to gain a passive farm advantage, then shifting to items like Shurelias, Randuins, Frozen Heart, Abyssal Scepter in order to increase the amount of punishment they can take.
The other large distinction between jungles is how strong their early gank is. Characters like Lee Sin and Shaco have very strong ganks that allow them to get an early red buff and then try turn that into kills. Skarner and Shyvana have weaker early ganks but stronger aoe farming abilities and thus use those to clear the jungle very quickly and build up an item advantage that they can carry into midgame power. The most important thing is to just realize what the ganking potential of your character is, then play accordingly. It makes no sense, for example, to pick Shaco and then never gank, or pick Warwick and gank constantly before level 6.
When selecting your jungle, look at what your team needs. If your team is light on damage, grab a jungle that will be able to do some damage as the game wears on. At the same time, if your team has a very weak early game presence but strong late game, a jungle with a strong gank can be just the thing your team needs in order to get an early boost and start rolling. Personal style also plays into this selection as well. If you don’t’ feel comfortable playing with a carry mindset, especially since you will not be very farmed for a large portion of the game, playing support tanks are probably the way for you to go, but make sure that you warn your team first.
Ganking
Ganking is one of the most powerful tools in a jungler's arsenal. The ability to have a member of your team constantly out of sight and threatening to make a lane into an unfair fight is a very intimidating ability. That being said, not all ganks are created equal, and not all lanes are either. Knowing the power of the lane you are going to gank is just as important as knowing how strong you are.
THE NUMBER 1 RULE OF GANKING IS NEVER FEED BUFFS.
It is the golden rule. Nothing will screw over your teammate more than dying and feeding a buff, or worse double buffs, to their lane opponent.
The other important thing to remember is that ganks have a cost. The benifits are obvious. More gold, you help your lane, ect. However, they are also risky. The important thing to remember is that even if you get a kill, the other jungle and every other lane has been farming while you were off doing what you do. That means that the difference in gains between the 2 teams are not as high as some people think. It also means that constantly ganking is NOT a good way to play. Its always better to be smart about when you gank. Minimize the amount you lose when you gank, even when playing a ganking jungler. If you minimize wasted time each gank you attempt, you are free to farm and gank other lanes more often.
If you are initiating a gank just to relieve pressure on a teammate (but not actually truly going for a kill), make sure you tell your teammate so that they don’t waste valuable cooldowns or mana on a gank you are not committed too. Make sure that your teammates in lane are ready, they have everything up that they are going to need. Remember- for them, a gank is a minute long diversion from farming. For you, its twice that long, if not more. Gank too much and you will find yourself hurting for farm and levels very badly.
Warding
Before we get too far further into ganking, it is very important we step back and take a look at how Summoner’s Rift SHOULD be warded.
Blue are the wards top lane is responsible for. Typically only one of those is actually ever warded. Pink is what purple side mid is responsible for, green is for blue side mid. As a jungle you should supply one of those wards, your mid should supply the other. Red is what your support is responsible for, and orange is also the responsibility of the support, but generally only 1 of the bottom bushes will actually ever be warded at one time. Black wards are the responsibility of the entire team. If they aren’t warded, SOMEONE needs to be on their way to ward it (after 15 minutes for baron of course). What does this mean for the jungle? Well, apart from introducing a bit more responsibility on your shoulders (drag, baron, and a mid ward) we also see that ganking is a pain in the ass nowadays.
These are all the gank routes for a blue side jungle, represented as black arrows. You will note that every route except for straight down the lane *SHOULD* all be warded. Luckily for us, they rarely are. Typically, only one of the blue wards is ever in use. That leaves 2 gank paths, down the lane and the dotted path for the river ward, or down the lane and through river if the tribush is warded.
Mid is a bit more difficult. Ideally, you should always show up if you cross into the river. However, mids have been slow to actually begin to ward. This means that there is a good chance that the pink wards wont actually be in the game, and if they are, your mid will see them as they are placed and can warn appropriately. But that is where the easy ganks end.
Bottom lane is an abomination for jungles. Not only is it the hardest to gank in terms of fights (a 3v2 is much less in the favor of the 3 than a 2v1 is in the favor of the 2) but it is also the single lane most likely to actually have the wards shown in the picture placed. That means you either have to rely on bot lane being stupid and not realizing you are coming, or just beast your way down the lane and hope that you can get into a bush that hasnt been warded (ie the orange dots arent actually there). But even if you can get there, 3v2 fights are very iffy, and the chances you actually convert a gank are pretty low simply because of how much utility bot lanes tend to have. Because of this, it generally isnt a good idea to spend a lot of energy ganking bot lane, if there is a perfect opportunity take it, but spend most of your focus on mid and top. This doesnt mean ignore them completely, as just showing your face bot can be a powerful tool that reminds the lane that they dont have free reign. But just remember that if you ARE spotted, the enemy knows that top and mid can push as hard as they want, and the enemy jungle can go into your top jungle or gank top and mid with impunity.
Actually Ganking
The actual process of a gank is highly champ dependent. WW ganks are very different from say, a Shaco gank. However, there are a few general truths that you want to keep in mind when you gank.
First, red buff is God. As I stated earlier in the guide, red buff is the ganking tool. If the enemy survives the initial burst of your damage and your teammates, red buff often makes the difference between the enemy getting away with a sliver of health and dying. Because of this, always make sure you apply red as soon as possible. This means making ABSOLUTELY sure to drop an autoattack before you start chaining your abilities together, especially now that red buff no longer applies on single target spells.
Secondly, make sure you and the teammate whose lane you are ganking are on the same page. In an ideal case, your teammate wants to bait his opponent into trading. This has a few goals. First, it encourages the lane to be a bit more static. It also puts a bit more damage on the enemy, which helps the whole killing thing. In a best case scenario, the enemy will also waste a spell on your teammate, which is very good because it is one less ability that can potentially kill you. If that spell was a root, snare, or stun, all the better. The overall goal is to have the enemy feel they are in a point of no return: they are committed to that exchange, so they will be more extended and react more slowly to your appearance.
If a trade isnt possible, try to get your teammate to drop his cc on the enemy as an opening. It cuts down on the amount of time the enemy has to run from you before you hit them. On the other hand, some jungles are excellent initiators, WW or Maokai. In this case, you want to be in a position to engage with your cc or follow up their cc with yours, but make sure that your teammate knows not to stack their cc on top of yours, wait till each runs to ALMOST full duration to maximize the amount of immobility, overlapping slightly to prevent the enemy any chance of escaping. That means that if they initiate, you should wait until theirs just about runs out before you drop your cc. Also important to note is that it is generally a good idea to hold onto skillshot cc. Missing it can ruin the gank, while having the opportunity to get closer, or applying a slow such as red buff or exhaust can greatly increase the chances of successfully landing the cc.
ONCE AGAIN, NO MATTER WHAT, DO NOT FEED BUFFS. If it looks like the enemy could get away, dont do something stupid that puts your buffs at risk. It is nowhere near worth it.
Other than those basic guidelines, each jungle is pretty different when it comes to which abilities to use and how effective they are at ganking. Broken record- check the champ threads or GD.
Jungle Guide Part 3: Advanced Jungling, Counterjungling, More Info.
Counterjungling
Counterjungling is one of the most misunderstood aspects of LoL. People tend to have the belief that counterjungling successfully is always good, which could not be further from the truth. Think about counterjungling like dropping or rushing DTs in Starcraft. Even if you manage to do a lot of damage, you always have to look at what you gave up for that opportunity. In LoL, the currency you lose is time. You have to cross river, go into jungle, and then kill a camp (make sure to leave a small creep so the camp doesnt respawn until the enemy resets it) then walk BACK across river. All the while keeping an eye on the minimap to make sure that you aren’t about to get caught and killed (i.e. all of a sudden both lanes near you disappear heading back into towards their tower is a good indication you have been spotted). Most of the time, this means that you just about give up any advantage over the enemy jungle you gained simply because of the time you had to spend traveling.
That being said, that does not mean you should never counterjungle. The most effective counterjungling occurs at level 1: gather your team, go steal a camp and a buff from the enemy jungle. It is the biggest blow you can actually deal to the enemy from counterjungling, and the least risky in terms of you being isolated and killed, but it does pose the risk of having the enemy team counterjunge YOU, and it also can force your lanes to miss cs, putting them at a early disadvantage. Again, weight the risk versus the reward.
After that though, counterjungling gets to be a bit more risky, and much less effective. I generally advise against counterjungling in your first clear save for a specific circumstance. Go about your business in jungle and do your best to get ahead by killing creeps quickly. After you get boots and there are more wards on the map, you are a bit freer to counterjungle. Typically the only small cams you are going to be able to steal are wraiths and golems, just because the others are so deep in enemy territory. On the other hand, moving as a team to secure enemy buffs is a VERY effective way to counterjungle and gimp the enemy team. Blue buff typically respawns at around 7:15- 7:20. If you can, try to get your team to move together and steal it before the enemy can take it for themselves. You NEED your team to react, however, and if they do not, don’t try to run in and interrupt a buff transfer all by yourself.
I mentioned earlier that there was a specific circumstance where you actually CAN counterjungle in your first clear. That is by actually DEDICATING yourself to it. From the start of the game, have a plan that involves invading by yourself and stealing creeps. There are a few considerations, however. You should be a character that can either 1v1 exceptionally well if you are caught (Lee Sin) or can run away (Shaco). Remember that counterjungling is a risk though. If you aim to counterjungle and fail, you will be behind the rest of the game. Even if you succeed, remember that creeps respawn very quickly. The enemey jungle will be a bit behind, but they will be able to catch up very quickly. Try to use the time you create to gank, or pass on the information to your team that they should be safe to push for a bit longer than they normally could.
Buff Transfers
A very common practice that has emerged recently is the idea of transferring buffs to carries. Early game, this typically entails giving second or third Blue spawn to your mana based AP carry, while late game this means giving Red buff to your ranged AD carry.
It is very important to understand why this is done before you do it (NEVER be a sheep, understand why things are done before you copy others). Red is transferred simply because a lot of AD ranged carries tend not to have slows, and Red buff on autoattacks with that slow makes AD carries very potent, not to mention the damage increase that scales better on characters with higher attack speed. Red does give a diminishing slow on ranged attackers, however. There are times when red is more effective on others, however. For example, Shyvana makes great use of Red because of her ability to chase down and kill enemy carries. Always make sure to think about who can use it best then give it to that person.
Blue is a bit more complex. Blue buff on an AP carry allows AP carries to use their abilities to clear waves quickly and then apply pressure around the map. However, most of the time low elo mids don’t understand this, so they don’t actually make full use of the buff. But that is beside the point. Blue is very helpful to mids, so it is perfectly acceptable to pass along, BUT ONLY AS SOON AS YOU DO NOT NEED IT YOURSELF (ie, if you are behind and need it to power farm).
Buffs are YOURS as the jungle. The trade off you face as a jungle is that you give up a very steady income in order to free up 3 full lanes for others. Of course, this means that you need to do your best to maximize what little gold income you get. For example, jungle gets blue buff the first go round so that they can make use of the CDR and mana regen to get through the first clear quickly. If you still need it after that first clear (ie you get behind because of a failed gank, someone counterjungles and kills you, ect) it is perfectly acceptable to take the next blue spawn as well so that you can use the clear speed it gives in order to catch up. Buffs always belong on whoever can use them the best. If you can use it better than your mid, take it. Just be ready to get an earful. Ideally your goal should be to have the freedom to pass blue along, but if you need it, take it.
Nonstandard Jungles
Personally, one of the most interesting aspects of jungling is the ability to use different champions effectively in jungle as you improve. One of my favorite nonstandard jungles is TF, I also love messing around with Leona, saintvicious is well known for his hard random jungling, and he often messes around with stuff like jungle Rumble and Blitzcrank. As you improve in jungle, keep an open mind. Pretty much every character has something that would make them a useful jungle. Drop armor runes on them and see what happens. Every popular pick was a troll pick at some point, perhaps you can find the next op. Just make sure you only experiment with people who wont report you .
Any guide for a jungle champion will tell you the rune set up, masteries, and item build you should be using. It will also tell you the path you should take, how many times you need blue, and whether or not you can go into the enemy jungle.
What it WONT tell you is what to do if you get screwed over, either in champion select or as the game unfolds. That’s what I am going to try to spend my 6k post trying to explain.
Now, everything described below is intended for a solo q format. Arranged 5 differs because you are able to better coordinate with your team, which allows you more freedom when picking and playing. Solo q is a crapshoot. Play it as such.
Getting Counterpicked
For some reason counterpicking junglers is one of the least talked about, and least thought about, part of picking a team. While not on the level of, say, picking your top, a jungle counterpick can certainly hit just as hard (and is about as easy) as a mid counterpick, and in many cases much more effective than trying to counterpick a bot lane.
There are generally 2 ways to counterpick a jungle: speed and power.
Speed is easy to grasp. It SUCKS to try to run WW against a competent Shyvana or Udyr. Whoever can clear jungle spawns will have an innate advantage in jungle, just like not having mana creates an innate advantage in lane. While some matchups, like the one listed above, are easy to grasp, others are not.
Just being faster doesn’t really mean that much. It is the degree that matters. Mundo will clear slightly faster than Shyvana, but because both are very quick, you cannot really take advantage of your speed early on. How early in the match you are is another big factor when looking at speed. Nocturne, for example, will speed up considerably as he gains levels in his q. Skarner, on the other hand, is slowed because of his mana constraints. These factors have a huge influence on how much jungle control you can have as the game goes on.
Power gets to be a little more tricky. It is much harder to correctly grasp the relative power of one champion to another because of how much effect builds have. A Lee Sin with boots is very different from a Lee Sin with a dorans blade, for example. Power is also generated through leveling and farm. If you are behind in levels or farm, even if you are playing a champion with greater 1v1 power, you will probably die.
An important thing to note about power, however, is that while speed is a passive benefit and can be used as such (i.e., taking your creeps simply because you cannot get to a camp in time) trying to counterpick someone through sheer power means that you have to actually find them in the jungle and try to bait a fight. While the gain can be higher (getting kills and completely shutting someone out of the game) it is also much riskier: instead of being able to sneak around, you directly expose yourself to the enemy team.
How can I tell if I just got counterpicked:
This can actually be a bit difficult. Not only does it vary based on the champions selected, it also involves being able to discern the mindset of the opposing player. For example, you don’t know if a Lee Sin has exhaust because he intends to find you in your jungle and kill you, or if he intends to gank the everliving hell out of your lanes. One has direct relevance to the way you need to play out your game. The other is someone else’s problem.
That being said, the general rule of thumb I would advise would be to always assume that they are gunning to take you out. Trust me, you would rather play under that assumption and be wrong than be wandering to your red, only to find a Shaco with a JITB sitting in the bush. It’s not fun (unless YOU are the Shaco. In which case it is VERY fun).
I think I just got counterpicked. What do?
Stage 1: Items
If you are scared of getting countered, stop and think when you buy your items. If the enemy team has a Lee Sin or a Shaco, it is probably a bad idea to open Vamp Scepter. Grab boots+3, or if you are feeling very scared, go cloth+5. It isn’t efficient, but efficiency doenst mean squat if you are dead. This is the case for any time you are going to be fighting 1v1, even if you are the stronger one. Things don’t always go according to plan. That’s why pots rock. (Unless, of course, you are going for a dorans blade cheese. But that’s a completely different story)
It’s harder to itemize if someone is faster than you and going to be trying to invade, mostly because you really cant itemize speed. Just get what you normally do. But remember, they will be in your jungle, which means you may have to fight them, so re-read the paragraph above about items to get.
Stage 2: Go on the offensive
One of my biggest pet peeves in LoL is playing out a game intending to let an enemy team do exactly what they want to do, but attempting to minimize the damage. I think this is a horrible way to play. In my opinion, its much better to make sure they cant do what they want to do in the first place. Or, in this case, make it so that letting the enemy do what they want isn’t going to hurt you.
My favorite thing to do when playing a weaker jungle is to jack the enemy red (or blue if they start at red) at level 1, with your entire team. Why? Because it works. Provided you can get your team to move together, it is low risk. And if you are able to pull it off, the worst that can happen to you from that point on in the initial jungle phase (i.e. before first back) is that you are going to be equal with the stronger jungle in terms of exp and gold. If I am WW and take an Udyr’s red, even if he gets my red after he does his blue, we are going to be even. And if he decides not to invade? Well, then I have 2 red buffs, am ahead of him, and on a fast track to level 6.
Now, invading is always risky. You need to make sure your team moves together. You always want to ensure that you aren’t seen by the enemy until YOU want to bee seen. You also want to be careful when invading against teams with strong level one fights. Best way to do that is to assume that they are invading your stuff and go where they aren’t. Which can be tricky. But most of the time level one teams prefer to be on the offensive (Blitzcrank, for example) than being on the defensive. Just make sure that you always move as a group so that if you are engaged on, hopefully you can either escape or make it an even trade.
Sometimes this strategy backfires. But most of the time, if you can do it properly, you will be just fine.
Also: make sure to brief your team. If you expect the enemy to be in your jungle, make sure your team is ready to move at the sight of an enemy. Counterjungling, just like drops or a DT rush in BW, is a risky strategy. It takes time out away from the enemy, but they are attempting to make sure that it hurts you more than it hurts them. If you can turn this on them, you come out ahead. It doesnt even mean getting a kill: just chasing them off before they can do any damage will put you significantly ahead.
Stage 3: Bribe someone to ward for you.
Pretty simple. The easiest way to shut down getting counter jungled is to ward.
Blue side: Have your support drop a ward at your wraiths (lower pink) and at the upper red. Congratulations! You have just completely protected your own jungle, as well as covered every gank path for the purple side jungler to get to bot lane.
Purple side: This is a bit more difficult because you will be hard pressed to convince your top to buy a ward for you, or for your support to drop 2 wards top. The best thing that you can do is have someone drop a ward at either the upper pink or upper green. You wont be able to tell if the enemy jungle enters if they go up through top side, but you will at least know your wraiths are safe and that you have a safe escape path to get back to your solo mid for backup.
Stage 4: Get to the point you picked the character for
This is pretty simple. If you picked a slow character, its most likely because they get stronger as they level (Shen, WW, GP). Your primary goal is to farm your ass off till you hit that point. If you can hit a gank and get some kill exp or lane farm, all the better. But your goal is to hit that point as soon as you can. Everything you do should be geared toward making that come faster.
If you picked a character who is weaker early on, simply get enough levels and farm to ensure you wont die in a 1v1 fight, or can at least survive long enough for help to arrive.
Stage Infinity: Constantly evaluate your own strength and speed relative to your opponent’s.
Always remember that just because you started off weaker than they did, it does not mean that you will always be weaker. As soon as you can, look to turn on them. If you become faster, jack wraiths on your way to (or from) a gank mid. If they keep invading you but you are stronger (or know that you can count on your team for help) fight them.
Unfortunately, I cannot tell you when this happens. Only experience will tell you when this starts to happen. Best I can do is just tell you to try, fail a bunch, and eventually you will learn.
Playing from behind: losing jungle control
So that is dealing with getting counterpicked and playing it off so as not to get super far behind. But what happens when you DO get boned.
I am not going to lie. This is, by far, the worst feeling in LoL. There is nothing as depressing as losing all jungle control and having the enemy team wander into your jungle any time because they know they have nothing to fear. They kill you, take your buffs, and your team is constantly blaming you for failing really hard. It sucks. Its also one of the hardest things to come back from. That’s why you want to be proactive to prevent it from getting worse.
Lets pretend you get behind. The enemy jungle is able to clear the entirety of your red side. Or worse, you get killed in your own jungle. The first thing that you MUST do is take steps to make sure it does not get any worse.
First, make sure that you ward the entrances to your jungle. If you go back up to the map above, you will notice that ideally, every lane should cover your entrances for you. Make sure you get them to do so. Beg if you have to. Buy a ward and plop it at whatever entrance is unwarded.
The effect of this is two-fold. First, it lets you farm in peace without having to worry about getting jumped, which means you can to catch up by cutting little things from your build. Buying 1 less potion, staying in jungle a little bit longer at less than full health in order to get an extra camp before the enemy jungle steals it. Little things that will let you catch back up. The second reason is because it gives you a good idea of where the enemy is at all times, which means if you see them enter your jungle, you can kill them, which is just about the fastest way you can catch back up.
Besides warding, make sure you get as much farm as you can. This means farm all the camps everywhere. Look for farm opportunities when your laners leave. You need all the help you can get to try to force your way back into the game.
Lastly, buy smart. Junglers already need to be smart with how they spend gold because of how little they get relative to lanes. If you are behind, spend smarter. Try to get Gp10 and extend the game. Don’t go for damage (which is expensive); go for tankiness (which isn’t). Even if you can’t kill people, at least you will stop dying. If you can come back and stretch the game out long enough, then you can buy damage. But your primary goal is to make sure that the game continues long enough for you to cancel out your deficit.
How to avoid this situation entirely
Simple: pick smart. Don’t deliberately pick into bad match ups. If they pick a Shyvana, stay away from GP or WW, go with Udyr, Mundo, Skarner, even Nocturne is fast enough at early levels to prevent falling behind very badly.
The best way to make counterjungling have no effect is to just keep your own jungle clear. If you pick someone who is fast enough to do that, you will come out ahead because of wasted travel time.
If the enemy picks a power hero, don’t pick someone frail like Amumu. Pick a strong, speedy clearer who will be able to quickly scale past the damage from the enemy jungle. This means doing something like picking Shyvana or Udyr against a Lee Sin or Shaco.
If, on the other hand, you are picking first, try to get heroes that aren’t easily countered. Shyv, Udyr, and Mundo are probably the best at this: fast clear, and good 1v1.
Picking smart does limit your options. But it doesn’t mean that you cant ever play some champions. You just need to be sure that your team is going to be able to help you, or that the enemy jungle is going to be unable to
Is it worth ganking top when your top is way behind? I remember hearing that often times when one top is losing hard, it becomes not worth it to try to gank top because it almost always will not result in a kill. I might be wrong but that's how I've been playing. Anyways, nice guide. It covers a lot of the basics and gives other people a lot of information on how to jungle ^_^ Thanks!
On May 03 2012 12:45 wussleeQ wrote: Is it worth ganking top when your top is way behind? I remember hearing that often times when one top is losing hard, it becomes not worth it to try to gank top because it almost always will not result in a kill. I might be wrong but that's how I've been playing
Basically the answer comes down to wether or not you think ganking is going to actually help turn the lane. Even if you dont get the kill, it can be worth ganking if you free your top up to farm and become less useless later on.
But if ganking isnt actually going to help your top be anything less than dead weight, throw the lane away and focus on your own farm and other lanes.
On May 03 2012 12:45 wussleeQ wrote: Is it worth ganking top when your top is way behind? I remember hearing that often times when one top is losing hard, it becomes not worth it to try to gank top because it almost always will not result in a kill. I might be wrong but that's how I've been playing
Basically the answer comes down to wether or not you think ganking is going to actually help turn the lane. Even if you dont get the kill, it can be worth ganking if you free your top up to farm and become less useless later on.
But if ganking isnt actually going to help your top be anything less than dead weight, throw the lane away and focus on your own farm and other lanes.
I remember seeing a post on reddit a few months back that compared where first blood occured from a jungle gank to winrates.
Ganking top successfully gave your team a ~85% chance of winning the game, mid was ~65%, bottom lane was ~53%, statistically insignificant. The reason being that out of all the lanes, top snowballs the hardest since champions are generally melee and can get zoned insanely hard if they're behind.
If at all possible, get your mid to go up as well and 3 man gank top constantly. At minimum, get the spree gold from the top laner. Even if you can't get your top laner back into the game, at least make sure the enemy top lane can't 1v2 your team.
The other way is on purple side, give top laner your doubles every time they spawn and tell them they can take them. The amount of experience that doubles gives is pretty huge and can turn a slight disadvantage into an even lane rather quickly.
I've had a lot of trouble after the jungle remake deciding when to gank lanes. Before the remake I played a lot of Shyvana and Udyr and it just seemed like it was always obvious when to set up ganks. Now I get "flustered" a lot when I play jungle and tend to just farm. The real problem is that I'm not where I need to be when a gank opens up. Say for example that top starts pushing and I just finished wolves with wraiths and golems up. If I clear wraiths and golems, top won't be gankable. If I skip them, I end up being behind and opening myself to counterjungling.
Honestly, that's really my number one problem. Since the rework I just have trouble being in positions to make convenient ganks. I seem to just get too caught up in the super fast respawn times and don't set myself in the right trajectories to gank. Do I just abandon the jungle when a gank opens up? Or should I just farm my jungle and if a gank opens up on the side I'm on, take it? Or if I'm on one side and the enemy jungler ganks a lane then go across and counterjungle to make them pay for it a bit? That feels right, but it does result in a LOT of people bitching that I'm not ganking enough for them and "their jungle has ganked 4 times already and you never come".
TY for the guide though. I love reading jungle guides.
While it is not necessarily wrong, I think it would be worth changing " Blue buff typically respawns at around 7:15- 7:20" to "whichever buff a jungler starts at should respawn at around 7:15" especially because many of the FotM Junglers these days have no reason to start blue.
Top tier Junglers like Mundo, Shyvana, Shaco, and LeeSin are all quite common picks and almost exclusively start red. Honestly, I'd say I see a red start in atleast 25% of my games. No use trying to counter jungle blue buff at 7:15 if you know he started red buff.
I see enough sheep try to invade my Mundo's blue at 7:15, and while I honestly dont mind having more opponents waste time, I think it is kind of misleading to just say blue spawns at 7:15.
nice guide! small question: when you talked about opportunities to take dragon you didn't mention situations when top lane comes down to make it 5v4. i'm not sure if this belongs here or in a separate guide for top lane, but i've never really understood when it's good for a top laner to go down and take dragon in exchange for top tower.
On May 03 2012 15:21 danana wrote: nice guide! small question: when you talked about opportunities to take dragon you didn't mention situations when top lane comes down to make it 5v4. i'm not sure if this belongs here or in a separate guide for top lane, but i've never really understood when it's good for a top laner to go down and take dragon in exchange for top tower.
It's more of a Top lane thread question. Obviously that thread isn't up yet.
Top joins in on Dragon on multiple situations. The main one is when Top bases and Jungle is ready to take Dragon. Then your Mid/Bot collapses on Dragon as well. If either Mid or Bot are very low, it might still be a bad idea for you and your Jungler to start Dragon. If a team fight starts and one of your allies gets OHKO'd, it could easily lead to a loss of Dragon control.
Helps especially if Top has an ulti (Panth) or TP that can help him return to lane easily.
I think jungle speed is somewhat overstated as the primary attribute for counter-jungling. What really matters is positioning, mobility, and vision. If you aren't in the right location, aren't assured of your ability to escape, or don't know where the enemy jungler/laners are it isn't safe to counter-jungle. Speed only comes into the equation when you already know you have an opportunity.
As an example, level 2 ganks are highly dangerous because they leave your jungle wide open for the taking regardless of what jungler you're using and who the opposing jungler is. Pretty much any jungler can steal your other buff provided they started with their analogous buff, whether it's Warwick or Shyvana.
That said, speed and mobility can make up for bad positioning. Speed also gives you more time to do things that aren't simply farming. That makes speed very valuable for new junglers looking to move beyond simple farming, as it gives them a greater margin of error. As experienced is gained, however, its importance diminishes somewhat.
Well, prior to edditing out a section or 2 before I posted, it was 20 pages single spaced. So its likely gonna be hard to read just from the standpoint that I basically started typing and didnt actually ever bother to stop.
Imo, your ganking section needs a lot of work, because you don't really tell people how to properly assess a good gank opportunity, which angle to come in from, fog of war blindspots etc that all helps with ganking.
I know you don't have much experience with the ganking aspect of jungling, so I won't be too critical of that.
On May 03 2012 23:53 Juicyfruit wrote: Nice guide =o
Imo, your ganking section needs a lot of work, because you don't really tell people how to properly assess a good gank opportunity, which angle to come in from, fog of war blindspots etc that all helps with ganking.
I know you don't have much experience with the ganking aspect of jungling, so I won't be too critical of that.
1st, FUUUUUU
2nd, Ganking is really the single aspect of jungling that requires the most experience. There is no good way to explain to someone how to gank simply because there are so many variables, summoners, champions, wards, creep positions, map positioning, buffs, relative health, relative farm, ect. I tried to do the best I could. Realistically I would need to have hundreds of videos and such in order to properly do that section.
Take my name off of this. You butchered all of the corrections I made and didn't even bother to let me look at this "final" draft. I want no part in this. I'll release my own version elsewhere.
what to do if your team has a jungler and the enemy team doesn't? In my experience, this usually results in a 1v2 top lane, where our top lane is usually at 50-75% health, and both of the enemy top laners are near 100% health. Is it ever a good idea to gank top in this case? I can almost never find a good opportunity to gank, but then the complaints start rolling in.
On May 04 2012 00:11 BlasiuS wrote: This is surely only a problem at lower ELOs, but:
what to do if your team has a jungler and the enemy team doesn't? In my experience, this usually results in a 1v2 top lane, where our top lane is usually at 50-75% health, and both of the enemy top laners are near 100% health. Is it ever a good idea to gank top in this case? I can almost never find a good opportunity to gank, but then the complaints start rolling in.
Take every buff on the map, level up faster than should be possible, and hope to hell that your top lane is smart enough to get as many levels and farm as they can.
And no, I would avoid ganking top. You cant do anything to turn that lane into anything less than a stomp. Focus on farming and winning the other lanes.
Imo, there are two correct responses to having 1v2 top.
1) Gank top super early and force a kill there. I am talking about you taking red buff and then immediately going top while they're still level 1. If you get a kill here, great, keep coming back and kill them over and over again.
2) If you don't pull off a kill top lane, don't go back there for a while because it won't be in your favor. Shift your attention on mid-lane. Make your mid win lane hard -> he gets the leeway to 2-man gank top with you -> pick up kills -> everyone celebrates with some frosty ale.
If your top lane dies at any point then everything becomes 10x harder.
in my experience the lane will be pushed up really far and if your top mite be ahead in levels, and so will you, so sometimes 1v2 top = ez double kill if you go help
Depends on the top laner. Especially at lower Elos/levels where people's mechanics and stuff aren't too refined, a strong harass/bully laner like Pantheon won't be able to straight up 1v2 his opponents, esp. if one of them has ignite, but he can still harass them to kinda low life (one or even both), and in those cases ganks are perfectly viable once you get in those situations and if the laner gets the kills he'll just turn it into a reverse stomp.
But that really depends on multiple factors: relative skill levels, match-ups, summonners, ability to wear opponents down to make the gank/burst possible, etc.
On May 04 2012 00:35 zulu_nation8 wrote: lol@rule #2, what would TL be if the master junglers likd td and cratonz didnt make guides to educate the ignorant masses
but it still is very important. It seems like a silly thing to say, but then you probably havent played with a level 10 trying to jungle who ends up at level 2 when everyone else is level 6. Dont discount the fact that shit that seems obvious to you wasnt at some point.
is WW really a great jungler to learn with? i feel like his ult might be a crutch that could really slow how fast you learn to gank effectively and lead to some bad habits.
i learned to jungle with udyr and i don't think you're giving up much in safety at all with him and will be forced to learn the importance of proper positioning while ganking. also while you're still learning to balance between time spent farming and ganking udyr's massive advantage in clear speed will give you a lot more leeway to make mistakes budgeting your time.
WW is also cheap and can jungle without runes, which is great for starters. Plus the effectiveness of WW's gank can help to demonstrate the impact of ganks on a lane, before you have to learn how to position properly and all for something that you may have yet to witness for yourself. The fact that WW's ganks are so strong also demonstrates jungler's pressure well, where your opponents (if they turn their brains on, that is) will learn to be wary when you haven't ganked for awhile, because "his ult is probably off cd now, he could come at any moment".
On May 04 2012 00:49 chalice wrote: is WW really a great jungler to learn with? i feel like his ult might be a crutch that could really slow how fast you learn to gank effectively and lead to some bad habits.
i learned to jungle with udyr and i don't think you're giving up much in safety at all with him and will be forced to learn the importance of proper positioning while ganking. also while you're still learning to balance between time spent farming and ganking udyr's massive advantage in clear speed will give you a lot more leeway to make mistakes budgeting your time.
I dont like learning on faster jungles because it makes it really hard to go back and learn WW or GP, for example. It's much easier to learn how to go faster than to learn how to jungle slowly but effectivly after being used to zooming around.
On May 04 2012 01:04 57 Corvette wrote: Are you going to have a section about specific jungle counterpicks, or are you just going to leave that for the individual champion threads?
Champ threads. The game changes far too much for me to be able to do that sort of thing here.
One of the sections that I had to delete was a brief description of common jungle champs from back in Jan-Feb, and even THAT was too outdated to keep.
I think this guide doesn't give enough respect to "over-ganking" especially in very snowball-y lanes like top. (rarely warded early game) Sure if you just randomly show up to lanes its bad but calculated over ganking can mean you can sit back and farm later when normally you might have 3 feeding lanes.
Counterjungling section might be a bit overblown most junglers are fine against anyone and counterjungling is only really dangerous if you dont account for it, gank too much unsucessfully, or their laners are dominating yours. (m5 style, rarely happens in solo queue people dominating lanes just push and die instead of warding and stealing red)
Although honestly I feel people or at least me only know the 10% of there is to know about jungling right now.
I started counterjungling more in the sense of stealing camps and leaving one when the jungler shows himself somewhere else but even then sometimes it's needed to have presence so he can't just keep camping that lane.
Especially when you mention WW, who is my mind is one of the most gank dependent junglers. He farms everythingly slowly is one of the best gankers and is super farm dependent.
Then again counterjungling might be the best strat versus over ganking early. (if he gets kills its not tho) God damn this shit can be complicated.
On May 04 2012 02:18 Slayer91 wrote: I think this guide doesn't give enough respect to "over-ganking" especially in very snowball-y lanes like top. (rarely warded early game) Sure if you just randomly show up to lanes its bad but calculated over ganking can mean you can sit back and farm later when normally you might have 3 feeding lanes.
Counterjungling section might be a bit overblown most junglers are fine against anyone and counterjungling is only really dangerous if you dont account for it, gank too much unsucessfully, or their laners are dominating yours. (m5 style, rarely happens in solo queue people dominating lanes just push and die instead of warding and stealing red)
Although honestly I feel people or at least me only know the 10% of there is to know about jungling right now.
I started counterjungling more in the sense of stealing camps and leaving one when the jungler shows himself somewhere else but even then sometimes it's needed to have presence so he can't just keep camping that lane.
Especially when you mention WW, who is my mind is one of the most gank dependent junglers. He farms everythingly slowly is one of the best gankers and is super farm dependent.
This is all definitly true.
But the main question I started out with was: "how do I teach someone who has no idea what jungling IS how to not be dead weight?" This means that quite a bit of more advanced stuff like camping top really doesnt have a place IMO, and why a lot of what I say seems silly to anyone who knows what they are doing.
Its also why I was so heavy into explaining counterjungling and going so far as to cross post my anti counterjungling guide: its really easy to be abused when you are starting out, so the faster you realize what is going on the better off you will be.
And again, I think I speak for everyone here when I say I would rather have a jungler who keeps up in farm and levels, even at the expense of ganking, than a jungle who ganks a ton and ends up super behind. Thats the approach I took. The first is easy to fix and comes naturally with experience, the second is a fundimental flaw in someones jungling.
On May 04 2012 02:18 Slayer91 wrote: I think this guide doesn't give enough respect to "over-ganking" especially in very snowball-y lanes like top. (rarely warded early game) Sure if you just randomly show up to lanes its bad but calculated over ganking can mean you can sit back and farm later when normally you might have 3 feeding lanes.
Counterjungling section might be a bit overblown most junglers are fine against anyone and counterjungling is only really dangerous if you dont account for it, gank too much unsucessfully, or their laners are dominating yours. (m5 style, rarely happens in solo queue people dominating lanes just push and die instead of warding and stealing red)
Although honestly I feel people or at least me only know the 10% of there is to know about jungling right now.
I started counterjungling more in the sense of stealing camps and leaving one when the jungler shows himself somewhere else but even then sometimes it's needed to have presence so he can't just keep camping that lane.
Especially when you mention WW, who is my mind is one of the most gank dependent junglers. He farms everythingly slowly is one of the best gankers and is super farm dependent.
This is all definitly true.
And again, I think I speak for everyone here when I say I would rather have a jungler who keeps up in farm and levels, even at the expense of ganking, than a jungle who ganks a ton and ends up super behind. Thats the approach I took. The first is easy to fix and comes naturally with experience, the second is a fundimental flaw in someones jungling.
While it is true that I'd rather have a jungler who did nothing than a jungler who did nothing useful + is also underleveled, I I thinking over-ganking and then toning it down to squeeze out more farm is a better method to learning jungle than the opposite. I find that the more you attempt to gank, the more obvious good ganking opportunities arise.
People who recently started jungling might not see a potential gank unless the enemy is already knocking up at the tower. A good jungler might start seeing gank opportunities on mid champions who haven't even moved up to the river yet.
Not to mention, you're simply going to get way more easy wins by getting off good ganks than by afk farming the jungle.
You win more games of SC2 by 6 pooling than you do by playing macro games. It doesnt make you a better player.
Its the same as laning. You learn to last hit, THEN you learn to take advantage of stupidity. Sure, randomly getting 3 kills in lane or in jungle is gonna help you win a game, but last hitting properly or farming properly will win you many more.
And it is MUCH easier to scale back farming than it is to scale back aggression. Everything in jungling is based on timing. Buffs, camps, dragon, baron. Learn the timing of the jungle itself first, then find the gaps where you can gank. Especially when dealing with slower junglers. Its better to operate under the assumption that "imma farm first and gank when the opportunity arises" than "imma try to force stuff to happen."
The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
On May 04 2012 03:28 Juicyfruit wrote: The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
WTF? How is taking the low risk high reward path like 6-pooling?
On May 04 2012 03:28 Juicyfruit wrote: The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
WTF? How is taking the low risk high reward path like 6-pooling?
It's not about the risk to reward, it's about following a pattern and not being creative.
But I'd say afk-farming is more like low-risk low-reward.
On May 04 2012 03:28 Juicyfruit wrote: The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
WTF? How is taking the low risk high reward path like 6-pooling?
It's not about the risk to reward, it's about following a pattern and not being creative.
But I'd say afk-farming is more like low-risk low-reward.
... This is a guide to teach people HOW to do something when they dont know how. It isnt about getting "creative." Its about the basics.
And you SERIOUSLY have problems if you think that farming the jungle is low-reward. Suddenly all the shit you take from TL B about your jungling makes more sense
AFK-Farming as in just farming camps and not thinking about ganks and "AFK-farming" which is when lanes are playing smart and there's a large amount of effort time and timing going into even getting the lane to force a flash. People complain about junglers "never ganking" but when do you see competitive level junglers get more than 1-2 kills from ganks? Very rarely.
That said farming in 1400 games where nobody has any idea how to play safe versus junglers is bad play because you need to learn to take any an all opportunities because in high level play they don't come often.
And it isnt as though I'm saying never gank. I mean, multiple times I state how to gank and that you need to always look for oportunities. But establishing a good base where you learn how to farm is much more important than completely skipping farming to try to gank everywhere at once. Its easier to tone back farming than it is to tone back ganking, especially with all the pressure junglers get from lanes begging for ganks.
On May 04 2012 03:28 Juicyfruit wrote: The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
WTF? How is taking the low risk high reward path like 6-pooling?
It's not about the risk to reward, it's about following a pattern and not being creative.
But I'd say afk-farming is more like low-risk low-reward.
... This is a guide to teach people HOW to do something when they dont know how. It isnt about getting "creative." Its about the basics.
And you SERIOUSLY have problems if you think that farming the jungle is low-reward. Suddenly all the shit you take from TL B about your jungling makes more sense
Farming the jungle is low-reward. How could you possibly define it as high-reward when it's the baseline.
I will just agree to disagree with you on this one. I think it's easier to squeeze farm into your jungling pattern once you have a really good feel of what you can get out of each gank (which involves attempting more ganks than you probably should). You think the opposite.
i definitely think not farming enough is probably the biggest thing that noob junglers fail at, im sure everyone at low elo has had that jungler on their team that is useless regardless of successful ganks because they have ~40 cs at 20 minutes.
On May 04 2012 03:28 Juicyfruit wrote: The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
WTF? How is taking the low risk high reward path like 6-pooling?
It's not about the risk to reward, it's about following a pattern and not being creative.
But I'd say afk-farming is more like low-risk low-reward.
... This is a guide to teach people HOW to do something when they dont know how. It isnt about getting "creative." Its about the basics.
And you SERIOUSLY have problems if you think that farming the jungle is low-reward. Suddenly all the shit you take from TL B about your jungling makes more sense
You're making it sound like it's hard to kill jungle camps. I agree that you should be getting control of the important objectives, but aside from that it doesn't take hours of practice to kill wolves/wraiths/double golems.
Farming the jungle is low-reward. How could you possibly define it as high-reward when it's the baseline.
No, baseline is not getting any farm. i.e dying a ton, not converting when constantly ganking, ect. I have seen jungles do this. Hell, I have dont that when getting counterjungled super hard. That is the baseline. Farming above that is not the base, its GOOD.
It takes 5-minutes to learn how to farm the jungle, it's literally the single easiest part of LoL. You kill the camps, then you kill the camps again, repeat forever. This isn't like last-hitting where you can practice for hours and still need more practice, clearing and reclearing the small camps in the jungle is about as stupidly easy as anything in a video game gets.
I've had far more pain, toil, sweat, blood, and tears over dragging newbie junglers away from the small camps to gank/counter-gank/take an objective than I've ever had convincing them to farm. Farming is easy, safe, and comforting, so newbies love farming. Ganking is difficult, dangerous, and scary, so most newbies are perfectly willing to go back to farming if you tell them to.
It's still super good if you're counter-jungling since you'll never get low and can take a few skirmishes with the enemy jungler while still completing your route.
On May 04 2012 03:28 Juicyfruit wrote: The thing though is that there are tons of opportunities that ARE 100% guaranteed to turn into an advantage to your team that wouldn't occur to you if you aren't very proactive in looking for them, or ganks that you think will work but are too afraid to try because you are worried about losing valuable farming time to try them.
I'd say your method is far more akin to 6-pooling because you're just training to look for the easy and obvious ganks.
WTF? How is taking the low risk high reward path like 6-pooling?
It's not about the risk to reward, it's about following a pattern and not being creative.
But I'd say afk-farming is more like low-risk low-reward.
... This is a guide to teach people HOW to do something when they dont know how. It isnt about getting "creative." Its about the basics.
And you SERIOUSLY have problems if you think that farming the jungle is low-reward. Suddenly all the shit you take from TL B about your jungling makes more sense
You're making it sound like it's hard to kill jungle camps. I agree that you should be getting control of the important objectives, but aside from that it doesn't take hours of practice to kill wolves/wraiths/double golems.
Farming the jungle is low-reward. How could you possibly define it as high-reward when it's the baseline.
Because T_D plays an extremely selfish "SV" style jungle. The emphasis in this style is heavy farming and "fuck the lanes" mentality. There's a reason I start bitching at him for ganks - because he does not gank otherwise. In reality, the other jungler will be getting ganks off and applying a lot of pressure on the map, all while the farming jungler's team falls behind because of lack of map presence.
Enemy jungler doesn't need creep farm if he's farming champions. The only time I see staying in the jungle to farm as a good idea is if every single lane is absolutely dominating just based on sheer play and they are resistant to enemy ganks. Yes, counter jungling while the enemy jungler is ganking on the other side of the map is effective for yourself. However, if the enemy jungler gets a kill (which, let's be serious, the vast majority of players die to a lot of ganks), it completely offsets any minimal advantage you may have gotten from a creep camp or two.
That said - yes, learning timings and opportunities is extremely important, and the only way to learn invasion opportunities is to play games out and see. However, emphasis on farming heavily is not always the best because for a lot of junglers, they must gank to keep lanes from failing - not to get lanes ahead.
On May 04 2012 04:02 seRapH wrote: cloth5 is a crutch now? :|
It's still super good if you're counter-jungling since you'll never get low and can take a few skirmishes with the enemy jungler while still completing your route.
It's a crutch if you're using it to just farm your own jungle. If you're using it as a defense against being attacked in your jungle, or as a way to be aggressive yourself, it's not a terrible idea (although usually if you're being aggressive you're going to be playing a jungler who can get away with an aggressive item).
On May 04 2012 04:04 jcarlsoniv wrote: Enemy jungler doesn't need creep farm if he's farming champions. The only time I see staying in the jungle to farm as a good idea is if every single lane is absolutely dominating just based on sheer play and they are resistant to enemy ganks. Yes, counter jungling while the enemy jungler is ganking on the other side of the map is effective for yourself. However, if the enemy jungler gets a kill (which, let's be serious, the vast majority of players die to a lot of ganks), it completely offsets any minimal advantage you may have gotten from a creep camp or two.
To be fair, if the enemy appears on the other side of the map for a gank and there's no ganking opportunity on your side of the map, counter-jungling is pretty much all you can do. It's that, farm your own jungle, or run all the way across the map to arrive way to late to accomplish anything other than waste time.
If champions die to ganks it's usually their own fault. If the jungler in the enemy team getting kills perhaps your team needs to play more passively and smarter in laning phase when theres no wards. Ganking isn't an action you can do like in final fantasy, it relies on the opponent fucking up to work. There is aruguments for taking risks in ganking to help lanes but it's not a sure thing and farming is.
I've swapped roles with a top laner who played alistar because of a mistake in swapping and ganked a lot and got underfarmed died a lot in 2v2/ 3v3/4v4 fights and was a useless piece of shit in jungle by 15 minutes was lower level than the support. Theres no excuse for the enemy jungler getting fed. If you need to push and play agressive you should coordinate that with your jungler so he knows to invade a lot to distract the other jungler and zone him from one side of the lane so he can only gank from the other side.
If you know their laner has to play aggressive early then that's a definite reward in ganking that lane, (I'm looking at you pantheon) but usually there isn't one. Most people pick laners who are happy to afk farm if jungler is wasting time and play agressive when he ganks somewhere else.
i think the most important quality of a jungler is presence, even doing stuff like showing yourself near a lane is enough to relieve pressure from a losing lane. There are too many situations where if you don't put down everything you're doing to camp a lane then the game will end in 20min. Getting a kill helps the solo out a lot more than it helps you. You're a shitty jungler champion who's never gonna carry a game late like your solos/ad can. The only way junglers carry games is by ganking 5 times in 10 minutes and effectively killing the game, if you're in the mindset to farm and not "overgank" you'll forever be useless unless you're content with going 1-2-5 every game with the 3rd most farm on team. Also camping top is an essential strategy for all junglers, it's basically how you win games in solo queue.
On May 04 2012 04:12 Seuss wrote: It's a crutch if you're using it to just farm your own jungle. If you're using it as a defense against being attacked in your jungle, or as a way to be aggressive yourself, it's not a terrible idea (although usually if you're being aggressive you're going to be playing a jungler who can get away with an aggressive item).
K, make sure you let Lilballz know that next time he starts Cloth+5 on one of the several junglers he regularly starts Cloth+5 on.
On May 03 2012 12:40 Two_DoWn wrote: THE NUMBER 2 RULE OF GANKING IS NEVER SACRIFICE YOUR OWN FARM AND LEVELS BY OVER GANKING.
The single most important job that you have as a jungle is to make sure you stay viable throughout the game. Most of the time that means you have to spend a considerable amount of time farming. If your team is bitching at you for not ganking as they drop like flies in 1v1 situations, most of the time the best thing to do is just ignore them. A gank takes a LOT of time, even successful ones. The important thing to remember is that even if you get a kill, the other jungle and every other lane has been farming while you were off doing what you do. That means that the difference in gains between the 2 teams are not as high as some people think. It also means that constantly ganking is NOT a good way to play. Its always better to be smart about when you gank. Maximize the amount of time you spend farming, minimize the amount you lose when you gank. Make sure you only gank situations that have a high likelihood of success (ie a kill, forcing the enemy to base, or doing enough damage to where your lane can start to bully the enemy around). If you are initiating a gank to remind the enemy you exist and force them to back off, make sure you tell your teammate so that they don’t waste valuable cooldowns or mana on a gank you are not committed too. Make sure that your teammates in lane are ready, they have everything up that they are going to need. Remember- for them, a gank is a minute long diversion from farming. For you, its twice that long, if not more. Gank too much and you will find yourself hurting for farm and levels very badly.
The best thing about cyclohexane's age of empires 3 guide was that it was completely objective. When you look at mojo stormscout's warcraft 3 guide or the starcraft BW guide on the BW site you see a lot of great information, but you also see things like "get lots of scouts. They good vs zealots cuz zealots can't look up." I read the title of this section and I realized that this guide would not be objective at all.
I don't like subjective guides and I think that they outdate quickly even if what's said in them is popular consent at the time of publication.
But what T_D's saying isn't even popular consent. I think a lot of people like to gank as much as possible and when they don't gank (warwick, shaco) lose out.
When you talk about farming instead of ganking, just illustrate how much farm is lost in a gank (use an example) and the potential benefits of a kill in ganking and just farming. Don't try to say one is definitely better than the other.
Craton shouldn't even say that it's a smart idea to pull dragon in his guide. He should say that pulling dragon is an option that can be smart because for the cost of a few seconds where you can't attack dragon, and a little damage, you can retreat more quickly if attacked and you reduce the likelihood of flash steals.
I play on the farm side too but it's definitely the easier way to play and I do my best to help losing lanes more lately but you have to really try if they are decent players they don;t just loldie without wards.
You don't even have to get a kill in most top lanes and some mid lanes for it to be a successful gank, hell you don't even have to hit them once or make them use a summoner. Just having them back off for a wave of creeps early on can be a big boost for your solo laners. Obviously this matters less as people get higher levels, but early on when it means your allied player hits a level a fair bit ahead of his opponent it can be massive(lvl2, lvl3 and lvl6 often being the biggest ones, but any early level matters a lot). So unless you are giving up an important buff to the enemy Jungler by showing yourself top too long its prolly worth it even if it puts you behind slightly personally.
I dislike how you didn't lay out any consequence for keeping the blue buff for yourself. If mid is facing someone who is being fed blue and they are not already significantly ahead, as long as the opposing mid plays it right, they can convert this to a tangible advantage in almost all match-ups. To simply say if you are behind consider keeping blue for yourself is a dangerous proposition, you are possibly converting 1 losing match-up into 2. (at best blue will help you pull even as a jungle esp on a jungle that clears quickly regardless)
Honestly I know how to play within my mana limitations, the problem has never been greed although it is often implied that by junglers, the problem has always been, that the other mid might get it, in which case you are fucked. I will give you credit for mentioning the bonus of mid ganks if you do choose to transfer, but again I make the counter argument, if you are behind, why not allow your mid to do what you are too weak to(gank).
This of course is all assuming your mid isn't already terribly behind and being farmed by the opposing jungler, and you've mentioned that this is supposed to be a beginners guide, also that you and I have had this exact discussion in the past and it ended in agree to disagree, but it scares me to think that a jungler on my team would think there is no consequence other than no ganks from mid when they keep the blue.
On May 03 2012 12:40 Two_DoWn wrote: THE NUMBER 2 RULE OF GANKING IS NEVER SACRIFICE YOUR OWN FARM AND LEVELS BY OVER GANKING.
The single most important job that you have as a jungle is to make sure you stay viable throughout the game. Most of the time that means you have to spend a considerable amount of time farming. If your team is bitching at you for not ganking as they drop like flies in 1v1 situations, most of the time the best thing to do is just ignore them. A gank takes a LOT of time, even successful ones. The important thing to remember is that even if you get a kill, the other jungle and every other lane has been farming while you were off doing what you do. That means that the difference in gains between the 2 teams are not as high as some people think. It also means that constantly ganking is NOT a good way to play. Its always better to be smart about when you gank. Maximize the amount of time you spend farming, minimize the amount you lose when you gank. Make sure you only gank situations that have a high likelihood of success (ie a kill, forcing the enemy to base, or doing enough damage to where your lane can start to bully the enemy around). If you are initiating a gank to remind the enemy you exist and force them to back off, make sure you tell your teammate so that they don’t waste valuable cooldowns or mana on a gank you are not committed too. Make sure that your teammates in lane are ready, they have everything up that they are going to need. Remember- for them, a gank is a minute long diversion from farming. For you, its twice that long, if not more. Gank too much and you will find yourself hurting for farm and levels very badly.
The best thing about cyclohexane's age of empires 3 guide was that it was completely objective. When you look at mojo stormscout's warcraft 3 guide or the starcraft BW guide on the BW site you see a lot of great information, but you also see things like "get lots of scouts. They good vs zealots cuz zealots can't look up." I read the title of this section and I realized that this guide would not be objective at all.
I don't like subjective guides and I think that they outdate quickly even if what's said in them is popular consent at the time of publication.
But what T_D's saying isn't even popular consent. I think a lot of people like to gank as much as possible and when they don't gank (warwick, shaco) lose out.
When you talk about farming instead of ganking, just illustrate how much farm is lost in a gank (use an example) and the potential benefits of a kill in ganking and just farming. Don't try to say one is definitely better than the other.
Craton shouldn't even say that it's a smart idea to pull dragon in his guide. He should say that pulling dragon is an option that can be smart because for the cost of a few seconds where you can't attack dragon, and a little damage, you can retreat more quickly if attacked and you reduce the likelihood of flash steals.
People arent actually READING what I wrote. If you look carefully, you will note that the rule is OVER ganking, not ganking in general. The purpose of the paragraph is to enumerate the cost of ganking because a new jungler will often go out, see 300 gold pop up when they get a kill, and think "oh hey, this is pretty cool, imma keep doing this." The benefits for ganking are fairly obvious. What I wanted to talk about were the COSTS, which a lot of new junglers dont understand exist.
In my experience, the #1 problem that new junglers have is that they focus too much on killing champions and ganking and too little time farming, even on champions like lee sin and shaco.
On May 04 2012 06:50 Nafaltar wrote: You don't even have to get a kill in most top lanes and some mid lanes for it to be a successful gank, hell you don't even have to hit them once or make them use a summoner. Just having them back off for a wave of creeps early on can be a big boost for your solo laners. Obviously this matters less as people get higher levels, but early on when it means your allied player hits a level a fair bit ahead of his opponent it can be massive(lvl2, lvl3 and lvl6 often being the biggest ones, but any early level matters a lot). So unless you are giving up an important buff to the enemy Jungler by showing yourself top too long its prolly worth it even if it puts you behind slightly personally.
Even if you aren't counter-jungled (which is a very large threat on level 2 ganks) the cost is high. Beyond the cost in farm the knowledge of your location allows the other lanes to be more aggressive and better predict your movements. If you don't at least force a summoner or recall the gank is likely to come at an overall cost to your team. A 25 second gank can easily mean an 80+ gold loss for you, the jungler.
On May 03 2012 12:40 Two_DoWn wrote: THE NUMBER 2 RULE OF GANKING IS NEVER SACRIFICE YOUR OWN FARM AND LEVELS BY OVER GANKING.
The single most important job that you have as a jungle is to make sure you stay viable throughout the game. Most of the time that means you have to spend a considerable amount of time farming. If your team is bitching at you for not ganking as they drop like flies in 1v1 situations, most of the time the best thing to do is just ignore them. A gank takes a LOT of time, even successful ones. The important thing to remember is that even if you get a kill, the other jungle and every other lane has been farming while you were off doing what you do. That means that the difference in gains between the 2 teams are not as high as some people think. It also means that constantly ganking is NOT a good way to play. Its always better to be smart about when you gank. Maximize the amount of time you spend farming, minimize the amount you lose when you gank. Make sure you only gank situations that have a high likelihood of success (ie a kill, forcing the enemy to base, or doing enough damage to where your lane can start to bully the enemy around). If you are initiating a gank to remind the enemy you exist and force them to back off, make sure you tell your teammate so that they don’t waste valuable cooldowns or mana on a gank you are not committed too. Make sure that your teammates in lane are ready, they have everything up that they are going to need. Remember- for them, a gank is a minute long diversion from farming. For you, its twice that long, if not more. Gank too much and you will find yourself hurting for farm and levels very badly.
The best thing about cyclohexane's age of empires 3 guide was that it was completely objective. When you look at mojo stormscout's warcraft 3 guide or the starcraft BW guide on the BW site you see a lot of great information, but you also see things like "get lots of scouts. They good vs zealots cuz zealots can't look up." I read the title of this section and I realized that this guide would not be objective at all.
I don't like subjective guides and I think that they outdate quickly even if what's said in them is popular consent at the time of publication.
But what T_D's saying isn't even popular consent. I think a lot of people like to gank as much as possible and when they don't gank (warwick, shaco) lose out.
When you talk about farming instead of ganking, just illustrate how much farm is lost in a gank (use an example) and the potential benefits of a kill in ganking and just farming. Don't try to say one is definitely better than the other.
Craton shouldn't even say that it's a smart idea to pull dragon in his guide. He should say that pulling dragon is an option that can be smart because for the cost of a few seconds where you can't attack dragon, and a little damage, you can retreat more quickly if attacked and you reduce the likelihood of flash steals.
People arent actually READING what I wrote. If you look carefully, you will note that the rule is OVER ganking, not ganking in general. The purpose of the paragraph is to enumerate the cost of ganking because a new jungler will often go out, see 300 gold pop up when they get a kill, and think "oh hey, this is pretty cool, imma keep doing this." The benefits for ganking are fairly obvious. What I wanted to talk about were the COSTS, which a lot of new junglers dont understand exist.
In my experience, the #1 problem that new junglers have is that they focus too much on killing champions and ganking and too little time farming, even on champions like lee sin and shaco.
I don't think you read what he wrote. He made a number of good suggestions such as quantifying the cost of ganking and avoiding unnecessary subjectivity. The point being that there isn't an objective point we can all agree upon where ganking becomes over-ganking, and the best you can do is provide the tools and knowledge for players to figure that out themselves.
One thing you might want to add is watching how each lane is pushing, and how pushed/how many minions there are. Ganking top when there's a 14 creep wave of death stampeding towards your laner's tower early on is still going to be difficult. Sure the other guy is going to be pushed up, but he has enough minions that your laner is going to have a very hard time assisting the gank and could even put your laner behind if he misses the creeps before they wash up against tower or takes too much damage from the creeps.
Ideally you want to arrive at a lane when it's pushed towards your tower and without much more than 1-1.5 creep waves. Being in position for this involves watching how each lane is pushing and then planning accordingly.
Finally there's stuff like helping your laner push EXTREMELY hard after a successful gank to let your minions wash up against the tower so you can buy safely and gain an advantage. (Only do this at higher elo's, I've had people in normals report me for taking their lane CS when I'm actually trying to help....)
On May 04 2012 06:50 Nafaltar wrote: You don't even have to get a kill in most top lanes and some mid lanes for it to be a successful gank, hell you don't even have to hit them once or make them use a summoner. Just having them back off for a wave of creeps early on can be a big boost for your solo laners. Obviously this matters less as people get higher levels, but early on when it means your allied player hits a level a fair bit ahead of his opponent it can be massive(lvl2, lvl3 and lvl6 often being the biggest ones, but any early level matters a lot). So unless you are giving up an important buff to the enemy Jungler by showing yourself top too long its prolly worth it even if it puts you behind slightly personally.
Even if you aren't counter-jungled (which is a very large threat on level 2 ganks) the cost is high. Beyond the cost in farm the knowledge of your location allows the other lanes to be more aggressive and better predict your movements. If you don't at least force a summoner or recall the gank is likely to come at an overall cost to your team. A 25 second gank can easily mean an 80+ gold loss for you, the jungler. [
25 secs is waiting out a whole creep wave pretty much, so 114+ gold. I mean it definitely depends on the matchup, but say you have a Riven vs WW top, and you come in after your red buff at lvl 2 for second wave. If the WW backs of into safety its fine to stay arround a bit, even if he stays safe Riven will just wail on WW all game from then on, while normally WW can chug pots early to farm up enough armor to make it so Riven can't actually engage him any more without taking her sweet time harassing him down slowly. Of course if its Something like Kennen vs WW you prolly won't gain your team as much as you lose. And once people are post6 then the advantage shrinks aswell. But its totally fine even then to run to top even if you more or less know its warded and you likely can't gank there after clearing your jungle if mid isn't open for a gank and you ended up on your Golems. More so if you can recall in an unwarded brush afterwards which leaves the enemy top guessing if you are still there or already went back.
On May 04 2012 06:50 Nafaltar wrote: You don't even have to get a kill in most top lanes and some mid lanes for it to be a successful gank, hell you don't even have to hit them once or make them use a summoner. Just having them back off for a wave of creeps early on can be a big boost for your solo laners. Obviously this matters less as people get higher levels, but early on when it means your allied player hits a level a fair bit ahead of his opponent it can be massive(lvl2, lvl3 and lvl6 often being the biggest ones, but any early level matters a lot). So unless you are giving up an important buff to the enemy Jungler by showing yourself top too long its prolly worth it even if it puts you behind slightly personally.
Even if you aren't counter-jungled (which is a very large threat on level 2 ganks) the cost is high. Beyond the cost in farm the knowledge of your location allows the other lanes to be more aggressive and better predict your movements. If you don't at least force a summoner or recall the gank is likely to come at an overall cost to your team. A 25 second gank can easily mean an 80+ gold loss for you, the jungler. [
25 secs is waiting out a whole creep wave pretty much, so 114+ gold. I mean it definitely depends on the matchup, but say you have a Riven vs WW top, and you come in after your red buff at lvl 2 for second wave. If the WW backs of into safety its fine to stay arround a bit, even if he stays safe Riven will just wail on WW all game from then on, while normally WW can chug pots early to farm up enough armor to make it so Riven can't actually engage him any more without taking her sweet time harassing him down slowly. Of course if its Something like Kennen vs WW you prolly won't gain your team as much as you lose. And once people are post6 then the advantage shrinks aswell. But its totally fine even then to run to top even if you more or less know its warded and you likely can't gank there after clearing your jungle if mid isn't open for a gank and you ended up on your Golems. More so if you can recall in an unwarded brush afterwards which leaves the enemy top guessing if you are still there or already went back.
When I said 25 seconds I was including time spent going to and from the lane. If you actively sit in the bush for 25 seconds the cost goes much higher, 150g+ not including the advantage you're giving the other lanes/enemy jungler.
So even if your mere presence zones the enemy so they can not farm, you're still losing with or without being counter-jungled. It takes very extreme situations for that course of action to make sense.
I mean you obviously aren't aiming to not get anything, but in a lane that can be snowballed either way (and that is a ton of top lane matchups) it can be well worth it to sacrifice jungler power if you get even a slight advantage for your top if he can exploit it. It also depends on the jungler in question ofc, it makes much less sense on a WW than it does on a Maokai as one needs lvl 6 for great ganks while the other one mostly wants farm for items/and late game levels. 150 gold is a complete clear of "your" 3 small camps in the jungle. Which unless you get counter jungled means you have to spend a minute or more depending on the clear state of the jungle and your clear speed for various camps. Which means it also depends on the side you are playing for, if you are on purple side you really only open up your Blue+Wolves for counterjungling, if blue is up the important buffs asterisk applies and if it is not you are merely risking your wolves, which honestly don't lose you a ton even if counter jungled as it takes the enemy some time to run over there and back out again. On blue side ganking top obviously opens up both wraiths and golems, so its a bit more problematic there.
Anyway I don't mean it as a rule that you should zone people and be happy, but just because you can't kill a champ reliably doesn't mean ganking is a waste. It makes the opponent back off, it keeps him honest with wards and it protects your top a little while you are about.
The single biggest thing that has improved my jungling is communication in the game. Try to set up a specific gank in the lobby or early in the game while checking bushes. If you have a stun on your champ (udyr or something) and so does your mid, an aggressive flash at level 2 or 3 can result in a first blood. Just trying to land it hoping your team follows up from a ping can be iffy. Telling them you're going to flash stun, and to follow up w/ their stun/ignite whatever is a great way to ensure that kill and FB. Ask lanes about wards, get them in the habit of telling you if they've seen them placed or timer on them is great. Encouraging your team for information is huuuge.
I started playing lol recently. With this last weeks free heroes I've been playing master yi and trying to jungle. Specifically, I've been using this guide:
I have several questions though. First off, he suggests starting with the minigolems to get lvl 2, but I have found that killing these does not lvl me up. Is this a change in the map, or do I need to make other players move farther away?
Also, I was wondering about dieing on the gank. Specifically, I thought that I gain a team edge by sacrificing myself to kill a solo opponent in a lane because it means my teammate in that lane will take a large exp and gold lead. Obviously, I would prefer to get the kill w/o dieing, but is my logic wrong?
Most importantly, I find it difficult to evaluate my games afterwards. With Master Yi, I will always eventually end up with the most minion kills by the end of my games. I usually am ahead around the time I get into the 50-70 kill region. This may be because the lvl I'm playing at isn't very good, or it may be champion specific, but idk. Games often end one sidedly, and I have a hard time telling how much of that is my doing well or failing or just the rest of my team doing well/failing. Perhaps this is a question for any role, but I feel it is especially difficult to tell for junglers.
I like to dip into lanes whenever I see a chance (I try to gank but find the enemy too pulled back, an ally dies, a turret of ours is under fire). I try not to stay long, but I net a few quick kills and lvl faster. Is this bad because they are kills my teammate is not getting? If it helps my teammate to push forward or encourages the enemy to play more cautious, does that make it worth it? You say that my appearance can turn a lane even if I don't get a kill, but I'm uncertain if I am defeating my role by making that presence and stealing my teammates farm.
People talk as though there are set times that I must gank. I once ganked and killed a solo top around 9 minutes, and my ally in top insulted me for my nonstandard timing. What are the standard timings at which I am expected to support another lane by default.
Lastly, late game is curious for me. I've found that I can often go off and solo a turret or two if the entire enemy team is attacking my base. Sometimes I do this to try to force them to come back or to kill an inhibitor and try to give us the edge in some lane. I feel like this is very strong in some games, but allys have gotten angry at me for not staying with the team. However, I only do it after the 5 on 5 team fight has gone poorly for us repeatedly. I'm certainthis startegy is valid, but I would like it if you could discuss when it is best implemented and how to best follow it up. i.e. is it better to try to kill 2 inhibitors or 1 followed by nexus turrets?
Thanks to anyone that reads this overly long post and can answer any of it.
On May 26 2012 17:44 phyren wrote: I started playing lol recently. With this last weeks free heroes I've been playing master yi and trying to jungle. Specifically, I've been using this guide:
I have several questions though. First off, he suggests starting with the minigolems to get lvl 2, but I have found that killing these does not lvl me up. Is this a change in the map, or do I need to make other players move farther away?
Also, I was wondering about dieing on the gank. Specifically, I thought that I gain a team edge by sacrificing myself to kill a solo opponent in a lane because it means my teammate in that lane will take a large exp and gold lead. Obviously, I would prefer to get the kill w/o dieing, but is my logic wrong?
Most importantly, I find it difficult to evaluate my games afterwards. With Master Yi, I will always eventually end up with the most minion kills by the end of my games. I usually am ahead around the time I get into the 50-70 kill region. This may be because the lvl I'm playing at isn't very good, or it may be champion specific, but idk. Games often end one sidedly, and I have a hard time telling how much of that is my doing well or failing or just the rest of my team doing well/failing. Perhaps this is a question for any role, but I feel it is especially difficult to tell for junglers.
I like to dip into lanes whenever I see a chance (I try to gank but find the enemy too pulled back, an ally dies, a turret of ours is under fire). I try not to stay long, but I net a few quick kills and lvl faster. Is this bad because they are kills my teammate is not getting? If it helps my teammate to push forward or encourages the enemy to play more cautious, does that make it worth it? You say that my appearance can turn a lane even if I don't get a kill, but I'm uncertain if I am defeating my role by making that presence and stealing my teammates farm.
People talk as though there are set times that I must gank. I once ganked and killed a solo top around 9 minutes, and my ally in top insulted me for my nonstandard timing. What are the standard timings at which I am expected to support another lane by default.
Lastly, late game is curious for me. I've found that I can often go off and solo a turret or two if the entire enemy team is attacking my base. Sometimes I do this to try to force them to come back or to kill an inhibitor and try to give us the edge in some lane. I feel like this is very strong in some games, but allys have gotten angry at me for not staying with the team. However, I only do it after the 5 on 5 team fight has gone poorly for us repeatedly. I'm certainthis startegy is valid, but I would like it if you could discuss when it is best implemented and how to best follow it up. i.e. is it better to try to kill 2 inhibitors or 1 followed by nexus turrets?
Thanks to anyone that reads this overly long post and can answer any of it.
That guide is kinda outdated I think. Jungle paths are usually wolves->blue->wraiths->wolves->full clear, wraiths->red->full clear, or some variation of those two.
In terms of sacrificing for a kill in a lane, it's very situational. Say after you kill them and die your ally is able to immediately push the wave into their tower, forcing the opponent to lose several waves of cs/exp then it's probably worth it. But say you have double buff and your ally was already winning the lane; dying in a gank probably wouldn't be worth it. Every situation is different, but dying during a gank is only okay if your ally can take advantage of your sacrifice. Even then, like you said, it's better to simply not die. When you die, you give their opponent gold/exp, which can be used to help them catch back up.
Ways to evaluation your impact is the superficial kdr, but also stuff like how many successful ganks (kills and/or forcing the opponent back) did you pull off? How are you performing relative to the enemy jungler in terms of KDA and cs? Were you a factor in helping your lanes win? How much map control did you assert and what did you do with it (like stealing buffs and taking dragons)?
Showing up in lane when your ally isn't there is almost always a good thing. Lane gives more gold/exp than the jungle and if your ally isn't there it's cs that would've been lost otherwise. If your ally is dead or back, they're not getting the cs anyways so it's better for you to get it. That being said, do NOT EVER freeze or cause the lane to be frozen outside the enemy turret that would expose them to a gank. If you are going to push, make sure you push it completely to the enemy tower so the lane will reset by the time your ally gets back to lane. This should be relatively easy to do, as most top-tier junglers have some form of strong aoe. A lot of times at low elo people will scream at you for "taking their cs" and "pushing their lane". As long as you reset the wave so it's not stuck outside the enemy tower, feel free to ignore them. If you can't or aren't sure if you can reset the wave by shoving it all the way to the enemy tower, then just play it safe and only last hit. It's always good to apply pressure to enemy lanes. A gank is successful if you get a kill, force them back, burn a summoner spell, or simply just make them miss lots of cs since they're very cautious. What you shouldn't do is show up, take some cs, and leave without pressuring the enemy laner. Generally, you don't want to take cs from a lane if your ally is there unless you forced the enemy back and you're trying to push the wave to their tower.
There are no "standard timings" for ganks. Your ally was an idiot. The only "standard" gank timing is the lvl 2 gank immediately after the jungler takes their first buff. Every other gank after that is based almost purely on the position of the creep wave, relative strengths of the laners/junglers, and other such factors.
Late game, it's almost always better to stay with your team especially in lower levels where people tend to do stupid things and get caught. That being said, sometimes split pushing a lane by yourself can be better than staying with your team. If you know your team can hold a 4v5 at your tower and you're playing a strong pusher, split pushign when the enemy team is stalled outside your towers can be a very good way to gain an advantage by taking some free towers. At lower levels especially, people in solo queue tend to be very bad at coordinating and dealing with split pushing. Usually what happens is they either ignore you and you get free towers, they all retreat and you basically single handedly stopped their push, or they panic and do something stupid. What you absolutely must keep in mind though, however, is whether or not your team can successfully hold them off at your own towers. You also have to be careful not to get caught and give up a free kill; to that end, you need good ward coverage and/or map awareness.
EDIT: If you know you guys can't win straight 5v5 fights for whatever reason, split pushing would be the way to go. It forces the enemy team to respond either by barreling down a lane faster than you can uncontested to take towers/inhibs while your team defends, or it forces them to split up, which will weaken their team fighting capabilities.
Generally if you have a lead, you want to take inhibs, turrets, and baron. Which ones are better than the others is debatable. You want to do what will give you the most gain for the least risk (usually). Turrets reduce the enemy's map control, which lets you contest buffs and objectives. Inhibitors lock down a lane, which lets you effectively ignore that part of the map so you can pressure another part of the map, while the enemy team has to constantly worry about the threat of mega creep. Baron gives you a large exp/gold lead and essentially gives you 4 minutes of the other team not being able to fight you outside towers (assuming no one gets caught ofc). Taking nexus turrets is risky and should only be done if you are strong enough to finish the game and/or tank two turrets. This means you can usually only do it when the other team has 2+ members down or you guys are just massively ahead.
Ways to evaluation your impact is the superficial kdr, but also stuff like how many successful ganks (kills and/or forcing the opponent back) did you pull off? How are you performing relative to the enemy jungler in terms of KDA and cs? Were you a factor in helping your lanes win? How much map control did you assert and what did you do with it (like stealing buffs and taking dragons)?
This is what I have a hard time telling. I just play the solo queue, so there usually isn't an enemy jungler to compare myself too. I might help to kill a turret here or there, but its impossible to say if it would have gone down without me or maybe gone down faster if I had simply played in lane. I use wriggles to ward buffs and gank routes, but its generally a team activity to take baron/dragon.
The point is, I think playing in a lane, you know if you are winning your lane or not. AP and AD characters either win the team fight with their burst or don't. With the jungle, I know if I am helping a teammate at the moment or if I get a kill or not, but I don't know how much that really helps. How many ganks I get or how much cs I let my teammate get by not laneing are things that will vary greatly from game to game, so I don't really know how to compare and see if I've progressed.
I think the random teams might also be making it difficult to improve. I can sometimes tell that another player is clearly doing very well, but they are playing a character I never have, and I don't have the time to watch them constantly to see what they are doing. Other times, I have a teammate that is very outspoken, but I have no idea if they actually know what they are talking about.
Maybe the rated matches would be better as I gather they assign an elo ranking to measure skill, but I've found the LoL community to be pretty angry and intolerant of beginners. Also, I'm only lvl 14 and haven't purchased anything like runes or champion unlocks.
I just came here to say that jungling does not give you 4 fully farmed heros vs 3. Jungle heros only get a nice amount of gold if they get lots of ganks, the weak jungle gold and ex riot has gone with forces you to do a dps jungle if you wish to have even a decent amount of gold
Ways to evaluation your impact is the superficial kdr, but also stuff like how many successful ganks (kills and/or forcing the opponent back) did you pull off? How are you performing relative to the enemy jungler in terms of KDA and cs? Were you a factor in helping your lanes win? How much map control did you assert and what did you do with it (like stealing buffs and taking dragons)?
This is what I have a hard time telling. I just play the solo queue, so there usually isn't an enemy jungler to compare myself too. I might help to kill a turret here or there, but its impossible to say if it would have gone down without me or maybe gone down faster if I had simply played in lane. I use wriggles to ward buffs and gank routes, but its generally a team activity to take baron/dragon.
The point is, I think playing in a lane, you know if you are winning your lane or not. AP and AD characters either win the team fight with their burst or don't. With the jungle, I know if I am helping a teammate at the moment or if I get a kill or not, but I don't know how much that really helps. How many ganks I get or how much cs I let my teammate get by not laneing are things that will vary greatly from game to game, so I don't really know how to compare and see if I've progressed.
I think the random teams might also be making it difficult to improve. I can sometimes tell that another player is clearly doing very well, but they are playing a character I never have, and I don't have the time to watch them constantly to see what they are doing. Other times, I have a teammate that is very outspoken, but I have no idea if they actually know what they are talking about.
Maybe the rated matches would be better as I gather they assign an elo ranking to measure skill, but I've found the LoL community to be pretty angry and intolerant of beginners. Also, I'm only lvl 14 and haven't purchased anything like runes or champion unlocks.
it's a little harder to tell how well you're doing at lower levels where there's not necessarily a jungler every game. but if you're playing a game where you're the only jungler, you should be farming both jungles nonstop and only ganking when a really obvious opportunity arises. with 2 jungles to farm from, you should outfarm and outlevel even the solos.
it gets easier to tell how well you're doing when you start playing against other junglers as you have something to compare yourself to.
Ways to evaluation your impact is the superficial kdr, but also stuff like how many successful ganks (kills and/or forcing the opponent back) did you pull off? How are you performing relative to the enemy jungler in terms of KDA and cs? Were you a factor in helping your lanes win? How much map control did you assert and what did you do with it (like stealing buffs and taking dragons)?
This is what I have a hard time telling. I just play the solo queue, so there usually isn't an enemy jungler to compare myself too. I might help to kill a turret here or there, but its impossible to say if it would have gone down without me or maybe gone down faster if I had simply played in lane. I use wriggles to ward buffs and gank routes, but its generally a team activity to take baron/dragon.
The point is, I think playing in a lane, you know if you are winning your lane or not. AP and AD characters either win the team fight with their burst or don't. With the jungle, I know if I am helping a teammate at the moment or if I get a kill or not, but I don't know how much that really helps. How many ganks I get or how much cs I let my teammate get by not laneing are things that will vary greatly from game to game, so I don't really know how to compare and see if I've progressed.
I think the random teams might also be making it difficult to improve. I can sometimes tell that another player is clearly doing very well, but they are playing a character I never have, and I don't have the time to watch them constantly to see what they are doing. Other times, I have a teammate that is very outspoken, but I have no idea if they actually know what they are talking about.
Maybe the rated matches would be better as I gather they assign an elo ranking to measure skill, but I've found the LoL community to be pretty angry and intolerant of beginners. Also, I'm only lvl 14 and haven't purchased anything like runes or champion unlocks.
it's a little harder to tell how well you're doing at lower levels where there's not necessarily a jungler every game. but if you're playing a game where you're the only jungler, you should be farming both jungles nonstop and only ganking when a really obvious opportunity arises. with 2 jungles to farm from, you should outfarm and outlevel even the solos.
it gets easier to tell how well you're doing when you start playing against other junglers as you have something to compare yourself to.
It actually really depends on how trustworthy your 1v2 lane is. In many cases you're going to need to spend a lot of time top early on in order to secure the lane. Even then, though, you should be controlling every buff and taking dragon constantly because they don't have a jungler to stop you.
How do you decide on whom to focus when ganking bottom lane? Like lets have an example:
You are nocturne, coming to lane gank bottom lane. Your team is Graves + lulu, they have trist + soraka. You know that Soraka has his flash down, while Trist has both flash + jump on. Both have 70-80% hp. To whom do i jump? I thought the logical choice is Soraka, because he dies so quickly without escapes, and we can then take out trist/force her to use summoners. Where as if i jump Tristana , he just jumps away. Was my thinking right, or is it always "always go for the AD?"
Got yelled for that by the entire team, so i am a bit puzzled now. Maybe i could jump on trist, and trust that i can get to Soraka even though trist uses w?
You may want to intiate on trist to force her to jump away to keep your bot lane safe, if they're in any danger. Otherwise, a kill is better than no kill.
On June 28 2012 19:16 Gaslo wrote: How do you decide on whom to focus when ganking bottom lane? Like lets have an example:
You are nocturne, coming to lane gank bottom lane. Your team is Graves + lulu, they have trist + soraka. You know that Soraka has his flash down, while Trist has both flash + jump on. Both have 70-80% hp. To whom do i jump? I thought the logical choice is Soraka, because he dies so quickly without escapes, and we can then take out trist/force her to use summoners. Where as if i jump Tristana , he just jumps away. Was my thinking right, or is it always "always go for the AD?"
Got yelled for that by the entire team, so i am a bit puzzled now. Maybe i could jump on trist, and trust that i can get to Soraka even though trist uses w?
Your entire team was retarded, the good thing to do was kill soraka, then either push lane and scare soraka to base or do drag if you have enough hp.
If Lulu was a good enough player to use W on trist and then use R on you once the polymorph ran out Trist would be the better target. Soraka is the safer choice. BIG PLAYS
On June 28 2012 19:20 R04R wrote: If Lulu was a good enough player to use W on trist and then use R on you once the polymorph ran out Trist would be the better target. Soraka is the safer choice. BIG PLAYS
Trist can spam flash while polymorphed, poly runs out trist is gone. Stupid patch. Depends on how far trist was away from turret aswell.
Just trying to thread the needle in finding a way to kill Trist, or how the rest of his team would think the gank would turn out. From Noct's position though he has no idea how much he can rely on his teammates so soraka is the correct choice in the end
I focus the ranged AD, if you see the ranged AD backing off and not willing to fight, kill the support because they are closer to you (plus if you know your ranged AD has better items/killing potential and you can kill pretty fast it always helps).
if you kill the support, you get something. there's probably no way to get the trist unless jump is baited so unless you're balls out diving, might as well kill a unicorn that can't run.
If you kill the support you're also now in a position to dive the AD carry, especially if you forced flash/jump. That's fairly important because now you can ram the creeps into the tower and either the enemy misses a ton of CS/exp or they die.
How do you make use of jungling if your top lane is 1v2? If I'm not in top my top lane will get more exp but they'll deny him cs, and I'll be leveling just as good as him and I feel that it's too much of a risk to go top to gank because if they focus me I'll just die giving them buffs. Should I just focus on the other lanes and give my mid their blue?
On July 18 2012 08:34 D u o wrote: How do you make use of jungling if your top lane is 1v2? If I'm not in top my top lane will get more exp but they'll deny him cs, and I'll be leveling just as good as him and I feel that it's too much of a risk to go top to gank because if they focus me I'll just die giving them buffs. Should I just focus on the other lanes and give my mid their blue?
Once top gets the sizable xp lead (and assuming ur up to par) you should be able to gank due to sheer level advantage.
Also the key to jungle cow is moovespeed, 0/21/9 for max moovespeed, and boots of moobility, build triforce, and eventually shureylas (you will be buying gp/5's ofc)
On July 18 2012 08:34 D u o wrote: How do you make use of jungling if your top lane is 1v2? If I'm not in top my top lane will get more exp but they'll deny him cs, and I'll be leveling just as good as him and I feel that it's too much of a risk to go top to gank because if they focus me I'll just die giving them buffs. Should I just focus on the other lanes and give my mid their blue?
It's not too much of a risk if you play it smart. You have to coordinate with your lane ally and go in together and/or wait for your opponents to put one or more abilities on cooldown before you go in. Playing a tanky jungler with a level advantage you should be able to survive a considerable amount of abuse, especially if you have a potion or two running while you fight.
Also, the earlier you gank the better. It means they have fewer abilities to throw at you, and you'll have a stronger advantage. When it's two level 1s versus a level 1 and a level 2 with Red, the latter should almost always win.
Just be aware of your ally's potential incompetence. You can't help them if they take a ton of damage before you even get there, or if they aren't willing to run in while you're running in (not after).
We were in same room but he was tryn vs jayce and wukong he wasn't able to farm without taking heavy harass, while I was WW and don't really have any gank potential til 6, and we were on blue so it's not like i had a red gank lined up. Also low levels so I felt i had to b before getting red.
This is like my first time running jungle but I feel like I did competently its just top couldn't hold and jayce got fed to the point that i couldn't even attempt to gank.
I feel a bit lost when playing jungle because I usually like to start a new account per role so I can learn a champ or two while leveling it up to 30. But jungle is so rune reliant I don't feel competent in the jungle. Even if I can clear, I cant clear enough, or clear enough and still go for a gank because I don't have rune slots unlocked or the other masteries to help me while I do so, I don't think there is any way to get around these boundary's but does anyone have and advice?
When we did our run I did blue, wolves, wraiths and then backed got boots, red golem gank bot. [I was Blue Side and WW.]
The pressure to not fail lies more heavily on your friend than it does you. In a 1v2 lane, the #1 priority is to not die and not feed. Staying alive comes before anything else. He needs to leech w/e exp and gold he can get, which won't be much. But he absolutely must not die. In a 1v2 lane, you just play passive and wait for the lane to reach your tower, which is will. Then farm what you can under tower. By doing so, he solo lane will be able to at least keep up in levels or be no more than ~1 level behind. At which point, the jungler can easily out-level the solo lanes and come in for an easy double buff gank.
From what you said, it sounds like your friend didn't know how to play a 1v2 lane properly and thus snowballed the lane in the other team's favor too hard. And yes, jungling is somewhat hard w/out runes.
They should just scale back the jungle based off of what summoner level you're playing at so that you can do it without needing @__@ Even on my 30 only 50% of the games have a jungle.
On July 18 2012 11:35 D u o wrote: They should just scale back the jungle based off of what summoner level you're playing at so that you can do it without needing @__@ Even on my 30 only 50% of the games have a jungle.
i dont think scaling the jungle is the right thing to do tho, cause it'll mess up the jungle balance and can potentially disproportionately favor certain junglers. And some low-level players do have runes.
That said, I do think that it's very hard to pick up jungling. It's also, imo, the hardest role to play by far.
On June 28 2012 19:16 Gaslo wrote: How do you decide on whom to focus when ganking bottom lane? Like lets have an example:
You are nocturne, coming to lane gank bottom lane. Your team is Graves + lulu, they have trist + soraka. You know that Soraka has his flash down, while Trist has both flash + jump on. Both have 70-80% hp. To whom do i jump? I thought the logical choice is Soraka, because he dies so quickly without escapes, and we can then take out trist/force her to use summoners. Where as if i jump Tristana , he just jumps away. Was my thinking right, or is it always "always go for the AD?"
Got yelled for that by the entire team, so i am a bit puzzled now. Maybe i could jump on trist, and trust that i can get to Soraka even though trist uses w?
You kill whoever you're most likely to kill without them getting away and losing someone on your team in the process. Ideally you want the AD, but I'm not about to waste my time on a Trist with W and flash up when I could just kill Soraka. Alternatively you can jump to trist, force the armor buff, then switch to Soraka. It's hard to coordinate that type of target switching in solo queue.
Basically, go for whatever nets the better likelihood of success.
On July 18 2012 11:35 D u o wrote: They should just scale back the jungle based off of what summoner level you're playing at so that you can do it without needing @__@ Even on my 30 only 50% of the games have a jungle.
i dont think scaling the jungle is the right thing to do tho, cause it'll mess up the jungle balance and can potentially disproportionately favor certain junglers. And some low-level players do have runes.
That said, I do think that it's very hard to pick up jungling. It's also, imo, the hardest role to play by far.
Jungling is probably the easiest of all the roles since in 95% of cases you have all the time in the world to make decisions and you aren't directly against an intelligent person. Yes, there is a lot that goes it to accurately reading lanes to make the best determination on what path to take to both farm and arrive in a place you can gank/counter gank, but that's nuancy shit that you can get around vs low level/caliber players.
It's sort of like the co-op vs AI in that really new players will struggle greatly and even lose to intermediate bots, but even mediocre players will stomp them without effort. When you're a low level laner you're usually going against someone equally inept. When you're a low level jungler, you're going against something fairly static. You just have to get to the point where you have enough game sense that you can actually overcome that point (which frankly isn't that hard). Runes are kind of an issue, but it's not a big deal overall.
I don't find it problematic that really low level games don't have junglers because there's still so many other factors they need to learn. You can jump into jungling at level 30 and have the basics down in a handful of attempts.
On July 18 2012 11:35 D u o wrote: They should just scale back the jungle based off of what summoner level you're playing at so that you can do it without needing @__@ Even on my 30 only 50% of the games have a jungle.
i dont think scaling the jungle is the right thing to do tho, cause it'll mess up the jungle balance and can potentially disproportionately favor certain junglers. And some low-level players do have runes.
That said, I do think that it's very hard to pick up jungling. It's also, imo, the hardest role to play by far.
Jungling is probably the easiest of all the roles since in 95% of cases you have all the time in the world to make decisions and you aren't directly against an intelligent person. Yes, there is a lot that goes it to accurately reading lanes to make the best determination on what path to take to both farm and arrive in a place you can gank/counter gank, but that's nuancy shit that you can get around vs low level/caliber players.
It's sort of like the co-op vs AI in that really new players will struggle greatly and even lose to intermediate bots, but even mediocre players will stomp them without effort. When you're a low level laner you're usually going against someone equally inept. When you're a low level jungler, you're going against something fairly static. You just have to get to the point where you have enough game sense that you can actually overcome that point (which frankly isn't that hard). Runes are kind of an issue, but it's not a big deal overall.
I don't find it problematic that really low level games don't have junglers because there's still so many other factors they need to learn. You can jump into jungling at level 30 and have the basics down in a handful of attempts.
I don't agree at all. Being a good jungler is hardly about afk farming against camps. You have to not only take your own camps, but watch for potential invades into your and the opponent's jungle, keep an eye on every single lane, and keep track of objectives. Jungling is probably less mechanically demanding that the other 4 positions, but the amount of experience and knowledge you need to jungle effectively is huge.
I get that you're kinda talking about low-level jungling. It's, in a sense, very easy to jungle in that all you have to do at low levels is to kill jungle mobs and occasionally gank un-warded lanes. But for low level games, laning is just as easy since no one knows how to last hit or be aggressive properly.
On July 18 2012 11:35 D u o wrote: They should just scale back the jungle based off of what summoner level you're playing at so that you can do it without needing @__@ Even on my 30 only 50% of the games have a jungle.
i dont think scaling the jungle is the right thing to do tho, cause it'll mess up the jungle balance and can potentially disproportionately favor certain junglers. And some low-level players do have runes.
That said, I do think that it's very hard to pick up jungling. It's also, imo, the hardest role to play by far.
Jungling is probably the easiest of all the roles since in 95% of cases you have all the time in the world to make decisions and you aren't directly against an intelligent person. Yes, there is a lot that goes it to accurately reading lanes to make the best determination on what path to take to both farm and arrive in a place you can gank/counter gank, but that's nuancy shit that you can get around vs low level/caliber players.
It's sort of like the co-op vs AI in that really new players will struggle greatly and even lose to intermediate bots, but even mediocre players will stomp them without effort. When you're a low level laner you're usually going against someone equally inept. When you're a low level jungler, you're going against something fairly static. You just have to get to the point where you have enough game sense that you can actually overcome that point (which frankly isn't that hard). Runes are kind of an issue, but it's not a big deal overall.
I don't find it problematic that really low level games don't have junglers because there's still so many other factors they need to learn. You can jump into jungling at level 30 and have the basics down in a handful of attempts.
I don't agree at all. Being a good jungler is hardly about afk farming against camps. You have to not only take your own camps, but watch for potential invades into your and the opponent's jungle, keep an eye on every single lane, and keep track of objectives. Jungling is probably less mechanically demanding that the other 4 positions, but the amount of experience and knowledge you need to jungle effectively is huge.
I get that you're kinda talking about low-level jungling. It's, in a sense, very easy to jungle in that all you have to do at low levels is to kill jungle mobs and occasionally gank un-warded lanes. But for low level games, laning is just as easy since no one knows how to last hit or be aggressive properly.
But as a jungler, you can sit there and stare at the minimap while killing your camps. It's easier to train yourself to have map awareness if you do this.
I agree though - jungling is the role that requires relatively few strong mechanics (though paying attention to monster health and timing your smite is a big one!) but requires more strategy and good decision making. A good jungler has the opportunity to make decisions about all the following things: ~ whether a lane will [still be/become] gankable by the time he finishes walking to it ~pays attention to where wards are on the map, ~needs to teamfight effectively on less gold than the 3 lane-farmers, ~plans his route so that he is at buff camps on time, ~realizes when the enemy jungler's route or gank target means he is leaving camps or buffs up, or that he can be there in time to counter-gank.
Oops, that wasn't the edit button. I'm bad at this game.
On July 18 2012 10:49 Ryuu314 wrote: The pressure to not fail lies more heavily on your friend than it does you. In a 1v2 lane, the #1 priority is to not die and not feed. Staying alive comes before anything else. He needs to leech w/e exp and gold he can get, which won't be much. But he absolutely must not die. In a 1v2 lane, you just play passive and wait for the lane to reach your tower, which is will. Then farm what you can under tower. By doing so, he solo lane will be able to at least keep up in levels or be no more than ~1 level behind. At which point, the jungler can easily out-level the solo lanes and come in for an easy double buff gank.
From what you said, it sounds like your friend didn't know how to play a 1v2 lane properly and thus snowballed the lane in the other team's favor too hard. And yes, jungling is somewhat hard w/out runes.
Also, don't be afraid to camp the SHIT out of the 1v2 lane when enemy team has no jungler. Even if it means your jungle path ends up being like Wolves -> blue -> camp top -> B -> wraiths wolves -> camp top -> their red -> camp top and so on.
You will be ahead of them because jungle exp + solo lane exp >>>>> duo lane exp. Might be barely even in gold, but when you and your lanemate are level 6 vs 2 level 4s (since neither of you have died this early, RIGHT??) you should just be able to trash them.
Also, get good at smite timing and you will never lose baron/dragons because enemy team has no smite.
On July 18 2012 11:35 D u o wrote: They should just scale back the jungle based off of what summoner level you're playing at so that you can do it without needing @__@ Even on my 30 only 50% of the games have a jungle.
i dont think scaling the jungle is the right thing to do tho, cause it'll mess up the jungle balance and can potentially disproportionately favor certain junglers. And some low-level players do have runes.
That said, I do think that it's very hard to pick up jungling. It's also, imo, the hardest role to play by far.
Well just allowing players to play as competent as a player with full runes. I'm talking as you're levelling your summoner up from 1-15 so that the jungle is scaled back so it doesn't seem like you're hindered. Then again I see this backfiring cause if there is a level 30 summoner in a level 15 game you're just going to dominate both jungles so~ nvm. LOL. Just feel like its the hardest to learn cause you're pretty dependant on runes and its a new environment where as lanes you'll already be comfortable.
On July 18 2012 10:49 Ryuu314 wrote: The pressure to not fail lies more heavily on your friend than it does you. In a 1v2 lane, the #1 priority is to not die and not feed. Staying alive comes before anything else. He needs to leech w/e exp and gold he can get, which won't be much. But he absolutely must not die. In a 1v2 lane, you just play passive and wait for the lane to reach your tower, which is will. Then farm what you can under tower. By doing so, he solo lane will be able to at least keep up in levels or be no more than ~1 level behind. At which point, the jungler can easily out-level the solo lanes and come in for an easy double buff gank.
From what you said, it sounds like your friend didn't know how to play a 1v2 lane properly and thus snowballed the lane in the other team's favor too hard. And yes, jungling is somewhat hard w/out runes.
Also, don't be afraid to camp the SHIT out of the 1v2 lane when enemy team has no jungler. Even if it means your jungle path ends up being like Wolves -> blue -> camp top -> B -> wraiths wolves -> camp top -> their red -> camp top and so on.
You will be ahead of them because jungle exp + solo lane exp >>>>> duo lane exp. Might be barely even in gold, but when you and your lanemate are level 6 vs 2 level 4s (since neither of you have died this early, RIGHT??) you should just be able to trash them.
Also, get good at smite timing and you will never lose baron/dragons because enemy team has no smite.
Well my team wasn't coordinated enough to actually go for any of these things. I ganked bot several times because my top lane did die and feed quite a bit, and our mid was winning but the jayce got really fed and they killed the turret and basically stopped the laning phase, wukong went into the jungle and I buff sniped with smite a few times but it wasn't enough. We also didn't have the greatest team composition so we basically lost at the picks but regardless I usually lane top and just farm til 20 min and win from there.
I'm so sick of jungling. I'm sure it's my ELO, but I just can't do it anymore. If your team lets you get counter jungled, and you're behind, its your fault, you're a newb.
If a champ escapes a gank with a flash, you're a newb, should've done it differently.
Bot has their lane pushed all the way the entire game, then gets pushed back, probably killed, then immediately complains that you haven't been ganking their lane.
Lose a 1v1 versus the enemy jungler? Forget about it, they are going to literally shit on you.
Place wards, when they expire, lane will complain about it not being warded while placing no wards of their own, or get mercilessly, constantly, ganked by enemy jungle.
Literally no one will assist warding late game, complain about lack of wards.
All lanes get pushed, you hold lanes so they can back, complaints about how you are underleveled and undergeared.
Teammate dies at level 3? Complains you should've ganked at level 2.
The lane gets "kill" credit for all your ganks, but you have 8 assists and 2 deaths? You're the worst jungle. "This Skarner" comments.
Maybe support is the most thankless role, in that no one sees what they do...But Jungle has to be the most blamed role. Feels like nothing I do is ever right.
On July 19 2012 22:13 Felnarion wrote: I'm so sick of jungling. I'm sure it's my ELO, but I just can't do it anymore. If your team lets you get counter jungled, and you're behind, its your fault, you're a newb.
If a champ escapes a gank with a flash, you're a newb, should've done it differently.
Bot has their lane pushed all the way the entire game, then gets pushed back, probably killed, then immediately complains that you haven't been ganking their lane.
Lose a 1v1 versus the enemy jungler? Forget about it, they are going to literally shit on you.
Place wards, when they expire, lane will complain about it not being warded while placing no wards of their own, or get mercilessly, constantly, ganked by enemy jungle.
Literally no one will assist warding late game, complain about lack of wards.
All lanes get pushed, you hold lanes so they can back, complaints about how you are underleveled and undergeared.
Teammate dies at level 3? Complains you should've ganked at level 2.
The lane gets "kill" credit for all your ganks, but you have 8 assists and 2 deaths? You're the worst jungle. "This Skarner" comments.
Maybe support is the most thankless role, in that no one sees what they do...But Jungle has to be the most blamed role. Feels like nothing I do is ever right.
Part of being a good jungler in solo q is ignoring your team's negative comments. Make your own decisions. If you end up getting crushed, evaluate for yourself why you failed. Don't listen to dumb kids who tell you to cover top lane, then immediately gank bot, only to gank top again, as if you have some infinite number of instant teleportation abilities.
From your post, you don't seem to have a good understanding of many aspects of jungling. How are you losing 1v1s to other jungles? You might need to learn about who's strong/weak during what phase. i.e.
On July 19 2012 22:13 Felnarion wrote: I'm so sick of jungling. I'm sure it's my ELO, but I just can't do it anymore. If your team lets you get counter jungled, and you're behind, its your fault, you're a newb.
If a champ escapes a gank with a flash, you're a newb, should've done it differently.
Bot has their lane pushed all the way the entire game, then gets pushed back, probably killed, then immediately complains that you haven't been ganking their lane.
Lose a 1v1 versus the enemy jungler? Forget about it, they are going to literally shit on you.
Place wards, when they expire, lane will complain about it not being warded while placing no wards of their own, or get mercilessly, constantly, ganked by enemy jungle.
Literally no one will assist warding late game, complain about lack of wards.
All lanes get pushed, you hold lanes so they can back, complaints about how you are underleveled and undergeared.
Teammate dies at level 3? Complains you should've ganked at level 2.
The lane gets "kill" credit for all your ganks, but you have 8 assists and 2 deaths? You're the worst jungle. "This Skarner" comments.
Maybe support is the most thankless role, in that no one sees what they do...But Jungle has to be the most blamed role. Feels like nothing I do is ever right.
Part of being a good jungler in solo q is ignoring your team's negative comments. Make your own decisions. If you end up getting crushed, evaluate for yourself why you failed. Don't listen to dumb kids who tell you to cover top lane, then immediately gank bot, only to gank top again, as if you have some infinite number of instant teleportation abilities.
From your post, you don't seem to have a good understanding of many aspects of jungling. How are you losing 1v1s to other jungles? You might need to learn about who's strong/weak during what phase. i.e.
I have a reasonable understanding, I'm no God by any means, but my outcomes are decent, especially with Yi, less so with Skarner, but I never end negative, and usually build tanky. Honestly? Maybe 75% of my problems, you're right, is trying to please the rest of the team and be everywhere at once, which honestly just gives me LESS of a presence throughout the entire game. It's just when you're in there and doing it, you feel a lot of pressure to be everywhere.
As to the 1v1 comment, sometimes you just get in a situation, especially around level 6, where you just get caught in a situation where you're low, or can't get away (maybe they have red or something). I wasn't speaking to a specific instance in my mind, just kind of making generalizations.
The only time I can definitively say I've been crushed is when my jungle was invaded early by enemy jungle, top lane, and mid, and my top and mid just stood at their turrets. My blue was stolen (Skarner) and it just put me so so so far behind that I really couldn't recover, but aside from that, maybe I have an "okay" game, but never "bad" in my eyes. I get kills, I have more assists than most, and I die less than 5 times in a full game. Seems decent to me. Wards go up as I can afford to protect lanes and my jungle, I don't feed deaths nor lose my buffs, I pass off blue and red when I don't need them, I communicate with team, call mias I see, so forth.
Jungling in low elo means you have to understand your teammates will probably not help you. They probably don't even know how to help you even if they knew they need too.
I've jumped down 200-300 ELO from inactivity/not taking the game so seriously in the last few weeks and I can feel a massive difference in the jungle. Even with worse teammates at lower ELO, I feel untouchable at jungle. Whereas at the higher ELO I feel even with better teammates and having them help me, I fail more times than they fail. I think this means you can definitely learn how to jungle better with/without your teammates help.
Don't misunderstand, there are games where, with Yi, I can end 20+/3. It happens frequently, in fact, I very rarely lose if I jungle Yi. But it doesn't stop the team from trash talking me until I begin to snowball. More often than not, if I jungle, we win. I'm decent at it, my outcomes are good, that's not the problem.
The problem is having to take the blame for the poor decisions and playstyles of those around me until they see that I am carrying them too victory.
Your story kinda hearkens back to many LoL players being rather unreceptive of anything nonstandard / up to their ridiculous expectations. You're not a tanky jungler who can face-first the enemy team while also counterjungling and ganking all the lanes? You're obviously picking a terrible champ, feeding, being unhelpful, and should get reported, banned, go uninstall immediately before throwing your computer out the window.
Remember, nearly every player believes that they are by far the best player on their team and must carry 4 bads to victory. Especially at lower Elo.
On July 20 2012 03:37 Felnarion wrote: The problem is having to take the blame for the poor decisions and playstyles of those around me until they see that I am carrying them too victory.
You can probably make this statement in any role in solo q
On July 20 2012 03:57 sylverfyre wrote: Your story kinda hearkens back to many LoL players being rather unreceptive of anything nonstandard / up to their ridiculous expectations. You're not a tanky jungler who can face-first the enemy team while also counterjungling and ganking all the lanes? You're obviously picking a terrible champ, feeding, being unhelpful, and should get reported, banned, go uninstall immediately before throwing your computer out the window.
Remember, nearly every player believes that they are by far the best player on their team and must carry 4 bads to victory. Especially at lower Elo.
Lol, indeed, indeed. I think, from now on, my primary jungle strategy will be to just not say anything (Aside from ask for a leash if I need it) and do my best under the circumstances.
If someone starts to get too annoying, I'll simply mute, and do what I can. The cool thing is, at least, even if you're making fun of me constantly, I'll still help you.
Wish I were better. I'm at a level where I have knowledge from those above me, but something is missing (build choice? Probably switching champs up too much) and I'm just lower than where my game knowledge is. It's kind of ruining the game for me.
On July 20 2012 03:37 Felnarion wrote: The problem is having to take the blame for the poor decisions and playstyles of those around me until they see that I am carrying them too victory.
You can probably make this statement in any role in solo q
Definitely, but I've played them all, and I haven't felt the same pressure I feel jungling.
Unfortunately the league subforum only shows 3 pages. I don't know if this has been talked about, but there is a finesse to ganking.
We all know how mundo is a subpar ganker. But I was playing kayle a few days ago against shyvana top. Mundo came in at level 2 and pinged for me. I thought to myself "what does he want" and then I realized "oh he wants me to go in the brush and bait shyvana". So I did just that, I did some damage, then shyvana used exhaust and ignite on me, and I backed out. Then mundo finally came in, shyvana realized, tried to escape but she'd burnt her W and exhaust already, mundo got first blood and I asked him to help me push the lane to which he happily obliged.
Then later I put a pink ward in top lane's river brush. I spotted one of shyvana's wards. I go to the tri a bit later than mundo and he pings shyvana's ward. I understand he wants me to bait again. I kill the ward and act oblivious to shyvana coming to kill me. Then shyvana gets baited into leaving her tower again and my Q and mundo's Q and phage are enough to ensure shyvana can't outrun us even with her ult, and my ult and mundo's means we can dive her easily to pick up the kill.
There's a finesses to ganking that doesn't just involve running into unwarded lanes, pinging, and being spotted right away. Often you want your team to bait a fight, to blow the enemy's escapes, to move them away from their towers, and to get their eyes off the minimap.
I know that this is common in high level ganks but it's just something small that can win games in low elo.
On July 19 2012 22:13 Felnarion wrote: I'm so sick of jungling. I'm sure it's my ELO, but I just can't do it anymore. If your team lets you get counter jungled, and you're behind, its your fault, you're a newb.
If a champ escapes a gank with a flash, you're a newb, should've done it differently.
Bot has their lane pushed all the way the entire game, then gets pushed back, probably killed, then immediately complains that you haven't been ganking their lane.
Lose a 1v1 versus the enemy jungler? Forget about it, they are going to literally shit on you.
Place wards, when they expire, lane will complain about it not being warded while placing no wards of their own, or get mercilessly, constantly, ganked by enemy jungle.
Literally no one will assist warding late game, complain about lack of wards.
All lanes get pushed, you hold lanes so they can back, complaints about how you are underleveled and undergeared.
Teammate dies at level 3? Complains you should've ganked at level 2.
The lane gets "kill" credit for all your ganks, but you have 8 assists and 2 deaths? You're the worst jungle. "This Skarner" comments.
Maybe support is the most thankless role, in that no one sees what they do...But Jungle has to be the most blamed role. Feels like nothing I do is ever right.
Sounds like your skin isn't thick enough to be a jungler. Slaves/laners always gonna bitch about something, just man up and ignore it.
Seems really nice on any of the many CC/initiating junglers. Gives you good positioning power before a fight breaks out, makes it just a little bit easier to be everywhere at once, and lets you force a gank and run right by a ward more effectively. It is a gambit to lose the cheap tanky stats of tabi / tenacity of treads, though.
Edit: Also, can we keep this thread to be the jungle role discussion thread and keep the QQ to the QQ thread D: Seems like all of the last page is QQ about how people treat junglers.
Mobility also allows you to run to where the action is much faster. People really underestimate the impact of travel times, and how something as simple as showing top before b-lining to mid can throw people off because they don't expect you to arrive so soon.
Mobility is king in chasing, engaging, and general mobility. They're weak in situations where you're straight-up duking it out with people or tanking a lot of damage.
I think they're a reasonable choice on any jungler if the game allows for those situations where they're strong. The only caveat is the game will generally reach the point where you have to teamfight. That said, WHEN the game gets to the point where you need straight-up fighting power is often-times under your control.
TL;DR -- Mobility is good on any jungler in the right scenario, but you have to be able to evaluate the game-flow and determine whether you can leverage the upsides of Mobility before the downsides start to come into play.
I love it on Alistar, sometimes love it on Maokai, and suck at Nautilus. I don't like them on Shyvana or Skarner (I'd rather the early duking-it-out power for threatening the other jungler in his own jungle. Also, their movespeed steroids+mobility boots push you deep into diminishing-returns-land of movespeed.)
I don't play other junglers often enough to make sweeping judgements. Even on the junglers I like them on, I don't always get them, either.
On August 14 2012 11:17 zulu_nation8 wrote: i dont like it
I love it on any jungler that is good at camping a lane or gank oriented rather than 1v1/damage oriented. You will take more damage but it doesn't matter as long as they person you're ganking dies before you do. I always get them on jungle alistar get them most of the time on maokai. It literally does not matter that you're a level or two behind and take more damage. You're innately tanky and have a 0% chance of dying before they do with help from the lane.
Depends. If you fall behind but the laning phase is still going on, you can still force ganks pretty well. It's teamfights where the squishiness is the big liability, but the junglers who tend to pick up mobility are generally not focused in teamfights except when overextended/split from team (re: alistar, naut, mao are the ones I see it built most often on.)
thats true but those junglers are the most starved ones, you'll be lucky if you have a aegis for the first 5v5, so passing up free resist is not smart imo.
As a naut jungle should i be going for armor 5pot? im not sure if i could do it without? :S Preferably i'd rather go boots 3 pots cause it'd make it much faster imo. :o
On August 28 2012 03:44 D u o wrote: As a naut jungle should i be going for armor 5pot? im not sure if i could do it without? :S Preferably i'd rather go boots 3 pots cause it'd make it much faster imo. :o
You can jungle Nautilus without using Cloth Armor, but if you don't get help at wolves or a leash and/or don't have extra armor runes it can be rough to run Boots. Regrowth is a pretty common middle ground.
On August 28 2012 03:44 D u o wrote: As a naut jungle should i be going for armor 5pot? im not sure if i could do it without? :S Preferably i'd rather go boots 3 pots cause it'd make it much faster imo. :o
You can jungle Nautilus without using Cloth Armor, but if you don't get help at wolves or a leash and/or don't have extra armor runes it can be rough to run Boots. Regrowth is a pretty common middle ground.
I main Naut and I always go for boots+3 pots. You'll need them for your level 4 gank. The 3 pots should be enough to sustain yourself until then.
k guys, right now i'm trying to fix my goddamn runepages because i made them when i was noob and they're all fucked up. For jungle, i currently have ad marks, armor seals, mr/lvl glyphs and aspeed quints. I don't jungle all that much, but when i do i usually go mundo, jax, or skarner. I know that runes are very champ-specific, but what's the best setup for a generic jungle build?
On August 28 2012 13:17 Varpulis wrote: k guys, right now i'm trying to fix my goddamn runepages because i made them when i was noob and they're all fucked up. For jungle, i currently have ad marks, armor seals, mr/lvl glyphs and aspeed quints. I don't jungle all that much, but when i do i usually go mundo, jax, or skarner. I know that runes are very champ-specific, but what's the best setup for a generic jungle build?
more junglers use aspd reds than AD, only shyvanna/lee can use AD reds and lee doesnt need aspd quints. Noct should use a mix of aspd and apen.
On August 28 2012 13:17 Varpulis wrote: k guys, right now i'm trying to fix my goddamn runepages because i made them when i was noob and they're all fucked up. For jungle, i currently have ad marks, armor seals, mr/lvl glyphs and aspeed quints. I don't jungle all that much, but when i do i usually go mundo, jax, or skarner. I know that runes are very champ-specific, but what's the best setup for a generic jungle build?
more junglers use aspd reds than AD, only shyvanna/lee can use AD reds and lee doesnt need aspd quints. Noct should use a mix of aspd and apen.
alright so aspeed reds instead of ad, should i replace the quints then, and with what?
ty for the help
*edit nvm didn't see your first post. movespeed quints sound good.
AS Armor MR MS and AD Armor MR AD are my two most commonly used jungle runes - other than on AP junglers, of course. Though sometimes even on AP-tank jungles like maokai/alistar I use the former of those two. High base damages help keep those early buff camps a bit more acceptable with AS runes on them. Also better at using maokai passive with them.)
Amumu and other APs like that, I'll use MPen Armor MR AP (which is a semistandard AP page anyway) or MPen Armor MR MS (which is also a rumble/other magic dmg toplaner page)
On August 28 2012 03:44 D u o wrote: As a naut jungle should i be going for armor 5pot? im not sure if i could do it without? :S Preferably i'd rather go boots 3 pots cause it'd make it much faster imo. :o
You can jungle Nautilus without using Cloth Armor, but if you don't get help at wolves or a leash and/or don't have extra armor runes it can be rough to run Boots. Regrowth is a pretty common middle ground.
If you don't expect a leash id start cloth. In all likely hood you'll probably die at blue with no leash.
You can jungle without boots on many junglers, it's just less common than it was a few months back.
Jungling without boots by either going dorans blade or regrowth means unless you're an extremely strong ganker with a reliable gap closer (lee sin, maokai, naut, shaco are the ones that come to mind), you're going to be farming, not ganking. Champions like Skarner for example actually have pretty deadly ganks when opening boots (skarner's W gives him a speedboost equal to udyr's bear for up to 6 seconds) but literally can't do anything when he opens regrowth against anyone who opened boots.
On August 28 2012 13:17 Varpulis wrote: k guys, right now i'm trying to fix my goddamn runepages because i made them when i was noob and they're all fucked up. For jungle, i currently have ad marks, armor seals, mr/lvl glyphs and aspeed quints. I don't jungle all that much, but when i do i usually go mundo, jax, or skarner. I know that runes are very champ-specific, but what's the best setup for a generic jungle build?
MS quints, AS reds, armor yellow, mr/lvl blue is what I run for a majority of junglers.
Hey guys, I'm actually pretty decent at jungling, but what's a good tip that someone in platinum can give that can help ease the jungle learning curve?
I've tried utilizing my buffs by camping lanes, or doing ganks, but the rest solely relies on the partners you have in that lane... if they suck, you either fail at your gank (no kills) or you die and lose your buffs.
On August 30 2012 08:33 zZygote wrote: Hey guys, I'm actually pretty decent at jungling, but what's a good tip that someone in platinum can give that can help ease the jungle learning curve?
I've tried utilizing my buffs by camping lanes, or doing ganks, but the rest solely relies on the partners you have in that lane... if they suck, you either fail at your gank (no kills) or you die and lose your buffs.
Alright, I'll try to post this in an order that makes sense. First, make sure you know what jungle route you are going to take. For example, Wolves-Blue-Red. You can find best jungle routes in good champion guides on solomid.net, or you can figure them out yourself. Not knowing what to do from minute 1 = bad. Farming is the main part of jungling. Make sure to time buffs, dragon and baron, also try to remember the respawn timer of your wolves, wraiths and small golems. If there's nowhere to gank, you need to know which of the camps is going to be up first! Watch your minimap 24/7, you don't even need to last hit. :3 Watch as lanes push and pull. Most junglers gank well from the river, so you usually want to gank when your laners are pushed on. Sometimes you want to gank from the bushes in lane/towerdive, then you have to gank when your lane pushes. etc. Before ganking, be aware of what you can do during a gank, what your teammate can do and what the enemy can do to escape. If your enemy is Riven and your teammate a lvl5 warwick, ganking might not be a good idea even when the Riven pushes a lot. That being said, after a gank, make sure to remember why your gank worked/didn't work. Next time you will know what to do! If you don't think any gank will succeed, don't be ashamed to farm. Sometimes your teammates crying for a gank really don't have better idea than you do.
Another few tips: creep wave size- If the lane is pushed out a lot, but their tower is killing your side's minions and they have a relatively healthy wave, the lane won't be pusehd for long. This is a great time to sneak into the lane bushes if you're in position and willing to devote time to the gank, or if you're not on the right side of the map, move in the general direction of that lane while clearing and tell your teammate to let the lane push.
Skip small golems 90% of the time. Just don't bother with them. They're really out of the way (lost walking time), most aoe junglers clear them slowly without blowing a smite on them (lost killing time), they don't give significantly more XP or gold than other jungle camps, and only one lane is in range to gank after doing them.
Always clear wraiths/wolves when they spawn unless you're doing other shit. At some point you'll often be doing other shit, and you can tell your mid to take your wraiths. (usually sometime AFTER you hit 6, and it depends on what champ you're playing and how much you're counterjungling/ganking)
I'm attempting to play with a high AD into bruiser lee sin, going cloth + 5 pots into madreds into boots into wriggles, followed up by my boots of choice then straight to BT and then Mallet.I'm attempting this on my smurf therefore the only runes I have at the moment are AD marks and quints, aspd blues and armour yellows. Are ther any runes I need to change ?
On August 30 2012 18:12 AceLight wrote: I'm attempting to play with a high AD into bruiser lee sin, going cloth + 5 pots into madreds into boots into wriggles, followed up by my boots of choice then straight to BT and then Mallet.I'm attempting this on my smurf therefore the only runes I have at the moment are AD marks and quints, aspd blues and armour yellows. Are ther any runes I need to change ?
what is this build supposed to accomplish? You will have a huge amount of lifesteal and AD with a minimal amount of defenses and then you build HP. I think if you want to scale up lifesteal you should get defenses natural follow ups from BT on a bruiser would be GA or even aegis, but let us look at the buildup first. I like cloth+5 into madreds into wriggles though because actually lee sin does not need alot of lifesteal early on. That said he really never needs it at all. all you are trying to do as jungle lee sin with lifesteal is to stay high on health between ganks and wriggles covers that fine. also the innate ward helps alot. after you finished wriggles and mercs ppl will allready gang up in higher frequenzy for turrets, dragons and buffs, the AP carries allready have a ton gold now and more level than you now and the bruisers top will have enough defenses to shrugg off aton of damage even if you allready have the BF sword. A BF sword costs alot of gold so you end up with just wriggles and mercs for a significant amount of time, while you could get parts for aegis/phage/hexdrinker or even purchase a giants belt. I see where you are comming from though. You want lee sin to be lee sin for a longer amount of time with adding some additional punch to his burst, abusing his mobility. Well then think up a build that builds up faster. brutalizer allways has been a natural choice for lee sin for example, hexdrinker doesn't give you as much damage but really helps against AP carry burst. Anything along that line should work way better and smoothens out your progression.
on a side note: when you start with cloth then you can easily scip some pots for a ward, which will help you alot more than having 3 pots left on your first back.
On August 30 2012 11:40 sylverfyre wrote: Another few tips: creep wave size- If the lane is pushed out a lot, but their tower is killing your side's minions and they have a relatively healthy wave, the lane won't be pusehd for long. This is a great time to sneak into the lane bushes if you're in position and willing to devote time to the gank, or if you're not on the right side of the map, move in the general direction of that lane while clearing and tell your teammate to let the lane push.
Skip small golems 90% of the time. Just don't bother with them. They're really out of the way (lost walking time), most aoe junglers clear them slowly without blowing a smite on them (lost killing time), they don't give significantly more XP or gold than other jungle camps, and only one lane is in range to gank after doing them.
Always clear wraiths/wolves when they spawn unless you're doing other shit. At some point you'll often be doing other shit, and you can tell your mid to take your wraiths. (usually sometime AFTER you hit 6, and it depends on what champ you're playing and how much you're counterjungling/ganking)
You want to do doubles on wriggles reliant junglers like lee sin, shyvana etc since it doesn't really take you much extra time compared to doing wraiths/wolves. On junglers like maokai though, I stick to my own wolves/wraiths and rely on smitestealing their big wraith and taxing lanes on ganks to make up for not doing doubles.
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On August 30 2012 18:12 AceLight wrote: I'm attempting to play with a high AD into bruiser lee sin, going cloth + 5 pots into madreds into boots into wriggles, followed up by my boots of choice then straight to BT and then Mallet.I'm attempting this on my smurf therefore the only runes I have at the moment are AD marks and quints, aspd blues and armour yellows. Are ther any runes I need to change ?
Don't open cloth on lee. If you're using 9/21 masteries, there's no need to use a cloth. Rushing madreds might seem to clear the jungle quicker but you're actually losing a huge amount of time running between camps and also, your ganking is pretty terrible in comparison to a lee that opens boots.
It's also really hard to get a BT out of the jungle. Unless you're actually getting kills, you're going to have much better luck sitting on a wriggles and hexdrinker than grabbing a BT. If you're getting fed in the jungle, I've seen far more lee sins skip the wriggles entirely and do a lane lee build going double dorans BT Aegis or something similar. Same thing with the mallet. Grabbing a phage is easy, grabbing a giants belt is easy but working up towards a mallet, paying 825 for a trivial amount of AD + health and a guaranteed slow is pretty bad when you consider that lee sin has a built in slow that's just as good beyond the fact that it has a cooldown.
On August 30 2012 19:06 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: Open boots + 3 pot on Lee Sin, it's just so much stronger.
If I open boots, do I still build straight to wriggles? Also, I have considered going Brutalizer then possibly GA into whatever I feel at the time. I'm trying to abuse the fact I am very comfortable with landing my Q + my ward jumping, so I'm trying to get burst ganks in rather then the usual low-damage ganks I find with my normal Lee Sin build.