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This is an introductory guide to jungling on Summoner's Rift, meant to help players who don't have a lot of jungling experience to:
- Understand what jungling is all about, and
- Give them tips on how to jungle effectively
This guide assumes that you are a level 30 Summoner; while it is possible to jungle without the corresponding Runes and Masteries on some champions, jungling at level 30 is very different to jungling at lower Summoner levels, and jungling is balanced primarily around level 30 Summoners.
Preface: Having a jungler should be a team consideration. Does your team come out ahead with 4 laners and 1 jungler, as opposed to 5 laners? Nowadays, the answer is usually YES- but you need to cover some bases. Usually, taking a jungler means the top lane will have only one champion on your side (why? Because you'll want more champions on the bottom lane, which is close to the Dragon- a very important early-midgame objective); this means you need two good standalone laning champions (for mid and solo top), rather than just one. I'm not an expert on how to play solo top properly, but obviously some champions are better than others. If you can pull this composition off properly as a team, then your solo top champion will get a BIG boost to his experience and gold income, while you, the jungler, are tapping other sources of gold and exp. More exp and gold for your team = better. Oh, and one more thing: If you're jungling, Take Summoner Smite. Don't argue with me, just take it.
Pillar #1: Speed
Q: Who is generally considered to be the best jungling champion?
A: Warwick.
Jungling speed is a very important consideration, and surprisingly, Warwick isn't a very fast jungler. Jungling speed is mostly about how fast you can clear the jungle camps, and a lesser consideration is how fast you can move between camps. Look at a moderately popular jungler, Udyr: He has this ability called Turtle Stance, which gives him a damage shield upon activation, and gives him health and mana drain on every attack. You'd think this is an excellent jungling ability; it's not. In fact, it's a terrible ability to start off with. Damage output is your first and second consideration when choosing skills; movement and survivability boosts are also helpful, but generally damage output takes precedence. In Udyr's case, get either Phoenix Stance or Tiger Stance first. You'll take more damage, but that's fine; health potions are cheap and can give you sufficient survivability.
I use 'time to get to level 5' as a benchmark. With Cloth Armor-starting Rammus, I get to level 5 by 5:10 approximately; with Mana Sapphire-starting Amumu, I make 5:00; with Cloth Armor-starting Udyr, I also make five minutes flat; with Shen or Warwick I make about 5:30. In other words; if you're taking 6:50 to get to level 5, you're doing something wrong (this is how long it took me to get to level 5 with Turtle Stance Udyr my very first time jungling :p).
Practice makes perfect here. Learn when to recall back to base (I generally clear 3 to 8 camps before recalling the first time- this varies a lot by champion! With someone who heals a lot like Warwick, you can afford to return to base less often than most other champions), practice what order you're clearing the camps in and try to make sure you're making the most of your smite spell, using it as often as possible and on worthwhile targets (Stone golems, Ancient Lizard, Ancient Golem, or blue wraith if you're starting at that camp at level 1). As for starting items, look to the strengths and weaknesses of your champion:
- Rammus: A lot of his damage output comes from Defensive Ball Curl and Powerball, and because he's a tank, you might as well buy a tanky item. I start out with Cloth Armor + Health Potion x5.
- Warwick: It's very standard to get a Mandred's Razor ASAP on Warwick. Standard item openings on him are therefore Longsword + Health Potion, or Cloth Armor in case you really want to buy an early Sight Ward.
- Amumu: Between Tantrum and Despair, Amumu has great damage output, but is enormously mana hungry. I like to start with Mana Sapphire and health potion x2.
- Udyr: You pretty much need Cloth Armor + Health Potion x5 or the jungle monsters will kill you.
Finally, note that your choice of Runes and, to a lesser degree, Masteries, can make a huge difference in jungling speed. I suggest you look at Champion-specific guides for advice on Rune and Mastery setups for jungling.
Pillar #2: Expense
Gold is a very important consideration in LoL. How much of it are you spending to make your jungling run successful? If you're buying an Elixir of Agility, that's 250g you're not seeing again; if you're buying a Cloth Armor, are you selling it later on for a 210g reimbursement (90g net expense), or are you using it as a component to build into something else? (net expense 0; Cloth Armor is a long-term investment) How many Health (or even mana) potions are you chugging?
In this category, Warwick is king. Cloth Armor and Longsword both build into a core item for him later on (Mandred's Razor / Bloodrazor), and he barely needs any Health Potions to keep his health up because his Passive + Q do most of the work in that regard. My net expense by level 5 with Rammus is of roughly 210g (6 health potions); with Amumu, it's 330g (6 health potions and 3 mana potions); for Warwick, it's 35g (1 health potion). Consider the tradeoff between speed and expense; an Elixir will generally improve your speed, but will also set you back on your expense account by so much it's usually not worthwhile.
Pillar #3: Map Control
Is the jungler on the enemy team trying to steal your wraith camp at the start of the game? Is the entire enemy team coming to your Ancient Golem camp to thwart your jungling before the minions spawn? Do you have the Dragon warded?
Starting off at different jungle camps will have different levels of risk; Ancient Golem is usually the riskiest. If you're starting at the Stone Golems, make sure you keep an eye out at your Wraith camp for as long as possible, to spot any attempts to steal those from you by the enemy jungler. You should also buy a ward and set it down in the river near Dragon as soon as you can afford it, both to know if the enemy team is attempting to kill Dragon, and to be aware of any movements along the river between the mid and bottom lanes.
Some champions exert better map control by virtue of being very powerful at the early levels. The best example of this is Nunu; with a monstrously large health pool and a spell which heals him for a ton of health, he's nearly unkillable in the early game- add to that a powerful slowing spell, and he becomes a super-scary foe to meet far away from your towers. On the flipside, Amumu is one of the least threatening junglers pre-level 6, because he's very weak in a 1-on-1 fight early on.
If you see a fight getting started on a lane, you should head over there ASAP (unless you're too far away to reach the fight on time); if one of your lanes gets wiped out, you need to hustle and cover it while your teammates get back, you can't just let it fall.
Pillar #4: Ganking
You have two big advantages for ganking as a jungler:
- No one can call mia on you
- Lizard Buff slow
Your worst enemy is: Wards. If the enemy laners set down wards on the river, you either need to know where they're placed and circumvent them cleverly, or it will be much harder to gank successfully (I can still do it on Rammus, for instance, because he's so fast that he can catch up to retreating opponents). The ideal situation for a gank is one in which your allies are towerhugging, and their opponents are pressing down on them; your prey has a long way to go before they reach the safety of their turret. Worst-case scenario is, of course, if your opponents are towerhugging; don't even try to gank in this situation, just keep on jungling or port home and buy if none of your jungle camps are up yet.
When ganking, make sure your laning allies are aware of this. If on Vent, tell them; if not, type something like 'ganking bot' and ping an enemy champion.
Make sure you design your jungling path with ganking in mind. When are you going to gank? Level 3, 4, 5, 6? Whenever it is, make sure you have the Lizard Buff on you, and that you are at (or very near) full health by when you spring the trap. On some champions, such as Amumu, waiting for level 6 can make sense- the difference between having Curse of the Sad Mummy available or not is worlds apart. What Summoner spell are you taking, apart from Smite? Exhaust, Ghost, Ignite, Flash? It's an important consideration for your gank attempts.
What champions are you trying to gank? Mordekaiser may be a great laning champion because he withstands harass very well, but he's very gankable; Shaco is one of the worst possible gank targets because Deceive is a godlike escape mechanism. What Summoner spells are they taking? If you press tab and see Ghost / Flash, chances are they're going to get away.
Having a successful ganking experience can set you way ahead for the rest of the game; failing your ganks (or worse, getting killed on gank attempts) will set you behind on the gold curve.
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Practice makes perfect! Time your jungling runs, try out different starting spots, and above all, don't get killed by jungle minions on Normal or Ranked games. That's what Practice games are for 
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Warwick should be taking longsword to open, not cloth armor. This is obvious from your very own highest priority rant, ironically...
Runes can matter. For junglers who can't go on infinitely (everyone but Fiddlesticks and Warwick, as far as I know), flat armor yellows can reduce the number of base trips.
That brings up another point: you say survivability is irrelevant, because killing speed is what matters. This is pretty much false, since (again, ignoring Fiddle/WW) survivability means fewer trips to base, and those eat vastly more time than a couple extra whacks on lizard/golem. This is one reason why Amumu should always open cloth + 5x health, and not mana crystal: it lets him bluepill less frequently. The other reason is that cloth builds into HoG (core on mummy), while sapphire builds into, umm...catalyst? I dunno.
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On November 08 2010 23:26 oberon wrote:
Warwick should be taking longsword to open, not cloth armor. This is obvious from your very own highest priority rant, ironically...
Runes can matter. For junglers who can't go on infinitely (everyone but Fiddlesticks and Warwick, as far as I know), flat armor yellows can reduce the number of base trips.
That brings up another point: you say survivability is irrelevant, because killing speed is what matters. This is pretty much false, since (again, ignoring Fiddle/WW) survivability means fewer trips to base, and those eat vastly more time than a couple extra whacks on lizard/golem. This is one reason why Amumu should always open cloth + 5x health, and not mana crystal: it lets him bluepill less frequently. The other reason is that cloth builds into HoG (core on mummy), while sapphire builds into, umm...catalyst? I dunno.
I'm not an expert on WW, and you make a good point about Longsword on him. Thanks.
As to survivability leading to fewer portals back, this is false if you're jungling quickly enough; you will be clearing out jungle camps faster than they can respawn, so unless you're going to go gank a lane (not viable on many champs at level 3) or going jungling into enemy territory (possible, but risky- especially if they have a jungler of their own), you can teleport back, regen health and mana, buy more stuff, and get back to the jungle by the time the minion camps respawn.
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First things first: Jungling is a lane not a role. What I mean with this is that being a jungler by itself doesn´t necessearly help the Team, a proper composition is still more important. That is why Amumu is such a popular jungler even though he is technically "bad" at it - he is a top Tank right now.
WW longsword is good if the other Team has no jungler (or a wannabe jungler that is predictable). Otherwise he should buy cloth and ward. That will alow you to observer the enemy runes and gank the jungler when he attempts them, netting you not only a kill but also the rune.
Taking Agi Elixier on Shen also irked me. It IS faster but only by 15 seconds compared to my fastest route with him if I take cloth and I´d end up with less life - not worth it imho. Elexiers first imho only make sense if they translate into First Blood, otherwise you are 300 Gold behind which is a lot more worth than 15 or even 30 seconds.
The trick with Shen is while his DPS isn´t great his burst is. Most of his damage comes from Ki-Strike and Vorpal Blade, as long as these aren´t wasted you don´t really care about autoattacks. Ideally you don´t have 200 Energy in the jungle and don´t use Ki-strike to overkill creeps.
For example it´s a big speedboost to kill the red wolf before the Golem spawns - you loose nothing since the life you´d loose anyway and the energy regenerates as you switch camps. By waiting for Golem you loose the 50 Energy that would have regenerated after spending it on the Wolf.
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Marshall Islands3404 Posts
On November 08 2010 23:48 Unentschieden wrote:
First things first: Jungling is a lane not a role. What I mean with this is that being a jungler by itself doesn´t necessearly help the Team, a proper composition is still more important. That is why Amumu is such a popular jungler even though he is technically "bad" at it - he is a top Tank right now.
WW longsword is good if the other Team has no jungler (or a wannabe jungler that is predictable). Otherwise he should buy cloth and ward. That will alow you to observer the enemy runes and gank the jungler when he attempts them, netting you not only a kill but also the rune.
not true, having a jungler is 100% required.
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On November 09 2010 00:01 Brees wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2010 23:48 Unentschieden wrote:
First things first: Jungling is a lane not a role. What I mean with this is that being a jungler by itself doesn´t necessearly help the Team, a proper composition is still more important. That is why Amumu is such a popular jungler even though he is technically "bad" at it - he is a top Tank right now.
WW longsword is good if the other Team has no jungler (or a wannabe jungler that is predictable). Otherwise he should buy cloth and ward. That will alow you to observer the enemy runes and gank the jungler when he attempts them, netting you not only a kill but also the rune.
not true, having a jungler is 100% required.
Yes, but WHICH one depends more on what your Team needs than who is best against creeps. By that metric no one but Warwick would jungle and sending Amumu to jungle wouldn´t make sense.
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On November 08 2010 23:48 Unentschieden wrote:
For example it´s a big speedboost to kill the red wolf before the Golem spawns - you loose nothing since the life you´d loose anyway and the energy regenerates as you switch camps. By waiting for Golem you loose the 50 Energy that would have regenerated after spending it on the Wolf.
Same thing with Nunu, 2 auto-attacks and Consume on the big wolf and your health is regenerated and Consume is back up before Blue spawns.
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Oh, and one thing I'd add to any general jungling guide is that on many junglers, you should be giving up at least the third buff spawns (or even the second) to other players on your team that will make better use of it. (Red to ranged carries, Blue to Kass/Heimer/Annie/etc.)
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Ah, I misread that, you already stated warwick isn't a fast jungler. Anyway yeah Yi/Cho/Udyr/Olaf are all faster.
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On November 09 2010 01:18 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Ah, I misread that, you already stated warwick isn't a fast jungler. Anyway yeah Yi/Cho/Udyr/Olaf are all faster.
I believe Malphite is as well
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I've only jungled with Malphite once or twice, but he seems to be one of the slower ones. Rammus is faster than WW too I think.
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I think you missed to huge thing when it comes to junglers. (part of why Amumu and WW are so good for a jungler)
1.End/Mid game power, Shaco weakness is this. He is an amazing jungler but he requires 5 kills before 9 to be a threat. Amumu shines in this aspect.
Transitioning out of the laning (phase) into a mid game phase is just as important as the actual jungling.
2.Jungle safety. Warwicks true power, He can start anywhere and he can almost always stay at almost full hp
This ties into safety as a lot of heroes have ganking windows were they have enough hp for it.
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On November 09 2010 01:41 STS17 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2010 01:18 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Ah, I misread that, you already stated warwick isn't a fast jungler. Anyway yeah Yi/Cho/Udyr/Olaf are all faster. I believe Malphite is as well
soloside yi, rammus and mordekaizer are, imho the fastest junglers (not 100% sure on rammus, but he feels really fast)
edit: also, jungle karthus is deceptively fast, i was outjungling a ww on it once, surprised me alot
edit2: note to OP, actually the commonly accepted jungle shaco path nowadays starts at red/minis/wraiths at the same time, not blue (refer to reginald's route, search reginald shaco on youtube, it should be the 1st one), this is really just nitpicking, but its good to be 'in' with the fads of the month for these guides tho
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suffeli
Finland772 Posts
Karthus is the fastest jungle of them all, dunno if he is 'viable' jungler though. Olaf clears creeps in about 3.30 mark. Udyr does a clean creep sweep with offensive masteries at about 3.20~ mark (few secs behind Karthus), but I wouldn't spec too deep in the offensive tree with him. Olaf and Udyr also can kill dragon at lvl 4 without madreds. Mordekaiser is fast too, but there is no reason him to jungle (he sucks at ganking and i'm quite sure he can't kill dragon at lvl 4).
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Shaco has to switch it up. If you always go red it's pretty easy for the other team to know which side to break boxes on.
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On November 09 2010 22:03 suffeli wrote:
Karthus is the fastest jungle of them all, dunno if he is 'viable' jungler though. Olaf clears creeps in about 3.30 mark. Udyr does a clean creep sweep with offensive masteries at about 3.20~ mark (few secs behind Karthus), but I wouldn't spec too deep in the offensive tree with him. Olaf and Udyr also can kill dragon at lvl 4 without madreds. Mordekaiser is fast too, but there is no reason him to jungle (he sucks at ganking and i'm quite sure he can't kill dragon at lvl 4).
Mundo: stonegols, wraiths, wolves, golem by 3:07. Recall golems lizard wraiths wolves by 5:07.
Threatens dragon at 6.
Very unsafe, sub 50 hp almost all the time.
Ganks decently (reliant on ghost, lizard, and hitting cleavers - usually not worth it to gank).
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2 quick things I'd like to chip in here
1. Rammus, Malphite and Amumu are all obscenely fast junglers on everything but dragon (and Amumu is fast on dragon too, though he's pretty unsafe with it).
2. Elixir first opening are only acceptable if they lead to a fast dragon. Otherwise they're horribly inefficient.
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On November 10 2010 03:15 Mogwai wrote:
2 quick things I'd like to chip in here
1. Rammus, Malphite and Amumu are all obscenely fast junglers on everything but dragon (and Amumu is fast on dragon too, though he's pretty unsafe with it).
2. Elixir first opening are only acceptable if they lead to a fast dragon. Otherwise they're horribly inefficient.
Hm. I'll make more jungling runs with and without elixirs to get an idea of how much they speed you up and on which champions. It may well be that you're right and elixir first is generally a waste.
As to which junglers are best at killing dragon as part of their jungling route, I prefer not to include any of that in the guide, as in my experience, a competent opposition will always have Dragon warded and trying to solo it with a jungler leads to getting chased away and wasting time at best- or getting caught and killed at worst. Because of this, I am of the opinion that soloing dragon at early levels is not in a junglers' job description.
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oh, well you're missing out on a lot of the pre-6 minute push and pull of jungle routes then. we once lost a game to Jatt's Udyr taking dragon with red pot opening by doing wolves -> golem -> dragon opening as Purple jungler. you really gotta be diligent watching the creep score of opposing junglers checking dragon at the right times even without wards.
also, part of the cookie-cutter longsword first WW route is rushing to dragon after first back with razors and forcing either the opposing team to concede dragon or teamfight you at an awkward timing for their jungler. early dragon awareness is crucial to good jungle play.
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On November 09 2010 21:23 Eppa! wrote:
I think you missed to huge thing when it comes to junglers. (part of why Amumu and WW are so good for a jungler)
1.End/Mid game power, Shaco weakness is this. He is an amazing jungler but he requires 5 kills before 9 to be a threat. Amumu shines in this aspect.
Transitioning out of the laning (phase) into a mid game phase is just as important as the actual jungling.
2.Jungle safety. Warwicks true power, He can start anywhere and he can almost always stay at almost full hp
This ties into safety as a lot of heroes have ganking windows were they have enough hp for it.
As to your first point- It is entirely valid, but I feel it isn't directly related to this thread and, more importantly, I do not feel capable of assessing all the various junglers' strengths at mid and late game. I'm not even capable of assessing how good they all are at jungling; I've never once jungled with Malphite, for instance. For this reason, I'd rather stick to what I know, and that is the basics of jungling. I'd encourage you to write a more advanced guide on this topic as a separate thread if you feel you can provide a valuable insight on this issue.
As to your second point, I don't believe Warwick is unique in being able to start at any jungle camp; the bigger reason why junglers like some starting spots better than others, as far as I can tell, is because they provide an efficient route that minimizes travel time, or because a particular route will let them grab the lizard buff and go gank at a specific timing. While I don't address jungle safety directly, it is more or less encompassed in the 'Map Control' section, where I mention how some jungling routes are safer than others because, for example, starting at the ancient golem can be very predictable with some champions. I'll edit in a mention of how staying at high health will make you less likely to die to counter-jungling.
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EPT
