For those that prefers to read, you can find the transcript of the video below.
What type of character to play in Jungle?
A Jungler is required during a match to farm the jungle, perform ganks, and provide neutral objectives control. So, by default we are looking at characters that can perform those actions efficiently. But it is rare to have characters that excels in all 3 of them, when it’s the case they usually rise to the top of the jungle food chain. So, we are looking at someone that is good for at least 2 of these criteria, which mean in the end jungle is an open role when it comes to which character can be taken.
In general, the farm efficiency criteria mean we see mainly, if not exclusively, melee character in the jungle but on the melee character side we still have the full spectrum of bruisers, tanks, and assassins. What really matters here is whatever character you end up selecting you need to play to its strength and play around its weakness.
What to do in the Early Game?
Jungle is a difficult role when it comes to decision making, you will never be able to do all the thing you want to do, there is too much to do on the map. Which means you will have to constantly takes decisions and most of the decisions are not obvious. So be prepared this role is mentally exhausting and will take a lot from you to master.
That being said, the early game revolves around one simple principle: Finding the right balance between farming and impacting the map.
How do we do that? First, we need to focus on optimizing our farm, like in the “How to win your games” guide the most important thing in the early game is farming, it is also true for jungler. Without farm you won’t be strong enough to impact the map, so it is important to keep the farm up. The primary aspect of efficient farm is clearing each camp as fast as possible while minimizing the damage taken. So be certain that your area of effect (AOE) abilities hit all the minions in the camp, and kite the camp, which means move out of harms way between auto-attack, to limit the damage taken because the minion will have to walk towards you instead of attacking you. Moreover, your auto-attack on melee character have a bit of cleave damage, utilize it to maximize your damage similar to your AOE use. The second aspect is your jungle route, put simply in which order are you going to do your camps? Every time you need to make a plan of where you are going to get the farm, when it comes to farm alone it is pretty simple, go to the zone where there are the most camps available and then jump from closest camp to closest camp. One way to optimize is building a bit your theoretical knowledge of the jungle by learning the respawn timer of each camp so it is easier for you to plan ahead.
Optimizing your farm was the easy part of the journey, let’s look at the impacting the map part. In early game you can impact the map in two ways, ganking lane or invading the enemy jungle. The impact the map moment should ideally be including in your farming plan, for instance if I clear my blue side, I will level up and get my ultimate so I can gank offlane with it. But as a jungler we need to always be ready to adapt the plan on the go, as the saying says “you need a plan to start but it is not this plan that will bring you to the end”.
How do we devise that plan? First you should not reroute completely to go for a gank or an invade in the early game, you should try to impact what is next to you. Why? Because we want to optimize our farm and walking long distance while doing nothing is not efficient.
Ok I am nearby a lane should I gank it? Ask yourself does my character and my teammate in the lane can win the fight if I show up? If yes, next question, are the enemies in a gankable position, if they are full health under tower, then probably the answer is no, if they are diving your tower then answer is probably yes. Next question is may other enemies appear if I go for it and if yes can we still dominate the fight or finish it before they appear. If after all this question the final answer is yes, we can prepare for the gank, otherwise it’s a no. So gank is on the board, how to increase its chance of success? First, warn your teammate you are coming, through the communication system and devise a plan in your head on how the gank is going to unfold. For instance, if you have a Riktor jungle and your lane as some sort of crowd control it is maybe better to wait for them to CC so you have an easy hook afterwards, but maybe the correct play is to flash ult immediately, what matters here is you try to plan out the different scenarios so you increase your chance of success. Which also means you should also have an idea of what you want the outcome of the gank to be, in general we are looking to get kills, but sometimes just getting the blink out is enough, or helping the lane crash the wave so they get a free back. That way you will know when you have done enough and can go back to farming. A little thing that your laner will appreciate after a gank try to fix the wave state. What I mean by that is if the wave is coming back to you, it’s fine don’t touch it but if it’s pushing in the direction of the enemy team, help your teammate crash the wave under tower so they don’t end up with a bad wave state once you are gone.
We have seen when, and how to gank, let’s look at when to invade. The answer would be everytime you can do it safely since stealing an enemy jungle camp is double value, you get it while denying it from the enemy jungler so you pull ahead on the farm category. How we know it’s safe? The easiest one is if your laner have priority in a lane you are nearby, which means they are pressuring the opponent so they can’t rotate, because thanks to them you are guaranteed to have numerical advantage, so it makes it a safe play. Otherwise, you need to be able to read the map accurately, where is the enemy jungler and if I go for the invade who can collapse on me, if they do, do I have a valid escape route. And if you thought you were safe but in the end you are not, it is better to drop the camp than dying to try to get it.
A couple additional note to conclude what to do in the early game. Idle time is bad for a jungler since while you are idle you are not farming or impacting the map. Which means waiting 10 seconds to increase our chance of success for a gank is fine, spending 30 seconds to hit a lane that obviously stay safe in proximity of their tower is not. Also don’t take your laners farm, there is always stuff in the jungle to take in the early game so the only time it is ok to go take the farm of a lane is if a wave is going to go under tower and nobody is around to take it besides you. And by nobody around means nobody is walking back to that wave. Really taking your laners farm at the wrong time can be extremely damaging to their chance of success.
What to do in the Mid Game?
In the mid game, you should keep applying the principles we have seen in the early game but this time the goal should be taking objectives and structures. So you have to start planning your jungle route and farming with the idea of creating opportunities to take early objectives or overpowering a lane to get their towers. So when you do your planning, look critically at what is available on the map, for instance if your team already have the tier 1 tower in offlane and mini prime is already done, even if the opposing offlaner is advanced on the lane it is likely not worth it to go gank him since that will open the Fangtooth to be taken by the enemy team and even if you get the kill you cannot convert it into a structure. Also be certain to keep a Hunt charge at all time in the mid game to be ready to start or contest objectives.
Jungler are critical to generate tempo on the map for their teams in the mid game which means if you are not yourself doing the right movement and the enemy jungler does, you are going to fall behind. This is where it can become complicated because sometimes even a successful gank is actually a loss of tempo on the map like we have seen with the previous exemple. So always think if your action will allow for your team to secure an objectives or structures and how the enemy jungler can respond to your own movement to stay a step ahead of him.
Last it is important that you understand what your role in teamfight is since you are likely to force them to secure objectives. There is no one fit all answer here, it depends on your own pick, your team composition, enemy team composition, and how well farmed everyone is. But keep in mind that there are two important things for successful teamfight, thinking about your positioning and your role and for that we have a simple algorithm to follow. First you have to answer if you are a tank/bruiser or an assassin.
If you are a tank or a bruiser your job is to initiate the teamfight, walk in front of your team and start the battle which means you need to pay attention about two things. First do not get poke too much while looking for the engagement, try to be decisive with it but pay attention if your teammates are in position to follow up your engage. You might be tanky but if you tank all 5 members of the enemy team alone you are going to die. Then once the engage is done you usually have two potentials roles, either keep pressuring their backline if you can kill them while staying alive or fall back to your backline to peel for them.
If you are an assassin, you should try to look to position yourself out of vision from the enemy and be ready to jump in on the enemy squishy character once the teamfight has been initiated either by them or your team. Then you need to all in, which mean try to do your best to one shot that character. Once this character is done depending on the state of the teamfight you can either jump to next target or disengage for a short while to get your cooldown back up to either re-engage and kill another target or reset because you are not in a position to fight anymore.
Teamfights will come with experience but if you really want to get better at them you need to watch their replays and ask yourself what should I do at every point in the teamfight while reviewing it. Remember the 50/50 rule from the “Perfect Mindset” video.
What do to do in the Late Game?
As a jungler you have access to the hunt item that is crucial to secure objectives that are almost impossible to solo. This means your job is usually to stick with your team and look for opportunities with them since if you try to split push, you put your team at a huge disadvantage on any objectives fight since the enemy team will have hunt while yours does not.
So realistically speaking your role as a jungler is not that much different than what you where doing in the mid game, try to find good opportunities to get map control and be around the objectives that are likely to be contested. Don’t forget to try to remove visions if you opted for the sentry vision item. Visions wins game so if you have control of a portion of the map, removing any wards the enemy team have in the area can be the difference between winning or losing the next teamfight.
Also in the late game, most people can farm the jungle and it is fine, especially when it comes to blue and red buff, it is usually better to have them on the mage and carry respectively so don’t hesitate to share them with your team to improve your chance of success.
Conclusion
We are at the end of this guide and jungler is definitely not an easy role at the beginning, there is a lot of macro aspect that might be complex when we start. Keep in mind to practice while using the isolation training method, you won’t be able to apply everything immediately so just focus on one step at a time. And for jungle I would recommend following that order:
- Learn to farm efficiently each camp
- Start planning jungle farming route
- Add some ganks to your route and improve their quality
- Add some invades to your route and improve their quality
- Focus on controlling objectives
- Improve your teamfighting
- Apply everything to adapt on the go your jungle route all the game long
Thank you for spending the time on this content and I hope it has provided you clear direction on how to bring your gameplay to the next level. Keep in mind that everyone around you also progress, and so if you want to rank up you need to progress faster than the pack. Following what we have seen in this guide will definitely allow you to do that, because very few play games with an understanding of what they are doing. So go out there and feel free to share your success story in the comments. For me, I will see you in the future with more educational content to help you towards becoming the best at Predecessor.
Mugi out!