I main
and I usually do not like the jungler coming top to my lane because they can mess up my early wave management and farm.
But I completely understand WHY they come top a lot. I am usually shoved to my tower, I offer one of the best slows in the game at level 2, and the jungler can save their gap closer for AFTER the duration of wither.
If they come top and I have a huge wave I ping them back. If my jungler keeps coming, I wither the enemy, but I do not help in autoing if I am farming under tower. If the jungler is about to die I will then give up the farm.
The jungler dying to my laning opponent is probably the worst situation in the early game as a Nasus main. If they are facing death I will blow everything to try to save them. Most junglers back off after a flash is burned by the top laner.
I do think junglers should avoid coming top if a dragon is up, unless they plan to do rift herald afterwards. In general, helping a lane that is losing usually does not provide the greatest benefit to the team. But helping lanes that are ahead or competent are GOOD for the team.
If you are the best player on the team and that is very obvious to the jungler that you are, you both will basically be buddies. Just even a few games ago I played a normal with some friends that had a mix of Bronze Silver players on my team and the opponents had the same mix with a Diamond and plat player. My jungler was silver, but immediately recognized that I was the best player on the team and was up top a lot. We got the rift herald, first tower blood, some kills, and they helped me a lot during the game. They literally followed me around and helped me secure objectives and kills for the first 20 minutes of the game. So while they themselves were not statistically doing well, they really helped me get a huge lead and secure objectives and had 8 assists that contributed significantly to my 19 kills.
The point of the anecdote is that junglers gravitating towards your lane when you are doing fine is typically the sign of a good jungler. Helping lanes that are losing does not typically help the team overall (or rather) it has less impact. Junglers should only help lanes that are even, ahead, or only slightly behind. If the player got behind against an opponent it signifies that they are not quite as good against their laner(s) and that it is very likely that if you help them catch up they will eventually fall behind again.
I am not a great jungler, but I recognize what I am suppose to do though and focus primarily on objectives (towers, dragon, rift, baron). I really dislike the role because I think it gets blamed a lot for losses. The problem is that when lanes fall behind they always expect help, and I play a jungler that doesn't do much until level 6. Even then, I tend to not help losing lanes.
Honestly, I think it is the Elo. Good junglers understand the right times to gank, while lower elo junglers only have an idea of the right times to gank.
- Bronze jungler - Hardly farm and just gank OR they ONLY farm and never gank. I actually prefer the ones that just farm.
- Silver junglers - Try to gank too often. They think it is their job to only gank, get kills and help lanes snow ball. They are really bad at objective control and knowing when to baron
- Gold junglers - Typically they balance ganking and objectives pretty well. They are better at ganking safely too and not taking high risk ganks. The biggest problem they have is that Gold junglers typically do the same things around the same time. Counter ganks happen a lot and it is almost as if everything is scheduled for them.
- Plat junglers - I have only started playing against or with low plat players recently since getting to higher gold. Most of them try to make plays more often. They make riskier moves for objectives or in ganks that are great when they pay-off, but disastrous when they do not. They definitely have more global impact though.